Impulsivity and Tragedy in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare was born on 26 April 1564 (died on 23 April 1616), in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire. Shakespeare was a poet, playwright and actor and has written about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems. Shakespeare wrote many successful plays such as, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet was written at the mid-1590s in London and even today it is considered to be one of the greatest plays ever written. It is a play based on a long dispute between two families, the Montague’s and the Capulet’s, and takes place in the cities of Verona and Mantua, Italy, over the course of four short days. From constant quarrels to deaths and a banishment, Romeo and Juliet go on loving each other until the end. The play starts with a somewhat happy and a tad comedic feeling but ultimately ends as a tragedy. In this essay I will be analysing how Shakespeare presents the consequences of impulsive behaviour of Romeo.

The first impulsive behaviour from Romeo doesn’t take long to come. Romeo is talking with his cousin, Benvolio, to whether crash into the masquerade feast at the Capulet’s house. Even though Romeo is a bit hesitant at the beginning, thinking that is dangerous and inappropriate to get into the Capulet’s house with Benvolio and Mercutio as they are Montagues “And we mean well in going to this mask, / But ’tis no wit to go.” (Romeo), eventually he has a change of heart and ends up going. This clearly shows that Romeo being young and immature, can’t make right decisions and lets the spark of the moment take over him without clearly thinking the consequences of his actions. He even states that in a dream, he learned that going to the feast was a bad idea, which Shakespeare foreshadows Romeo’s dea...

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...sn’t so irrational and so impulsive before killing himself he would have thought to at least talk to Friar Lawrence before doing it. If he had talked to the Friar, he would have learnt that Juliet wasn’t really dead and that everything was staged so that they could be together. Unfortunately, because he wasn’t really thinking rationally he failed to do the things mentioned above and drank the poison a few minutes prior to Juliet’s awakening. When Juliet woke up and realised that their plan didn’t work, she decided to end her life as well so she could be with her loved one for eternity.

In essence, most of the tragic things that happened in the play were because Romeo didn’t sit down and think calmly and thoroughly what consequences would his actions lead to. This impulsive behaviour led him to problematic and poorly made decisions, which conclude to this tragic ending