romeo and juliet by william shakespeares study : character traits in different characters

1. Romeo & Juliet
William Shakespeare
Sofea, Doreen & Hafizan

2. Question #2
Draw a table to compare the character
traits of the different characters in Romeo
& Juliet.

3. Know The Characters…
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Romeo
Juliet
Lord Capulet
Lady Capulet
Lord Montague
Lady Montague

4. Comparison
Of
Characters

5. Love / Relationship

7. ROMEO MONTAGUE
• His relation to love is not simple/stable. At first he fall in love with
Rosaline but she slipped of Romeo’s mind after he kissed Juliet for the
first time and falls for Juliet.
• Juliet is no mere replacement. The love she shares with Romeo is far
deeper, more authentic and unique than the cliché puppy love
Romeo felt for Rosaline.
• Romeo’s love matures over the course of the play from the shallow
desire to be in love to a profound and intense passion.
• Romeo’s deep capacity for love is merely a part of his larger capacity
for intense feeling of all kinds. Put another way, it is possible to
describe Romeo as lacking the capacity for moderation.

8. • Love compels him to sneak into the garden of his enemy’s daughter,
risking death simply to catch a glimpse of her.
• Anger compels him to kill his wife’s cousin in a reckless duel to avenge
the death of his friend.
• Despair compels him to suicide upon hearing of Juliet’s death.
• Such extreme behaviour dominates Romeo’s character throughout
the play and contributes to the ultimate tragedy that befalls the
lovers.
• Of course, though, had Romeo not had such depths of feeling, the
love he shared with Juliet would never have existed in the first place.

10. JULIET CAPULET
• Having not quite reached her fourteenth birthday, Juliet is of an age
that stands on the border between immaturity and maturity.
• At the play’s beginning however she seems merely an obedient,
sheltered, naïve child. Though many girls her age, including her
mother - get married, Juliet has not given the subject any thought.
• When Lady Capulet mentions Paris’s interest in marrying Juliet, Juliet
dutifully responds that she will try to see if she can love him, a response
that seems childish in its obedience and in its immature conception of
love.
• Juliet seems to have no friends her own age, and she is not
comfortable talking about sex (as seen in her discomfort when the
Nurse goes on and on about a sexual jokes.

11. • Even in Juliet’s dutiful acquiescence to try to love Paris, there is some
seed of steely determination.
• Juliet promises to consider Paris as a possible husband to the precise
degree her mother desires.
• While an outward show of obedience, such a statement can also be
read as a refusal through passivity. Juliet will accede to her mother’s
wishes, but she will not go out of her way to fall in love with Paris.
• Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward
adulthood. Though profoundly in love with him, Juliet is able to see
and criticize Romeo’s rash decisions and his tendency to romanticize
things.

12. • After Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished, Juliet does not follow him
blindly. She makes a logical and heartfelt decision that her loyalty and
love for Romeo must be her guiding priorities.
• Essentially, Juliet cuts herself loose from her prior social moorings—her
nurse, her parents, and her social position in Verona—in order to try to
reunite with Romeo.
• When she wakes in the tomb to find Romeo dead, she does not kill
herself out of feminine weakness, but rather out of an intensity of love,
just as Romeo did.
• Juliet’s suicide actually requires more nerve than Romeo’s: while he
swallows poison, she stabs herself through the heart with a dagger.

14. LORD CAPULET
• The head of his family and father to Juliet, is about sixty years of age
but calls himself young.
• By personality, he is fiery, interfering, forgetful, and domineering; but at
the same time, he can be hospitable, and generous, as he appears at
his party. He delights in entertaining lavishly and personally welcomes
and jests with his guests.
• Capulet dearly loves his daughter Juliet, but likes to have his way with
her. He is very considerate of her feelings when he first speaks to Paris
about their marriage; he states that his consent to the marriage
depends upon her wishes, and tells Paris that he needs to woo and
win her.

15. • Later, when Juliet is grieving over Tybalt, he overrules any
consideration of her feelings. When she refuses to marry Paris, he
becomes angry and calls her vile names, threatening to turn her out
on the street and to disinherit her.
• He fixes the day of the marriage for Thursday and suddenly advances
it to Wednesday. He is highly insensitive to the feelings of Juliet when
she defies him.

17. LADY CAPULET
• She also has fewer redeeming qualities than he does. She ridicules his age in
the presence of others and endeavours to assert her authority over him.
• Capulet completely ignores her on all occasions thus showing she has no
influence over him.
• She also has very little influence over her daughter; she has had little part in
her upbringing and still treats Juliet as a child.
• When she learns that Romeo killed Tybalt, her nephew, she demands the
death of Romeo.
• She is incapable of seeing any justice in Romeo’s fighting Tybalt over the
death of Mercutio; her hysterical demands, however, make no impression on
the Prince.

18. • Her wickedness comes to the forefront when she tells Juliet that she plans to
seek revenge on Romeo for Tybalt’s death and will poison him through a
servant.
• Lady Capulet, revealing very little that is admirable in her character, is
created to be an unlikable and unsympathetic character.
• The shock that Lady Capulet receives over Juliet’s supposed death removes
all superfluity from her, and the grief-stricken mother comes out.
• Her sorrow over the loss of her child is immense, which she clearly expresses
with a string of adjectives. “Accurs’t unhappy, wretched hateful day!”, are
genuinely from the heart.
• Lady Capulet is an unsympathetic, heartless, scheming woman, until she is
overtaken by tragedy.

20. LORD MONTAGUE
• Lord Montague’s social position in Verona is the same as that of the
Lord Capulet, but he, his son Romeo, and his nephew Benvolio, are far
from being eager to fight their enemies.
• Lord Montague is a foil to Lord Capulet. He is selfcontrolled, quiet, and dignified. He loves his son dearly and grieves
over his strange behaviour and his secretiveness.
• His first words spoken in the play, “The villain Capulet! Hold me not, let
me go,” are dramatically intended to inform the audience, at the
outset, of the relations between the two houses.
• Even in this exclamation, the reader can see his mildness and selfcontrol. He does not want to be involved in a fight with the Capulets.

21. • In the opening scene, he begs Benvolio to find out what is wrong with
Romeo and he pleads with the Prince to consider that Romeo, in
killing Tybalt, has only done what the law otherwise would have done.
• In the closing scene, he announces that he was grieved over
Romeo’s exile; now he has to face his son’s death.
• He accepts Capulet’s hand but is too much overcome with grief to
speak about forgetting the past enmity. He does, however, propose
to raise a golden statue of Juliet for her everlasting remembrance.
• He also worries over Romeo's relationship with Rosaline (with whom
Romeo was in love at the beginning of the story), but cannot get
through to his son.

23. LADY MONTAGUE
• Lady Montague’s character is not much developed in the play.
• She speaks only once, stating her happiness that Romeo was not
involved in the street fight in the opening scene.
• She is present with her husband in Act III, Scene 1, but says nothing,
apparently overcome by the sentence of banishment of Romeo.
• In the closing scene, her husband reveals that she died in grief over
Romeo’s exile.
• Lady Montague is cast in a more suave and womanly manner than
Lady Capulet is. She says nothing but restrains her husband from
fighting by throwing her arms around him.

24. • She loves him and does not want him to be hurt or to engage in a fray
forbidden by the Prince.
• She is more interested in her son’s welfare than in the cause of the
fight. She is devoted to her husband and her son and in the end dies a
sad death.

25. “
Don't Waste Your Love On
Somebody, Who Doesn't Value
It.
- William Shakespeare
”

27. End Of Slide 