Romeo and Juliet Balcony Scene

Set in Verona, William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet shows the disastrous effect of love in the lives of the play’s key characters, Romeo and Juliet. The balcony scene of the Shakespeare’s play and Baz Luhrmann’s film is the most significant and important scene of the whole play. This scene serves to establish Romeo and Juliet’s love, it illustrates the barrier between the ‘pair of star-crossed lovers’, and how they confess their lover for each other and decide to get married in spite of the feud between their families; the balcony scene also serves to consolidate the individual personality traits, develop them as characters both in and separately from their relationship. Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation from the original play is contemporary and quite innovative.
In the balcony scene of the play and the film, the key characters, Romeo and Juliet are quite similar. Through this scene, both Shakespeare and Baz Luhrmann has revealed and communicated to us about the film’s characters in this scene. We can see that Romeo idolises Juliet, describing ‘Juliet [as] the sun’. He is also romantic about love and uses flowery and poetic language whilst speaking to Juliet. Romeo is also honourable to Juliet as he wishes to marry her, not just after sex, though we can say that he is impulsive and spontaneous as he moves from Rosaline to Juliet. Juliet, however, has completely opposite personalities to the idealistic Romeo. She is a logical, practical and cautious girl, she is concerned about Romeo’s safety when he broke into the Capulet’s house, she says to Romeo: ‘If they do see thee, they will murder thee.’ Juliet is also witty and mature, as she tells Romeo not to swear their love by the inconstant moon, she is aware of men’s games. Although Luhrmann’s film has variations to the play, the characters are still quite similar to the original.
The setting of the balcony scene in Shakespeare’s play is completely different to Luhrmann’s film, but the symbolic meanings behind the