Romeo And Juliet - "Consider the role of Fate, Fortune and The Stars in the play."

Authors Avatar

Romeo and Juliet

Daniel Murphy

Romeo And Juliet

“Consider the role of Fate, Fortune and The Stars in the play.”

The play “Romeo And Juliet” is doubtless one of the most easily recognisable and well known pieces in all the Shakespearean works, if not the whole of English literature. Shakespeare’s play is based on a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke in 1562 named ‘The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet’. It has become the ultimate love story and adaptations of the play exist all over the world in many different formats. “Romeo and Juliet” is a tale of two young “star-cross’d lovers” (Prologue, L.6) who, amidst the turmoil of their feuding families, manage to sustain a relationship of true love which, ultimately, is destined for destruction. Romeo is the only son of Montague and Juliet the only daughter of Capulet; the play takes place in the Italian City of Verona.

When considering the destruction of Romeo and Juliet one of the most important factors are Fate, Fortune and The Stars. These factors are integrated into one another and can boradly be classified under fate. Fate above all ruined Romeo and Juliet. Many

 the most significant factors a person can think about are Fate, Fortune and The Stars. These factors are integrated into one another and can broadly be classified under fate. Fate above all ruined Romeo and Juliet. Many instances in the play reveal that the love of Romeo and Juliet would end in death and even from the very beginning it is evident that they were destined by the stars for bad fortune. In the opening of the play the chorus is describing Romeo and Juliet, and predicts their life together as having a star-crossed conclusion, that their lives are governed by fate, a force often linked to the movements of the stars. By already knowing from the beginning that their life has an ill-fated finale, we can see how their choices brought them to their death. Shakespeare also uses two types of fate; fate and Fate. The latter being personified, a characteristic which he also attributes to Death, a force he gifts with anthropomorphic personification, especially in Romeo’s soliloquy in Act 5, Scene 3, L. 74-120.

The two forces that control the lives of Romeo and Juliet are those of fate and freewill. These two forces continually contradict each other throughout the play. Romeo and Juliet start their love as an act of freewill. Even though they met through an act of fate. Their families are feuding, yet they take it upon themselves to get married. They decide for themselves what to do in life, which shows how they use their freewill to an advantage. However, in the wake of every act of freewill in the play fate intervenes and ensures that disruption, and eventually destruction features in their lives.

Join now!

We are first introduced to the concept of fate in the play in Act 1, Scene 2 when a servant of the Capulet household encounters Benvolio, Romeo’s loyal cousin, who seems to act as a pacifier between the two families throughout the play, and Romeo. The servant asks Romeo to read the invitation list to a Capulet ball; fate intervenes when Romeo notices that Rosaline, Romeo’s most recent focus of unrequited love, is on the list. Of course this social function will be the first time he meets Juliet, the girl he will instantly fall in love with. In L. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay