The reason Romeo meets Juliet is at the Capulet party. The servant runs into Romeo and Benvolio on the street, and asks Romeo to read the guest list to him as he is illiterate, and so when reading the guest list Romeo also adds on his name. It is this encounter that enables Romeo to read the list of names of guests for the Capulet party. Had Romeo not run into the servant, he would have never gone to the party, and hence, never even met Juliet. It is fate that makes this encounter possible. In Act 1 Scene 4 Romeos speech shows that fate is already playing a part in the play, even before he has met Juliet. Romeo has fears from the start about going to the party, ‘I fear too early…’, he says that something has been set out for him, his life story and from this period onwards it will be de period till his death. With this night his time will come when he dies, ‘expire the term….’ His heart will stop beating as he will have to give up his life for something he has done. But what is meant to happened will happen, as if his life has already been planed for him, ‘the steerage of my course.’ He speaks about an unknown danger "hanging in the stars." This notion of events expected to occur being written in the stars explains how life is predetermined by fate. Romeo senses that something bad may occur and it is this sense of foreboding from the beginning that indicates fate is rife.
Act 1 Scene 5 is Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting. After Romeos speech in Act 1 Scene 4, he goes to the party at the Capulet mansion. In this scene Tybalt sees Romeo at the party, he goes to tell Capulet, who orders him to do nothing, ‘let him alone’ and ‘he shall be endured.’ This is unusual as both the families are sworn enemies; never would Capulet allow a Montague to be at his party.
While he is there at the party he sees Juliet and asks the servant working there who she is he replies saying ‘I know not sir.’ This is odd because he was the servant of Juliet’s father and so he not knowing who Juliet is almost impossible. This is a sign of fate, because if the servant had told Romeo that she was the daughter of Capulet it would have been very unlikely that he would speak to her. After Romeo approaches Juliet, and speaks to her for the very first time. Romeo speaks of Juliet’s hand as the shrine to which pilgrims (his lips) travel to worship (kiss). Juliet says ‘o then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do’, and they kiss. Juliet is presented as unearthly, this is related to fate as if to show that she should not be on this earth and this is what happens at the end. This first conversation between them two forms a sonnet, the sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem in mainly iambic pentameter, with a formal rhyme scheme, which are mainly love poems. It is the most accepted form for the language of love. This is fate, one without the other would not have been able to form this sonnet, and the two halves show that they need each other. While they are kissing, the nurse interrupts with a message that Juliet’s mother wishes to speak to her. Romeo asks the nurse who Juliet is and learns that she is a Capulet, ‘o dear account, my life is my foe’s debt’, and he is saying that his life depends on his enemy. Juliet says ‘my grave is like to be ma wedding-bed’, if Romeo is married then she does not want to live. Then Juliet realises Romeo is a Montague. She says ‘my only love sprung from my only hate, too early seen unknown, and known too late!’ She is saying that once she saw Romeo she fell in love with him, even before she knew who he was. Now she knows who he is it is too late for her to change her feelings.
After Romeo kills Tybalt IN ACT..SCENE.. he shouts, "O, I am fortune’s fool!" Here Romeo clearly understands the full impact of this tragic event on his future, and how everything that has happened to him after he met Juliet was not in his favour. Fate is so strong that it works within the characters, and Juliet says "If all else fail, myself have power to die." once she sees how all the events lead to a tragic end.
Romeo himself realizes that fate has much to do with the events that have taken place. He knows that something else is fated to occur, something that will end the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues. Juliet tells Romeo of her vision of him dead at the bottom of a tomb. This is foreshadowing to the already destined event these two lovers will soon face, death. Romeo has a dream that Juliet finds him dead. Shakespeare uses dreams in the play to forebode what is going to happen. In Elizabethan times dreams were seen as portents, as if they predicted what was going to happen. This is yet another example where fate has a role in the lives of Romeo and Juliet; it is something that they cannot control.
In Act 5 Scene 3; this is when Romeo kills Paris. He is not sorry about killing Paris as he believes his fate had already been decided, he says ‘…sour misfortunes book.’ Romeo notices that ‘death’ has not yet had an effect on Juliet’s beauty (even though she is not actually dead yet), but death and beauty are linked in this play. ‘Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.’ Death has no power over her beauty, ‘beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear’ & ‘Too beautiful for world to poses’; this is telling us that she does not belong on this earth that she is going to die, another link to fate. Romeo thinks that Juliet is dead so he is really angry he wants to shake the stars as in he wants to shake fate, ‘and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars.’ This is linked to the beginning of the play where it says ‘star-crossed lovers’, the prologue which told us the sad tragedy of this story. When Romeo kisses Juliet the first time they meet, he is getting rid of his sin by passing it to Juliet, ‘Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.’ And then when he kisses her again in Act 5 Scene 3 he is taking his sin back, ‘The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death.’ After this kiss he has taken the sin back, this is fate that he is meant to die. It is like a curse for something he has done that just before Juliet wakes up he drinks the poison and dies. Juliet wakes up from the sleeping potion and asks the friar where Romeo is. The friar responds by saying, ‘A greater power than we can contradict hath thwarted our intents.’ That some higher power has changed their original plans. This higher power is what people have no control over - fate. Through fate, the friar does not make it to Juliet's tomb on time. Romeo kills himself before the friar can tell him that Juliet is not really dead. This is not the friar's fault. Rather, it is fate that he did not get there on time.
Overall I believe that the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is fate driven. All the events that happen in the play lead to one major event, for which the play is said to be tragic, in which for most part fate plays a large role. Both destined lovers realize their love cannot be pure and simple, and that no matter what they do, it will be tragic. The two families, whose strife can only be stopped by the predetermined love of their offspring, seize the hatred between them.
