In William Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet He uses fate in Many Different Ways, He uses fate in the prologue, In metaphors and in the characters. In the Prologue Shakespeare gets a speaker to shout out the Prologue using Iambic Pentameter, and in the prologue it says there a pair of “star crossed lovers”, that pretty much means that God put them in love to die. It also says “Death Marked Love” This is for certain death written all over it. The prologue is the plot and people thought that it is ruining the play, However most of the Audience were looking how he would tell the play. In the times when Shakespeare was king of English everybody in England and in Europe believed in God so many people believed in fate. Shakespeare was smart enough to use fate in romeo and Juliet Because people would believe it more then and people now would dismiss it easier. But what does fate mean to me and you. Fate to me means that it was destined and it will always happen. In the dictionary:
1. Fate is something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; lot: It is always his fate to be left behind.
2.the universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably prescribed; the decreed cause of events; time: Fate decreed that they would never meet again.
3. that which is inevitably predetermined; destiny: Death is our ineluctable fate.
4. a prophetic declaration of what must be: The oracle pronounced their fate.
5. death, destruction, or ruin.
Number 5 was most likely influenced by Romeo and Juliet.
The Next use fate is when there is a man that cant read a invitation to the Capulet’s Party and then romeo gets the invitation. Him, mercutio and Benvolio and the others want to go there and ruin the party, But instead Romeo finds Juliet and they fall in love. This is fate because it is extremely lucky to get a invitation and luckily find a man who can’t read and then getting one, it was either A Big Amount Of Luck Or it was always meant to be.
The Next use of fate in Romeo and Juliet was when Friar Lawrence was marrying Romeo and Juliet, this is the extract from the play. “These Violent Delights have Violent Ends, And in triumph die like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey is Loathsome in his own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately, long love doth so; To swift arrives as tardy as too slow” All of this paragraph is a warning from Friar Lawrence that it could be to soon. At the beginning it says “These violent Delights have Violent Ends” This means that it is all cute and cuddly but when people find out at least one of them would be dead, this is a metaphor as well as a use of fate. Another use of metaphor is when Friar Lawrence says that The sweetest honey is Loathsome in his own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite. This metaphor means his metaphor means that at the beginning Romeo and Juliet love is nice and sweet. But when it gets a bigger relationship they would start to hate each other and not to love each other anymore. Like when you have to much honey and you start to turn ill. So Basically the Friar is warning the young couple that it is to early and could be the wrong thing to do and if goes to long and the families find out it will be endless WAR!
When Romeo Kills Tybalt And romeo has to flee to Mantua, Friar Lawrence gives a Drug to Juliet and she consumes it and she goes into a short comma. The Friars plan was to Send a letter to another Friar in Mantua to give Romeo the letter that contains the friars plan. But when The letter is sent it was stopped on the border and romeo never got the letter. This is fate because, on that day, on that hour, on that minute, they had to stop the letter and to forbid romeo knowing everything about the fake death. When that was happening Juliet’s Family was in shock and in pale because they were putting Juliet’s body into the Capulet’s Graveyard or Tomb. When Romeo found out about the death of his wife, He wanted to see his wife in her grave bed, so he rushed to Verona and on the way he killed Paris (Juliet’s Forced Husband) and then he was by his loved one. Then Romeo Stabbed Himself. Shortly later Juliet woke up to see her Husband dead by her deathbed, so she killed herself to be with him.
Friar Lawrence was always right but the young couple never listened to him. This has to be considered fate due to the couples warnings and how the play was run. Like when the letter to Romeo was blocked.
This was how fate was used in Romeo and Juliet.
I got the dictionary definition from www.dictionary.com
I got my ideas from my book and a web search of How Shakespeare uses fate in Romeo and Juliet.
React!