Romeo Montague is a drama queen. He’s impulsive, melodramatic, and acts upon his impulses. His every action begs the question if he stops to think about what he’s doing or, perhaps, if he lets his sudden moods control him. Romeo’s flare for the dramatic might just be a part of his character or, he simply lets his emotional bias and feelings dictate his life. Romeo Montague is an example of someone with strong mood-congruent judgement, behavior, and memory- perhaps too strong even.The mood-congruent theories, specifically the mood-congruent judgment effect and mood-congruent behavior are related theories stating that one’s actions, perception of the world, and choices are directly affected by, and can be linked to, one’s moods and emotional state. These theories exhibit themselves at large in Romeo and Juliet, particularly by the ill-fated lovers, Romeo and Juliet themselves. Romeo, especially, shows the mood-congruent theories in practice through the way he acts, interacts with others, and expresses himself and his desires.
Throughout the play, Romeo is shown to be foolhardy, rash, and
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impulsive with every decision he makes. He lets his moods control him to the point where when he is happy, and particularly when he is in love, he feels that all is fine or able to be fixed and that when he is upset, nothing could be set right. Gordon Bower,in his paper Mood and Memory, writes, “Thus, a person in a depressed mood will tend to recall only unpleasant events and to project a bleak interpretation onto the common events of life” (Bower 145). While Romeo’s impulsiveness are strong themes of his character it also presents the fact that he lets himself, and his actions, be controlled by how he feels in the moment- exactly what mood congruent behavior is. He doesn’t let himself stop to think about the right course of action, he simply knows what he feels and acts accordingly. When he is confronted with a ‘diverging path’ of choices, he picks whatever ‘matches’ his mood. At the time after when he devastated from having been banished and in Friar Laurence’s cell, he is so overcome with grief that he tries to kill himself, “O, tell me, friar, tell me,/In which vile part of this anatomy/Doth my name lodge? Tell me that I may sack/the hateful mansion./[He draws his dagger]” (III.III.114-117). Romeo doesn’t stop to think about this decision, he only does it because it is what he believes is the right thing to do. Later on in the play, once again when Romeo is devastated, he acts on his moods and impulses.
When confronting Paris near the Capulet tombs and Paris tries to stop him from harming the graves, even though he wasn’t actually there to do so, Romeo himself even acknowledges that the emotions he is currently feeling could lead him to doing dangerous things and he is not thinking clearly. He speaks, “Good gentle youth, tempt not a desp’rate man./ Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone./Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,/ Put not another sin upon my head/ By urging me to fury. O, begone!/ By heaven, I love thee better than myself,/ For I come hither armed against myself/” (V.III.59-65). Because of his strong emotional-bias that moment, as he is so grief stricken and sad, Romeo acts before he can think and soon enough Count Paris lies dead at his
feet. As Romeo Montague looks down at his love, Juliet Capulet, and prepares to drink a deadly poison, it is the last moment that he lets his moods affect a decision he is making. In his end, his strong emotional bias leads him to an untimely fortune. Romeo may have possibly been one of Shakespeare’s biggest drama queens but, he’s also a victim of his own mood-congruent judgment and behaviors.
“Wilt thou provoke me? Then, have at thee boy!” says Romeo, the murderer of Paris. In the play The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, a young man named Romeo falls in love with Juliet, a maiden from the opposing family. Romeo latches on to the thought of being with Juliet, and crosses great boundaries. Romeo’s gestures can be interpreted as romantic, loyal, and passionate. However, I believe he is mentally unstable and extreme in his decisions. Romeo does not consider the future of others, as well as himself.
Love, what a small word for being one of the most powerful and complicated emotion someone can receive. Love grants people an experience of other emotions such as, sadness, happiness, jealousy, hatred and many more. It is because of those characteristics that love creates that make it so difficult to define the emotion in a few words. In the play, “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, defy their parents in hopes of being able to be together and live a happy life. The characters in “Romeo and Juliet” show the characteristics of love through their words and actions throughout the play. The attributes the characters illustrate throughout the play are rage, loyalty, and sorrow.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet demonstrate the ignorance and susceptibility of men to making impulsive decisions without considering the consequences.
Throughout the play Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare in the 16th century, there is consistent theme of conflict featured in terms of both mental, physical and emotional means. The way this dispute is embodied throughout the duration of the play alternates subject to subject to the character in question- but can be represented through many means.
Throughout Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, Romeo’s character is desperate and impulsive which ultimately contributes
In an attempt to push away from medieval love conventions and her father's authority, Shakespeare's Juliet asserts sovereignty over her sexuality. She removes it from her father's domain and uses it to capture Romeo's love. Critic Mary Bly argues that sexual puns color Juliet's language. These innuendoes were common in Renaissance literature and would have been recognized by an Elizabethan audience. Arguably, Juliet uses sexual terms when speaking to Romeo in order to make him aware of her sexuality. When he comes to her balcony, she asks him, "What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?" (2.1.167). Bly asserts that "satisfaction in her hands, becomes a demure play on the sating of desire" (108). Following this pun, Juliet proposes marriage. She teases Romeo with sexual thoughts and then stipulates that marriage must precede the consummation of their love. Juliet uses "death" in a similar sense. She asks night to "Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die / Take him and cut him out in little stars" (3.2.21-22). Death holds a double meaning in these lines. It connotes both "ceasing to be and erotic ecstasy" (Bly 98). Based upon this double meaning, one can infer that "she sweetly asks 'civil night' to teach her how to lose the game of love she is about to play for her virginity" (Wells 921). She tells her nurse, "I'll to my wedding bed, / And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!" (3.2.136-137). Placing death opposite Romeo highlights the irony of the situation; both death and Romeo should claim her maidenhead together. These sexual puns reveal Juliet's awareness of her sexuality. She entices Romeo, forcing her sexuality to act as emotional currency.
