Romeo and Juliet---Art and natur

conduces nothing to the progress of the play'. Dr Johnson was writing from his study: any actor, breathless after the ballroom scene and preparing for the big balcony scene that follows, could tell the scholar why these fourteen lines are necessary. Shakespeare was himself an actor (he is more likely to have played the part of Friar Laurence than that of Romeo) and he understood an actor's needs.

To satisfy contemporary audiences and actors is a considerable achievement for any dramatist at any time. It was especially difficult in the sixteenth century when the large audiences were made up of spectators from every level of society, with all kinds of interest and degrees of intelligence. What Elizabethan audiences did not expect-and what we today always look for-is the detailed, sensitive character-portrayal for which Shakespeare is most famous. No other dramatist of this period creates characters as Shakespeare does: their dramatis personae are types,Shakespeare's are individuals. The characters' vitality comes inpart from the precise information we learn about them-information which is unnecessary to the plot of the play : we do not need to know that the Nurse's daughter was called Susan, or that her husband was 'a merry man'. And they speak in ways that vary subtly from one character to another-just as no two human beings speak quite alike. The rhythms of the Nurse's speech are quite different from those of Mercutio's explosive outbursts, and these again are totally unlike Benvolio's solemn utterances.

With the central characters, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare takes even greater care. Romeo's witty introspection when he is describing his passion for Rosaline sounds very different from the quiet eloquence with which he speaks his love for Juliet; in the balcony scene Shakespeare shows the change in Romeo as the young man hesitates between his former rhetoric ('It is the east, and Juliet is the sun') and his new-found simplicity:

It is my lady. O, it is my love!O that she knew she were!

Romeo seems to grow older-to mature-as the play progresses;and the verse both reflects and expresses the change in his character. Juliet is more straight forward, and the verse she speaks creates a character of purity and passion. After the death of Tybalt she is confused, and her conversation with Lady Capulet show show she is resolving the confusion: Juliet speaks at the same time to her mother and, with a different meaning, to the audience, who hear her private thoughts.