Conflict

The play opens on the feud, not the love. Before any character speaks, the Chorus names two equal houses and an old grudge breaking out again, and gives it no cause: the play never will. The first damage it names is public, ‘civil blood makes civil hands unclean’, so the quarrel is a wound in the whole city. Then the sonnet says how it will end and who will pay: nothing could remove the parents' rage ‘but their children's end’. Even the love is announced through the feud's cost: the Chorus calls it ‘death-marked’, the phrase AQA's November 2020 mark scheme quotes for the conflict keeping the lovers apart. AQA has never printed the Prologue, but the November 2020 report praised answers that widened from the extract to it: make it the frame of any conflict essay.

• Two households,¹ both alike² in dignity³

  The feud arrives as 'households' before any person in them has a name: people here are first their families, which is what the feud needs and what the lovers will try to undo.

  Key word: ‘households’

  A household is a family with its servants and dependants, so the word takes in everyone who wears the house's colours: that is why the first fight is between servants.

  In the exam

  Open an effects essay here: the play starts with institutions and spends the rest of its length counting what they cost individuals.

• From ancient¹ grudge² break to new mutiny³

  The feud has an age and an outbreak but no beginning, so nobody can be made to answer for its cause, only for today's fight.

  In the exam

  If a question invites causes, say the play withholds one, and move the argument from why the feud began to who keeps it going.

• And the continuance¹ of their parents' rage,² / Which, but their children's end,³ naught could remove

  No other remedy is offered: no law, no marriage, no change of heart. The Prologue tells us that every attempt at peace will fail, the Prince's sentence and the Friar's alliance among them, so the audience watches each one knowing the end; whether they had to fail is the play's question.

  Key word: ‘end’

  'End' means death, and it is also the word for a story's close: the children's deaths, the feud's removal and the play's last scene are one event, so the Prologue has already placed the peace in the play's final minutes.

  In the exam

  Measure each attempt at peace against this line, and use it to answer a 'how far is the ending hopeful' question from the first minute.

Shakespeare stages the feud before the lovers, and in one scene it spreads up Verona's ranks: servants who check whether ‘the law’ is on their side before they dare, Benvolio drawing to part them, Tybalt, who hates the very word 'peace', citizens who curse ‘Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!’, and two old men spoiling to fight, Capulet calling for his sword and Montague already flourishing his, while their wives mock them and hold them back. Nobody dies and much of it is comic, yet the Prince names the fathers as the cause and prices the next brawl at a life. Later that day Capulet thinks peace easy for ‘men so old as we’, and a servant who cannot read invites Romeo, of all people, to the feast. The feud says nothing in the women's scene (1.3). AQA has printed 1.1 twice, the servants (June 2017) and the Prince's speech (November 2020): from either, leave by the Prince's sentence, which 3.1 breaks and 5.3 carries out. Specimen 1 (1.2.6 to 19) opens three lines after Capulet's easy promise: set it against that morning's sword, then leave for 3.5, where his temper turns on his daughter.

• What, drawn and talk of peace?¹ I hate the word² / As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.³

  In the whole brawl only Tybalt says that he hates: the servants need the law's permission and Capulet needs his sword fetched. Everyone shares the feud's habit; its hatred, so far, belongs to one young man.

  In the exam

  On a Tybalt question, use it as the fixed point: his hatred never changes, so his scenes measure how far everyone else moves.

• What noise is this? Give me my long sword,^1,2 ho!

  In the morning Capulet calls for a sword at a noise; that night he forbids Tybalt to fight a Montague at his feast. The feud is the fathers' temper, not their policy, so it is easy to restart and hard to end.

  In the exam

  Set it beside 'Am I the master here or you?' (1.5) and 'O brother Montague' (5.3) to argue that the fathers decide when the feud matters.

• Rebellious subjects,¹ enemies to peace, / Profaners² of this neighbor-stainèd steel³

  The Prince charges both sides with one crime without asking who began it (he asks only in 3.1, over a body): in Verona's law the feud has no right side, only two sets of guilty hands.

