How Does Shakespeare Use Dramatic Devices to Make Act 3 Scene 1 Such an Interesting Exciting Scene?

The sudden, fatal violence in the first scene of Act III, as well as the build up to the fighting, serves as a reminder that, for all its emphasis on love, beauty, and romance, Romeo and Juliet still takes place in a masculine world in which notions of honour, pride, and status are prone to erupt in a fury of conflict. The viciousness and dangers of the play’s social environment is a dramatic tool that Shakespeare employs to make the lovers’ romance seem even more precious and fragile—their relationship is the audience’s only respite from the brutal world pressing against their love. The fights between Mercutio and Tybalt and then between Romeo and Tybalt are chaotic; Tybalt kills Mercutio under Romeo’s arm, flees, and then suddenly, and inexplicably, returns to fight Romeo, who kills him in revenge. Passion outweighs reason at every turn.

Romeo’s cry, “O, I am fortune’s fool!” refers specifically to his unfortunate actions in being forced to kill his new wife’s cousin, thereby getting himself banished (III.i.131). It also recalls the sense of fate that hangs over the play. Mercutio’s response to his fate, however, is notable in the ways it diverges from Romeo’s response. Romeo blames fate, or fortune, for what has happened to him. Mercutio curses the Montagues and Capulets. He seems to see people as the cause of his death, and gives no credit to any larger force.

Elizabethan society generally believed that a man too much in love lost his manliness. Romeo clearly subscribes to that belief, as can be seen when he states that his love for Juliet had made him “effeminate.” Once again, however, this statement can be seen as a battle between the private world of love and the public world of honour, duty, and friendship. The Romeo who duels with Tybalt is the Romeo who Mercutio would call the “true”