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Cite. Romeo and Juliet teaches audiences that sometimes people construct their identities based on what the world tells them they should be—and sometimes it is necessary to break free from those ...
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Romeo and Juliet takes place in Italy during the High Middle Ages, during which time the nation was made up of several warring city-states in which a handful of noble families enjoyed luxury and refinement while the peasant class—the majority of the population—struggled and suffered in obscurity. In light of this historical context, many contemporary scholars look at Romeo and Juliet’s ...
Upon learning each other's identity, Romeo reacts with dismay, using a financial metaphor to express that his life is now indebted to his enemy. Juliet expresses her shock and sorrow through a ...
In Romeo and Juliet personal identity is inflected by distinctions of gender, class, age, and ethnicity. The play also shows how personal identity may be conflicted; put under pressure from opposing demands and desires. When Romeo, for instance, fails to respond to Tybalt's taunts in 3.1, Romeo's new and as yet private identity as a husband and ...
- The Forcefulness of Love
- Love as A Cause of Violence
- The Individual Versus Society
- The Inevitability of Fate
- Love
- Sex
- Violence
- Youth
- Fate
Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. Love is naturally the play’s dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet,love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supers...
The themes of death and violence permeate Romeo and Juliet, and they are always connected to passion, whether that passion is love or hate. The connection between hate, violence, and death seems obvious. But the connection between love and violence requires further investigation. Love, in Romeo and Juliet,is a grand passion, and as such, it is blin...
Much of Romeo and Julietinvolves the lovers’ struggles against public and social institutions that either explicitly or implicitly oppose the existence of their love. Such structures range from the concrete to the abstract: families and the placement of familial power in the father; law and the desire for public order; religion; and the social impo...
In its first address to the audience, the Chorus states that Romeo and Juliet are “star-crossed”—that is to say that fate (a power often vested in the movements of the stars) controls them (Prologue.6). This sense of fate permeates the play, and not just for the audience. The characters also are quite aware of it: Romeo and Juliet constantly see om...
Given that Romeo and Julietrepresents one of the world’s most famous and enduring love stories, it seems obvious that the play should spotlight the theme of love. However, the play tends to focus more on the barriers that obstruct love than it does on love itself. Obviously, the Capulet and Montague families represent the lovers’ largest obstacle. ...
The themes of love and sex are closely linked in Romeo and Juliet, though the precise nature of their relationship remains in dispute throughout. For instance, in Act I Romeo talks about his frustrated love for Rosaline in poetic terms, as if love were primarily an abstraction. Yet he also implies that things didn’t work out with Rosaline because s...
Due to the ongoing feud between the Capulets and the Montagues, violence permeates the world of Romeoand Juliet.Shakespeare demonstrates how intrinsic violence is to the play’s environment in the first scene. Sampson and Gregory open the play by making jokes about perpetrating violent acts against members of the Montague family. And when Lord Monta...
Romeo and Juliet are both very young, and Shakespeare uses the two lovers to spotlight the theme of youth in several ways. Romeo, for instance, is closely linked to the young men with whom he roves the streets of Verona. These young men are short-tempered and quick to violence, and their rivalries with opposing groups of young men indicate a phenom...
The theme of ill-fated love frames the story of Romeo and Juliet from the beginning. During the Prologue, before the play officially commences, the Chorus makes several allusions to fate, including the famous reference to Romeo and Juliet as a “pair of star-crossed lovers.” Shakespeare coined the term “star-crossed,” which means “not favored by the...
Oct 31, 2024 · Juliet’s fear: Juliet delivers a soliloquy just before taking the sleeping potion. Hеr language becomes increasingly emotional and fragmented as she considers the horrific possibilities of the potion killing her or waking up in the tomb and going mad.
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Romeo’s remark “O, I am fortune’s fool!” illustrates the fact that Romeo sees himself as subject to the whims of fate. When he cries out “Then I defy you, stars,” after learning of Juliet’s death, he declares himself openly opposed to the destiny that so grieves him. Sadly, in “defying” fate he actually brings it about.
