Romeo and Juliet Quotations from the Play Illustrating the Young Lovers Poor Decisions
Prompt: William Shakespeare’s tragic play Romeo and Juliet often makes people wonder how things could have gone wrong for the two “star-crossed lovers." As the story unfolds, it is evident that many characters play a vital role in the events that ultimately lead to the tragic deaths of Romeo and Juliet, but none hold the responsibility as much as the lovers themselves.
In a well-developed, double-chunk, four paragraph essay, explain and analyze how Romeo and Juliet are ultimately to blame for their own deaths.
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Romeo and Juliet – quotations from the play illustrating the young lovers’ poor decisions and/or personal responsibility for their own deaths:
*Check MLA Style rules for quoting poetry to be sure you incorporate quotations accurately!
Act I
1. Romeo on seeing Juliet at the party for the very first time: “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it sight! / For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night” (1.5.51-52).
*Romeo falls in love irrationally; he is obsessed with “love” and falls too easily and too deeply in love with young women he barely knows.
2. Romeo on crashing the Capulet party: “And we mean well in going to this masque / But ‘tis not wit to go” (1.4.48-49).
*Romeo knows instinctively that it is unwise for them to go to the party, but he gives in to peer pressure and goes anyway.
I fear, too early; for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels and expire the term
Of a despised life, closed in my breast,
By some vile forfeit of untimely death. / But he that bath the steerage of my course
Direct my said! (1.4.106-113).
*Romeo ignores the dream warning him of his own death and commits his future to fate.
3. Juliet speaking to the nurse as Romeo leaves the party: “Go ask his name---If he be married, / My grave is like to be my wedding bed” (1.5.133-134).
*Like Romeo, Juliet behaves unreasonably; she falls hopelessly in love with someone she has just met and declares that she will die if he is already married.
4. Juliet explaining her predicament after the nurse tells her Romeo is a Montague:
My only love, sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me
That I must love a loathed enemy. (1.5.136-140).
*Despite learning that Romeo is the son of her father’s enemy, Juliet never even considers abandoning her love for him because she thinks it is simply too late to change. From this point on, she is committed to doing whatever it takes to be with him.
Act II
1. Romeo speaking to Juliet on her balcony:
And but thou love me,
let them find me here.
My life were better ended by their hate
Than prorogued, wanting of thy love. (2.2.16-18).
*Romeo says he would rather die now than postpone the love he feels for Juliet whom he has just met.
2. Juliet pledges her total commitment to Romeo as he leaves her balcony:
If that thy bent of love be honorable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow
………………………………………………….
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay
And follow they my lord throughout the world (2.2.143-148).
*This she declares only moments after saying that their talk of love is "too unadvised, too sudden" (2.2.118) and suggesting that they let their love blossom more slowly!
3. Romeo speaking to Friar Lawrence just before Juliet arrives to marry him:
Do thou but close our hands with words,
Then death-devouring love do what he dare-
It is enough I may but call her mine" (2.6.6-8).
*Romeo irrationally claims that being married to Juliet for even a minute would be enough, and death itself could not spoil his joy.
Act III
1. Romeo speaking about revenge as Tybalt returns after killing Mercutio: "Away to heaven respective lenity, / And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now" (3.1.117-118).
*Romeo calls upon fury to guide his hand in avenging his friend's death, so to call himself
"fortune's fool" (3.1.130) is hardly reasonable; the decision to fight Tybalt is his own.
2. Romeo speaking to Friar Lawrence after the nurse describes a grieving Juliet:
O, tell me, friar, tell me,
In what part of this vile anatomy
Doth my heart lodge?
Tell me, that I may sack
The hateful mansion" (3.3.105-108).
Act IV
Juliet telling the Friar that she is ready to kill herself if he can't advise her of some other way to prevent her marriage to Paris:
If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help,
Do thou but call my resolution wise
And with this knife
I'll help it presently (4.I.52-54).
*Behaving irrationally, Juliet unwittingly pressures Friar Lawrence to come up with some way out of the mess she's in by convincing him that she will kill herself if he doesn't.