Fate On Juliet In William Shakespeare

’s Romeo And Juliet Essay, Research Paper

William Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, is one of the greatest love stories of all time. The play was written around 1595, but the story has proven to be timeless. The play is a story of forbidden love that is resolved in two tragic deaths. Romeo and Juliet come from feuding families, but they defy the feud and fall in love. Many events take place during the five short days that they share their love. All of the events surround characters from both the Montague and Capulet families. For example, during the play, a fight, which ends in Romeo’s banishment, takes place because of Tybalt’s hot temper, Romeo’s extreme passion, and Mercutio’s quick wits. The forces of love and hate are also very evident throughout the play. In the end, Romeo and Juliet’s love finds a tragic way to overcome the hate between their families. In Romeo and Juliet, the story revolves around Juliet while she grows up and falls in love, only to have fate keep her from complete happiness.

Juliet is the strong-willed young daughter of Capulet, a rich man in Verona. Shakespeare made her character a mere thirteen years old, but she acts mature beyond her years. She is practical, honest, and loyal to herself and her family. She is also very passionate about her love, but she has control of her passion. The play is about how she discovers love, loses love, and grows up over a very short period before her ill-fated death. Romeo and Juliet is very much the story of a girl becoming a woman. She acts as the protagonist of the play because she is the main character that the audience watches while she matures and people want her to be content.

G. K. Carey, M. A., author of "Cliffs Notes of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet," states, "…the play, for all purposes is hers [Juliet's]- a thirteen year-old girl, discovering love, being loved, then abruptly being, according to her nurse, as good as widowed…" He makes a very good point about the main events in the play that revolve around Juliet. The first main thing that she is involved in is just the fact that she belongs to one of the feuding families. Another scene involves Paris asking to marry Juliet. Through this scene, Shakespeare shows the importance of Juliet to the story, and he also confirms her beauty, since Paris falls in love with her on sight alone. He also shows that she is an obedient child. When her mother asks her how she feels about marriage, she replies, "I’ll look to like, if looking like move; but no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly." That statement lets the reader know that she is not interested in love yet, but she will do as her parents want her to do. This obedience starts to diminish as she falls in love and gives her loyalty to Romeo.

The next main event in the play is the ball, where Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love. When Juliet learns that she has fallen in love with her enemy, she shows great remorse and her loyalty begins to go to Romeo because she thinks the feud is absurd, "…Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed enemy." Through this scene and the balcony scene, the reader learns that Juliet is the sensible, controlled half of the couple, while Romeo is the impulsive one. She shows her practicality in the balcony scene when Romeo asks what he should swear his love by. She rationally replies, "Do not swear at all; or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry, and I’ll believe thee." She is passionate about her love, but remembers her adult duties and gives Romeo an ultimatum to marry her if his love is true. She definitely takes charge of the relationship to be sure that she is not just another one of Romeo’s crushes.

After their wedding, when Juliet learns that Romeo has killed her cousin, Tybalt, she is certainly more loyal to her husband than to her family. After she realizes where her loyalty should be, she says, "Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband." Without her loyalty and love, she would not have stuck by Romeo. If she had taken her Nurse’s advice and considered Romeo dead when he was banished, there would be no love story. The entire story is based on her decisions and how they affect the rest of the details in the story. Her decision to be faithful to Romeo is the most important one. It is the decision that the falling action of the play is based on.

While Romeo is in Mantua, Capulet decides that Juliet and Paris will be married immediately. Her obedience is completely gone when she defies her father and tells him she will not marry Paris. They end up in an argument over the very important issue until Juliet concludes that she will have to kill herself before marrying Paris. She tells her mother this in hope that she will delay the marriage, "Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed in that dim monument where Tybalt lies." During this portion of the play, we begin to see the extreme dilemma that she is in. According to "Barron’s Book Notes on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet," by various authors, "Because she [Juliet] is so young, we feel intense sympathy for her." We would feel sympathy for any character in this type of predicament. Shakespeare makes Juliet his protagonist so the audience will feel sorry for her and want her to be happy.