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
Brooks, Arther. "THE TRAGICALL HISTORY OF ROMEUS AND JULIET." Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project. N.p., 1562. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. .
DiYanni, Robert. Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2008. Print.
Johnson, Ben. "The Holloway Pages: Ben Jonson: Works (1692 Folio): Love freed from Ignorance and Folly." The Holloway Pages. Clark J. Holloway, 2003. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. .
Shakespeare, William. "Romeo and Juliet: Entire Play." The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. .
In every fairy tale, movie, story, and play there is always a ‘happily ever after’ but in not in this case. The star struck lovers, Romeo and Juliet, both from families who loathe each other, end up taking their lives because they rather die than live without one another. The play “Romeo and Juliet” written by, William Shakespeare, mainly focuses on how selfishness can lead to tragedy. The selfish personalities of the characters caused conflict, betrayal, and 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. (2013). Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Language of Literature. Ed. Arthur N. Applebee. Evanston: McDougal Littell, 2002. Print.
... 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.
The. “Romeo and Juliet.” Literature and Language. Illinois: McDougal, Littell and Company, 1992. 722-842
Watts, Cedric. Twayne's New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.
< http://callisto.gsu.edu:4000/CGI:html> (5 May 1997). Rozen, Leah. "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet."
In Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the lovers meet their doom, in scene iii of Act V. With their fatal flaw of impulsivity, Romeo and Juliet are ultimately to blame for their death. Contrarily, if it was not for the unintentional influence of the pugnacious Tybalt, the star-crossed lovers may have remained together, perpetually. To the audience, the deaths of Romeo and Juliet are already understood, for it is a Shakespearean tragedy. However, the causes, predominantly Romeo’s and Juliet’s fatal flaws of impulsivity and rashness, are as simple as Shakespearean writing. Though Romeo and Juliet are wholly to blame for their tragic suicides, in Act V scene iii, Tybalt is, in turn, responsible, as his combative spirit forced Romeo to murder him and Juliet to marry Paris.
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.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. New York City, NY: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1992, 2011. Print.
Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D. (2010). Literature an introduction to fiction, poetry, drama and
Romeo and Juliet is a romantic love story about a young lad named Romeo who has fallen in love with Lady Juliet, but is unable to marry her because of a long-lasting family feud. The play ends in the death of both these characters and the reunion of the friendship between the families. Romeo is in love with Juliet, and this is a true, passionate love (unlike the love Paris has for her or the love Romeo had for Rosaline) that nothing can overcome, not even the hatred between their two families that is the reason for the death of their two children. Throughout the play, Shakespeare thoroughly explores the themes of both true love and false love and hatred. Without either of these themes, the play would loose its romantic touch and probably would not be as famous as it is today.
The Web. 1 May 2014. onlinelibrary.wiley.org/>. Shakespeare, William, and Burton Raffel. Romeo and Juliet.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "Romeo and Juliet Summary." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. .