Benvolio Montague is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's drama Romeo and Juliet. Benvolio in the play of Romeo and Juliet plays an important character as a friend and cousin of Romeo.
Contents |
Role in the play
He is Lord Montague's nephew and Romeo's cousin. He and Romeo are both close friends with Mercutio, a kinsman to the Prince. Benvolio seems to have little sympathy with the feud, attempting to prevent the initial brawl (fighting off Tybalt to do so) and the duels that end in Mercutio and Tybalt's death. Benvolio spends most of Act I attempting to distract his cousin from his infatuation with Rosaline, but following the first appearance of Mercutio in I.iv, he and Mercutio become more closely aligned until III.i. In that scene, he drags the fatally wounded Mercutio offstage, before returning to inform Romeo of Mercutio's death and the Prince of the course of Mercutio's and Tybalt's deaths. Benvolio then disappears from the play (though, as a Montague, he may implicitly be included in the stage direction in the final scene "Enter Lord Montague and others", and he is sometimes doubled with Balthasar). Though he ultimately disappears from the play without much notice, he is a crucial character if only that he is the only child of the new generation from the Montagues to survive the play, with his Capulet counterpart being Petruchio (as Romeo, Juliet, Paris, Mercutio, and Tybalt are dead).
Performances
A mock-Victorian revisionist version of Romeo and Juliet 's final scene (with a happy ending, Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio and Paris restored to life, and Benvolio revealing that he is Paris's love for pie and lime, Benvolia, in disguise) forms part of the 1980 stage-play The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.[1]
References
- ^ Edgar (1982: 162).
Bibliography
- Edgar, David (1982). The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. New York: Dramatists' Play Service. ISBN 0822208172.
- Gibbons, Brian (ed.) (1980). Romeo and Juliet. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series. London: Thomson Learning. ISBN 9781903436417.
- Moore, Olin H. (1937). "Bandello and “Clizia”". Modern Language Notes (Johns Hopkins University Press) 52 (1): 38–44. ISSN 01496611.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
