Theme Of Fate In The Play By William Shakespeare

“God forgive me! Marry and amen! How sound is she asleep! I need to wake her. Madam, madam, madam!”.Death pervades the opening scene. When the nurse draws back the curtains we see the star crossed lovers' fates have been sealed. Fate is a powerful force in the play. No matter what the lovers tried to do to be happy, it ended with the Juilet ‘dead’ in this scene. This is because even though they tried to change their fate, they could not, for fate bent to no man.

The prologue itself shows that fate is against them. It says that their love is 'death-marked”, showing that they have absolutely no control over their fate. The forces of destiny leave the characters to think that Juliet is dead.

To think that you have no control over your life is a frightening thought, yet the theme of fate is frequently mentioned throughout the play. Even in the opening lines we see that their fate is written in stone.

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In the modern context fate is a great excuse to explain incompetence. Fate absolves you from agency in your failures. Fate is invoked when things go bad, and aptitude gets the credit when things go well. So the reason fate plays such an important role is because the play ended in tragedy, so it's easier for us as the audience to blame fate, rather than accept the main characters failings.

Words like 'star-crossed' give us a sense of destiny. Some people in Shakespeare's day believed that the course of your life was decided by the stars ' movement and location, in other words, their destiny was written in the stars, which is an ironic coincidence considering that the couple were considered star crossed lovers.

In making Romeo and Juliet openly recognise their doubts about their cursed destinies, Shakespeare shows how badly his characters want to believe that their wishes and acts can change the hand of fate. Juliet is frantic after hearing that her parents arranged for her to marry Paris. She tried to take fate into her own hands, resulting in the scene we just performed. Yet even with that, fate had its own ideas.

In the end we see how significant the theme of fate is as it is what propels the play forward. We see this from the prologue, “A pair of star crossed lovers take their life” to the line we just performed. So I leave you with this thought are you acting of free will? Or are u simply a pawn of fate?