A series of premonitions and a sense of fate are embedded into the play. We first hear of Romeo and Juliet’s ill-fated future in the prologue when we are told that they are ‘a pair of star-crossed lovers’. This lets the audience know right from the start that perhaps Romeo and Juliet have no control over their future. Also, Romeo sometimes feels that someone else has control over his life when he says ‘…He that hath the steerage of my course’. In that same speech he also has a premonition of his ‘untimely death’. He fells there is ‘some consequence yet hanging in the stars’. Later in “Romeo & Juliet” Friar Lawrence warns the couple that ‘violent delights have violent ends’. This is one of the clearest premonitions in the play.
This story of love is contrastingly set against a background of conflict and hatred. The feud is first mentioned in the prologue as an ‘ancient grudge where civil blood makes civil hands unclean’. This shows that although the feud is just timeless bitterness with no true reason for it people are still fighting. The best example of how widely spread across Verona the feud was is the public brawl started by the Montague servants and Tybalt. There must have been quite a few people if officers with ‘clubs, bills and partisans’ couldn’t stop the fight. Another factor that makes their love so contrasting to the feud is that Juliet is very much aware that Romeo is ‘[her] only love sprung from [her] only hate’. All of this makes their love more poignant and vulnerable.
Other characters talk about Romeo before he enters meaning that we already have an idea about what he is like before we meet him. Lady Montague was first to mention Romeo when she asked ‘where is Romeo’. She was ‘right glad’ that he ‘was not at this fray [the first public brawl]’. Romeo is obviously loved by his parents and they are quite concerned for him. Next Benvolio talks about the last time he saw Romeo. When Benvolio walked ‘towards him… he was ware’ of him and hid in ‘the wood’. Something must have been upsetting Romeo for him to be avoiding both his parents and his friends. Montague describes how Romeo stays ‘away from light’ and ‘shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out and makes himself an artificial night’. Romeo is clearly very depressed.
Like Romeo, Juliet is spoken of before she enters meaning that we have some opinion of her before we see her. The first time a character mentions Juliet is during the conversation between Paris and Capulet. Capulet wants Paris to wait for ‘two more summers’ before marrying Juliet because ‘she hath not seen the change of fourteen years’. In this speech Capulet seems very much out of the norm for a patriarchal society and he clearly loves Juliet very much. Perhaps this is because the ‘earth hath swallowed all [his] hopes’ except for Juliet and he wants to protect her.
When Romeo first enters his language is quite different before and after they meet each other. Before they meet, Romeo is very self-indulgent and self-piteous. He describes love by using lots of oxymorons like ‘brawling love’ and ‘loving hate’. These oxymorons show Romeo’s insincerity and confusion. However, when he sees Juliet across the room at Capulet’s party, he immediately changes his language from a state of confusion to innocent, loving curiosity. He asks a servant ‘what lady’s that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight’. This is love at first sight. Later in “Romeo & Juliet” he is using the somewhat confusing language from earlier in the play but without the self-indulgence, especially with the use of apostrophe. ‘It is my lady, O it is my love, O that she knew she were’. He seems to genuinely love or at least is willing to love Juliet.
Juliet’s language also changes slightly after she meets Romeo. Before they meet, Juliet’s language is quite formal and she only speaks a few lines in her first scene. When asked of marriage she replies ‘it is an honour I dream not of’. She is very courteous and is aware of the patriarchal society she lives in. After she meets Romeo and has her own soliloquy, her language is still simple and spontaneous but with more emotion and feeling.
‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or if thy wilt not, be sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’
Perhaps this change in language is because she does genuinely love Romeo.
We can see from these many methods of introducing a character, including the chorus, the sense of fate, the contrasting feud, how other characters speak of them and the characters themselves, that Shakespeare was in control of our opinion and perception of Romeo and Juliet.
