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Who Is To Blame In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

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Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet Who or what is the most to blame? Tragedy, heart break and grief are emotions everyone can relate to. The feelings of emptiness that comes after losing someone you love is emotionally exhausting. It can leave people in a state of shock, bewilderment and disbelief - and even making people do things they would never consider doing under normal circumstances. No one captures this sense of melancholy as well Shakespeare, and in his play, Romeo and Juliet, it seems that the tragedies taking place there were part of a mixture of bad luck and inconvenience, and each time misfortune struck it would just happen to get worse and worse, leading into a massive snowball effect. Who or what exactly is to blame for these unfortunate …show more content…

Due to Tybalt's brash and aggressive nature, it would only be natural for his character to seek revenge for the embarrassment Romeo indirectly laid upon him. However, what Shakespeare fails to do in this regard is give concrete motivation for why Tybalt hates the Montagues. Without that information, Tybalt stays completely one-dimensional and has no depth whatsoever. The same can be said for Mercutio, albeit to a lesser extent. Though he may have an eccentric and intriguing personality, his background and past remain a mystery - particularly his relations to Romeo, besides being his best friend. Though it is a somewhat dark moment when Mercutio dies, it gives us nothing to really feel the pain that Romeo has, and therefore his actions to kill Tybalt to the viewer is just seen as a crude plot device to stir more drama. The only kind of emotional attachment we feel for both of their deaths are barely substantial and amount to little. Their deaths, along with Friar Lawrence's plan to marry Romeo and Juliet to make peace, and even Romeo and Juliet meeting in the first place is directly linked to the feud, if not caused by it, and the hatred between the two families just shows how stubborn and selfish humanity can be. Though the feud may have had a role to play when setting the story, you cannot blame the feud alone for the events that took place, since that was entirely independent …show more content…

From fate representing Romeo and Juliet's encounter, to their love, and finally representing their untimely death, fate and fortune has been a contributing factor towards all the tragedies in Shakespeare's play, possibly being the main clause. Throughout the play, several references of fate and the stars are mentioned when characters show terrible grief and heart break. For example, mere seconds after Romeo slew Tybalt in a blind fit of rage, he exclaimed, "O, I am fortune's fool." He is saying that he is being controlled and forced to do things not in his control to change, and that he is a victim of circumstance (which in this case is fate). In which, he is. Time and time again it seems that Romeo and Juliet's love is in fact dependent on fate and fortune, since in the Prologue itself mentions that "...their death bury their parents' strife." It seems that even from the beginning, Romeo and Juliet were destined to die. No matter what they tried, and no matter how hard they wanted to stay together, fate always found a way to ruin their plans. Just after they get married, Romeo just so happens to run into Tybalt and Mercutio. Just after the couple consummated, Juliet was to be married to Paris on Thursday. Just after Friar Lawrence made a plan to reunite Romeo and Juliet, the wedding of Juliet and Paris moved one day forward! The letter

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