Similarities and Differences Between Romeo and Juliet Play and Movie

My claim for this essay is the similarities and differences between the 1968 movie and the original Romeo and Juliet play. I’m going to argue the similarities and differences between the Romeo and Juliet scenes in the movie and play, but many people believe that the movie is the same as the play. However, there are a lot of differences between the two. 

I know there are more differences than similarities because we read the play for English 9 and watch the 1968 movie while making inferences about the things that are different in all the scenes. I only had 6 or 7 similarities between them. But I had 12-13 differences. That's a massive difference if you ask me. But for now, I’m going to list everything I wrote down on my piece of paper in my different body paragraphs.  

Some similarities between the movie and play are the following: they open with a street fight, Capulet and Montague have a feud with each other, have the biting your thumb at me sir, Juliet makes the Nurse ask the boy what his name is and he's a Montague, Romeo ends up in the Capulet garden. Mercutio dies. As you can see there are barely any similarities between these two. People say that the 1968 movie is more similar to the play than any other movie made but I suppose that it is not very similar, to be honest. 

Some differences are the fight was more aggressive fight than in the play, there was never an ambush when the fight happened, not many people were injured, never was there a guy singing at the Capulet's ball, never mentioned Rosaline, Juliet and Romeo don’t kiss in the Capulet garden, the boys underneath the Nurse’s dress was never in the play, it didn’t say anything about Capulet putting his hands on Juliet or the Nurse, Paris was not in the Capulet tomb when Romeo got there, Romeo’s mother never died she was there for Juliet’s funeral. Most of these differences were from the movie. 

My claim for this essay is to compare and contrast the 1968 movie and the original Romeo and Juliet play. As you can see there are more differences than similarities. But I think the Romeo and Juliet 1968 movie is better than the play if you ask me. A lot of the differences are in Act 2-3. But some are in the scenes of Act 5 too.  

Works Cited 

Romeo & Juliet. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, performances by Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, Paramount Pictures, 1968.

https://www.ipl.org/essay/Similarities-And-Differences-Between-Romeo-And-Juliet-PKNBDH4ACFR#:~:text=The%20similarities%20are%20how%20Mercutio,use%20swords%20(Shakespeare%201.1).

https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/romeojuliet/act-1-prologue/

https://thegreatestbooks.org/authors/4917.