Cadence Ryan
English
Mrs. McIntosh
27 March 2023
What is Love?
William Shakespeare was a famous poet who lived in the mid-1590s. He wrote many famous plays and sonnets. One of his most famous plays was The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. A big misunderstanding about this play is that it is a love story. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy that follows two lovers, Romeo and Juliet, who kill themselves because of the hate surrounding their family. However, this does not mean love isn’t shown throughout. Love is a device that many authors use. Shakespeare uses love to develop personalities, take risks, and allow characters to make decisions that would otherwise be unthinkable. He shows many different types of love in his plays.
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Unrequited love is when one character feels romantic love towards another that doesn’t feel that same. This love is shown through Romeo and Rosaline. Shakespeare writes, “This love feel I, that feel no love in this” (Shakespeare 1.2.180). When Romeo says this, he is saying that while he loves Rosaline, she doesn’t love him back. Another example of unrequited love is when Shakespeare writes, “She whom I love now doth grace for grace and love for love allow. The other did not so” (2.3.87-89). When Romeo says this, he is talking about how Juliet loves him back while Rosaline didn’t. Shakespeare uses unrequited love to develop Romeo as a petrarchan lover. His love for Rosaline quickly switching to Juliet shows he never truly loved …show more content…
Fated love is when two people are destined to be together. This destiny is often felt by the two people and given as a reason for the characters to make rash decisions for someone they’ve known for little time. An example of this is when the author writes, “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life” (Prologue). When Shakespeare tells the audience that Romeo and Juliet are fated to be together and die because of their love, he is giving an example of fated love. Shakespeare implies that they are fated lovers by having Romeo talk about fate and blaming it for what had happened to Juliet. Juliet also thinks they were fated because of feelings she got when looking at Romeo from her balcony. This is shown when he writes, “I fear, too early, for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars” (1.4.113-118). This shows that fate is the cause of their meeting and death. Shakespeare uses fated love to excuse the sacrifices both Romeo and Juliet made for someone they had just met. Their destined love gives reason to their
Fate never intended to have Romeo and Juliet together, which led to the unfortunate ending that occurred. An example of Fate not wanting the lovers together is when it states, “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life, whose misadventure piteous overthrows doth, with their death, bury their parents' strife” (1. Prolauge.6). This quote describes how fate did not want Romeo and Juliet together. This shows that he wanted them to die if they got together. And because of them falling in love Fate kills them.
To demonstrate, the author of “Essential Secrets of Psychotherapy: Fate, Destiny, and Responsibility” mentions how “fate refers to the existential givens of life, those aspects of existence…over which we can exert little or no control” (Doc E). One’s fate is something that they can’t control, so the negative outcomes from it are inevitable. Fate was never on Romeo and Juliet’s side, which set them up for their devastating deaths at the end. However, even though fate played a part in the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, the impact love had on their brains was responsible for their deaths since it caused them to be possessed and react poorly to fate. As mentioned earlier, Helen Fisher’s TED Talk discusses how love can possess one and cause them to do things they wouldn’t normally do.
Romeo knew he could not have Juliet’s heart because of a “greater power than we can contradict”(DBQ: Project, 2013). The treacherous fate did not stop the strong feelings between Romeo and Juliet, however fate did win the battle of love. Romeo and Juliet’s love were destined to crumble. Everything terrible that happened to them was for a reason, fate caused Romeo to fall in love with his families greatest enemy. Fate also caused Romeo to find Juliet after she had drunk the sleeping potion and his confusion and mortification with her “death”.
Romeo and Juliet's meeting was only the beginning of their woeful tale. Fate is to blame for how madly they fell in love with each other, and it was also fate that quarantined Friar John and prevented the delivery of the letter. The letter that could easily have saved both the teens’ lives. Fate played a big part in the death of Romeo and Juliet, and because of it, their death was
In the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare both main characters Romeo and Juliet die at the end. They were warned several times over the play not to fall in love but didn't listened and that lead to them deciding on their own to kill themselves. Fate is when you can't control your future. Some may say their deaths was fates fault but this is inaccurate because they both chose to kill them selves. They chose their own destiny.
