Although many themes run through the play, fate is on aspect that makes a significant appearance throughout the play, questioning how seriously superstition was taken. Other themes like chance also frequently make an entrance. Combined with fate it exploited the fact that two themes go hand in hand, because you can argue that it was by chance that Peter the servant was illiterate, but was it fate that he happened to stumble upon Romeo and Benvolio and ask them to read out the guest list. Making Romeo aware that Rosaline the women he had an unrequited love for was to attend the ball of the Capulet’s. Was by chance that Romeo met Juliet at the ball seeing that he was there for Rosaline, but in saying that Romeo himself proclaimed on his way to the ball that there was something quite not right in the stars, that something unusual, something with a consequence will happen to night. So with this in mind is it fair to put it down to chance that Juliet happened to find herself on the balcony at the same time Romeo is in the Capulet’s courtyard. You see when Romeo did this he knew that there would be consequences, but what was the cause of this consequences?
Was it down to plain old bad luck that the pair of young lovers died however was it plain? For something to be plain and simple it has to go of an easy route, and as we all know Romeo and Juliet, no matter how long there love lasted, definitely did not have a plain and simple storyline. Their love exceeded barriers and showed that there was positively not one cause from which they died of. You see fortune is fickle, so maybe no one was to blame, could it have been a series of accidents, which in the end led to Romeo and Juliet’s suicides? It is quite clear a friend of the Montague’s; Mercuitio was killed by an accident, it can be said that it was definitely by chance that Mercutio was sleighed by Tybalt because he was in between Romeo and Tybalt. This is the moment when Romeo draws his sword to repay Tybalt for the death of Mercutio. A few minutes earlier Romeo had turned the other cheek in response to the insults of his now beloved cousin. Now, however, with Mercutio’s ‘plague’ ringing in his ears, he can hear only the promptings of revenge. We’re surely meant to identify and empathize with Romeo’s plight, but as soon as he makes his fatal decision and the deed is done, we recognize, with him, that he has reacted impulsively and he is now “…Fortune’s Fool…” Which in itself introduces that chance could be the cause, just as the example with the Friar’s letter. Because it was by chance that the illness of the time delayed the message to Romeo, however it was very convenient that Balthasar, Romeo’s servant happened to be in the other side of Verona, making him more available to get to Romeo in Mantua more promptly than Friar John. You see if Balthasar hadn’t been restrained, would Romeo of got the message that his wife had taken the potion so they could be together? Which still comes down to the point that chance did in someway or another script its way into the play, making it a possible cause for the deaths of Juliet and her Romeo.
Another cause for Romeo and Juliet’s deaths could have been because of adolescent passion. Could it have been the young lovers’ own fault? Was their adolescent love at first sight a cause for their end? Were Romeo and Juliet mature enough, had they fully reached a state of maturity that they were able to, one, be in love and deal with all the feelings/emotions that come with it. And two, were they mentally mature enough to have a sexual relationship and also deal with the properties and emotions that came with the package of committing yourself to another. Excusing the fact that they were married, this still doesn’t identify enough concrete evidence to comply that they were fully mature. People nowadays have sexual relations, even from the same age as Romeo and Juliet, even though their not married does it still make them capable to have a sexual relationship and deal with all the factors that come with it, for anybody can say the words ‘I love you.’ However it was exactly those three words that carried so much power and so much admiration which in itself could be the cause for their deaths, for anybody can say “I Love You,” but it is another thing to actually mean those sacred yet volatile words and it is another for that person to actually know that they are capable and that they’re in love. Being the age they were, they were old enough to identify what love was, or was the strong feelings they shared just that; strong feelings and not love, however bearing this in mind “is love blind?” What age can you put the word love under, what age can you restrain love to? How old do you have to be to know and feel love? Or is it one of those things we just cannot restrain or tie down to a limit? Or is it true to say that love knows no barriers?
In Romeo and Juliet’s relationship, its first elements; that sense of imperfection, that yearning to combine itself with something lovely. Romeo became enamoured of the ideal he formed in his own mind, and then, as it were, christened the first real being he desired. He appeared to be in love with Rosaline, but in truth he was in love only with his own idea. He felt the necessity of being beloved, which no noble mind can be without: Shakespeare then introduced Romeo to Juliet, and made it not only a violent but permanent love at first sight. Which later on Romeo talked about, hinting how he openly felt about her when he said, “O she doth teach torches to burn bright.”
From the very beginning, the audience is made aware that there is something seriously wrong in the play’s world. The chorus delivers a Prologue in the form of a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem usually devoted in Shakespeare’s time to private declaration of love. But here we have a sonnet gone public and a sonnet that speaks not of love but of civil war: “Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” Moreover, the Prologue is followed by the appearance of two servants of the house of Capulet who seem to have no object in life except to quarrel with their rivals, the Montague. The two servants continue the confusion between love and war, sexuality and violence, which was first suggested by the sonnet. I think that there is very good reason why Romeo the lover, and Juliet, too, should talk like a sonneteer. The play was written in the heyday of the sonnet, and the language of the sonnet was the language of love. I think the contact with Juliet tends to be a matter of reaching out, and gently touching, while the idea of union with her generates imagery of parts securely fitted to each other, rather than wholes merging and boundaries dissolving.
