The Causes Behind the Tragedy of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

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The Causes Behind the Tragedy of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a tragic love story written by William

Shakespeare. The play is based around two lovers, who commit suicide

when their feuding families prevent them from being together, set in

Verona, in northern Italy.

The play is generally involving love and family honour, in the days

when the play was written, parents expected to be obeyed-they even

decided who their children should marry. Romeo and Juliet go against

their parent's wishes and the feud when they fall in love.

There are many reasons as to why the final tragedy may have occurred.

Some of the main characters contribute to it; the pace of the play

leads to it; fate also plays a role.

Friar Lawrence plays the role in the play as a priest, and also to

many almost an agony uncle, he's an advisor and likes to help with

good intentions, mainly known to do so with Romeo, the Friar refers to

him as ''pupil mine''(act2 scene3)

When persuaded to take part in risky decisions by Romeo and Juliet,

such as agreeing to marry them both, he did so with good intent to

bring the two feuding families together, perhaps one of the most vital

decisions he made in the play.

My impressions of the Friar are that he's very independent, and likes

to take control of situations in order to sort things out, as he

automatically takes on the load of getting peace between the two

families. This happens as soon as Romeo and Juliet fall in love, and

he doesn't fully agree with the speed of their decision.

Romeo: ''O let us hence! I stand on sudden haste.''

Friar Lawrence: ''Wisely and slow. They stumble th...

... middle of paper ...

... less people appear on stage. I think a fast climatic scene is followed

by a slow paced one, just for the audience to take in all the drama.

The whole play combines huge conflicts, emotions and events in such a

short space of time, creating a sense of haste. There's never a

feeling of characters standing back and trying to prevent the tragedy

and I feel it's for this very reason that the theme of haste

contributes to the final tragedy.

Overall I don't think there is just one factor we can pin-point to

blame the tragedy on; I think this is one of the reasons Romeo and

Juliet remains a popular play. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet are

announced at the start of the play, but we become caught up in their

story. It keeps the audience guessing, what/who is really intended to

be blamed for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet?

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