Discuss Shakespeare's Use Of Foreshadowing In "Romeo And Juliet".

Discuss Shakespeare’s Use Of Foreshadowing In “Romeo And Juliet”

William Shakespeare, throughout his play “Romeo and Juliet”, uses foreshadowing to give the readers and audience hints on the outcome of the play, and also to add more meaning to the play. He also uses this technique to display Romeo and Juliet’s love for one another.

We see the first use of foreshadowing right at the beginning of the play, in the prologue. The prologue sums up the entire play, and tells us what is going to occur. It doesn’t hint what’s going to happen, so it super-seeds foreshadowing. “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Do with their death bury their parents’ strife”. This section of the Chorus in the Prologue is the part that sums up the play. The next section repeats the same message, and so repetition is used to clearly give the story away.

When Benvolio is trying to talk Romeo out of love with Rosaline, he foreshadows that Romeo will fall in love with Juliet and forget about Rosaline, “Take thou some new infection to thy eye,

And the rank poison of the old will die”. (1.2) In Scene 1 Act 4, Romeo replies to Benvolio “I fear, too early: for my mind misgives

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars

Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night’s revels and expire the term

Of a despised life closed in my breast

By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

But He, that hath the steerage of my course,

Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen”. This foreshadows of what happens in the rest of the play. ‘Consequence’ means event, and so a fateful chain of events begins that night, which is referred to as ‘date’.

At the masked ball at Lord Capulet’s house, Capulet resorts to threats and insults and tells Tybalt not to start a quarrel, and to go away. Tybalt then says to himself, “I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall

Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall” (1.5). Tybalt here is foreshadowing that Romeo’s lust and desire for Juliet leads to Romeo’s death by poison. (“Gall” means poison)

When Juliet sends the Nurse to find out Romeo’s name, in the same scene, Juliet says, “If he be married.

My grave is like to be my wedding bed”. She is here ...

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Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall” (1.5). Tybalt here is foreshadowing that Romeo’s lust and desire for Juliet leads to Romeo’s death by poison. (“Gall” means poison)

When Juliet sends the Nurse to find out Romeo’s name, in the same scene, Juliet says, “If he be married.

My grave is like to be my wedding bed”. She is here foreshadowing her own fate without knowing it, in which her grave does become her wedding bed.

In Scene 2 Act 2, Romeo states, “life were better ended by their hate,

Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love”. He’s basically saying that he’d rather be caught by Juliet’s kinsmen, her relatives, and killed still having Juliet’s love, rather than not have her love and survive now, but die later. Thus, Romeo foreshadows him getting Juliet’s love, but unfortunately dying for it as well.

In the next scene, Friar Laurence, whilst picking herbs, says “but, strain’d from that fair use,

Revolts from true birth stumbling on abuse

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;

And vice sometimes by action dignified”. He is stating that there is some good in every plant. He’s foreshadowing that as a result of Romeo and Juliet’s death, the feud and hatred between the Montagues and the Capulets comes to an end.

In Act 2 Scene 6, Friar Laurence thinks ahead and says to Romeo, before he is married, “So smile the heavens upon this holy act,

That after hours with sorrow chide us not!” The Friar agreed to secretly marry the two lovers because he believes that the ‘after hours’, the time after the marriage, will bring an end to the ancient feud between the two quarrelling families. But he also thinks that the ‘after hours’ could bring sorrow, and things could go wrong and ‘chide’ them for what they are about to do. Romeo later comments that he is about to face the greatest sorrow of all, “Do thou but close our hands with holy words,

Then love-devouring death do what he dare;

It is enough I may but call her mine”. These words foreshadow exactly what they say; “love-devouring death” occurs after the wedding, where Tybalt dies at the hands of Romeo.

We see Romeo foreshadowing his banishment when he cries out, in Act 3 Scene 1, “O, I am fortune’s fool!” He knows that his fate is not in his hands any longer, as he has just murdered Tybalt. His fate is now in the hands of the Prince, who ultimately results in banishing him from Verona, vowing that if he ever returns, he will be killed.

Juliet, when she hears about Romeo’s banishment, thinks she will die with sorrow, “I’ll to my wedding-bed;

And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!” This concept is repeated when Capulet says to Paris, “O son, the night before thy wedding-day

Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,

Flower as she was, deflowered by him”. Lord Capulet is saying that Romeo has deflowered Juliet, and led her to death. This is true, as Juliet had said before that Romeo’s death would kill her. Capulet’s speech here is foreshadowing the fate of Juliet, who dies next to her dead husband.

When Romeo and Juliet are saying their final farewells to each other, Juliet says, “Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,

As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.

Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.” (3.5) She is saying that she feels Romeo will end up dead in a tomb. Consequently, the next time she sees him is when he’s dead at the bottom of a tomb, and so this is yet another example of foreshadowing. Juliet has mixed feelings about the arrangement devised by the Friar, so that the two can be together. She thinks a disaster will be aroused as previous tactics have failed.

Juliet, later in the same scene, pleads with her mother to help delay the marriage with Paris, “O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!

Delay this marriage for a month, a week

Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed

In that dim monument where Tybalt lies”. Juliet is saying that she would rather die than marry Paris, and that she will end up dead next to Tybalt. She is foreshadowing the time when at the end of the play she is sleeping next to her husband, in the same ‘dim monument where Tybalt lies’, where she also later dies after drinking the poison.

When Friar Laurence, in Act 4 Scene 1, is about to tell Juliet about the plan of the sleeping potion, Juliet says that she’d do anything rather than marry Paris. She asks the Friar to “hide me nightly in a charnel house,

O’er-cover’d quite with dead men’s rattling bones,

With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;

Or bid me go into a new-made grave

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;

Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;

And I will do it without fear or doubt,

To live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love;” This long speech is telling and describing to us what happens to Juliet; ‘a dead man in his shroud’ is Tybalt, and she does end up next to him in the ‘charnel house’.

Act 4 Scene 3 demonstrates to the audience of the play what will happen at the end. This scene is some sort of a preview, as it shows Juliet drinking Friar Laurence’s sleeping potion, and so she is ‘faking’ death. Therefore, this foreshadows the final scene where Juliet tries to drink Romeo’s poison, and then stabs herself to death.

The most cleverly thought of example of foreshadowing in the play is in Act 4 Scene 4, where the Nurse and Lady Capulet are preparing the feast for the wedding of Juliet and Paris. They are preparing it in the same room where Capulet’s ball had taken place, and where Romeo and Juliet had first met. Also, the bed where Juliet is sleeping on, ‘faking’ death, is behind Lady Capulet and the Nurse. This cunningly foreshadows that the wedding will soon become a funeral.

The final instance, in which we see the skill of foreshadowing used, is when in Act 4 Scene 5 Capulet tells Paris about Juliet’s ‘apparent’ death, as mentioned before, “O son, the night before thy wedding-day…” (See page 3 for full speech) Lord Capulet is here foreshadowing the fate of Juliet, and so her real death.

In conclusion, William Shakespeare expertly and ingeniously uses the technique of foreshadowing to help the reader from being astonished by disastrous outcomes, and to help hint at scenes to come. It is used also to predict the results of the play and its scenes, and also to express the love between Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, a significantly horrendous ending takes place, but with Shakespeare’s use of foreshadowing, the reader is kept from being traumatized. To this day, the skill of foreshadowing is used to have a great influence on the reader and audience.