The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet: Who Is to Blame for Their Deaths?
William Shakespeare, a world-renowned playwright, poet, and actor, has been known for centuries all around the world for his great variety of brilliant, poetic, and creative plays written during the Elizabethan Era. Shakespeare’s plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and Western literature, traditionally divided into the genres of tragedy, history, and comedy, and comprising of various imaginative settings, plots, characters, and conflicts. They have been translated into every major living language, in addition to being continually performed all around the world. Many of Shakespeare’s plays give insight on human nature, astonishingly able to characterize every emotion, strength, and weakness possessed by human beings during the Elizabethan Era and even today. The most famous and critically acclaimed of Shakespeare's plays has to be Romeo and Juliet, a romantic tragedy concerning the fate of two young "star-crossed lovers" (Prologue, l. 6). The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet and the deaths of the two characters because of their eternal love for each other. While there could be various reasons for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, it is obvious that both the two households and significantly Old Capulet play the greatest roles in the tragedy due to their ancient family feud and Capulet’s overwhelming authority over his daughter, Juliet.
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a world of violence and generational conflict in which two young lovers fall in love and die because of that love. The story is rather extraordinary in that the normal problems faced by young lovers are here so very large. It is not simply that the families of Romeo and Juliet disapprove of the lovers’ affection for each other; rather, the Montagues and the Capulets are on opposite sides in a blood feud and are trying to kill each other on the streets of Verona. Every
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a world of violence and generational conflict in which two young lovers fall in love and die because of that love. The story is rather extraordinary in that the normal problems faced by young lovers are here so very large. It is not simply that the families of Romeo and Juliet disapprove of the lovers’ affection for each other; rather, the Montagues and the Capulets are on opposite sides in a blood feud and are trying to kill each other on the streets of Verona. Every
Cited: Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.