Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a play well known by all for its death and demise of its characters, as well as its tragic ending that leaves two star-crossed lovers to their fate. The true misfortune of Romeo and Juliet is that individually they ultimately all lose, however together, everyone wins. A tragedy is defined as an event causing great suffering, destruction and distress usually concerning the downfall of the main character. To lose is defined as causing someone to fail to gain something or to suffer. Death is a major subject in the play and significantly establishes the mood of the scene. These disastrous events affect everyone including ones mourning the death of their loved ones. However, there are also positive themes that
Romeo and Juliet yearned to be together, however they both lose their lives tragically during the process and thus, lose in the end. When Juliet sees Romeo lying dead by her side, she takes a ‘happy dagger’ (A5, S3, L168) and kills herself. This is after she sees that Romeo has ‘left no friendly drop’ (A5, S3, L163) for her, implying that Romeo should have left enough poison for her to die too so they could be together in their afterlife. Shakespeare’s use of the phrase ‘happy dagger’ is ironic as it shows Juliet’s rash judgement on the situation and how she thought killing herself would make her happy. In the end, both characters die and neither of them gain anything. This is a very powerful scene in which two young lives are lost in the most unfortunate way, hence showing the audience how death can make people
Death and mourning are closely associated with one another as when someone dies, they cause sorrow to their family and friends as they mourn the lost life of a loved one. After Mercutio’s death, Romeo becomes vengeful with ‘fire-ey’d fury’ (A3, S1, L120) and seeks to kill Tybalt for the ‘cold death’ (A3, S1, L158) he caused to Romeo’s dear friend. Later on in the play, when Romeo and Juliet are found dead and the Prince informs their parents, Lord Montague briefly states that his wife (Lady Montague) passed away after hearing her son’s exile ‘hath stopp’d her breath’ and (A5, S3, L211) and he also describes his ‘woe’ towards the recent events. Both scenes illustrate the extremities one can go to when mourning the death of a loved one. It also depicts how grief can impact someone and how ‘all are punish’d’ (A5S3L295) for it. All the characters lose as they are all related to someone who has died in the play regardless of what ‘side’ they are on the
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.
There are many forces in the tragic play of Romeo and Juliet that are keeping the two young, passionate lovers apart, all emanating from one main reason. In this essay I will discuss these as well as how love, in the end, may have been the cause that led to the tragic deaths of Romeo and Juliet. Their strong attraction to each other, which some call fate, determines where their forbidden love will take them.
In Romeo and Juliet, the tragic love story, emotion is also surrounded with both the protagonists and brought themselves a tragic ending. Early in the story, Romeo and Juliet made an unacceptable forbidden decision which created a path towards their graves. After knowing themselves as the enemy of their household, the two teenagers yet fall in love with each other. Their idiotic actions of love have brought themselves a road to death at the end. Is unworthy to cost your life by your foolish decision. Furthermore, Romeo made another decision out of momentary anger and caused himself a disastrous problem. After Mercutio's death, out of anger Romeo duel with Tybalt and demands to slay him. After his revenge, he brought a death sentence on himself if he is ever found within the city again.
Shakespeare plays have fascinated audiences with their ability to seemingly portray the depth of the meanings and descriptions of each scene. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was for many years the world’s best love story and influenced readers and writers from around the world. Understanding the contrasting natures is one of the most important themes in this play and underpins the plot. Love and hate, life and death, lastly, missions and reality will only increase every reader’s sense of curiosity.
In the play The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, many people lead to the outcome of Romeo and Juliet’s deaths. The play is about a boy, Romeo, and a girl, Juliet, from two rival families that fall in love. The two families, the Montagues and Capulets, have been fighting for a long time and it affects the entire city of Verona, where they live. It is debated whether or not the deaths of the star-crossed lovers could be blamed on numerous people. The tragedy of their deaths was the faults of multiple characters and could have been prevented.
The story of Romeo and Juliet had many tragic, yet meaningful events that somewhat constructed what we know today as, “The tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet.” In fact, all of those ‘tragic yet meaningful events’ are all the deaths of Mercutio, Tybalt, Romeo, and Juliet. All of the tragic, meaningful events show what theme the story portrays. Romeo and Juliet itself is a well-known so called ‘love’ play/story, but when you really ‘dig deeper’ into it you will soon come to realize that it is more of a death play than a love play. Romeo and Juliet could be considered more of a death play than a love play because, majority of the events that happened were violent and the violence resulted in death; the only two people who showed ‘love’ throughout the story was Romeo and Juliet. It is clearly shown that death brought nothing but sorrow, sadness, and problems to Romeo and Juliet from beginning to end. Analyzing the story, it is obviously shown that death is written all over Romeo and Juliet, and that all the deaths of certain characters formed Romeo and Juliet itself. Therefore, with that being said, the theme that will be most strongly portrayed is death.
