Moral Choices, Not “Inauspicious Stars,” in Romeo & Juliet (with a conjecture on Romeo’s tragic flaw)

Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet has acquired a reputation for putting forth a fatalistic world view, as if these young lovers’ lives (and possibly everyone’s) are dictated more by astrology than by the consequences of human choices.  But this reputation is ill-deserved and comes from too much shallow reading of the play.

Yes, line 6 of the opening Prologue calls the lead characters “star-crossed lovers,” and Romeo, upon hearing of Juliet’s supposed death, defiantly cries, “Then I defy you, stars!”  In his last speech before his suicide Romeo says he is about to “shake the yoke of inauspicious stars” (Act V, Scene 3, line 111, or V.3.111, in the Folger Shakespeare Library edition). 

Very early in the play, before crashing the Capulet’s masquerade party where he will meet Juliet, he expresses fears that:
“Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels…”  (I.4.114-116).

After he has rashly killed Tybalt in the play’s pivotal scene, Romeo laments that he is “Fortune’s fool” (III.1.142) rather than expressing any remorse for a tragic moral choice.  In the final scene he professes himself to be “writ… in sour misfortune’s book” (V.3.82).

Isn’t that enough to constitute a theme of the play?  Not if we look closer.  Notice that every one of these references—other than the line from the Prologue—is in the words of one character:  Romeo.  Other characters refer to “heaven” or “the heavens” (clearly a metonymy for God) as having power to influence the action.  See Friar Lawrence in IV.5.100-101 and Prince Escalus in V.3.302-303.  Juliet uses “the clouds” very similarly (III.5.208).  But these are references to a superintending deity exercising moral judgment, not the impersonal zodiac.

Moral Choices

The play is driven at every turn by the free moral choices of its major characters.    Inordinate haste in matters of love and marriage, especially matters hidden from both sets of parents, is a moral issue that the characters are aware of yet hurry ahead regardless.  Juliet in the famous balcony scene pushes the romance forward precipitously despite confessing “no joy” at a contract that is “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden” (II.2.124-127).  Friar Lawrence soon seconds her concern, urging Romeo, “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast,” (II.3.101) yet the young lovers hasten ahead with his assistance.  Lawrence even foresees that “These violent delights have violent ends” (II.6.9).

Morally irresponsible decisions by the characters themselves create virtually every development leading to the final tragedy.  Romeo’s fatal vengeance on Tybalt, (III.1.88-91) which he admits is abandoning mercy in favor of “fire-eyed fury” (III.1.128-129) is provoked by Tybalt himself, but still not excusable on biblical grounds (“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,” Rom. 12:19) and Prince Escalus does not totally excuse it (III.1.196-197).  [It is worth noting, however, that Escalus reduces to banishment his previously-threatened penalty of death even as he moralizes that “Mercy but murders, pardoning those who kill” (III.1.207).  He will later regret his leniency (V.3.304-305) and blame that moral fault in himself for additional deaths—those of his own kinsmen.]

In the final graveyard scene Romeo kills Paris unnecessarily and seems to blame the victim for the sinful act, even acknowledging that his killing of Tybalt was similarly sinful.  “Put not another sin on my head by urging me to fury” (V.3.62-63).

We should not let Friar Lawrence himself escape our moral scrutiny.  He does marry a 13-year-old girl to the young son of her household’s mortal enemy without telling either family, and then puts the young bride through a “desperate” exploit (IV.1.70), which goes fatally wrong after all, in an effort to keep the matter hidden.  Even more inexcusably in the graveyard scene, he leaves the desperate Juliet to her suicide in the tomb (after V.3.165) because “a noise did scare me from the tomb” (V.3.271).  He will admit that his action was blameworthy (V.3.234-236) and express his willingness to die for this guilt (V.3.275-278) but Escalus immediately (and leniently!) excuses him as a “holy man.”

The only crucial plot development that was nobody’s fault is the miscarried message from Friar Lawrence to notify Romeo of the pseudo-death stratagem involving Juliet, which Lawrence will only call “Unhappy fortune” (V.2.17) and an “accident” (V.2.27 and V.3.260) rather than blaming it on the stars.

We’ve examined moral choices of Romeo, Friar Lawrence, and Escalus, and we could do the same with other important characters including Juliet.  But we can probably afford to excuse her for being 13, and even without her the evidence seems as overwhelming as it is generally overlooked.  Romeo & Juliet is not a play about fatalistic celestial interference in innocent lives, but a straightforward cautionary tragedy with the standard Aristotelian features of a tragic hero and his tragic flaw which brings about his tragic fall.  (See my 7-26-10 post titled “Tragic Heroes”.)  Too often Romeo is easily dismissed as an exception to Aristotle’s rule, but here is the conjecture on his tragic flaw promised in the title.  Isn’t Romeo, young as he is, fatally flawed with moral denial—that is—a refusal to acknowledge his own responsibility for his woes and a “default reaction” of blaming, instead, the stars (fate) and even the victims of his fury (Tybalt and Paris)?

James 1:13-16 warns us not to be deceived into thinking that our sins result from forces outside ourselves (even God, specifically) that impel us to sin.  It is temptations and lusts within ourselves, not acknowledged and resisted in a godly way, that lead to sin and “bring forth death.”  If we refuse to take responsibility for our own sins, we are calling God a liar, says the apostle in First John 1:8-10, a text that Romeo desperately needed to understand and obey.  

Well, there’s the big ending for now.  But I have at least one more post that I want to get into words before long dealing with another serious moral issue of the play.  Suicide.  It’s not just the bleak outcome of the play, it’s a recurring theme throughout, and it deserves a Bible-based exploration one of these days.