Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is his eleventh
play. It is with no doubt a
tragedy.
Shakespeare has
included all the necessary elements for a tragedy. The play has a tragic hero
of high standing
who dies. The hero opposes some
conflicting force. The hero has a tragic
flaw and this
flaw will lead to his downfall and the downfall of others. Good is always
wasted driving
out evil. Indeed, Shakespeare's Romeo
and Juliet is a tragedy.
In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is the tragic
hero. He is the only son of the Montague
family, therefor
he is of high standing and very wealthy.
He is so well respected that even
Capulet, His
family's sworn enemy praises him:
...let him alone,,
He bears him like a portly gentlemen;
And, to say truth, Verona brags of him
To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth.
I would not for the wealth of all this town
Here in my house do him
disparagement...(I.IV.65-70)
This means that
among the people of Verona, Romeo is very well respected, and he would
not do any harm
to Romeo at that time. Romeo is the hero
in this story. Romeo must die
along with Juliet
in order to stop the families' feud.
The conflicting force which Romeo opposes is
the fact that he is a Montague that is in
love with a
Capulet; his family's sworn enemy. The
Montagues and the Capulets have been
feuding for many
years. Romeo is a Montague and he is born into the feud. He does not like
it and he feels
that it is a waste. Romeo has to disobey his family so he can be with Juliet.
In this play, Romeo's tragic flaw is that he is
always melancholy, miserable, and
downcast, and
Romeo is always in love, and when he falls in love, he falls hard. Romeo is
depressed over
Rosaline. Romeo is very disheartened
over her and it seems he has been like
this for some
time already. Montague tells us this
when he says Romeo "...Shuts up his
windows, locks
fair daylight out, / And makes himself an artificial night..."(I. I.
135-137).
Romeo has a major
problem. Even after he meets Juliet, he
is very sad because he discovers
that she is a
Capulet. Shortly after, he is banished
from Verona and is very downcast once
again over the
fact that he will not be able is see Juliet again. Romeo is so extremely in love
that he says that
instead of being banished, he would rather be dead. When Friar Laurence
gives Romeo the
news of his banishment Romeo replies by saying "Ha, banishment! Be
merciful, say
"death";..." (III. III. 12).
Romeo feels that "There is no world outside of
Verona walls, /
But purgatory, torture hell itself..."(III. III. 17-18). Romeo is so much in
love with Juliet
that he wants to kill himself when he discovers that she is dead. Clearly,
Romeo's tragic
flaw is his tendency to be melancholy.
This flaw of Romeo's, which is his utterly
immense sadness, leads to his downfall and
the downfall of
others. At the tomb, Montague states
that lady Montague "is dead to-night;
/ Grief of my
son's exile hath stopp'd her breath..." (V. III. 210-211). Because Romeo is
banished from
Verona, Lady Montague dies. Romeo's fall not only leads to the downfall of
Lady Capulet, but
it also leads to the downfall of Juliet, Tybalt, Mercutio, and Paris. Romeo
goes to Juliet's
tomb, kisses her, takes the poison, and
dies. This action of his leads to the
death of
Juliet. Juliet sees Romeo dead, and
tries to get some poison from his lips to hers.
Unable to
succeed, she takes his dagger out and kills herself. Romeo causes the death of
Mercutio, and
Tybalt. If Romeo was not trying to make
peace with Tybalt, Mercutio would
not have tried to
defend Romeo. Mercutio feels that Romeo
is afraid to fight Tybalt and he
wants to defend
him. Romeo only wishes to make peace
with Tybalt because now he is a
relative of
his. Paris dies by trying to defend the
Capulets tomb from Romeo. Paris feels
that Romeo has
come to the tomb "...to do some villainous shame / To the dead
bodies..."(V.
III. 52-53) and dies trying to defend Juliet and the Capulets.
Good is always wasted driving out evil. The only way for the feud between the
Montagues and the
Capulets to end is through the death of their children. Romeo and Juliet
must pay the
forfeit of the peace.
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a
tragedy. He has all of the elements of a
tragedy in
this play. The
play has a tragic hero of high standing who dies, the hero opposes some
conflicting
force, the hero has a tragic flaw, this flaw leads to his downfall and the
downfall
of others. Good is always wasted driving out evil..
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
is an excellent
play. It is one of Shakespeare's
greatest tragedies ever.
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