First Draft

The play Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare about how two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, fall in love with each other in the first sight yet are fool by destiny to meet their eventual death due to the combination of several seemingly accidental events and ironically make a mutiny finally among their two hostile families.  Like other Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet has been viewed as one of the masterpieces of classic English Literature. Often considered as a story of forbidden love, Romeo and Juliet demonstrates how irrationality, impulsion and grudge can trigger the irreversible tragedy. The Feud of the two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, is the main culprit of the demise of the young couple and more importantly, it blinds the ability of those members in these two families to understand the affairs thoroughly: they are easily irritated and treat others with long-hold prejudice.In order to embody the importance of this theme to the final tragedy, I chose Act 1 scene 1, Act 1 scene 5 and Act 3 scene 1 to perform with suitable actions, vocal technique, contrary costumes and emotional movements

The world that Shakespeare portray is violent and full of abhorrence from the beginning of the play. Act one scene one establishes the ongoing conflicts between the house of Montague and the house of Capulet to an extent in which even the servingmen under two households want to instigate the other to start a fight. The first scene also set the background of  the play. In this scene, two members of the Capulets, Gregory and Sampson, walks alone the Verona street with the conversation of how tough they are and the hatred to the Montagues. After a while, Abram, the member of the Montagues, enters their sight. Unwillingly to break the law yet love to provoke Abram into a fight, Sampson bites his thumb, an action that is a disgrace to Abram, while denies the fact that he is actually biting the thumb at Abram.  Sampson and Gregory successfully infuriate Abram and starts a fight which later entangles Tybalt and Benvolio  until Prince restore the peace with severe warning.  We did make a lot of adaptation of the first scene. In order to show the difference between Montagues and Capulets during the performance, we decided to let Montagues wear Black Costume and let Capulet wear green costume with medieval style. In order to show the feud between the families in this scene, we specifically emphasize and pick the lines like “ A dog of the house of Montague me to stand. I will take the wall of any man of or maid of Montague's"(Act 1 Scene 1, line 12-13), a sentence implicitly states Sampson's strong will to physically suppress the men of Montagues and sexually conquer the women in Montague Family. We shorten the play and only act the first part of scene one because that is the part that reveals the conflicts and paves  the way for the larger inharmony later. Although in the original play, the playwright does not mention how the fight ends up, we let Sampson and Gregory stab Abram in the end of the scene in order to exaggerate and show the severity of the conflicts and foreshadow the following aggravated tension and bloody events. Even though Romeo and Juliet do not appear in this scene, the scene is actually related to the tragedy. Tybalt is the one who is involved in this chaos and the fight actually let him hold a grudge and make him want to vent his anger which lead to the second scene that we perform.

Unimportant to the theme of feud at the first sight, act one scene five is indeed essential to the overall development of increasing tension, escalating Tybalt's determination of vengeance to Montague's family. It is the scene where the Capulet’s party is held. Everyone, except Tybalt, is enjoying themselves in the party: Capulet is socializing with others, Romeo and Juliet are stunted by each other’s appearance. However, because of the prejudice, Tybalt recognizes the uninvited guest, Romeo, in the party and wants to expel him or gives him severe punishment because “this is a Montague, our foe, a villain that is hither come in spite to scorn at our solemnity this night” (Act 2 scene 5, line 69-71). Tybalt views Romeo as a disgrace to the Capulet party and a people who intends to ruin the party as he says Romeo will "fleer and scorn at our solemnty", but his attempt fails when Capulet forbidden him to create disturbance in party. Nonetheless, the seed of revenge is planted in Tybalt’s heart. “I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall, now seeming sweet, covert to bitt’rest gall” (act 1 scene5, lines 102-103) is the final speech before Tybalt’s exist, foreshadowing the later turning point of the destiny of the young lover like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. In order to emphasize the power of feud, our group condensed the play of this scene into the conversation between Capulet and Tybalt where Tybalt expresses his hatred to Romeo and Capulet warns him not to do so. Considering the fluency of the play, we selected a part of Romeo's speeches in the party and placed it at the beginning of this scene. Romeo was pretending to talk to a real person beside him and after that Tybalt pointed to Romeo while explaining to Capulet why Romeo should be banished from the party. In order to show the foreshadowing at the end of Tybalt speech, we added a music which is a deep sound like the coming of storm and let Tybalt throw his wine glass to the ground and leave with heavy foot step after he said " I will withdraw....covert to bitt'rest gall", showing the degree of anger in Tybalt's heart.