Bonjour!

Welcome to another “This Week I Learned” post. As you might know, each week I’ll be doing a TWIL post while we read Romeo and Juliet in Humanities class. I’ll be reviewing what we learned by choosing a specific topic and sharing my thoughts about it.

For this week, I’ve decided to create a visual representation of the differences between two of R&J’s most important characters: Tybalt and Benvolio. This is also an intersting comparison because they are perhaps two of the most contrasted characters in the play.

Tybalt:

The Capulet cousin of Juliet, “Price of Cats,” is a brash and hotheaded character. He is the main antagonist of the play, provoking the Montagues in the first scenes and introducing himself as a Montague-hater and brash young man.

Benvolio:

Cousin of Romeo and fellow Montague, is a calm and levelheaded sidekick to his wayward friend Romeo. He is known for keeping peace whenever he can, and upon meeting Tybalt in the first scenes attempts to do so.

Tybalt and Benvolio create an interesting dynamic in the play. First of all, they are both the cousins of the main characters, who fall in love. However, unlike Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt and Benvolio (mainly enforced by Tybalt) are out to get one another from the beginning of the play. Benvolio’s peaceful nature keeps him from instigating any quarreling, but Tybalt actively seeks the fight and seems to like causing trouble. This is one of the most evident differences between them— the contrasting opinions on the rivalry between the Capulet and Montague families.

Not to say that Benvolio isn’t loud and proud of his Montague roots— he very much so is, but in a different way than Tybalt.

Another thing that sets these two apart is their attitude. Benvolio is quiet. He is there for Romeo, but he doesn’t yell or squabble. He is intent on being a peacekeeper, especially with his friends Mercutio and Romeo, who have knacks for getting into trouble. He is very selfless, one could say.

Tybalt is the opposite. Throughout the play so far, we have yet to meet anyone that Tybalt is “friends” with— we simply see him show up, causing turmoil, in both the beginning scenes and the party. Though he has the same “correlation” with Juliet, being her cousin, as Benvolio is to Romeo, he doesn’t interact with her or associate with her at all. His anger isn’t justified; it’s not like he has a friend to be a sidekick to or to protect. He is just constantly arrogant and extremely set on his hatred of the Montagues.

Overall, both of these characters are interestingly chosen by Shakespeare to be so different yet similar in their “place” in the play— cousins to the mains, polar opposites that are part of the “_______ versus _______” subplot. Either way, they’re important parts of the story, and I think they balance out Romeo and Juliet by being different from each of them but adding a debatably good and “bad” to each side of the story.

Check out my future blog posts for more rambling about R&J if you like! 🙂