Romeo And Juliet Compare And Contrast Essay

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In the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film “Romeo and Juliet,” there are many differences from the 1597 Shakespeare play which it is based off of. To start, at the beginning of the movie Rosaline was not mentioned which is a major difference compared to the movie where he is incredibly heartbroken and moping around for what seems like a while. In the movie he seems become happy pretty quickly and not waste too much time being upset. After Juliet dies, there was more to the scene in the play. For example, there were bustling funeral preparations and and a section where Paris grieved. In the movie this was completely left out so the audience never fully understood that Paris was also mourning over the loss of his soon-to-be bride. Also, another difference was that when Romeo decided on suicide in the play, he went to the apothecary to get a poison but in the movie he never did. This caused the poison to come out of nowhere and was a minor hole in the scene because the audience didn’t know where to poison came from and had no reference. Also, this may just be my opinion, but when Juliet and her father were in a big fight after she told her parents she wouldn’t be marrying Paris, the Nurse seemed to …show more content…
It followed to the play well, and conveyed the same theme and message. The message about forbidden love did not differ from play because they still fell in love but couldn’t marry each other because of their quarreling families. Although the plot didn’t have too many major changes, I did notice a change from the book to the movie, which was the focus on the deaths of Romeo and Juliet over the other characters who were killed off. For example, not only was Paris’ absence in the last act a major difference from book to movie, but because he was never at the tomb to fight with Romeo he never got killed. This was a way for Zeffirelli to keep the spotlight on the main character’s deaths instead of branching out to the less important