The Great Chain In Romeo And Juliet

By looking at the political implications of the Great Chain of Being, readers can clearly see how a young woman standing up to her father, and thus breaking the chain, will lead to a tragic fate involving death. Throughout William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, elements of the Great Chain of Being (also referred to as the chain), are both strictly followed and recklessly broken by many of the characters. One of the most evident examples of breaking the chain is when Juliet hears about her engagement to Paris, but she is already wed to Romeo. She cannot believe the engagement and cries out to her mother, “I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam, / I will not marry yet. And when I do, I swear, / It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, / Rather than Paris”
Because Capulet married off Juliet without her consent, she runs to Friar Lawrence for a way out. He, in turn, gives Juliet a sleeping potion which misguided Romeo, in his grief, mistakes for his love being dead. One thing leads to another and they both die tragically due to their own misunderstandings and Juliet’s disobedience. This truly tragic fate is a result of the aforementioned father-daughter conflict, and the break in the Great Chain of Being. By applying this literary lens to this specific plot point in the tragedy, readers can realize how something as simple as a disagreement between parents and their children can turn into something more powerful that only fate can control. A series of events lead to the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, but this specific break in the chain is the most significant for readers to notice because of it’s surface level simplicity, but it’s deeper meaning and the result of this break in the chain. Once the chain is broken, chaos is set off and fate takes over to finish the