Student essay: Romeo and Juliet – Destiny or Free Will

By Rebecca N.

[Note:  This is a condensation of an essay by a home school student who participated in our 2012 Summer Shakespeare Seminar.  It was written in partial fulfillment of the high school credit certificate offered in connection with the Seminar.]

     At first glance, Romeo and Juliet seem to be unfortunate but innocent victims of fate, or of the stars. This assumption isn’t surprising when we see that the prologue calls the lovers “star crossed.”  Focus on the Family’s review of Romeo and Juliet takes from the phrase, “star crossed” the conclusion that destiny rather than God guides the lovers. But is Romeo and Juliet really just “a tragedy of unawareness?” (Amanda Mabillard, “Themes in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.”) Or could the fault actually belong to them because of their choices along the way?

     While things such as fate, fortune, and the stars are mentioned throughout the play, Romeo is almost always the one talking about them. In addition, he is the only character who refers to the stars as having authority. What could be his reason for this?  H.B. Charlton says Romeo “disowns responsibility and throws it on Destiny, Fate.” 

     Romeo makes many poor moral choices, each of which brings him one step closer to his doom. He chooses to hastily and secretly marry Juliet, murders Tybalt and later Paris, and finally commits suicide. We do not see Romeo assume responsibility for any one of these choices, or recognize how those choices are affecting his life.

     We cannot place all the blame on Romeo, however. Other characters are at fault also. For instance, though Friar Lawrence warns Romeo against haste, he agrees to marry the pair, and later offers Juliet the sleeping potion that leads to her death as well as Romeo’s. Juliet’s nurse bears some blame by choosing to help the two lovers get secretly married. If the Montague and Capulet families had been reasonable and settled their differences long ago, Romeo and Juliet may not have felt it necessary to keep their love a secret, and then to resort to suicide.

     So, while on the surface it appears that Romeo and Juliet were victims of destiny doomed from the beginning of time by fate, if we look closer it is easy to see that not destiny, but foolish choices by several characters came together and resulted in this tragedy.