Romeo And Juliet "Consider the role of Fate, Fortune and The Stars in the play."

Essay by malone2003A+, December 2002

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The play "Romeo And Juliet" is doubtless one of the most easily recognisable and well known pieces in all the Shakespearean works, if not the whole of English literature. Shakespeare's play is based on a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke in 1562 named 'The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet'. It has become the ultimate love story and adaptations of the play exist all over the world in many different formats. "Romeo and Juliet" is a tale of two young "star-cross'd lovers" (Prologue, L.6) who, amidst the turmoil of their feuding families, manage to sustain a relationship of true love which, ultimately, is destined for destruction. Romeo is the only son of Montague and Juliet the only daughter of Capulet; the play takes place in the Italian City of Verona.

When considering the destruction of Romeo and Juliet the most significant factors a person can think about are Fate, Fortune and The Stars.

These factors are integrated into one another and can broadly be classified under fate. Fate above all ruined Romeo and Juliet. Many instances in the play reveal that the love of Romeo and Juliet would end in death and even from the very beginning it is evident that they were destined by the stars for bad fortune. In the opening of the play the chorus is describing Romeo and Juliet, and predicts their life together as having a star-crossed conclusion, that their lives are governed by fate, a force often linked to the movements of the stars. By already knowing from the beginning that their life has an ill-fated finale, we can see how their choices brought them to their death. Shakespeare also uses two types of fate; fate and Fate. The latter being personified, a characteristic which he also attributes to Death,