The play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is still capable of speaking to the modern audience.
‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a play written by William Shakespeare in 1594 and to this day, it is one of the most frequently performed plays (Britannica, n.d.). This is because Shakespeare was surprisingly ahead of his time and the play contains early forms of many of our modern values. The way people express love, adolescence and pride has not changed since Shakespeare wrote the play. Love is still able to change someone’s thinking and emotion in a short period of time, something that is shown in Romeo and Juliet. In the play, characters act in an adolescent way and deal with problems in an immature way which teenagers still do today. Some characters in the play want revenge against others because of pride; this causes disaster just like the death of Mercutio and Tybalt in the play.

The feeling of love can change people’s thoughts and behavior in a short amount of time which most people experience sometime in their life. In the play, when Romeo saw Juliet, he immediately forgot about his previous love. Then Romeo thinks of himself as a part of the Capulet family so he had a “reason… to love [Tybalt]”  (Act III Scene I) even though their parents are at ‘war’. Juliet is not supposed to marry other people if her parents disagree, if she were to marry Romeo or anyone other than Paris, Juliet would “be married to her grave!” (Act III Scene V). Juliet tries to avoid her parents arranging the marriage with Paris by saying that it will “not make [her] a joyful bride” (Act III Scene V). This love at first sight still happens often today as “people [still]… experience love at first sight in the instant they encounter a person” (Theresa E DiDonato, 2018). The speed of love changing someone’s behavior and how people express love has not changed since the Shakespearian era.

The character in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ presented the theme of adolescence and it is still relevant today because of the way children react to the situations did not change over time. The characters in the play unable to consider the long-term consequences of their actions (healthy children, 2015) so they use extreme ways to solve problems just like in present days. When Romeo is at the Capulet Ball party, Tybalt saw Romeo and wanted to kill him as Romeo should not have come to the Capulet’s party. He has a narrow point of view as he does not care about what others people think about and just does what he thinks to be correct. Tybalt wants to fight Romeo instead of negotiating with him when he married Juliet. He thinks Romeo is “a villain” and words “[will] not [make] injuries” “Therefore [only] turn and draw”(Act III Scene I) his sword will resolve the problem. This shows Tybalt is very immature as he uses a very aggressive approach and does not obey either the rule of the government or the family. He also rebels against his family by using violence to solve the conflict. Those violence reactions are how children solve problems which bespeaks the theme of adolescence (national association of school psychologist, 2004).

The way that people maintain their pride today still causes violence just like the violence throughout the play. Pride causes anger which leads to people mishandling situations. Anger causes the character in the play to make a rash decisions that they usually would not make. When the civil brawl started at Act I Scene I, Capulet wanted to get his “long sword” while Montague called out “Thou villain Capulet” (Act I Scene I). Those insult and conflict are not beneficial for anyone, none of the family will get any benefit by winning the fight against another family other than pride. The “Three civil brawls” are caused by people’s pride which make them continue their feud, even it doesn’t benefit them in any way. The pride in the play is still able to reflect the way how modern people want to gain pride without caring about other factors. all conflict and sin can be traced back to one common ugly root – pride! (Bible, 1604). Shakespeare wants to warn us about the dangers of pride, and still today, there is violence caused by people mishandling situations, causing damage.

In conclusion, the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is still capable of speaking to a modern audience as the expression of the themes love, adolescence and pride are remarkably like how they are presented in the play. These themes are common themes most people will to experience in their lifetime so most people are still able to connect themselves to some of these themes. The themes of the play are also able to appeal to a broad audience, from children to elders. These unchanged themes make the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ still one of the most frequently performed plays to this day.