Romeo and Juliet: Fate Flashcards
what does the proleptic exposition do?
Foreshadowing storytelling
- Framing device
Thus the audience is rendered a helpless observer; they know that the lovers are doomed but they are unable to influence or change the events.
tragic inevitabilityand chorus
Structually,shakespears use of the chorus in the prologue creates a sense of tragic inevitability about the events of the play,using prolepsis to reinforce the idea that the lovers are not only fated to die,they are already dead.
“from forth the fatal loins of these two foes/a pair of star crossed lovers take their lives”
- prologue is highly structured -sonnet form,tightly controlled rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter
-reflects closed structure-no change
“we are born to die”-capulet at tybalts death
- his words have a broader thematic resonanse as it also applies to romeo and juliet
Witin the broader paradigm of futility withinh the play,Romeo and Juliet find a sense of meaning through their passionate love for eachother.
C
In the early modern period the idea of fate was well established with people beleiving that the wheel of fortune could turn and leave a rich destitute without warning.BEleif in astrology was widespread and so the idea that Romeo and Juliet were controlled by forces beyond their control would have resonated with an early modern period.
cosmic irony
Shakespeare uses the motif of stars in order to reinforce the sense of cosmic irony; the lovers are fated to die.
“a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life”
“death-mark’d love”
“hanging in the stars”(romeo before capulet party)-celestial imagery
“but he that hath the steerage f my course/Direct my sail”
awerness of fate
On a deep psychological level,it is almsot as if the lovers are aware of their own fate.The repeitive use of dreams and visions suggest a latent awerness of their own fate, which borders on metatextual.The audience is all too aware of the irony, that they are always doomed to die.
romeo before death:
“then I defy you, stars!”
“Fatalistic- what will be , will be”
dreams and visions show fatality
Shakespeare makes use of dreams and visions of death to create a sense of how romeo and juliets love is fated to be fatal.
juliet after consumating marriage
“i have an ill diving soul”
“I see thee … As one dead in the bottom of a tomb”
shakespeare frames the final act,the denounment,of the play with an ironic adumbration of Romeo and Juliet’s deaths.
“I dreamt my lady came and found me dead/And breath’d such life with kisses in my lips”- romeo
juliet: if romeo is married “my grave shall be my wedding bed”
violence and obssesion witth male honour
However, rather than being at the mercy of cosmic forces of abstract fate, it is arguable that Shakespeare presents the lovers at the mercy of the social forces of patriarchal honour.
-peripeteia of the tragedy rests on a matter of male honour
-lovers die because of patriarchal conflict that frames the play
“ancient grudge” “breaks to new mutiny”
tybalt-“to strike him (romeo) dead/ I hold it not a sin”
romeo being satisfied(doesnt want to fight tybalt)
“o calm dishonorable vile submission”
violence(capulet possesion)
However the audience are invited to question wether or not he is at the mercy of “fortune” or rather an honour system that meant that there was an inexorable escalation of violence.
capulet “she will be ruled in all things by me,nay more”
“you be mine, i give you to my friend”
“out you green sickness carrion”
“ i will drag thee on a hurdle hither”
“you tallow face”(worse version of wax,contrast between “man of wax” paris
C arguably capulet fuffils the function of an anagnorisis when he realises that his daugter and romeo are “bitter sacrifices of our emnity”
- has a tragic arc
- audience can gain closure and can acheive catharsis- outpouring of emotion after tragedy
- attempts to conform to an aristotalean tragedy
Green-sickness was a form of anaemia thought to afflict young unmarried women, the cure for which was marriage: Juliet is clearly pale, not just someone suffering from anaemia, but as an anaemic corpse, carrion, and tallow-face also suggests pallor (tallow is much more down-market than wax; compare Paris being praised as a man of wax)
And in the midst, a very specific threat, although not necessarily a literal one: I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. Traitors were dragged to the place of execution on a hurdle– think a rudimentary sled – and Capulet is therefore suggesting that Juliet is a traitor, in her unfilial disobedience and defiance, and also that she’s dead to him. (Men convicted of treason were disemboweled and dismembered, and this very particular and spectacular violence is also, perhaps, nastily shadowed by fettle your fine joints; women traitors were burned. Fun fact: wives who killed their husbands were executed as traitors, because patriarchy.)
