The Character of Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare
In the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’, which was written by William
Shakespeare, fate plays a vital role as an amazing number of unlucky
events happen to Romeo. By analysing the key themes, character
dialogue and the structure of the play, I hope to find out to what
extent Romeo is a victim of fate.
In Shakespeare’s days, many Elizabethans had a strong belief that
stars and star signs had a great impact on their destiny. The
Elizabethans believed that fate existed in order to limit people’s
ambitions and pride, and to maintain a sense of order in the world.
Some people appear to be approaching a state of perfection; it is the
role of fate to bring that individual down, to remind people that even
the greatest human are below the ‘Gods’. Fate may be described as
being envious or jealous of its own position. This was a very large
part of the Elizabethan’s understanding of the universe that our lives
were planned out before we were born. The major way of determining our
destinies was by looking to the heavens. This relates to the play
because ‘Romeo and Juliet’ are called ‘star cross’d lovers’ and also
when Romeo hears of Juliet’s death he say’s ‘I defy you stars’, this
is extremely foolish of him because he is defying what the heavens
have planned for him.
As a result of this he immediately goes, without even thinking, to buy
some poison and commit suicide.
Romeo and Juliet experience numerous misfortunate events in the play,
beginning with their meeting at the Capulet’s ball where the moment
Romeo sets eyes on Juliet he completely erases Rosaline from his mind
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...made foolish decisions. Firstly, knowing the families hatred for
each other he still choose to go to the party. Secondly, Romeo did not
even see Juliet’s face before he declared his love for her. Later, he
only thought of his anger and not his love for Juliet when in revenge
of Mercutio’s death he killed Tybalt. Again, he made a bad decision by
foolishly not keeping to his banishment but returned to Verona. Also,
he did not think of anyone but himself when he made the decision to
just go and buy poison without talking to anybody first. I personally
think the tragedy was caused by Romeo’s self-centred decisions and bad
choices.
In spite of this Romeo and Juliet’s momentous love affair was too
strong and their love was too pure that if it had lasted more than a
week they would have started to fade away from each other.