How Did Shakespeare Keep His Audience Interested in the Play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with Specific Reference to Act 3 Scene I and How Would You Make This Scene Relevant to a Modern Audience?

How did Shakespeare keep his audience interested in the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with specific reference to Act 3 scene I and how would you make this Scene relevant to a modern audience?

I am studying ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Act 3 scene 1. The play is about two teenagers who are from rival families; one is called the Montagues and the other Capulets. The rivalry between the two families goes back hundreds of years. The two teenagers fall in forbidden love.
Act 3 scene 1 is a very important scene because this is the scene where Romeo kills Tybalt and gets banished from Verona to Mantua.

Shakespeare had a lot of difficulties originally when staging a play because Shakespeare used to stage his play in an open air theatre so the audience didn’t have any protection from the weather and the audience had to stand up and watch the play so if they were tired and wet they had to be something to hold their interest. In absence of the technology it was hard for Shakespeare to express his ideas because of the lack of effects such as lighting, sound and computer generated imagery. Shakespeare used dramatic devices such as language, conflict, contrast, dramatic irony, pace and suspense to make his plays interesting.

Because of these difficulties, Shakespeare had to use language to keep the audience interested.
As Shakespeare didn’t have any cameras and a lot of the audience were far away from the stage he had to use the language to describe the character. For example we know that Benvolio is a peaceful character because he says “I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire” he says this when Tybalt appears wanting a confrontation with Romeo.
This shows that Benvolio doesn’t want to fight. Mercutio is a character who likes to wind people up he says “here’s my fiddle-stick, come here is that shall make you dance” this shows that he is starting the fight. Another interesting and important language device used in the play is when Romeo is unwilling to accept any responsibility for what has happened after he has killed Tybalt. He says “O I am fortune’s fool” by saying this he is blaming his luck instead of himself another example of this is when he says “O Juliet, thy beauty hath made me effeminate” by this he is blaming Juliet for the fact that he is a murderer.

Conflict is a disagreement between one or more characters. Conflict creates tension between the characters. If there was no conflict between the character the play would be boring. A
In act3 scene 1 the conflict arises between Tybalt and Mercutio when Tybalt says “Mercutio thou consort with Romeo” Mercutio reply with “consort! What dost thou make us minstrels?” This keeps the audience interested because the audience like watching a fight because they know that a fight is going to happen but they are not sure who the fight is going to be between or when it is going to happen.
The whole play is based on conflict between the two families and this is one of the reasons why this play has lasted for so long.

Contrast is the difference between the characters. In this scene the contrast is partly between Romeo and Tybalt. Tybalt is a character who has a fiery temper “therefore turn and draw” Romeo replies with “I do protest I never injured thee” Romeo says this because he is in love and is a peaceful character. This contrast between them leads to the fight. At the start of the scene there is contrast between peace loving Benvolio and Fiery tempered Mercutio and this leads to a joke as Mercutio teases Benvolio pretending Benvolio likes fighting. There is contrast within the characters. An example of this is Mercutio who is a joking humorous character, even when he is dying he is making jokes “You will find me a grave man” but the he gets serious and curses both of the families “A plague on both your houses”.

Dramatic Irony is when the audience know something that the characters don’t. In this scene the Dramatic Irony is that we know
Romeo is married to Juliet but Tybalt doesn’t “Till thou shalt know the reason of my love” by saying this Romeo is making another excuse to avoid a fight, he is hinting to Tybalt that they are now related. Dramatic Irony makes the audience feel important and keeps the audience interested because the audience feel special because they know a secret and feel a part of the play.

Pace is the speed the play moves at. The scene starts off slowly as the Montagues are relaxing and speeds up when Capulets arrive. It is important for the play to have change of pace otherwise the audience would get bored. The pace changes when the Mercutio is talking to Tybalt it goes from slow to fast, from the talk to the fight. However there must not be too much fighting otherwise the play will not move on.

Suspense is something that the audience know is going to happen but the writer deliberately makes the audience wait. In this scene Shakespeare uses suspense to make the play more exciting.
In this scene we know that someone other than Romeo will get hurt even though we know Tybalt is looking for Romeo. Tybalt “Well peace be with you, sir. Here comes my man” the audience are kept in suspense waiting for Tybalt and Romeo to fight but in fact the first fight is between Mercutio and Tybalt.

In my conclusion, I think Shakespeare used these techniques to make this exciting and suspenseful. If he hadn’t used these techniques the play would have been not that interesting and not as famous as it is now. I think by using dramatic irony the scene was more interesting because we knew that Romeo was married to Juliet although none of the other character in that scene knew. We wanted to watch what would happen in the end because we thought we were in on a secret and we wondered what would happen when the others found out.
I really enjoyed this play because it was very good and kept me interested in the outcome right till the end.