Romeo and Juliet don’t find out until after their kiss that they are from opposing families. Only after they have ‘fallen in love’ does Juliet find out that Romeo is a Montague. Just as their second kiss ends, the Nurse arrives and tells Juliet that her mother wants to speak with her. Romeo asks the Nurse who Juliet’s mother is. The Nurse replies that Lady Capulet is her mother. Romeo is devastated. Juliet is just as struck with the mysterious man she has kissed as Romeo is with her. She comments to herself that if he is already married, she feels she will die. She tells the nurse, “Go ask his name: if he be married,
My grave is like to be my wedding-bed.” She then finds out it is worse than that, i.e. he is not married but he is a Montague. The nurse tells her about him, “His name is Romeo, and a Montague; The only son of your great enemy.” The emphasis is put on the enmity between the two families as the nurse says, “…your great enemy.”
Romeo and Juliet are so enrapt completing the sonnet and gazing into each other’s sparkling eyes that they forget to ask one another for names; instead, both discover from the Nurse the other’s identity. In an instant, Juliet concisely expresses the connection between love and hate and marriage and death: “My only love sprung from my only hate.” She also declares immediately that if she cannot marry Romeo, she would rather die: “If he be married. / My grave is like to be my wedding bed.” The image of death as a bridegroom for Juliet is repeated throughout the play to maintain an atmosphere of impending tragedy
There are more complications which suggest that Romeo and Juliet’s love will end in tragedy. After the fighting earlier in the play, the prince issues an edict that there will be death for anyone who ‘disturbs the peace’ in Verona. This leaves the audience in a bit of suspense as the audience knows that someone is going to die and Shakespeare suggests this way that there is going to be tragedy.
In addition to the many existing problems, the audience finds out that Juliet is already arranged to get married to Paris. This further adds to the complications between Romeo and Juliet’s relationship.
In their first conversation, Romeo and Juliet use religious language to describe their strong feelings for each other. From a religious perspective, this could be seen as blasphemy and a kind of idol worship. Romeo compares Juliet to an image of a saint that should be worshiped, a role that Juliet is willing to play. Romeo also says, “This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this, My lips, two blushing pilgrims…” Juliet commits an even more profound blasphemy in the next scene when she calls Romeo the “god of her idolatry,” effectively placing Romeo in God’s place in her personal religion. Hence, not only does Romeo and Juliet’s love always seem to be opposed by the social structures of family and honour, it is now also against Christian religious values.
Fate also plays a part in the tragic end of Romeo and Juliet’s love. From early on, Romeo has a feeling that something will go wrong. This is passed on to the audience and Shakespeare indicates this through Romeo’s premonition of something ‘bad’ coming from ‘this nights’ revels’.
When Romeo and Juliet meet they speak just fourteen lines before their first kiss. These fourteen lines make up a shared sonnet, with a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg. A sonnet is usually used to write about love. Shakespeare cleverly uses a sonnet to indicate to the audience that Romeo and Juliet’s love will end in tragedy. The play’s prologue also is a single sonnet of the same rhyme scheme as Romeo and Juliet’s shared sonnet. The sonnet in the Prologue introduces the play, and, through its description of Romeo and Juliet’s eventual death, also helps to create the sense of fate which surrounds Romeo and Juliet. The shared sonnet between Romeo and Juliet therefore creates a link between their love and their destiny. With just one shared sonnet, Shakespeare finds a means of expressing perfect love and linking it to a tragic fate.
In conclusion, the audience is suggested to throughout the play by Shakespeare that Romeo and Juliet’s love will end in a fatal tragedy. There loves opposed the social customs and the social structure of the society they lived in. It was against family standards, religious values and outside the norms of the traditional marriages in Verona. Moreover, because fate had a part to play, there was no way they or their love would last till the end of the play.
Tybalt
“Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe:
A villain that is hither come in spite,
To scorn at our solemnity this night.
He further states, “I’ll not endure him”
“I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall,
Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall.”
Romeo
“O dear account! My life is my foe’s debt”
Juliet
“If he be married, My life is like to be a wedding bed”
“My only love sprung from my only hate!”
“…That I must love a loathed enemy.”
