Romeo and Juliet - Themes
Love
The accepted, and most popular, theme of Romeo and Juliet is that of love – the passionate, reckless and almost irrational feelings that the adolescents feel for each other is recognized in all times and cultures. They are willing to sacrifice their families, their reputations, and ultimately, themselves, for love. The title characters are saturated in the concept of love – only Juliet is briefly seen before she falls in love with Romeo; Romeo himself appears early on besotted with Juliet’s relative, Rosaline. Without love, the play’s central theme is lost, for all the conflict and the resolution of the play are driven by love.
Youth
Youth is a recurrent theme in the play – Juliet is still very young; not yet fourteen. She is from a privileged class where girls were married off young to exalt their families’ status and produce as many healthy heirs as possible. Romeo is thought to have been only a few years older than she. He is full of the ardor of the adolescent male, and still a hopeless romantic. Juliet’s Nurse still regards her charge as a little girl and her relationship with Juliet helps the audience see her as a still basically a child. Friar Lawrence upbraids Romeo for his youthful fickleness and we realize he is in many ways a callow youth. It is their youthful impetuousness that leads ultimately to their deaths.
Loyalty
The theme of loyalty plays a very important part in the drama. The feud between the Montagues and the Capulets mean that other characters must choose sides – it is not just the family members that brawl and argue, but their household staff and their friends. Romeo and Juliet must fight against this very loyalty when they fall in love, and love can be the stronger emotion (and proves to be in Romeo and Juliet). In the end, Romeo and Juliet remain loyal to themselves and to each other and events both within and out of their control lead to their deaths.
Conflict
The conflict between the families of Capulet and Montague seems to be based on nothing more than a flimsy rivalry of power and status in the city state of Verona. The Prince, Escalus, sensibly recognizes that it is all about nothing but that it causes great damage – he wants it stopped. The passionate emotion of love parallels that of conflict and proves to be just as destructive for the feuding families of Verona.
Violence
The play Romeo and Juliet showcases the senseless feud of two powerful families that leads to much destructive violence. Opposite members of the household fight each other in the streets, the young men take each other on when they happen to run into each other, and the slightest perceived insult can turn into a brawl. Several young men die in the course of the play, and the reasons are rooted in the families’ feud and vendettas. Swords and daggers are the tangible symbols of their violence.
Secrecy
Secrecy is a motif in Romeo and Juliet. It begins at the Capulets’ party when Romeo and his friends crash it in disguise. Romeo is secretly in love with Rosaline, another Capulet girl but soon plunges into a secret passion for Juliet. He and Juliet enter into a secret relationship that includes a clandestine marriage performed by their priest, Friar Lawrence. At the end of the play, his secret plot, which was meant to help them, becomes instrumental in the young lovers’ deaths.
Darkness
Darkness is a common motif throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet meet at night, they declare their love in the Capulets’ garden under the moonlight, they elope at night, and they die at night, in a lightless tomb where Juliet lays in darkness for two days, supposedly dead. Darkness represents the shadow of the conflict that has hung over the families for many years and is made permanent by the deaths of the son and daughter of their houses which, in a sense, snuffs out their light forever.
Fate
The Renaissance period was a time when people believed the position of the stars and planets influenced events in their lives. The theme of fate is strong in Shakespeare’s play, and in fact, the chorus in the Prologue for Act 1 calls the title characters ‘star-crossed lovers’ which over the centuries has become a famous allusion to Romeo and Juliet and to any doomed lovers whom fate has touched with fate’s destructive hand.
Death
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy and as such, death is almost a prerequisite. The senseless deaths of two such young people made the story even more tragic. The loss of Romeo, the heir of the Montague family, and Juliet, the only surviving Capulet child, underlines the finality of their deaths and what the families have lost due to their senseless feuding. Death is foreshadowed throughout the play with the loss of several young men; and it is not the elderly who die, which while sad, is a natural course of events. Death is final; there is no redemption or second chance for Romeo or Juliet.
Poison
Poison is used in a literal sense in Romeo and Juliet to hasten the deaths of the title characters. Poison is represented as illegal, since the apothecary breaks the law in selling it to Romeo, and as destroying, as it takes lives. The poison also figuratively represents the poison that exists between the rival families, and the damage it does, which leads to the loss of five young lives.
