Romeo and Juliet

Destiny / Fate versus Coincidence / Chance

Romeo and Juliet is a romantic play. It looks back to the medieval days of courtly love, but brings an added element: the idea of true love that can exist beyond the confines of admiration and the courtly tradition, coming to fruition in marriage and a union of true minds and spirits.

In Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare relies on an established definition of tragedy; very generally, a play dealing with a serious theme, usually one in which a character falls to disaster, in Romeo and Juliet not because of personal failings but as a result of circumstances beyond the lovers' control. In the later, great tragedies Shakespeare moves the emphasis to incorporate a flaw in the character. Once chance has put the character in a threatening position, the element of choice comes into play. We need only think of the characters of Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear or Othello.

So in this play, as established in the Prologue, the lovers are at the mercy of Fa...