Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is a play that has shaped and made the basis for the way people think about love and rebellion. It is one of the most famous examples of tragedy because of it’s obvious examples of forbidden love all throughout the play. Romeo and Juliet are the two main characters because of the intense love they share upon first glance at each other. While in the scene chosen, I had to keep in mind all of my experiences with Romeo as Juliet and let them influence how I reacted to certain things. We ended up choosing Act 2 Scene 5 where Juliet and the Nurse talk about Romeo. My experience playing Juliet changed my opinion of her because even though Juliet asserts her independence from her parents, she remains childlike in that she relies on the nurse for parental guidance.
When I first started reading Romeo and Juliet, I saw Juliet as an obedient teenager. She seemed so innocent and caring that when I found out she was going to die, I felt bad for her. As I read, I took notes on her and her family and picked up on some details that gave me some background on her life and family. In one of the first scenes, the nurse flat out tells us her age: "She hath not seen the change of fourteen years" (I.II.9), which means Juliet is 13 at the time.The quote “Two households, both alike in dignity…” (I.I.2) suggests that not only Romeo, but also Juliet comes from a wealthy family. Juliet is also extremely obedient to her parents. She isn’t very close with her mother or father, however she has a very close knit relationship with the nurse, which is the secondary character in the scene I performed. Juliet is extremely impressionable, I think this is why she had always been so obedient to her parents.
When Romeo came along he brought excitement and a new experience and it gave Juliet a new way to look at love without her parents telling her one thing or the other. This sparked a change in Juliet, going from letting her parents make the decisions to making her own decision to pursue Romeo. By doing this, she not only closes the gap between herself and Romeo, but also distances herself from her parents in the process. Her parents weren't a big part of Juliet's life other than restraining her from doing anything they disapproved of, so defying her parents by pursuing Romeo is a huge defiance in their eyes.
The nurse is a character that is very close to Juliet. She is really more of a mother figure and a confidante than anyone else in the play for Juliet. Since her parents aren’t there, especially her mother, Juliet uses and trusts the nurse with all of her secrets, even the ones about Romeo. Juliet knew that if her parents ever found out they would immediately remove her from ever seeing him again, so she uses the nurse for advice and counseling on the matter. I think that if the nurse didn’t give Juliet the approval she needed to hear with moving forward with Romeo by means of marriage, Juliet would have given up. This is because the nurse is one of the few people Juliet trusts, so if the nurse had said no, she would have known that what she was doing was wrong and listened to her.
Keeping all of this in mind while trying to figure out how I should perform as Juliet was probably the hardest part. I tried to keep her young but at the same time mature. To do this, I made my voice higher but softer, not so much as a whisper but low enough so that the audience would understand that she has control and she is slightly mature. I also did this by changing my normal walking pattern to something with a little more of a jump or skip to show youth.
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