Romeo conceives his Juliet as something very precious, something sent from heaven, as he refers to her as a, “…bright angel…” and refers to her as a something of a Godsend throughout the play. To have been in Romeo and Juliet’s state of mind would have been in a world of one’s own. As Romeo from the beginning, calls Juliet a saint, he feels a violent emotion which overrides everything else, as they did frequently refer to each other as their, “true love.” He had developed an unconditional love for Juliet, where as with Rosaline he had an unrequited love, although it was more of an infactuaration than love. What most of us recall most vividly from Romeo and Juliet is the scene in Capulet’s orchard when Romeo looks up to his Juliet’s window and the two lovers exchange the most poetic vows in the annals of courtship. This tableau is mirrored in a later scene when Romeo descends from their one night together and Juliet has a premonition of him standing in a grave: “…Me thinks I see thee now, thou art so low, as one dead in the bottom of a Tomb…” Marriage became the outcome of their passion. Their first ever meeting was a turning point. The passion and the love was so deep, and because it was so deep it continued right through to the end, and it could of been because of that love the young lovers could of died. One of the reasons for the fame of Romeo and Juliet is that it has so completely and clearly isolated the experience of romantic love. It has let such love speak for itself; and not alone in the celebrated wooing scenes, where the hero and heroine express themselves with a piercing directness, but indirectly also, and possibly with still greater power. Their deep interest for us lies in their being alone in a world, which did not understand them.
Romeo and Juliet charged rapidly through everything leaving very little time to think about the consequences, which was exactly a perfect example of adolescent passion. They at some stage became oblivious and forgot about the social issues choking them at the time. Romeo and Juliet were the outcome of ancient enmity between the Montague’s' and Capulets’. The two families struggled for power in Verona, their ‘current grudge’ broke “to new mutiny” at the start of the play. A stiff-necked code of honour made the young men spring to violent, bloody action. We observed that Romeo belonged to a hot-blooded male world that lived by the code duello. In this environment tempers were near boiling point, and even placid gentlemen like the law-abiding Benvolio must be prepared to defend their “honour”, and by extension their lives, at the slightest provocation. At the ball Tybalt had recognized Romeo’s voice as that of a Montague and had vowed revenge for what he regards as a scornful encroachment on Capulet ‘Solemnity’. In this scene Shakespeare plants the seeds of a denouement in which “violent Delights” will bear fruit in “Violent Ends”. The quoted words are Friar Lawrence’s, and he plays a role in this category that is perhaps best described as equivocal. On the other hand, he speaks sincerely and eloquently for a tradition of ‘learning’ and ‘philosophy’ that is several times evoked to remind the protagonists that they must use their heads if they hope to foster the desires of their hearts. On the other hand, he acts in ways that encourage precisely the behaviour he warns against. In an effort to forge an “alliance’ that will turn their “households’ rancour to pure love,” he agrees to marry the lovers secretly and, when things go awry, to assist them expedients that will buy time until they can live openly as husband and wife.
Right from the very start, Romeo and Juliet face conflict of loyalties, they were subjected to the environment of brawls and controversy that reserved them for being together. They literally had their loyalties clashing against each other. Attempting to omit their conflicts, they found it near to impossible to do so. Even their first initial meeting was juxtaposed by Tybalt’s out burst, however their second acquaintance was still under unsafe circumstances, as Juliet herself expressed that the courtyard would be “…the place death…” for Romeo if her “kinsman” were to “find thee here,” reminding us that the feud was still present. Due to the feud, Juliet finds it impossible to find counsel in her parents, about her marriage to Romeo, leading to her taking the potion. Seeing five people died in the play, a sense of violent passion ran frequently, yet surely through the play, embarking a feeling of insecurity. The feud itself fabricated a lot of problems making Romeo and Juliets' relationship a exaggerated issue, like a child holding a crystal glass in a shop. Even though the child was only looking, the thought of an accident occurring alerts every alarm making it an instant drill; a cause for concern. Tybalt felt that his honour of “kin” had been insulted by Romeo’s presence at the Capulet’s feast, he took this personally as a direct and honest insult, upon him and his family. Same way how Romeo was provoked into a “fiery-eyed fury” by the death of Mercutio. Mercutio was a man possessing all the elements of a poet; high fancy, rapid thoughts. The whole world was, as it were, subject to his law of association, wherever he wished to impress anything, all things became his servants; all things told the same tale and sound, as it were, in unison. This was combined with a perfect gentleman, himself unconscious of his powers. It was by his death contrived to bring about the whole catastrophe of the play. It endears him to Romeo, and gives to Mercutio’s death an importance which otherwise could not have acquired.
