"Romeo Juliet as Shakespearean tragedy."

"A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances."

The following fourteen points are a summation of a typical Shakespearean tragedy.

1.)Tragedy is concerned primarily with one person – The tragic hero.

2.)The story is essentially one of exceptional suffering and calamity leading to the death of the hero. The suffering and calamity are, as a rule, unexpected and contrasted with previous happiness and glory.

3.)The tragedy involves a person of high estate. Therefore, his or her fate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire.

4.)The hero undergoes a sudden reversal of fortune.

5.)This reversal excites and arouses the emotions of pity and fear within the audience. The reversal may frighten and awe, making viewers or readers of the play feel that man is blind and helpless. The audience will regard the tragic hero as an individual who is up against an overwhelming power that may treat him well for a short period of time, but will eventually strike him down in his pride.

6.)The tragic fate of the hero is often triggered by a tragic flaw in the hero’s character. The hero contributes in some way, shape, or form to the disaster in which he perishes.

7.)Shakespeare often introduces abnormal conditions of the mind (such as insanity, somnambulism, or hallucinations).

8.)Supernatural elements are often introduced as well.

9.)Much of the plot seems to hinge on “chance” or “accident”.

10.)Besides the outward conflict between individuals or groups of individuals, there is also an inner conflict(s) and torment(s) within the soul of the tragic hero.

11.)The tragic hero need not be an overwhelmingly “good” person, however, it is necessary that he/she should contain so much greatness that in his/her fall the audience may be vividly conscious of the individual’s potential for further success, but also the temptation of human nature. Therefore, a Shakespearean tragedy is never depressing because the audience can understand where the hero went wrong.

12.)The central impression of the tragedy is one of waste.

13.)The tragic world is one of action. Action is created when thoughts turn into reality. Unfortunately for the tragic hero, their plans do not materialize as they may have hoped and their actions ultimately lead to their own destruction.

14.)The ultimate power in the tragic world is a moral order; more specifically, the struggle between good and evil.

a)The main source of the problems which produces all the death and suffering is evil in the fullest sense.

b)This evil violently disturbs the moral order of the world.

c)Evil is seen as something negative, barren, weakening, destructive, a principle of death. It isolates, disunites, and annihilates. Only while some vestiges of good remain in the hero, can he/she still exist. When the evil masters the good in the hero, it destroys him/her and those around them.

d)This evil is eventually destroyed and the moral order of the world is re-established





At its very least, Shakespearean tragedy is pre-eminently the story of one person, the hero (and on occasion the heroine). The story leads up to and includes the death of the hero (a person of high degree); it is in fact essentially a tale of suffering and calamity leading to death. The suffering and calamity are, moreover, exceptional. They befall a conspicuous person and are themselves of some striking kind, including being unexpected and contrasting with previous happiness or glory.However, and this is important, the calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent by the gods; they proceed mainly from actions, and those are the actions of men. Consequently, the hero always contributes to the disaster in which he perishes; at the same time, the center of tragedy may be said to lie in action issuing from character or in character issuing in action. That is, the calamities and catastrophe follow inevitably from the deeds of men, and the main source of the deeds is character. There are some qualifications to made here regarding the role of character and tragedy. First, Shakespeare sometimes represents abnormal states of mind: insanity, somnambulism, hallucinations. Deeds done from these conditions are not what we can call deeds expressive of character. However, these abnormal conditions are never introduced as the origin of deeds of any dramatic moment. Second, the supernatural is sometimes introduced in his tragedies; ghosts and witches appear who have supernatural knowledge. Yet the supernatural is always placed in the closest relation to character. Third, he allows chance (any occurrence [not supernatural of course] which enters the drama neither from the agency of a character nor from the obvious surrounding circumstance) a large role in some of the action. This operation of chance is a fact of human life and to exclude it wholly from tragedy would be to fail the truth. In addition, it is not merely a fact; that men may start a course of events that they cannot control is a tragic fact, and Shakespeare attempts to make us feel this. The roles then of character and action in Shakespearean tragedy are obviously linked to the ideas of Aristotle. In almost all of them we see a particular obsession; a marked one-sidedness; a pre-disposition in some direction, a total incapacity, in certain instances, of resisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind. This is perhaps the fundamental tragic trait. It is a fatal gift, but is carries with it a touch of greatness; there is something attractive about a man so possessed with one concentrated activity. Unfortunately, his one-track focus destroys him. He errs by action or omission and his error, joining with other causes, brings on him ruin. For Shakespeare, the idea of the tragic hero as a being destroyed simply and solely by external forces is quite alien.


