Decisions Revealed In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Rebecca Brand once said, “Never be tempted to make a permanent decision based on a temporary circumstance.” This quote has much correlation with one of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays, Romeo and Juliet. In this play, Romeo and Juliet are members of two opposing families that end up falling madly in love with each other. Since they are forbidden to be together, they hide their relationship, which leads them to make rash and spontaneous decisions that conclusively end in their death. Both Romeo and Juliet’s impulsive decision to get married, Juliet’s commitment to fake her death, and both of their ultimate resolutions to end their lives establish a conclusion that love can be so powerful that it sometimes robs a person of reason.
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Feuding is prohibited by Prince Escalus due to the excessive amount of fights that are taking place. Therefore, Romeo is banished from Verona as a punishment and is sent to a neighboring city called Mantua. Juliet’s nurse communicates the news wrong, and Juliet believes that Romeo died. This sends her into a spiraling depression over her one true love until finding out he was just banished and not killed. However, her parents thought that she was distraught because of the death of Tybalt, her cousin. In an attempt to help her grieve less, they schedule her to marry Paris, a kinsman, the following Thursday. Juliet, not wanting to succumb to her parent’s requests, decides to ask the friar to help her with her issue or else she will take her own life: “I’ll to the friar to know his remedy. / If all else fail, myself have power to die” (3.5. 241-242). The next morning, Juliet arrives at Friar Lawrence’s cell in hopes he will help her. To her shock, Paris is also there, asking the friar to marry him to Juliet. Once Paris leaves, Juliet asks Friar Lawrence to help her prevent the wedding or else she will kill herself. Not wanting this, he offers her a potion that temporarily fakes her death long enough for her to be able to escape to Mantua and live the rest of her life with Romeo. He tells her to go home and tell her father that she will marry Paris, and to take the potion the

However, upon arriving at her tomb he comes across Paris. He is there to pay his respects and lay flowers at her tomb. When he sees Romeo, he assumes he is there to disrespect her grave since he is also the one who killed Tybalt, which leads them to fight. Romeo kills Paris, and fulfills his last request of being laid with Juliet. On his way into the tomb, Romeo admires Juliet, and says it is as though the beauty never left her body. He does not inspect further on this suspicion and lays next to her and drinks the potion, killing him: “Here’s to my love! O true apothecary! / Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die” (5.3. 119-120). Soon after Romeo drinks the poison, Juliet awakes and sees him lying with a cup of poison enclosed in his hand. She tries kissing him in hopes of getting remnants of the poison in her mouth so it would kill her too. After this attempt does not work, she grabs Romeo’s dagger and stabs herself before anyone can come in persuading her not to: “Yea noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger, / This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die” (5.3. 169-170). Following both of the young lovers’ deaths, both families decide that their feuding should come to an end. Prince Escalus declares that this is the result of their decisions, and now they have to live with the consequences of their