Sometimes when people are amongst conflict, they act impetuously in certain situations. In the play Romeo and Juliet written by William Shakespeare, careless actions take place by the characters when they are put into stressful and difficult situations. They are not thought through and result in consequences for more than just themselves. In Romeo and Juliet when in the midst of conflict, characters tend to think and act impulsively and not think of the reaction to their actions. They do not think of the consequences their actions may bring, or how they may affect others in the future.
Romeo fights and kills Tybalt just because Tybalt slays Mercutio, despite knowing the consequence of fighting -death- he still takes it upon himself as a way to seek repentance for Mercutio’s death. He is able to restrain himself before the death of Mercutio but after his death Romeo falls to his impulsiveness and fights Tybalt. After killing Tybalt and getting banishment instead of a death sentence, Romeo refuses to look on the bright side and goes to Friar Lawrence where he says “Ha, banishment! Be merciful, say ‘death’.” (Act 3, Scene 3 line 12), this shows that he deems life without Juliet life not worth living. He then continues weep then decides to take his own life, the Friar stopped him but had Romeo stopped being so quick to make decisions he would have realised banishment is much better than death and would be rejoicing instead of weeping. Romeo hears about Juliet's “death” from his servant Balthasar he instantly decides to kill himself, he doesn't mourn his loss or even cry, he simply buys poison, rides to Verona and kills himself. Had he spoken to anyone and taken any advice he would realize that suicide is not the answer but he had his mind made in a minute, he wanted to be dead with his wife. Romeo impulsiveness to make decisions is a very important characteristic for him to have and for the rest of the
Hasty and rash decisions can dramatically alter the life of anyone in positive and negative ways; poorly thinking an action through and acting only on emotion can lead to egregious consequences. William Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet’ shows us on an number of different occasions that hasty and rash decisions can have fatal and tragic consequences. Some instances when this is shown to be true is in the circumstance in which Tybalt is murdered by Romeo, Romeo and Romeo’s decision to commit suicide near the end of the play.
Furthermore, in the last scene in the Capulet’s tomb where Juliet lies, Paris gets angry when Romeo comes in to visit Juliet. In this case, Paris says Romeo is a “condemned villain” in which Paris plans to kill, thinking it was only right (5.3.58). Paris is so hateful of Romeo, he plans to stop Romeo at any cause, including murder. Within Paris, killing was the only way to relieve hate toward Romeo. Thus demonstrating how with hate, people say things they don’t mean, leading to their actions.
As the leading characters, Romeo and Juliet both portray the flaw that ultimately leads to the resolution: impulsiveness. Portrayed as emotional throughout the play, Romeo’s hamartia came to play in his vengeful state: “And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now...Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.” (3.1.117-122). Shakespeare’s characterization of Romeo as
Ultimately, Romeo and Juliet become embodiments of impulsiveness. Through their rash words and actions in the tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”, Shakespeare sets forth that both are too hasty in their decisions, leading them into unfortunate events. As the plot unfolds, Romeo and Juliet’s futile love is torn apart by their family’s hate and animosity towards each other. Despite their constant struggle to let their love survive, it is doomed from the beginning of the tragedy. It is plain that lack of foresight and wisdom leads to disaster all around.
In Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the lovers meet their doom, in scene iii of Act V. With their fatal flaw of impulsivity, Romeo and Juliet are ultimately to blame for their death. Contrarily, if it was not for the unintentional influence of the pugnacious Tybalt, the star-crossed lovers may have remained together, perpetually. To the audience, the deaths of Romeo and Juliet are already understood, for it is a Shakespearean tragedy. However, the causes, predominantly Romeo’s and Juliet’s fatal flaws of impulsivity and rashness, are as simple as Shakespearean writing. Though Romeo and Juliet are wholly to blame for their tragic suicides, in Act V scene iii, Tybalt is, in turn, responsible, as his combative spirit forced Romeo to murder him and Juliet to marry Paris.
A Psychological Analysis of Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet was obviously not written to fit the psychoanalytic model, as the theories of Freud were not developed for centuries after Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote about Renaissance England, a culture so heavily steeped in Christianity, that it would have blushed at the instinctual and sexual thrust of Freud’s theory. However, in order to keep literature alive and relevant, a culture must continually reinterpret the themes and ideas of past works. While contextual readings assure cultural precision, often these readings guarantee the death of a particular work. Homer’s Iliad, a monument among classical works, is currently not as renowned as Romeo and Juliet because it is so heavily dependent on its cultural context.
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, is a well known play. That it is still performed in theaters and English classes to this day. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is a play about two star crossed lovers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. They fall in love, despite of the feud between their families. They were forced to keep their love secret because of their families, and they also got married without their families figuring out. This story is still read now because of its strong usage of literary elements. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet endures time because of its expert use of literary elements including foreshadowing, metaphor, and simile.