The accepted, and most popular, theme of Romeo and Juliet is that of love – the passionate, reckless and almost irrational feelings that the adolescents feel for each other is recognized in all times and cultures. They are willing to sacrifice their families, their reputations, and ultimately, themselves, for love. The title characters are saturated in the concept of love – only Juliet is briefly seen before she falls in love with Romeo; Romeo himself appears early on besotted with Juliet’s relative, Rosaline. Without love, the play’s central theme is lost, for all the conflict and the resolution of the play are driven by love.
Youth
Youth is a recurrent theme in the play – Juliet is still very young; not yet fourteen. She is from a privileged class where girls were married off young to exalt their families’ status and produce as many healthy heirs as possible. Romeo is thought to have been only a few years older than she. He is full of the ardor of the adolescent male, and still a hopeless romantic. Juliet’s Nurse still regards her charge as a little girl and her relationship with Juliet helps the audience see her as a still basically a child. Friar Lawrence upbraids Romeo for his youthful fickleness and we realize he is in many ways a callow youth. It is their youthful impetuousness that leads ultimately to their deaths.
Loyalty
The theme of loyalty plays a very important part in the drama. The feud between the Montagues and the Capulets mean that other characters must choose sides – it is not just the family members that brawl and argue, but their household staff and their friends. Romeo and Juliet must fight against this very loyalty when they fall in love, and love can be the stronger emotion (and proves to be in Romeo and Juliet). In the end, Romeo and Juliet remain loyal to themselves and to each other and events both within and out of their control lead to their deaths.
Conflict
The conflict between the families of Capulet and Montague seems to be based on nothing more than a flimsy rivalry of power and status in the city state of Verona. The Prince, Escalus, sensibly recognizes that it is all about nothing but that it causes great damage – he wants it stopped. The passionate emotion of love parallels that of conflict and proves to be just as destructive for the feuding families of Verona.
Violence
The play Romeo and Juliet showcases the senseless feud of two powerful families that leads to much destructive violence. Opposite members of the household fight each other in the streets, the young men take each other on when they happen to run into each other, and the slightest perceived insult can turn into a brawl. Several young men die in the course of the play, and the reasons are rooted in the families’ feud and vendettas. Swords and daggers are the tangible symbols of their violence.
Secrecy
Secrecy is a motif in Romeo and Juliet. It begins at the Capulets’ party when Romeo and his friends crash it in disguise. Romeo is secretly in love with Rosaline, another Capulet girl but soon plunges into a secret passion for Juliet. He and Juliet enter into a secret relationship that includes a clandestine marriage performed by their priest, Friar Lawrence. At the end of the play, his secret plot, which was meant to help them, becomes instrumental in the young lovers’ deaths.
Darkness
Darkness is a common motif throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet meet at night, they declare their love in the Capulets’ garden under the moonlight, they elope at night, and they die at night, in a lightless tomb where Juliet lays in darkness for two days, supposedly dead. Darkness represents the shadow of the conflict that has hung over the families for many years and is made permanent by the deaths of the son and daughter of their houses which, in a sense, snuffs out their light forever.
Fate
The Renaissance period was a time when people believed the position of the stars and planets influenced events in their lives. The theme of fate is strong in Shakespeare’s play, and in fact, the chorus in the Prologue for Act 1 calls the title characters ‘star-crossed lovers’ which over the centuries has become a famous allusion to Romeo and Juliet and to any doomed lovers whom fate has touched with fate’s destructive hand.
Death
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy and as such, death is almost a prerequisite. The senseless deaths of two such young people made the story even more tragic. The loss of Romeo, the heir of the Montague family, and Juliet, the only surviving Capulet child, underlines the finality of their deaths and what the families have lost due to their senseless feuding. Death is foreshadowed throughout the play with the loss of several young men; and it is not the elderly who die, which while sad, is a natural course of events. Death is final; there is no redemption or second chance for Romeo or Juliet.
Poison
Poison is used in a literal sense in Romeo and Juliet to hasten the deaths of the title characters. Poison is represented as illegal, since the apothecary breaks the law in selling it to Romeo, and as destroying, as it takes lives. The poison also figuratively represents the poison that exists between the rival families, and the damage it does, which leads to the loss of five young lives.