  In the exam

  On an effects question (November 2020), begin with the conflict's effect on the state, then follow the Prince to 5.3, where he counts himself among the guilty.

• Three civil brawls¹ bred of an airy² word / By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,³ / Have thrice⁴ disturbed the quiet of our streets

  The Prince's charge against the feud names three brawls that 'disturbed the quiet', and no death: so far its effects are noise, fear and old men in arms. That is what makes 3.1 the change, when the next brawl kills.

  Key word: ‘bred’

  To breed is to beget and raise: the brawls are the airy word's children, so the feud is a family that reproduces itself, in a play where the houses' real children pay for it.

  In the exam

  On a Prince question, show his authority working by naming the fathers to their faces, then test it against his own 'winking' in 5.3.

• If ever¹ you disturb our streets again, / Your lives² shall pay the forfeit³ of the peace.

  For now the law is the one force stronger than the feud, and the crowd goes home. But it can only punish the next brawl, not end the feud, so Romeo can cite it in 3.1 and still not stop the fight.

  Key word: ‘peace’

  Peace here is a bond the citizens hold and can forfeit, like a deposit: a legal state, not a feeling. The Prince's last 'peace' (5.3) is a state of affairs again, and a 'glooming' one.

  In the exam

  Argue that the state deters but cannot cure: follow the sentence to Romeo's 'The Prince expressly hath / Forbid this bandying' (3.1), spoken while the swords are out.

At the feast the feud recognises Romeo before Juliet does. Tybalt knows his voice, calls for his rapier and is overruled by his uncle; he leaves vowing the intrusion will ‘convert to bitt'rest gall’, and the lovers' sonnet begins in the next line. From here the feud goes quiet on stage but grows in two places. It enters the love: Juliet can name her love only through ‘my only hate’, argues in the orchard that the feud is only a name, and still warns Romeo that ‘they will murder thee’. And it plots offstage: by Monday noon Tybalt has ‘sent a letter’, a challenge. The Friar marries the lovers hoping to end the feud, and the wedding happens offstage. AQA's four extracts from these scenes carry the feud faintly. The sonnet (June 2019) has none: leave by what follows it, the Nurse's news and 'my only hate'. Specimen 3 ends on Romeo's 'proof against their enmity'. June 2022 (2.2.2 to 26) and June 2024 (2.5.1 to 18) never name it, but the June 2024 mark scheme credits the effects of conflict on Juliet: bring the feud in through the name she must refuse, ‘my enemy’. From any of them, leave for 3.1.

• This, by his voice,¹ should be a Montague. / Fetch me my rapier,^2,3 boy.

  A mask hides Romeo's face but not his family: the feud needs only a voice to find an enemy, and it recognises the lover before the girl he is praising knows his name.

  In the exam

  On a Tybalt question, show his hostility is instant and inherited: he identifies a Montague by voice alone, then reads mockery into his mere presence ('To fleer and scorn at our solemnity').

• My only love sprung¹ from my only hate!²

  Juliet speaks of the hatred as hers, though nothing in the play shows her with a quarrel of her own: the feud is inherited like a name, and she finds she owns it in the same breath as the love.

  In the exam

  On a feelings or relationship question, show the feud inside the love from its first hour, before anyone has fought over it.

• 'Tis but thy name¹ that is my enemy. / Thou art thyself,² though not a Montague.

  Juliet treats the feud as a matter of words, as Tybalt did when he hated the word 'peace': on both sides it lives in language. Her cure is to strip the name off, and she says it believing herself alone, so the play's sharpest argument against the feud is heard only by the Montague it is about, hidden below.

  In the exam

  On a feelings or relationship question, use it to show Juliet arguing with the feud rather than fighting or obeying it: others try to stop the brawls, and she questions what makes an enemy.

• In one respect¹ I'll thy assistant be, / For this alliance² may so happy prove / To turn your households' rancor to pure love.³

  The Friar's plan never goes near the Prince: the one adult who wants peace works privately, through a marriage, while the state works publicly, through threats, and the Prince hears of the plan only at the inquest in 5.3. Verona's two cures for the feud never meet until it is too late.

