Poisons In Romeo And Juliet

William Shakespeare wrote his play, Romeo and Juliet, to identify conflicts in the good and evils will we find in ourselves. Romeo and Juliet undergo challenges that test their undying love. These challenges take the form of poisons figuratively and literally. This constant battering of opposing forces causes the characters to be justifiably weary. As in a “The Boy who Cried Wolf” scenario, the characters of Romeo and Juliet have a reason to be feeling wary. At one scene in the play, Juliet’s mind is sickened by fear that she has the notion to believe that even the Friar, a devout Christian, would have the motive to poison her. “What if it be a poison/ which the Friar hath subtly minister’d to have me dead”(IV,iii, 24-25). Poisons and medicines

Juliet refers to her and Romeo’s relationship as a bud, waiting to flower in the spring. “ This bud of love, by summers ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.”(II,ii, 121-122). As with real flowers, many of these buds do not survive throughout the cold and harsh winter, awaiting spring. The same occurred with the star-crossed lovers’ relationship. Through hardship between the two families, death struck the children. A relationship such as that in the play is only bound for failure. The power of love found is only strong enough for the two youths, but not for their respective houses. The only power that is strong enough to end this is death. Unfortunately, death can not come with joy. Flowers that die under pestilence or malnourishment are gone without a trace. That is the only difference between them and the lovers. In the last scene of the play, the Lords of both families promise to dedicate each others child with a gold statue. “In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will/; and where the worser is predominant/, full soon the canker death eats up that plant”(II,iii,32-34). Friar Lawrence concludes his speech with these lines. Shakespeare used a method of foreshadowing to loom the finale of the play. The Friar relates the herbs and plants in nature to man. He states that grace and rude will of man both exist, with the rude will being the stronger of the two. These are intertwined in the analogy of medicine and