In the famous play, Romeo & Juliet, the first act of the story has been already given the audience the setting, the characters, and the conflict between the two families. I understand that women had almost no right in sixteenth century and the two families’ conflict will cost lots of troubles and some of the characteristic of some of the roles.
As an audience, I can see that Juliet is extremely unwilling to get married, but at that time, marriage’s use is only to make both of the families more powerful and wealthy. So, women had no choice at all; their marriages were the family’s benefits, but not theirs. Compare to the twenty-first century, there are lots of differences. Marriages are no longer parents’ choice in most of the families, and lovers can marry each other without parents’ permission. People are actually marrying the loving one today while the women in sixteenth century are marrying men that they had never met.
The conflict between the families becomes an important role in the whole play. The long term fighting of the two families makes all the people suffer, and the whole city went in to a big turmoil. With the prince’s punishment, which says that if the families fight again they will be punished by death, Romeo and Juliet’s loving story seems more dramatic. They love each other and they want to marry each other, but they cannot let anybody that is in the fight of the families know this.
Lastly, the characters. In the first act, with only a few scenes, we can figure out some of the trait of some characters. By Tybalt’s actions and dialogue, we can see that he is a person that likes to quarrel and fight. The old Capulet and old Montague even want to join the fight, so we can see that they hate each other so much. And the main character, Romeo, is crying everyday because the girl he likes doesn’t like him, we can see that he is very sensible and loving.