Romeo & Juliet 'I am fortune's fool' - to what extent is Romeo a victim of fate?

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                                                                                                              Sam Jones TW

                                                        Romeo and Juliet

                   ‘I am fortune’s fool’ - to what extent is Romeo a victim of fate?

The notion of fate plays an important role throughout Shakespeare’s play, “Romeo and Juliet”. The two lovers encounter an enormous amount of bad luck. It is made clear to the audience right at the start, in the prologue, when Romeo and Juliet are described as star-crossed lovers, that their lives are controlled by fate and that they are destined to suffer tragic consequences.  Shakespeare makes many more references throughout the play to the fact that fate is tampering with Romeo and Juliet.  However their fate could have been their own doing, for example their untimely deaths could have been due to Romeo’s character or simply have been bad luck. In this essay I aim to answer the question, to what extent is Romeo a victim of fate?

‘Romeo and Juliet’ was written in Elizabethan times.  Science and discovery were taking great leaps forward (for instance the first ships were leaving England for America the ‘new world’). Things were also going on in the world for which we have an explanation now but they didn’t then. Questions such as “how did the universe begin?” were left to be answered by religion which was dominant at that time. It was an age when many people still looked at the world through fearful and superstitious eyes. In Shakespeare’s day the infant mortality rate was high, the ‘black death’ was abounding in Europe, and people’s lives were short and often brutal. Most people were very religious with a strong belief in heaven and hell – and also the supernatural – and they had little scientific intelligence of their own.  As they felt they had little control over their own destiny, they placed themselves in the hands of fate and fortune. As an illustration of their lack of control over their own lives, the insecurities of their life and future, and all of the mysteries of the universe, they sought out fortune tellers, looked for ‘signs’, followed astrology and heeded stories about the supernatural to help them make sense of their lives and the world they lived in. That was the reason why Shakespeare’s supernatural plays such as Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream were highly popular.

Romeo and Juliet endure a catalogue of misfortune from the outset of the play, starting with their fateful meeting at the Capulet ball, to the conclusion, where they both die in love with each other. They were born into two rival families which were ‘both alike in dignity’ in Verona, Italy. The start of the play focuses on the hatred between the Capulets and the Montagues; the prologue describes their deep and ancient hatred of each other. A quarrel soon breaks out between the servants of the Capulets and the Montagues. Shortly afterwards a fight ensues and the hatred between each other is so strong that the Prince of Verona himself has to step in to stop the fighting. This illustrates the extent of hatred between the two families and would show the danger Romeo and Juliet are when they fall in love with each other.

Meanwhile Romeo, who is portrayed as the ‘courtly lover’, is pining after the current love of his life Rosaline. To cheer him up his friends Benvolio and Mercutio persuade him to come with them to enter the Capulet party uninvited. At the ball Romeo and Juliet first set eyes on each other, and later in the night they exchange vows and decide to get married. The next day Romeo seeks out his spiritual adviser the friar, and he agrees to marry them. With the help of Juliet’s Nurse and the Friar they marry each-other, meanwhile Juliet’s cousin Tybalt is really angry that Romeo and his friends intruded the ball so he requests a duel and starts looking for him. This is the start of the problem the couple would encounter when they finally get together.

When Tybalt is looking for Romeo he meets Mercutio on the way.  They both exchange insults. However Tybalt is more interested in quarrelling with Romeo, when he arrives Tybalt taunts him and tries to provoke him to fight. However, as the audience now knows, Romeo has just married Juliet. Juliet is Tybalt’s cousin and Romeo would not pick a fight with someone who is now his family so he walks away from the fight. Mercutio, unaware of the couple’s marriage, thinks that Romeo is submitting and, as he cannot bear seeing Romeo being treated in this way, he fights Tybalt. Romeo interrupts the fight and then Tybalt kills Mercutio. This starts a chain of catastrophic events which causes problems for Romeo and Juliet when they try to get together. Mercutio’s death at Tybalt’s hands incites Romeo to kill Tybalt. Romeo flees to Friar Laurence’s cell and the Prince of Verona banishes Romeo.  Now Romeo cannot see Juliet – another problem for the couple.  The Friar counsels Romeo when he tells him that he is banished and instructs him to go and consummate his marriage to Juliet. After their night together Romeo goes to Mantua.

Meanwhile Lord Capulet arranges the wedding between Juliet and Paris the following Thursday, thinking that Juliet needs to get over her grief which he thinks is there because Tybalt is dead but actually is because Romeo is banished. This puts pressure on Juliet to find a way out and she refuses to marry Paris, Capulet turns angry and he tells her that if she does not change her mind and go ahead with the marriage, she will be cut off from her inheritance and from his (Lord Capulet’s) love.  Juliet confides in the Friar her despair at having to marry Paris and she asks him for a means to prevent the forthcoming marriage. He gives her a vial of potion he has concocted to take while in bed that evening, which will make her appear dead for 42 hours. He plans to send for Romeo to meet Juliet at the Capulet tomb.  The Friar’s messenger is delayed and does not reach Romeo. Romeo’s servant Balthazar views Juliet’s funeral and tells Romeo that Juliet is dead. Romeo subsequently buys a vial of poison from the apothecary and travels to Verona to Juliet’s tomb, planning to kill himself; Romeo in despair at Juliet’s ‘dead’ body kills himself because he thinks that, with Juliet dead, he has nothing to live for.  Soon afterwards Juliet wakes up and when she sees Romeo’s dead body she commits suicide.  The two feuding families, when they discover the consequences of their enmity, agree to put their differences aside and live in peace. The couple finally are together, but in death.

 

Romeo’s character is interesting; he has many positive qualities such as his popularity and his positive outlook on life, but also many negative ones, which can be seen in his actions and his and the other characters’ words. At the start of the play, after the brawl, Benvolio and Lord and Lady Montague talk about Romeo and suddenly the atmosphere changes. Benvolio talks about sunlight, secrets and silence and Lord Montague talks about Romeo’s sadness but uses imagery about the weather and the earth to imply it. He says Romeo has tears ‘augmenting the fresh morning’s dew’ and that his sighs were ‘adding to clouds more clouds’. This imagery proves what Romeo means to his family and friends to the audience. When Romeo was mentioned it changed the worried atmosphere of conflict and it was about Romeo and their concerns about him and comparing him to the world. These images and ideas accompany Romeo throughout the play and shows how well liked and loved he is within the family. However it also highlights the fact that he acts as the courtly lover because of his melancholy state. Another source which shows his popularity and how well-liked he is comes from Lord Capulet himself when he says ‘Verona brags of him’ and he admits that Romeo is ‘a virtuous and well governed youth’.  Even his family’s bitter enemy confirms his popularity in Verona.  It shows that he is lively as well as popular – and usually happy too. For instance, Romeo is very happy after he has arranged his marriage to Juliet with the Friar, and even starts making jokes with Mercutio. Compared to Romeo’s melancholy state in the first act Romeo seems happier and, according to Mercutio, more himself. Mercutio confirms that Romeo is usually popular, happy and sociable when he said ‘now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo’.

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However Romeo is also immature and impulsive.  At the start of the play when he meets Benvolio he imagines he is in love with the chaste Rosaline and his talk is bookish and full of artificial expressions of emotion.  He really seems to be wallowing in self pity. Romeo’s language is artificial, intellectual and rather forced. He uses so many ornate and different descriptions for his feelings because he is not really in love at all - he is in love with the idea of being in love. He uses many rhyming couplets such as ‘still’ and ‘will’ ‘breast’ ...

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