This is explored through the characters of both lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Near the end of the play, Juliet drinks a potion to make her appear dead to her parents and get her out of an unwanted arranged marriage to a man named Paris. Once her parents would find her dead and place in a tomb with her ancestors, her other lover, Romeo, would get her and they would elope together. However because of miscommunication, Romeo was not aware of this plan and he heard that Juliet had died from someone else. Because of this he goes to see her and decides to kill himself, but after seeing her “dead” body for closure. When Romeo thinks Juliet is dead, he immediately resorts to suicide without once thinking about any other possibilities or considering a life without her. This quick conclusion leads to the unnecessary death of Paris, who also came to meet Juliet, and Romeo, himself, which then leads to Juliet killing herself. Before Romeo drinks poison and commits suicide, he says “Here’s to my love! (drinks the poison) O true apothecary,Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.” This rash and hasty decision, had it been put off for a minute or so would have resulted in Juliet awakening and the couple living together, which was their goal. However, Romeo’s impetuosity results in an unhappy and tragic end to him, his wife and his wife’s other lover. This
Romantic love stories are often ended with a tragedy, because of loss of passion or a loved one. These tragedies are often the result of one person’s actions that ended someone’s life or love. In the Romeo and Juliet play written by William Shakespeare, two citizens of Verona come together and fall deeply in love. Unfortunately their love comes to an end, along with their lives, because of a misunderstanding and a persistent feud between their families. Although there are many characters in this play that have contributed to Romeo and Juliet’s death, Friar Laurence is the person most to blame.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is arguably the most well known and well-read play in history. With its passionate and realistic treatment of universal themes of love, fate, war, and death, it’s not difficult to see why. However, most people don’t realize that there are several versions of the play, each with their own unique additions and/or changes to the plot, dialogue, and characters. After thumbing through the texts located here on this website, you can see even at a glance the distinct differences between the versions of Romeo and Juliet. This essay will explore how people dealt with death during the Renaissance in context to Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Lamentable Tragedie.) More specifically, I will show that the added monologue in act 4, scene 5, regarding the convention of death, is consistent to the social and religious beliefs of the time period.
In the course of the play, Romeo and Juliet immediately fall in love. Also, they know they are meant for each other and therefore decide to get married. After this marriage, there was a brief moment in time where everything was perfect. They are married, in love and there is nothing stopping them from being together. This however quickly changes after a fight that leads to death. Once Romeo is banished from Verona for the penalty of murder, love grows tremendously between the couple and drives the need to be together. The marriage between Romeo and Juliet is hidden from their parents, so Montague decides to arrange a marriage between her and Paris. With all the conflict arising between Juliet’s family, Friar Lawrence creates a plan that unfortunately does not succeed. His plan for Juliet is to tell her father she will marry Paris then go to bed with no one, not even the nurse. After, she will drink a potion to make her seem dead for forty two hours and then have a messenger tell Romeo about it. He will have her put in a vault to wait for Friar to bring her out so she and Romeo can elope. The plan was perfect until tragedy occurs, Benvolio had seen Juliet dead and immediately tells Romeo about it. The result is Romeo and Juliet murdering themselves and the play had a tragic ending. Overall, young, innocent lovers die, through no fault of their own but a simple mistake. “How oft when men are at the
There are many contributing factors to the death of Juliet and her Romeo. The omnipresent feud was the catalyst for the secrecy of their marriage, for Friar Lawrence's mechanisms in using them to form a hard peace between the families, and for the public fight that resulted in Mercutio and Tybalt's untimely deaths and Romeo's banishment. Fate, also, plays cruelly with the couple. Friar John being unable to forward Friar Lawrence's note to Romeo to explain his plan and Juliet's parents' misunderstanding of her grief over Romeo's banishment and pushing forward the marriage to Paris in unnatural haste as a sort of balm for her flagging spirits serve as examples of fate's intervention. The chief culprit, however, in the deaths of Juliet and
...tion the audience does he confronts Romeo and loses his life in a fight. In the most heartrending instance of dramatic irony, Romeo kills himself after seeing Juliet in her grave. Romeo’s death is all the more tragic because the audience is aware that Juliet is in fact not dead, and had this information gotten to Romeo neither him nor Juliet would have died.
Reckless actions lead to untimely deaths. In Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”, both protagonists fight for their hopeless love. Bloodshed and chaos appear inevitable in fair Verona; Romeo and Juliet come from enemy households, the Montegues and the Capulets, who have sworn to defeat one another. The young and handsome Romeo weeps over his unrequited love for Rosaline, until he lays his eyes on Juliet. Strong and independent, Juliet seeks to escape her family’s will to marry her off to Paris, a kinsman of the Prince. Fate ties these adolescents’ lives together binding them to witness the ill-fortunes of Romeo and Juliet’s love. Romeo and Juliet prove themselves woefully impulsive through their words and actions, which ultimately lead them along a series of unfortunate mishaps.
'Romeo and Juliet' is a play written by William Shakespeare that teaches current and future generations important lessons about love and vengeance. Hatred and revenge is a key theme throughout the play as everyone is blinded by pessimistic opinions and ideas about their enemies. Although their pride and passion for violence is extremely overpowering and demeaning, there is a small seed of hope and love (Romeo and Juliet) beginning to grow in the immense darkness. By analysing these themes, it helps to enlighten and strengthen your knowledge of the consequences of forbidden love and assists the reader in becoming more optimistic.
Juliet goes through physical pain, stabbing herself so she can be with Romeo after his death. Juliet looks at death as a positive thing because it allows her to be with Romeo again. Before she kills herself she says, “O, happy dagger, this is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die” (Shakespeare V.iii.174-175). In most romantic tales, violence is the last thing you would think of when it comes to love, but it would be different in this play.