Blog post #3 the shape (color and pattern) of the play

Romeo and Juliet is a love tragedy play with very dramatic plots. Two main characters who symbolize variable conflicts act in the plots generally concentrate on the three main elements: love, fight and death. The shape and colors of this play are striking. 

I usually think about the colors of literature works because I usually try to understand them as arts. So firstly, I really want to talk a little about my own understanding of the color of the play which we have not talked in class. For me, the color of this play is a kind of dark red, since this play mainly focus on two giant emotions—hate and love, which starts from hate and changes into love. Other different emotions such as angry, struggling and etc. all are byproducts of love and hate. Normally speaking, when we think about couples’ love, it is sweet and has a kind of pinkish red color. However, the love between Romeo and Juliet is seemed to be inappropriate because their families are enemies, so their love is heavy and not that lively and easy, as a result, the color of their love might be much darker than the normal pinkish one. On the other hand, the feuds between their two families cause a lot of fighting and bloody conflicts, so the color of this hatred is similar with the dry-out blood color. “Civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” (Romeo and Juliet 8) In this play, death is the destiny of these two faithful lovers which is an interesting ending, for the hatred between their families is strong enough to break them apart “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name” (65), and their love is also strong enough to bring them together “By love, that first did prompt me in inquire; He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes. I am no pilot, yet, wert thou as  far as that vast shore wash’d with the farthest sea, I should adventure for such merchandise” (68). And actually, no one can define whether they get together or not if they die.

I feel like there is not any exactly shape for this play because you can have different sights and patterns when you watch it from different viewpoints. However, the pattern of this play is kind of symmetry: two rich and powerful households stand on the opposite sides; two children come from two enemy families; they both have a cousin and a good friend. All these similarities between two main characters balance the patterns of Romeo and Juliet’s identities. Besides, according to what Sam said in class, the pattern of the plots is also symmetry, since one scene starts with fighting and ends with love, and the following scene may start with love and end with fighting. Also, the day-night changing and the dream-reality replacement are both following the symmetry pattern. In a word, this play is a competition of several pairs of opposite elements which creates a very precise and neat pattern. That is why the ups and downs of the plots are frequent and drastic.