Romeo and Juliet is obviously a tragedy of imprudent young love and its ensuing complications. However, Shakespeare manipulates the heedless romance between Romeo and Juliet to entangle two feuding families and uses the young lovers’ romance to connote the paradoxical nature of the play. The conflict between the Capulets and the Montagues is due to the fact that each regards their family as completely honorable and the other as completely evil. The dialogue between Capulet and Tybalt in Act I.5 is a dramatic reversal of expectations and the resulting contraries serve as a reminder of the duality of customs and people. Shakespeare begins Romeo and Juliet with a prologue that insists that the conflict is not between an evil family and an honorable family, but rather between “two households, both alike in dignity” (I.Prologue.1). The prologue illustrates the course of action of the play as the “star-crossed lovers take their life” (I.Prologue.6), to “bury their parents’ strife” (I.Prologue. 8). The action begins with Romeo forlorn over the unreturned love of his beloved, Rosaline, and the immediate conflict that arrises between members of both houses. The fight between Sampson and Benvolio is the first of the seemingly constant conflict between the two houses that plagues Verona and is a central part of the play. The dueling is done solely on the basis of kinship and customary allegiances that pit the two families against each other with no justification other than their names. Both families are equal in status and are equal in their contempt for the other with their only difference stemming from their name. Romeo and Benvolio attend the Capulet feast in an attempt to compare Rosaline to the rest of “the admired beauties of Verona” (I.ii.86). Upon entering the feast, Romeo is immediately lovestruck by a woman he discovers to be a Capulet. As he is praising the beauty of Juliet Capulet, Romeo completely forgets about his old love: “Did my heart love til now? Forswear it, sight! / For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night” (I.v.53-54). This proclamation of love is the first change of many regarding the two families’ perception of the other. Fickle Romeo sets the precedent of changing one’s notions of familial ties and standards to the contrary based on the context and situational developments. For example, his perception of the Capulets is indefinitely altered upon admiring Juliet’s beauty. Tybalt overhears this announcement and states, “This, by his voice, should be a Montague” (I.v.55). Tybalt’s first line immediately changes the tone of the scene from that of optimism and fondness, to that of conviction. Tybalt justifies his judgement by referring to the “stock and honor of my kin