Character Analysis
Why Character Analysis Matters in the Exam
In the Edexcel exam, both the part (a) extract question and the part (b) essay question require you to analyse how Shakespeare presents characters. This means going beyond describing what characters do. You need to explain how Shakespeare uses language, structure, and form to shape the audience’s response (AO2), and why he presents them this way in relation to Elizabethan context (AO3). This lesson covers the key characters and the quotations you need to memorise for each.
Romeo
Romeo undergoes the play’s most dramatic transformation. He begins as a lovesick Petrarchan poseur, infatuated with Rosaline and speaking in borrowed oxymorons: “O brawling love, O loving hate.” When he meets Juliet, his language transforms into original, vivid imagery: “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” This shift signals genuine emotion replacing performance. However, Romeo remains impulsive throughout: he falls in love instantly, marries secretly, kills Tybalt in rage, and takes poison without verifying Juliet’s death.
His cry “O, I am fortune’s fool!” after killing Tybalt shows his awareness that fate controls him, while “Then I defy you, stars!” shows futile rebellion against it. Romeo is both a passionate lover and a flawed, impetuous young man. Shakespeare positions the audience to sympathise with him while recognising that his haste contributes to the tragedy.
Romeo’s character arc: from artificial Petrarchan lover to genuine romantic to impulsive killer to tragic victim. His language shifts from stale oxymorons (Rosaline) to original imagery (Juliet) to violent imperative (“fire-eyed fury be my conduct now”). Track these language changes across the play to demonstrate AO2 analysis of character development.
Juliet
Juliet is arguably the play’s true protagonist. She is thirteen years old, yet she displays greater emotional maturity, intellectual sophistication, and moral courage than any other character. She begins the play as an obedient daughter — “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move” — but rapidly develops into someone who challenges patriarchal authority, defies her family, and takes her own fate into her hands.
In the balcony scene, Juliet drives the conversation: she proposes marriage, questions the meaning of names, and rejects false oaths. Her “What’s in a name?” speech is a philosophical argument that names are arbitrary — revolutionary thinking in a society where your family name determined everything. Her potion soliloquy (Act 4, Scene 3) shows extraordinary courage: she confronts horrifying visions of the tomb yet drinks anyway. Her final act — “O happy dagger, / This is thy sheath” — is decisive where Romeo’s was elaborate. Shakespeare gives Juliet agency, intelligence, and courage that subvert every Elizabethan expectation of how a young woman should behave.
Mercutio
Mercutio is the play’s most energetic and subversive character. He belongs to neither family, which gives him the freedom to mock the feud, mock love, and mock social conventions. His Queen Mab speech reveals a cynical worldview: dreams are illusions created by desire. His attitude to love is crudely physical, the opposite of Romeo’s idealism. Yet his loyalty to Romeo is absolute — he fights Tybalt because he sees Romeo’s refusal as dishonour.
His dying curse — “A plague o’ both your houses!” — is the play’s moral centre. Even in death, Mercutio refuses to choose a side. The pun “grave man” shows his wit surviving to the last breath. His death transforms the play from comedy to tragedy and demonstrates that the feud destroys even those who stand apart from it.
Tybalt is the embodiment of the feud’s destructive logic. His first words establish absolute hatred: “What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word, / As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.” He sees the world in black and white: you are either a Capulet or an enemy. At the ball, his rage at Romeo’s presence is barely contained: “Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting / Makes my flesh tremble.” This suppressed violence explodes in Act 3, Scene 1.
Mercutio calls Tybalt “the Prince of Cats” and “the King of Cats,” referencing Tybalt’s namesake in medieval fable — a cat known for its fighting skill. Tybalt is a skilled swordsman whose identity is defined entirely by the feud. He has no life outside conflict. His death is both a consequence of his own aggression and the event that triggers the tragedy’s unstoppable cascade.
The Nurse
The Nurse is Juliet’s closest companion and surrogate mother — she has raised Juliet since infancy and is the only person Juliet trusts with the secret of her marriage to Romeo. The Nurse is comic, earthy, and affectionate, providing much of the play’s humour with her rambling stories and sexual innuendo. She acts as a go-between, carrying messages between the lovers.
However, the Nurse ultimately betrays Juliet. After Romeo’s banishment, she advises Juliet to forget him and marry Paris: “I think it best you married with the County. / O, he’s a lovely gentleman! / Romeo’s a dishclout to him.” For the Nurse, love is practical, not sacred — one husband is as good as another. This betrayal forces Juliet to turn to the Friar and the sleeping potion, accelerating the tragedy. The Nurse represents a world where love is a commodity, not a spiritual bond.
Friar Lawrence is well-intentioned but reckless. He agrees to marry the lovers hoping to end the feud (“For this alliance may so happy prove / To turn your households’ rancour to pure love”), but his plans depend on impossible precision and he flees the tomb when things go wrong. His herb speech (“poison hath residence and medicine power”) establishes the play’s central duality. He represents the failure of adult authority — the adults who should protect the young instead gamble with their lives.
Lord Capulet shifts from a seemingly reasonable father (“let two more summers wither in their pride / Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride”) to a patriarchal tyrant (“Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wretch!”). His grief at Juliet’s apparent death — “Death lies on her like an untimely frost / Upon the sweetest flower of all the field” — is genuine, but deeply ironic: his own tyranny drove Juliet to fake her death. He embodies how patriarchal authority, even when motivated by love, can destroy the very people it claims to protect.
The Prince serves as a choric figure: he frames the play, delivers moral judgements, and speaks the final words. His decree in Act 1 creates the stakes; his mercy in Act 3 (banishment instead of death) inadvertently worsens the tragedy; his final “All are punish’d” assigns collective responsibility. He represents the law and civil order that the feud has undermined.
Every adult in the play fails the young. The Friar gambles with their lives, the Nurse betrays Juliet’s trust, Capulet exercises tyrannical control, and the Prince’s mercy creates the conditions for disaster. Shakespeare presents the tragedy as a failure of the older generation to protect the younger one.