Essay On Loyalty In Romeo And Juliet

Love, loyalty, and death are each words with different meaning that work together to formulate theme. One theme in the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is an obsession with loyalty leads to death. For family or for love, many of the main characters die or kill to stay loyal to the ones they care about. Once the star-crossed lovers are married, dependability becomes severely important. After the wedding, Romeo refuses to fight Tybalt because Romeo does not want to kill his new family member, but after Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo seeks revenge. Wanting to stay loyal to her husband, Juliet refuses to marry the County Paris, but her enraged father will not let her. Juliet threatens her mortality to the Friar if she has to be disloyal

The use of motif helps the reader to fully understand the loyalty between characters through the repetition in the text. Before a street fight between Tybalt and Romeo, the men explain why they must stay loyal. First, Tybalt says, “Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford / No better term than this: thou art a villain.” (III.i. 59-60). In response, Romeo backs down and replies, “Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee / Doth much excuse the appertaining rage.” (III.i.61-62). Here, Tybalt is explaining his faithfulness to justice and his family, while Romeo is hoping to stay true to his new family. In another section of the motif, Romeo explains, “But love thee better than thou canst devise / Till thou shalt know the reason of my love.” (III.i.68-69). This motif clearly revolves around love. Even though the men are about to fight, both explain the devotion they have for their family, and in this case, they are family. Most importantly, love is the underlying force that drives the fidelity of all the characters in the play, and this love-driven devotion will cause the murder of Mercutio and Tybalt in the fight scene, adding to the theme that an obsession with loyalty leads to death. Later in the play, Juliet describes her hatred of marrying Paris through a dramatic motif that reads: “Or shut me nightly in a charnel house, / O’ercover’d quite with dead men’s rattling bones,” (IV.i.82-83), and “Or bid me go into a new grave / And hide me with a dead man in his shroud-” (IV.i.85-86). In this motif, she tells of extreme situations revolving around the idea of death that she would rather encounter than marry Paris. The speech begins with, “O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,” (IV.i.78) and ends with, “And I will do it without fear or doubt, / To live an unstain’d wife of my sweet love. “ (IV.i.98-99). This motif boldly indicates that she is