  In the exam

  On a Prince or how-far question, use it to argue that peace in Verona fails because its makers work apart: the Friar in secret, the Prince in public, the fathers not at all.

Within the hour of the wedding the feud is back in the street, in the heat Benvolio blames. The order of events matters, and answers often blur it. Mercutio has already goaded Tybalt when Tybalt challenges Romeo, who refuses and calls him ‘good Capulet’; Mercutio, who cannot bear the refusal, draws; Romeo steps between them, and Tybalt wounds Mercutio ‘under your arm’; Mercutio curses both houses and is helped off to die offstage; Romeo chooses revenge and kills Tybalt; the Prince, whose own kinsman is dead, exiles him. In under eighty lines, from the challenge to Tybalt's fall, the feud kills a man of neither house and a Capulet, and by the scene's end the Montagues' only son is an exile. The scene is the exact middle of the play, and after it the play no longer has a comedy's shape. AQA has not printed 3.1 in any confirmed paper, but every conflict answer needs it: from an Act 1 extract, it is where the brawl first kills.

• And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something. Make it a word and a blow.¹

  The first call for violence in 3.1 comes from a man of neither house: the code recruits outsiders, and the one who asks for the blow is the one it kills.

  In the exam

  On a blame question, set it beside 'A plague o' both your houses!': the man who asked for the blow curses others for it.

• Romeo, the love I bear thee¹ can afford / No better term than this: thou art a villain.²

  Courteous in form and deadly in content: Tybalt follows the rules of honour to the letter, so the killing that follows cannot be put down to hot blood alone.

  In the exam

  On a Tybalt question, argue he is the code's most correct follower, and that his grievance is the feast, not this afternoon.

• And so, good Capulet,¹ which name I tender² / As dearly as mine own,³ be satisfied.

  Romeo still calls Tybalt by his house, as the feud taught everyone to, but he will 'tender' that name 'As dearly as mine own': the feud's habit of reducing a man to his family is kept and its feeling reversed. His peace does not leave the feud's language; it loves inside it.

  In the exam

  Show peace possible in words and impossible in public: weigh it against Mercutio's 'vile submission' two lines later.

• A plague¹ o' both your houses!²

  The feud's first death falls on a man of neither house, and his curse is the citizens' cry from 1.1 in a dying man's mouth: the conflict has escaped the families and is killing outsiders.

  Key word: ‘houses’

  A 'house' is a family line, the Prologue's 'households'. Mercutio served neither and dies of both, so the curse treats the two as one disease, as the citizens did in 1.1 and the Prince will in 5.3.

  In the exam

  On an effects question, widen the feud's cost beyond the two families, then follow the curse to 'All are punished' (5.3).

• Thy beauty hath made me effeminate¹ / And in my temper² softened valor's steel.³

  Romeo cannot defend his peace in the code's terms, because its real reason is a secret marriage, so he accepts the code's name for it: the feud wins because the other side of the argument cannot be spoken.

  In the exam

  On a Romeo and Tybalt question, use it to explain why Romeo loses the argument before the fight: the one reason for his peace that would satisfy the code, his marriage, is the one he cannot give.

• Away to heaven, respective lenity,¹ / And fire-eyed² fury³ be my conduct⁵ now.⁴

  Revenge passes the debt along: Tybalt fought over a slight, Mercutio for Romeo's honour, Romeo now for Mercutio. Each killing makes the next creditor, which is how a feud with no cause keeps going.

  In the exam

  Use it to show the feud's mechanism, revenge as repayment, and argue that Romeo re-enters a feud he had left an hour before.

• O, I am Fortune's fool!^1,2

  Within seventy lines of calling Tybalt 'good Capulet', Romeo has killed him, and he names Fortune as the culprit, not the feud and not himself: the feud has taken back its would-be deserter and left its own part unnamed, as the Prologue left its cause unnamed.

