Romeo and Juliet is a play written by William Shakespeare about two teenage lovers from two families that hold a deep hatred for eachother. With the help of a local friar, the two are sent through a complex plan to get married and run off together. While the original plan seems to be simple, as it unwinds, it shows it’s many flaws. The two end up both committing suicide because of the miscommunication from everyone involved. All of the characters in the play have a number of motivations and reasons they act as they do.
“Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own. ”- H. Jackson Brown Jr. This quote is reflecting the main point of Romeo and Juliet. In this tragic story both Romeo and Juliet put themselves before each other and act upon what will not only benefit them but will benefit the significant other even more.
Theme: Love may hurt (you)/ Love is a game, if you aren’t careful you’ll get hurt./you have to learn to play before you get hurt. Romeo and Juliet fall in love, initially Romeo was hurt and that’s why he met Juliet. Upon meeting her, they instantly fall in love. Knowing it could never work between them due to their family feud, they still fought for their love. As hard as they tried in the end they both died.
Romeo and Juliet have fate against each other. Its said hat their love is “death marked.” Romeo and Juliet can’t control what going to happen as they go alone with this. For starters they’re in different groups, so they don’t know how their groups is going to react. It is their misfortune that leads to a terrible at the end.
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet can be seen as a simple story of star-crossed lovers, but it is clear that every act, scene, line, and word has an intricate meaning. The entire story is laid out for us in the first scene. So, the meaning of the play is not in the plot, but in the words and poetry being utilized. William Shakespeare, writer of Romeo and Juliet, utilized the implications of words being expressed as feelings, in this case violence and pain, the theme of religion and life, and the use of hyperboles to bring the play to life. William Shakespeare used words to convey varying emotions, actions, and themes along with other qualities to make his stories congenial.
The prologue tells the audience that the play will make murders of all the characters. The influential role that fate and fortune played in mediaeval Europe helped build the base of the Romeo and Julet which as Friar Lawrence says is, ‘These violent delights (will) have violent ends’. While fighting to keep their love—and themselves—alive, Romeo and Juliet fought so violently against their fate that they were willing to do reckless things such as betraying their families. Furthermore this violence follows Romeo and Juliet into their relationship as Romeo mirrors the story of the Petrarchan Lover as he sees Juliet as just an innocent pure object for him to love so much that he would sacrifice everything for the idea of. Not only were the irresponsible childish actions that they both committed violent but also the inevitable consequences that followed those acts.
Pardon & punished are reoccurring themes within Romeo and Juliet. It is also an obvious recurring theme within Shakespeare’s work. At the end of the play the prince says “Pardon means to be forgiven for an act or mistake that you have done or the act of forgiving someone for something they have done. Punished is when you inflict a penalty or sanction against someone who has wronged. The idea of “punishment & Pardoning” are relevant to the play because they represent the good and bad within the play.
Through the use of foreshadowing, Shakespeare enhances Romeo and Juliet by creating a deeper interest among the audience. In the prologue of act 1, Shakespeare references Romeo and Juliet by the line, “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,” (I, Prologue, 9). In this line, the lovers are said to be fated to commit suicide. By revealing the ending of the plot prematurely, Shakespeare creates dramatic irony and entices the audience to view until the end to gain the details leading to their deaths. Later, midway through the play as Mercutio is slain, he repeats a line multiple times, “A plague o’ both your houses!”
Georgia Heseman Mrs. Drozkowski Advanced English I 29 April 2024 Act I Romeo and Juliet Reading Log quotations pg 1 - 1234567 Benvolio: “I will make thee think thy swan a crow” (I. ii. 94). The syllable of the syllable. Romeo: “So shows a snowy dove trooping with doves.” (I. v. 55). In scene one, Benvolio talks to Lord and Lady Montague about why Romeo has been so depressed lately.
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare tells the story of 2 star-crossed lovers fighting against fate. On this journey, they face deception, disloyalty, and loss. Ultimately their story ends in tragedy, but they got to experience love in its true form. Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet in order to illustrate that both deliberate and unintentional deceit lead to extreme loss and the destruction of relationships. Shakespeare emphasizes how Juliet believed Romeo knew about her plan to fake her death in order to showcase that even unintentional deceit can cause death and devastation.
Through the predominant influences of certain characters, inconsistency of decision making, and secretiveness amongst the characters, these events quickly lead to the grievous incident of the play. All the way from past hatred and persuasive friends, to emotionally driven decisions such as Romeo’s desire to be married and his vengeance, the play concluded with potions that provoked counter outcomes. Romeo and Juliet displayed the risks they were willing to take in the name of love, but in the end, poor choices took responsibility for the continuous occurrences that lead to dreadful ends; however, opposed to the idea of fate, or a stronger force guiding the character’s actions. With this, the play closed with the poisonous idea of the love that Romeo and Juliet shared, including all that they would sacrifice to have a chance at a life
Shakespeare has many instances of dramatic irony in Romeo and Juliet. He uses it for different purposes, one purpose is to show how, despite the Friar trying to help the situation he worsened it unintentionally. A second purpose is to show how secret Romeo and Juliet were. One example of dramatic irony is the Friar gives Juliet a potion and creates a plan to help Juliet be with Romeo again.
Stop. Think. Rethink Using this simple approach can ultimately save a life. Moving too quickly without thought is a very dangerous game. In almost every scenario and situation, going too quickly through life results negatively because it causes one to act recklessly, make wrong decisions, and end up in situations they never anticipated.
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare has toyed with the emotions of its audience members for centuries. The play’s main characters, Romeo and Juliet, love one another in spite of the feud between their families and later on, in the wallows of grief, each take their own life. While the characters both meet their end tragically, it was their choices that realistically led them down that path. The cause of the two “star-crossed lovers” final end is not due to fate or destiny, but by their own foolish hands.
In reference to the bold statements of the younglings throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet, it could be said that they were willing to ‘risk it all’, despite the circumstances they were under. These two lovers, being described as “star-crossed”, propelled the storyline in a way that was facile for conflicts to form, all of which were a result of their forbidden love (Prologue 5). Over the short course of time during the period in which their story had taken place, Shakespeare asserted the impression that all these conflicts were caused by a cruel overwhelming fate, sheer accident, and by their own willfulness. All these facets of the plot coalesced and attributed to the bringing about of Romeo and Juliet’s untimely and unfortunate death.
