Fate In The Tragedy Of Romeo And Juliet

Throughout the Shakespeare's play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare portrays a hidden factor that affects the character’s action in the play. Fate, a potent and supernatural element that determines events beyond people’s control, plays an enormous part in producing the end result of the play. During the Elizabethan era, many people, like Shakespeare, believed in the idea of Fate and how it plays a major controlling factor in people’s life. For this reason, Shakespeare coordinates Fate as a theme in his play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Fate plays an important aspect in the play because of the references to celestial imageries by Romeo, Juliet’s dream, and Friar Lawrence’s action and discourse, which eventually leads to Romeo’s

Shakespeare introduces this concept in the prologue when he introduces Romeo and Juliet as “a pair of star-crossed lovers (that) take their life,” which addresses that the two companions end their life because of Fate (I.Prologue.6). For this reason, Shakespeare institutes star as a symbol for Fate. When Romeo tells Benvolio “for my mind misgives some consequences yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date,” he believes that attending the Capulet’s party sets forth some kind of catastrophic event, which he thinks brings forth his demise (I.iv.106-108). Shakespeare excessively represents Romeo’s and Juliet’s inevitable Fate in this quote due to the fact that he foreshadows the consequence of their Fate. Romeo also hints at the stars when he discovers about Juliet’s death, and he thinks he must kill himself because he believes by defying the stars, he’s going to be reunited with Juliet. As a result, Romeo’s and Juliet’s Fate casts out to be

This motif foreshadows futuristic events, which immensely clarifies how Fate defines character’s actions in the play. Shakespeare subsumes this motif when Juliet tells Romeo that she sees him “ as one dead in the bottom of a tomb,” which notably foreshadows the last scene where Romeo died in the capulet’s tomb, but also ensures that the omen Shakespeare entails in the play shows how Fate controls the characters without their free will (III.v.56). When Shakespeare embodies Fate as a controlling factor, he manipulates this factor to fit into the story of the play. For example, Romeo and Juliet did not meet each other because of concurrence but due to the idea of Fate itself. When the illiterate servant, Peter, finds Romeo, the actions that lead to this moment defines Fate. In essence, Fate’s action towards the character may seem coincidental, but merely just one of the many manipulations of Shakespeare’s deliberate