Fate in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

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Fate in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

The play, Romeo and Juliet, involves plenty of bad luck and misfortune

that ultimately

leads to the deaths of these star crossed lovers. Romeo and Juliet are

referred to as, "star

crossed lovers" because they were destined to fall in love and die a

tragic death. The stars

have decided that they would fall in love and die, with everyone else

the stars have

decided their future. The audience were given hints that Romeo and

Juliet were going to

die when the prologue stated, "Death-mark'd love." This gives a

warning of what to

expect. There are several incidences that symbolise misfortune and bad

luck. An obvious

indication to the audience that something tragic will occur, is when

Romeo had bad

dreams and premonitions often involving death. In the play, the

prologue refers to an

ancient grudge between the Capulets and Montagues, which attracts our

attention to

human error. This is because grudges can cause lethal rage and bring

out the worst in

someone, which are few of the characteristics that we regret having.

If the parents' rage

was not so powerful and rebellious, this tragedy may not have occurred

because the

parents would have accepted Romeo and Juliet to be married. There is a

lot of conflict in

the play between the characters. The characters personalities had a

variety of weaknesses;

we have seen anger, pride, arrogance, hastiness, deceit and ill

judgement. An example of

deceit is when Juliet insured her father, Lord Capulet that she would

marry Paris and beg

for forgiveness, "Pardon, I beseech you! Hencef...

... middle of paper ...

...ed our interests….. the work

of heaven.." He

believes that a much stronger power (heaven) will not let the couple

live together. The

prince, too, reprimands both the Montagues and the Capulets, "See what

a scrounge is

laid upon thy hate that heaven finds means to kill your joys with

love!" From these

quotes we can clearly see that fate appears to be punishing both

families for their

weaknesses.

To conclude, I feel that fate played a large part in the play due to

several incidences that

symbolise misfortune, the personality traits of the characters equally

contributed to the

tragedy. The character weaknesses eventually resulted in six deaths

signifying the

weaknesses of the characters including Romeo, Tybalt, the Nurse, Friar

Lawrence, the

prince, Juliet and the parents.

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