ROMEO AND JULIET'S FATAL PASSIONS

Romeo and Juliet's Fatal Passions

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's view of a disturbing world was by a paradoxical and all too precarious balance of good and evil. Paradox is at the heart of this play, and the theme is a foreshadowing used in Shakespeare's later tragedies. The tragedy of character, destiny, and divine providence are differing themes that all support the balance of the play.
Tragedy of character is catastrophe that develops from faults of character: Romeo's impulsive nature leads him to despair and death. "This problem is the feeling that Romeo and Juliet lack tragic inevitability precisely because so much of the action turns on ignorance that might have been remedied and on sheer mistimings" (Cole 14). The immediate cause of Romeo and Juliet's unhappy deaths is Romeo's reckless fury and blind despair. "On Romeo's inability to control either his passionate love or his passionate grief, his death and Juliet's depend" (Dickey, p. 105). Romeo theref...