How does Act 3 Scene 1 in Romeo and Juliet educate us about the Elizabethan Era?

Answer 1

A reader has to be careful about using Shakespeare's plays as a textbook of Elizabethan society. Sometimes he puts Elizabethan behaviour into plays which are supposed to be set in the distant past, like when Cymbeline says that he was knighted by Augustus Caesar. Sometimes the reverse is the case--the behaviour in question is in the source material and is important to the plot but is not typical of Shakespeare's England. An example of this is the way that Juliet is only let out of the house to go to confession: English girls of Shakespeare's day were given much more liberty to walk around than this, and did not go to confession (at least not publicly) as this was a Catholic behaviour.

That being said, Act 3 Scene 1 presents a number of interesting points. We will not go into what it tells us about Elizabethan language, which is of course a lot, because you get that from any Elizabethan writer. Note Mercutio to Benvolio: "Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes." and that whole conversation. If a person wanted to fight with another, he needed a pretext, some reason for the fight. It could be pretty flimsy, as we see. Mercutio to Tybalt: "Consort! What! Dost thou make us minstrels?" A consort of minstrels was the equivalent of a band, a group of musicians. Clearly they were not held in as high esteem back then as they are now.

Tybalt to Romeo: "Thou art a villain." He's trying to provoke Romeo into fighting with this insult. Not only is a villain a villein, a peasant, but Tybalt uses the pronoun "thou" which was used only for lovers, pets, children and servants. Thus he is doubly calling him low-born, a real insult back in Shakespeare's day. Social class was terrifically important, and there were a lot of miniscule gradations in it. You could easily offend by suggesting that someone was a lower class. Shakespeare himself spent an enormous amount of time and money to get a coat of arms so he could be called "Mr. William Shakespeare, gent." instead of plain "William Shakespeare".

Romeo to Tybalt: "Mercutio's soul is but a little way above our heads" It was a common belief that the souls of the deceased existed in time and space, which explains the ghosts in Hamlet and Macbeth. The trial scene does not reflect the practices of Elizabethan courts, which Shakespeare was well familiar with, but then trial scenes in drama rarely do, as even the most important real trials are exceedingly dry, dull and undramatic. Prince: "And for that offence immediately do we exile him hence". This was a real sentencing option in Elizabethan England (and elsewhere), as a more merciful sentence than capital punishment. Exile as a punishment was abolished in Britain in 1868.