  In the exam

  On an effects question, use it as the conflict's effect on Romeo himself: the would-be peacemaker made a killer and, minutes later, an exile.

• And for that offense¹ / Immediately² we do exile³ him hence.⁴

  The second judgement softens the first: the death promised in 1.1 becomes exile, because Tybalt killed first. The feud has bent the law to fit a fight with two killers, and the judge is now one of its mourners.

  In the exam

  Track the Prince's three judgements, and argue that this merciful one sets the rest of the tragedy moving: the Friar's plan, the potion, the letter.

After 3.1 the feud is never fought in Verona's streets again: it moves into rooms, words and minds. Juliet hears the news and the two houses fight inside her sentences until she chooses her husband, ‘That villain cousin would have killed my husband’. In the Friar's cell Romeo hears his own name as a murderer's and turns a dagger on himself to cut it out. In the Capulet house the feud's revenge passes to a mother: Lady Capulet, refused Romeo's death by the Prince, plans to send poison to Mantua, and Juliet answers her in double meanings. Then the household's war on its daughter takes the feud's place, and Capulet's ‘My fingers itch’ brings the street's violence home. Five AQA extracts come from these scenes (3.2 in Specimen 2, November 2021 and June 2023; 3.5 in June 2018 and June 2025): read any of them as the conflict's effects reaching people who never fought in it.

• Beautiful tyrant,¹ fiend angelical!²

  The feud reaches Juliet: each oxymoron sets the husband she loves against the cousin her house has lost, so the street fight of 3.1 is replayed inside one sentence.

  In the exam

  On an effects or difficulties question, show the conflict moving from the street into Juliet's mind; AQA's June 2024 mark scheme lists its effects on her.

• In what vile part of this anatomy¹ / Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack² / The hateful mansion.³

  Romeo now reasons as Tybalt did, that a name is a reason to kill, but turns the reasoning on himself: the feud's logic needs only one Montague to work.

  In the exam

  Argue that after 3.1 the conflict's effects are inward as well as physical, and pair it with Juliet's orchard argument that the name is the only enemy (2.2).

• We will have vengeance for it,¹ fear thou not. / Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,² / Where that same banished runagate doth live, / Shall give him such an unaccustomed dram³ / That he shall soon keep Tybalt company.⁴

  Lady Capulet offers her daughter revenge as comfort, not knowing she is plotting against her son-in-law: with the young men dead or gone, the feud's revenge passes to the parents and into the house.

  Key word: ‘fear thou not’

  The comfort promises the one thing Juliet fears most: dramatic irony turns a mother's reassurance into the feud's threat, minutes after Romeo has gone.

  In the exam

  On a family or effects question, show the feud continuing indoors, where each word of comfort to Juliet threatens her husband.

Act 4 has no brawl, no Prince, no Montague and no Romeo, and the feud's own words ('grudge', 'quarrel', 'foe', 'enemy' and the rest) are not spoken from 4.1 to 5.2. The silence is evidence. The feud's threat has been taken over by a household: a father's decree and a wedding moved forward press on Juliet as hard as any sword. The feud surfaces once, at night, in Juliet's imagination: alone with the vial, she pictures ‘bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth’ in the vault where she must lie, then seems to see his ghost hunting Romeo. In 5.1 Romeo buys poison in Mantua, and in 5.2 a house sealed for plague stops the Friar's letter, an irony an answer can set beside Mercutio's curse on 'both your houses'. No AQA extract has come from these scenes: use the silence to argue that the conflict's effects outlast its fighting.

• O look, methinks I see¹ my cousin's ghost / Seeking out Romeo that did spit² his body / Upon a rapier's point! Stay, Tybalt, stay!³

  The only feud in Act 4 is in Juliet's mind, and even there it is the 3.1 killing replayed: the conflict has become a fear she must carry alone into her family's vault.

  Key word: ‘Seeking’

  The ghost is still hunting: in her vision the feud goes on after death, looking for its next victim, and at the tomb Paris will ask whether vengeance can be pursued 'further than death'.

