Romeo & Juliet

by Shakespeare

Here's a short essay on how the role of fate intervened in Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet: Fate

by Katy Z.

In Shakespeare’s play of Romeo and Juliet, the families of the two “star-crossed lovers” were punished for their long-standing feud and erupted violence against one another. Romeo and Juliet’s love was cursed to be deadly from the beginning, “The fearful passage of their death-marked love” (Shakespeare 2). From their coincidental meeting at the Capulet’s masquerade party to their suicides that took place only mere seconds apart, Romeo and Juliet were used as Fate’s pawns in order to punish their families. The two lovers were forbidden to be together, but were finally united at death. Fate altered the love life of Romeo and Juliet to punish their two families for their hatred.

Romeo and Juliet coincidentally happened to meet each other at the Capulet’s masquerade party. By fate’s chance, Romeo was held up by the very Capulet servant who had the guest list for the masquerade party. After receiving news of Rosaline, his former crush, attending the party, he decided to go too. Romeo foreshadows the coming of his death right before he enters the ballroom, “my mind misgives some consequences yet hanging in the stars” (Shakespeare 56). It is there at the party that Romeo catches his first glimpse of the fair Juliet and his love for Rosaline was all together forgotten. Fate had it arranged so that Romeo would fall in love with Juliet at the very party that he came to see Rosaline at.

After Juliet and Romeo fell in love and were bound in marriage, Capulet demanded that his daughter, Juliet, be married off to the bachelor, Paris. The faking of Juliet’s death was the original plan for her escape of her dilemma of Paris. However, word that Juliet’s death was a hoax was unable to reach Romeo in time and he was devastated when he received news of her death. Fate, again, doomed the two “star-crossed lovers”. The very man that was able to send Romeo news of the fictional death was held in captivity when the city he was visiting caught a deadly plague, “I could not send it…Nor get a messenger to bring it to thee, so fearful were they of infection” (Shakespeare 257). Romeo believed Juliet to be dead and would later commit suicide.

In the last scene of the play, Romeo and Juliet die in the Capulets’ tomb only moments apart from one another. If the timing was different, they’d both still be alive. Fate aligned Romeo’s suicide right before Juliet awakes from her forty-two hour death-like slumber. She perceives that he is dead and after realizing the approaching footsteps of the Prince, she quickly stabs herself to death. ”Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger, This is thy sheath.” (Shakespeare 274). At the end of the play, the Prince, or the leader of the city of Verona in which the story takes place, exclaims to Capulet and Montague, “heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!”(Shakespeare 284). This line brings together the idea that in order for their families to end their hatred for one another, the love of Romeo and Juliet was arranged by Fate to be doomed.

The love life of Romeo and Juliet was altered by Fate in order to punish their two families for their hatred. They were only allowed to meet in secret throughout their entire short marriage, but finally, at last, they were united at death. They fell in love coincidently at a masquerade party and died in each other’s arms. Their love was doomed from the start and many lives perished along with theirs. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet were the only things that ended the unwavering hatred between the Montagues and the Capulets. And as Shakespeare portrayed in his play, the only way to end hate is through love.