Romeo and Juliet

 

In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet the Chorus, often played by a single narrator, opens the play with a brief summary of what’s to come on stage. Just as the Chorus in ancient Greek tragedies provided a commentary on events in the play for the audience, so Shakespeare’s Chorus sets the scene for tragedy by presenting his two young protagonists as the victims of fate whose lives are marred from the outset by the feud between their families: “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.” Any lack of suspense as to the outcome of the play serves to emphasize the major theme of fate — an omnipresent force looming over Romeo and Juliet’s “death-marked” love.

The prologue is also a sonnet, a popular form of 16th-century love poem that often explored such themes as love in conflict. Shakespeare chooses this poetic form to outline the play’s main issues of love and feuding and to present another major theme: how true love ultimately triumphs because the deaths of Romeo and Juliet end the feud between their families.

The play opens with the servants of the Montague and Capulet families quarreling and fighting in the streets of Verona, Italy. The two families have been enemies for as long as anyone can remember. Romeo, son of Lord Montague, accidentally finds out about a ball given by Lord Capulet and plans to attend uninvited. Romeo and his friends Mercutio and Benvolio put on masks and attend the ball, where Romeo meets the beautiful Juliet and falls instantly in love. Later that night Romeo goes to Juliet’s balcony, and they exchange vows of love. Romeo enlists the help of Friar Laurence, who agrees to marry the young lovers in hopes of ending the long-standing feud between the two families.

Viewed from this fresh perspective, Shakespeare’s tragic drama of the star-crossed young lovers is seen to be an extraordinary work. Indeed, Romeo and Juliet was an experimental stage piece at the time of its composition, featuring several radical departures from long-standing conventions. These innovative aspects of the play, moreover, reinforce and embellish its principal themes. The latter include the antithesis between love and hate, the correlative use of a light/dark polarity, the handling of time (as both theme and as structural element), and the prominent status accorded to Fortune and its expression in the dreams, omens and forebodings that presage its tragic conclusion.

Shakespeare’s use of dramatic structure, especially effects such as switching between comedy and tragedy to heighten tension, his expansion of minor characters, and his use of sub-plots to embellish the story, has been praised as an early sign of his dramatic skill. The play ascribes different poetic forms to different characters, sometimes changing the form as the character develops. Romeo, for example, grows more adept at the sonnet over the course of the play.