  In the exam

  Make it your Act 4 reference in any conflict essay: the feud's effect on Juliet is terror of her own family's dead.

The feud's last fight happens at the tomb door, and it is not between the houses. Paris, the Prince's kinsman, tries to arrest a ‘vile Montague’ under the Prince's law; Romeo begs him three times to go, then draws on him with Tybalt's word, 'boy', and kills him. Inside, he asks the dead Tybalt's pardon. Then the feud is settled in public. The Prince turns on the fathers and counts himself among the punished; Capulet offers Montague his hand and calls it his daughter's ‘jointure’; Montague answers with a statue in gold, and Capulet with another. The peace is real, and it is priced: in gold, perhaps the old habit of outdoing the other house in a new form, and in five young lives and a mother's. AQA has never printed 5.3, and its November 2020 mark scheme says the conflict is 'only resolved through death': from any extract, end here, and weigh the handshake against the 'glooming' dawn.

• Wilt thou provoke me?¹ Then have at thee, boy!²

  The last fight is between a Montague and the Prince's kinsman, at the Capulets' tomb, over the Prince's law: by now the feud's labels and challenges work without either house in the fight.

  In the exam

  Show the conflict's habit outliving its fighters: Paris, betrothed into the Capulet house, sees only a 'vile Montague' who 'murdered my love's cousin', and the feud's grievance kills a man of neither house.

• Where be these enemies?¹ Capulet, Montague, / See what a scourge² is laid upon your hate, / That heaven⁴ finds means to kill your joys with love³

  One 'hate' for two houses: the Prince speaks of the feud as a single thing the fathers own together, as Mercutio's curse did, so the verdict joins them in guilt a moment before Capulet joins them in kinship.

  In the exam

  On a blame question, use it as the play's official verdict, then weigh it against the choices of 3.1 that it leaves out.

• And I,¹ for winking² at your discords too, / Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.³

  The forfeit of 1.1 has been paid, but not by the men it named: the price set on the fathers' lives was collected from their children and the Prince's kin, and both fathers survive.

  In the exam

  On a Prince question, use 'And I' to argue that the last judgement falls on authority itself.

• O brother^1,2 Montague, give me thy hand.³ / This is my daughter's jointure,⁴ for no more / Can I demand.⁵

  These are Capulet's first words to Montague in the play; the only other time the fathers address each other is Montague's 'Thou villain Capulet!' (1.1). Between the two lines the feud has cost each of them his only child.

  In the exam

  On a 'how far is the ending hopeful' question, weigh the handshake against what the fathers do next, a bid and a match in gold, and decide whether the feud has ended or only changed its currency.

• But I can give thee more,¹ / For I will ray her statue³ in pure gold,² / That whiles Verona by that name is known, / There shall no figure at such rate⁴ be set / As that of true and faithful Juliet.⁵

  The feud ends as its brawls began, in public display: monuments that will stand 'whiles Verona by that name is known', so the city will look at the houses' quarrel for ever, in gold.

  In the exam

  On a 'how far is the ending hopeful' question, use the bidding on both sides: generosity between enemies, or the old competition in a new currency.

• As rich¹ shall Romeo's by his lady's lie,² / Poor sacrifices of our enmity.^3,4

  Capulet fulfils the Prologue's 'but their children's end' in a father's mouth, and calls the deaths sacrifices, as if they had bought something, where the Prince called them a scourge.

  In the exam

  Weigh whether the deaths are a price paid for peace or a punishment for hate: father and Prince describe the ending in different terms.

• A glooming peace¹ this morning with it brings.

  This is the first time in the play that 'peace' names the feud's end, rather than a law to keep, a word to hate, a greeting or a call for quiet, and it arrives already darkened.

  Key word: ‘brings’

  The subject of 'brings' is the morning, not the fathers or the Prince: the peace is delivered to Verona rather than made by it, the strongest evidence for reading the ending as exhaustion rather than change.

  In the exam

  End any conflict essay here: weigh 'peace' against 'glooming', and judge whether Verona has changed or only run out of heirs to fight with.