Romeo and Juliet’s and Othello’s plots are both tragedy. These plays are focused on the destruction of the main relationships within of the plays. In Othello, the main relationship in the play is around Othello and his bride Desdemona. Othello, because of his jealous rage, murders wife who he later finds to be innocent. Romeo and Juliet, which is named for the featured couple, kill themselves in order to be together in an afterlife. They take their own lives because the world around them will not allow them to be together. It would appear that the marriages in these two plays are primarily based on love and should last, but they both end in death because the couples internal pain and sufferings.
Throughout history Romeo and Juliet is often portrayed as an ideal of romantic love, but this is not always the way it is seen by contemporary readers. In fact, according to the source that Shakespeare used to base his play, “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet” Arthur Brooke describes the characters death as a punishment for their neglect to authority and their un-honest desires. This is most clearly stated in the following passage:
a couple of unfortunate lovers, thrilling themselves to unhonest desire; neglecting the authority and advice of parents and friends; conferring their principal counsels with drunken gossips and superstitious friars (the naturally fit instruments of unchastity); attempting all adventures of peril for th' attaining of their wished lust; using auricular confession the key of whoredom and treason, for furtherance of their purpose; abusing the honourable name of lawful marriage to cloak the shame of stolen contracts; finally by all means of unhonest life hasting to most unhappy death. (Brook...
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...more in common than most people think. They are both tragedies, both of the main couples die and sins such as gluttony and jealousy can destroy love
Works Cited
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Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. New York City, NY: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1992, 2011. Print.
Romeo and Juliet, a drama play by William Shakespeare, tells the tale of two star crossed lovers. In the city of Verona 1590, two love struck teenagers, are predestined to meet. They are forbidden to be with one another for a feud by their progenitors has doomed them with a forever lasting hatred for one another. Defying those rules, the two decide to keep their love a secret, ending their lives in a way no one would have imagined. Some say they acted like children, some say they were just in a daze, but despite knowing the risks and consequences of loving Juliet, Romeo continues to ignore them and fight for more time with her, resulting in his own demise.
Rosenberg, David A. "Romeo and Juliet." Back Stage East 48.26 (2007): 14-. ProQuest. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.
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Rozen, Leah. "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet." People Weekly. 11 Nov. 1996. <http://callisto.gsu.edu:4000/CGI:html> (5 May 1997).
... meet a quick and fiery end as well, as compared to the reaction between fire and gunpowder. Though unable to control their feelings for one another, Romeo and Juliet are fully responsible for the methods and decisions they made, as well as the consequences of their actions. Their passion and dedication are admirable, yet sadly misguided. The boundary between love and hate is blurred in Romeo and Juliet, with extreme passion often causing either love or hate to be sacrificed in the name of the other. This parallel is a precursor to the nature of love and its appeal to human nature. The selfish desires of humanity are sated by the indulgence in temperamental love, which, when underestimated, will not hesitate to prey upon the evil cravings of the human soul.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragic story about a pair of star-crossed lovers whose demises were unexpected to most. However, their deaths were a result of their impulsiveness. It caused their problematic marriage, Romeo’s preventable death, as well as Juliet’s preventable death.
There are many tragedies to be found in literature, but only a few are like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is a story of forbidden love in which a young couple are torn apart by their families’ feud in Renaissance Italy; the play’s tragic ending has both main characters die. Many aspects of this play have sparked a heated debate: is Romeo and Juliet a tragedy or is it simply tragic? Some critics claim that the play lacks elements that are necessary for a tragedy. Yet Aristotle explicitly states the essential components of a tragedy in his Poetics, and Romeo and Juliet meets those requirements. Romeo and Juliet can be considered an Aristotelian tragedy because of Romeo’s impetuousness, Juliet’s loyalty to Romeo, and the play’s peripeteia.
Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D. (2010). Literature an introduction to fiction, poetry, drama and
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1997. Print.
Watts, Cedric. Twayne's New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.
Golden, Leon, “Othello, Hamlet, and Aristotelian Tragedy” Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2869923.