The chorus refers to Romeo and Juliet as "star-crossed lovers". Do you agree with this view?

Authors Avatar

6 July 2001

The chorus refers to Romeo and Juliet as “star-crossed lovers”.  Do you agree with this view?

        The play “Romeo and Juliet” begins with a prolonged outlining of the plot and ending of the play very blatantly.  This is very unusual way to start a play by modern standards but in Shakespeare’s era starting a play in this way was not uncommon and was used very effectively.  The prologue outlines the whole play in fourteen short lines.  Informing the readers of the feud between the families and the situations of Romeo and Juliet and their fate.  In the opening passage Romeo and Juliet are described as “star-crossed lovers”, this means they are doomed to failure or ill fated.  The nature of the conflict is also reviewed in this chorus using simple descriptive terms; “ancient grudge” simply reveals the timescale of the problems between the families; “fatal loins” shows in a very graphic way how the feud is revolved around parents and which family people are born into, nothing else is considered.

        This chorus summarises the whole play in five lines, although it is very hard to write a successful play when the outcome is told at the beginning Shakespeare manages to keep the audience interested throughout even though they are informed of how the play ends before it even starts.  This approach towards the start of a play showed to audiences that they were going to witness a tragedy, society in the time of Shakespeare loved destruction and unhappy endings.  Notice the last word of this quotation, Shakespeare shows discreetly how strong the bond is between the two lovers; he says they are one life.

        “Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”

        This line shows obviously and simply that both families are from the same town but it is also implied in using the same word to describe the families that they are equals.

        Throughout the play, which takes place over only a few days, the two lovers meet, fall in love, marry in secret and die so that they can be with each other.  The two die to be together because they belong to feuding families who would never let them see each other.  There are many Things against the pair that make them doomed; all they have is their love of each other, and two people who understand their love and want to see them happy. The only people who see beyond the conflict and see the two as individuals instead of members of two different families.

Join now!

        One of the major factors going against them is the long-lived feud between there two families.

        “Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford

        no better term than this - thou art a villain.”

        This quotation is an example of the conflict between the families, Tybalt makes this statement to Romeo simply because Romeo and some of the other Montague’s attended a Capulet party.  The families’ hatred of each other has been passed down for so long that no one knows how the feud started, all that is known is that it exists and is very evident in the Verona ...

This is a preview of the whole essay