A) Compared with the image that Juliet has built up in the previous acts, she makes a lot of changes approaching the end of the play. When she first shows up in the play, her mother and the Nurse suggests her to marry Paris, she responds that “I will look to like … but no more deep … than your consent gives strength to make it fly” (1,3,97). She is still an obedient girl, doing whatever pleases her parents. And then, after she falls in love with Romeo, she starts rebelling against her parents: from she secretly marries Romeo till openly disobeys her father despite of threat to disown her. Juliet, however, begins to make her own decisions instead of just submitting. As the play develops, her transition from an adolescent to a mature adult becomes more and more obvious. After Romeo leaves her and flees to Mantua, and she falls out with her family, she takes more decisive actions to pay for her love with Romeo while facing the despairing situation: she takes an unknown vial and risks her life. In contrast with her, Romeo does nothing but just wait for their messages in Mantua. Juliet absolutely grows more than Romeo: her courage, loyalty and efforts. Shakespeare sets up an intriguing contrast here: in comparison with the former part of the play, the majority is focused on Romeo’s actions and thoughts, and Juliet just stays at her room. In Act 4, it is all about Juliet’s physical and mental activities.
C) Consider the ending of the play. Is it a tragedy even though the city's natural order is restored by the ending of the feud? Were the deaths worth it?
It is a tragedy. Firstly, the story ends up with a tragic ending that most characters die including Mercutio, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet and Lady Montague. Secondly, the whole play exactly shows the audience how fate and partly Romeo and Juliet’s own decisions lead them toward their destruction at the end. Although Romeo and Juliet does not have a usual pattern like most of the other Shakespeare’s tragedies: there is always a tragic hero who has a high status, whose decisions have large impacts on the others, whose tragic flaws lead himself toward the destruction, there are also some similarities. The two protagonists do have a higher status: both of them are the only child of two famous households. Their own decisions also partly contribute to their final downfall. Despite their destined identities, it is their own wills to marry each other. Besides, their tragic flaws also somehow promote their tragic ending. Romeo is still an impulsive young man. If he does not kill Tybalt without consideration, their destiny would be entirely changed. As well as for Juliet, she has been forced to become mature too quickly; if she is still an innocent obedient girl, maybe the ending also will change. Even though the tragic ending is very sad, we should be grateful of how the death these two star-crossed lovers finally make these two families reconcile, otherwise, it will be more lives to pay for their long-existing feud.
F) Claire Danes’ portrayal of Juliet in the film nearly prefect restores every characteristic that Shakespeare builds up on Juliet. She successfully shows the whole transition made by Juliet from a quiet and obedient girl to a “mature” adult who makes her own decisions. However, the director also makes some slightly change in the movie: Juliet’s emotional side was magnified. For example, when Juliet goes to ask Friar Laurence for solution after Romeo leaves Mantua and she was forced to marry Paris, instead of trying to suicide with holding a knife in her hand, she points her gun to Friar Laurence, and “threatens” him to help her, otherwise, she would die with him. I think the little adaptation made here by the director is pretty understandable, and somehow makes me more empathize with Juliet. It not only emphasizes the significant transition made by Juliet: she is now a brave and strong-minded person, but also portrays her loyalty to her love Romeo: how desperate she is if she cannot be together with Romeo.
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