Transience In Romeo And Juliet

In the first act of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the theme of transience can easily be related to the daily life of a major part of society in the 21st century. In Romeo and Juliet, after Romeo’s love has been turned down by Rosaline, Mercutio and Benvolio take him to a party at the Capulet’s, uninvited. While at the party, Romeo finds himself dancing with a beautiful maiden-who turns out to be a Capulet-in whom he falls in love with and ends up kissing. This series of events can be aligned with the theme of transience due to the fact that Romeo had not even gotten over the fact that the woman that he loved had sworn to a life a chastity before the party, he fell in love with a woman whose identity was unknown to him at the time.

As stated earlier, this can be related to the fast-paced daily life of society in the 21st century. Today, people have become accustomed to using social media to communicate with each other instead of an actual face-to-face conversation or a simple phone call, or shopping online because it removes the “hassle” of having to go out and make your purchases at the store. Both of these practices feed into the theme of transience that seems to linger everywhere in society today, where we want everything right now with no wait included; and into Romeo and Juliet, where the events of the story happened so quickly, and Romeo falls in love with a woman who he did not even know the identity of at the time, right after his love was turned down by someone else.