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is a tragic and dramatic play about the awful outcome of love between two immature teens. The families of the two lovers are rivals and have a tension between each other that would oppose the love between Romeo and Juliet. The outcome of Romeo and Juliet ultimately occurred because of the human faults of impulsiveness, irresponsibility, and selfishness. In Romeo and Juliet, the characters are regularly victims of their own impulsiveness.
Fate works in strange, sometimes even unpleasant ways. This concept has appeared in many types of literature, including the classic tale of two young teenagers who fell for one another, but were born from families with a long standing feud. In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, fate continuously thwarts their star-crossed romance before they ever meet in the form of a warning, during their attempt to be together as their plan unfavorably unravels, and as they meet their ends, moments apart from each other. From the beginning, fate warns Romeo and Juliet that tragedy is in their future. Particularly, fate warns Romeo that “Some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date” (1.4.109-110).
Evidence to prove how Fate played a huge role in the lives of Romeo and Juliet is given thoroughly in the Prologue: “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life (Doc A).” With that term star-cross’d means either doom or unluckiness. Another would be when Friar John was supposed to deliver the letter informing Romeo that Juliet is not actually dead, but he was unable to deliver due to a plague and was held quarantined: “I could not send it, ---here it is again,---...
In Shakespear's play The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet two star- crossed lovers take their lives. Romeo and Juliet were two lovers who had to keep their love For each other a secret. Each of them From opposing families that hated each other. On top of Romeo and Juliet having to Keep their love a secret, Paris, a man who loved Juliet, had arrangements to marry her. Even though Romeo and Juliet hid their love for each other from their families, Romeo and Juliet were just lustful, dramatic teenagers because they were too young to know how to love and Romeo was obsessed with Juliet Just after crying over Rosaline for days.
This is a reason because Romeo just got over Rosaline, when he sees Juliet he is somewhat using her as a rebound. “Out of her favor, where I am in love.” (act 1 scene 1 line 163) In this scene, Romeo is going on and on about how he loves Rosaline but she doesn’t love him back. Later on, he sees Juliet at the Capulet party and falls ‘in love’ with her.
When Romeo fell in love with Juliet it indicates that fate had already planned everything beforehand and that they couldn’t have chosen which path they wanted to go for in their lives. The third and final example of fate controlling the destiny of the characters in the story is when Mercutio died because of Romeo getting in the way of their fight. When Mercutio died, he curses the Capulets and the Montagues: “Ask for me tomorrow, / and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, / I warrant, for this world. A plague o' both your houses!”
From the very beginning of the play, Shakespeare, is holding fate to blame for the death of the two lovers. In the line “from forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life” foreshadowing, metaphor and alliteration are used to show how Romeo and Juliet’s love would end in tragedy. Foreshadowing is used to create suspense leading to a later scene in the play where the lover’s suicide. The metaphor “star-crossed lovers” suggest the prophetic alignments of the stars are against them. The lovers are ill-fated from the start.
Love possesses an immense power capable of overcoming all obstacles, yet it could also result in grievous calamities. " Romeo and Juliet," a timeless masterpiece composed by William Shakespeare during the 16th century, remains as one of the most renowned love stories that has mesmerized audiences for generations on end. The tale narrates two youthful lovers from rival households who fall deeply in love but are ultimately led to their tragic demise. Despite numerous contributing factors leading up to Romeo and Juliet's catastrophic conclusion, Friar Lawrence alongside Lady Capulet ignorance played pivotal roles resulting in their downfall.
In one case Romeo talks about his unreturned love for Rosaline, saying, “Out of her favor, where i am in love” (1.1.158). Romeo is hinting at the point that Rosaline has nothing to do with him, yet, he is in love with her. In this case Rosaline will never return Romeo’s love for her, displaying unrequited love. This love is shown once again in another part of the story with Juliet. Juliet’s mother wants her to marry Paris (who also wants to marry juliet)
The theme of Fate vs. Free Will is dominant in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; however the theme of fate is more significant than free will. In the play both Romeo and Juliet meeting was contributed by fate as Shakespeare mentioned in the prologue that Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed lovers that were meant to meet, fall in love and their death would be the reason for the feud to end between the two families. Fate was the reason Capulet’s servant asked Romeo and Benvolio to help him read the invitation for him that contained all the names of the people that were invited to the ball Capulet hosted. “…If you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come and crush a cup of wine.