Were Romeo and Juliet victims of fate, love, society or love?

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Sarah Powell 10D         English Essay        Ms Mortimer

Romeo and Juliet

Were Romeo and Juliet victims of fate, love, society or love?  That question has been the topic of many discussions and arguments over the years and the answer is all four plus the interaction and complications of other characters in the play.

Fate plays the first and maybe most important role in the play, it is the foundation and explanation as to why Romeo and Juliet fell in love.  At the very beginning in the prologue is the first mention of fate, ‘a pair of star crossed lovers,’ (Prologue, line 6) this shows that later on in the play there will be something in the stars that will guides the lovers together.  

Just before the Capulet party it all begins to make sense as Mercutio talks of Queen Mab the fairies midwife who goes through lovers minds at night so they dream of love,

‘O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, …

And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are’

(Act 1, Scene 4 Line 53-76)

Mercutio is teasing Romeo here over his dream of true love and goes through a large over expressed speech to prove that Romeo is just a victim of fate.

In the modern film the director, Baz Luhrmann, has shown Queen Mab as a hallucinogenic drug that takes control of Romeo after he says the words, ‘On, lusty gentlemen’.  The drug takes over Romeo as does fate in the Franco Zeffirelli version and it guides him towards Juliet where when he meets her.

Romeo’s soliloquy is then spoken,

‘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’

(Act 1, Scene 4 Line 106-113)

What Romeo is saying is that from now on his life is given up to the hands of fate,  ‘a despised life closed in my breast,’ he knows he loves something on the inside that on the outside he hates and if it so happens he will die for it.

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Mercutio speaks much of fate as a pun on Romeo as with his last mention he is trying to prove to Romeo that love is just a form of fate and that it should be handled with care

‘Speak to my gossip Venus in one fair word,

One nickname for her purblind son and heir,
Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim,
When King Cophetua loved the beggar-maid!
He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not;
the ape is dead, and I must conjure him.

Conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,
by her high forehead and her ...

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