The prince is at the top of the tree, as it were, in terms of status. He ostensibly has the power in that city, but apparently not that much agency to change anything. So iw'uld say it's really the fathers in this play who could change everything, but choose not to. They've they've created a culture in verona in which whole households servants and offspring are either montague or capulet supporter. The violence that verona is allowing its younger generation to enact on each other becomes intensified on the bodies of romeo and juliet. But there's also a structural point. Violence is endemic in this a split society. Tragic char s are
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, written in the early 1590s after a series of histories and comedies. His audience already knew the story of the feuding Capulets and Montagues in Verona and the fate of the young lovers from their rival houses, but not how Shakespeare would tell it and, with his poetry and plotting, he created a work so powerful and timeless that his play has shaped the way we talk of love, especially young love, ever since.
The image above is of Mrs Patrick Campbell ('Mrs Pat') as Juliet and Johnson Forbes-Robinson as Romeo in a scene from the 1895 production at the Lyceum Theatre, London
With
Helen Hackett
Professor of English Literature at University College London
Paul Prescott
Professor of English and Theatre at the University of California Merced
And
Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson