Romeo & Juliet

Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare, is one of the most famous plays ever created. Shakespeare depicts a tragic tale that toys on people’s emotions, the most significant of these being love and hate. On many occasions both combine, leading to Romeo and Juliet’s untimely demise.

Life in fair Verona used to be peaceful, that is until an unknown disaster exploded between the Montague’s and Capulet’s. Generations later the feud still rages. The two households taking up hostility in the streets like a bunch of thugs, as witnessed in the beginning of the play, Act 1, Scene 1, where Benvolio and Tybalt fight for no apparent reason other than a name; and again in Act 3 Scene 1, A fight in which results in the death of Mercutio and later on in that scene, Tybalt. If not for the all-consuming hatred the two families share, these lives would not have been wasted. In the midst of this hatred, against all odds (as mentioned in the play’s introduction) “a pair of star-cross’d lovers” find love in one another.

Love, in Romeo and Juliet, is extremely powerful; it can overwhelm a person just the same as hate can. The passionate love between Romeo and Juliet is joined from the moment of its origin with death. Tybalt sees that Romeo has crashed the Capulet’s party and becomes determined to kill him just as Romeo sights Juliet and instantly falls for her. From that point on, love seems to push Romeo and Juliet closer to violence, not farther from it. Romeo and Juliet are plagued with thoughts of suicide, and a willingness to experience it; in Act 3, scene 3, Romeo wields a knife in Friar Lawrence’s cell and threatens to kill himself after he has been banished from Verona and therefore, Juliet. Juliet also pulls a knife on herself in Friar Lawrence’s presence just three scenes later.

After Capulet decides that Juliet will marry Paris, Juliet makes it clear that she would rather die than marry a man she does not love, “If all else fail, myself have power to die”. Romeo and Juliet each imagine that the other looks dead the morning after their first, and only, sexual experience (”Methinks I see thee,” Juliet says, “. . . as one dead in the bottom of a tomb”. This continues until its inevitable end, double suicide. This tragic choice is the highest, most effective expression of love that Romeo and Juliet can make. It is only through death that they can keep their love alive, and their love is so bottomless that they are willing to die in its defence. Love leads as much to destruction as to happiness. But in its immense passion, the love that Romeo and Juliet experience also appears so beautiful that few would want to resist its power.

Romeo and Juliet depict many examples of love and hate. The deaths suffered in this play could have been avoided if the feud was resolved. Hate leads to love, love leads to hate; it is that endless cycle that consumed the lives of Romeo and Juliet.