Although the characters are obviously important in Shakespeare's tragedies, there is a kind of operative controlling force that is present throughout. It would be comforting if we could easily see the direct influence of a benevolent, personal God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Such, however, is not the case. Elizabethan drama was almost wholly secular; and while Shakespeare was writing he practically confined his view to the world of non-theological observation and thought, so that he represents it substantially in one and the same way whether the period of the story is pre-Christian or Christian. He looked at this secular world most intently and seriously, and he depicted it accurately without the compulsion to impose on it his own system of belief. Tragedy within the context of this dramatic world must be qualified by two points. First, the tragic actions appear piteous, fearful, and mysterious. Second, the presentation of the tragedy does not leave us crushed, rebellious, or despairing. From the first point it follows that the ultimate power in his tragic world is not adequately described as a law or order which we can see to be just and benevolent--in the sense of a moral order; for in that case the spectacle of suffering and waste could not seem to us so fearful and mysterious as it does. And from the second it follows that this ultimate power is not adequately described as fate, whether malicious and cruel or blind and indifferent to human happiness and goodness; for in that case the spectacle would leave us desperate or rebellious.


Still, the idea that some kind of fate controls the dramatic world of Shakespearean tragedy is hard to ignore. If we do not feel at times that the hero is, in some sense, a doomed man; that he and others drift struggling to destruction like helpless creatures borne on an irresistible flood towards a cataract; that their failings are far from being the sole or sufficient cause of all they suffer; and that the power from which they cannot escape is relentless and immovable, we have failed to receive an essential part of the full tragic effect. Many times we see men and women confidently attempting to survive the tragic world. They strike into the existing order of things in pursuit of their ideas. But what they achieve is not what they intended; indeed, it is terribly unlike it. They seem to understand very little of the world in which they operate. They fight blindly in the dark, and the power that works through them makes them its instrument. They act freely, and yet their action binds them hand and foot. And it makes no difference whether they meant well or ill. Consequently, everywhere in the tragic world what characters intend is translated into the opposite of what was intended. Their actions, seemingly insignificant, become a monstrous flood which spreads over a kingdom. Whatever they dream of doing, they achieve just the opposite and typically end in destroying themselves. All this makes us feel the blindness and helplessness of man. It is obvious that these impressions about fate are in Shakespeare's tragedies. On the other hand, there is practically no trace of fatalism in its more primitive, crude, and obvious forms. Nothing makes us think of the actions and sufferings of the persons as somehow arbitrarily fixed beforehand without regard to their feelings, thoughts, and resolutions. Nor are the facts ever so presented that it seems to us as if the supreme power, whatever it may be, had a special spite against a family or an individual. Neither do we receive the impression that a family, owing to some hideous crime or impiety in early days, is doomed in later days to continue a career of portentous calamities and sins. What, then, is this fate which the impressions already considered lead us to describe as the ultimate power in the tragic world? It appears to be a mythological expression for the whole system or order, of which the individual characters form an inconsiderable and feeble part; which seems to determine, far more than they, their native dispositions and their circumstances and action; which is so vast and complex that they can scarcely at all understand it or control its workings; and which has a nature so definite and fixed that whatever changes take place in it produce other changes inevitably and without regard to men's desires and regrets. And whether this system is called fate or not, it cannot be denied that it does appear as the ultimate power in the tragic world.
Whatever may be said of accidents, circumstances and the like, human action is presented as the central fact in tragedy and as the main cause of the catastrophe. That necessity which so much impresses us is chiefly the necessary connection of cause and effect. For his own actions we tend to hold the hero responsible. The critical action of the hero is to a greater or lesser degree bad or wrong. The catastrophe is the return of this action on the head of the hero. Another way to say this is that the ultimate power in a Shakespearean tragedy is a moral order. Thus, what a man does in violation of the moral order must be inevitably paid back to him. Even if we confine our attention to the heroes who are not guilty of overtly monstrous sins, even if they are comparatively innocent, they still show some marked imperfection or defect--irresolution, pride, credulousness, excessive simplicity, excessive susceptibility to sexual emotions, and so on. These defects are certainly in the widest sense evil, and they contribute decisively to the conflict and catastrophe.

Not all heroes are as perfect as some might think. In fact, in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, the tragic hero, Romeo is quite flawed. The play is set in Verona and is about two families, the Capulets and the Montagues, who are bitter enemies. Juliet, the daughter of Capulet, and Romeo, the son of Montague, fall in love and get married. Soon after their marriage, Mercutio, Romeo’s friend and Tybalt, Capulet’s nephew gets in a fight in which Mercutio is killed. Romeo seeks revenge and kills Tybalt. As punishment, Romeo is banished from Verona. With the help of Friar Lawrence, Juliet comes up with a plan to see Romeo by faking her death. Romeo, unaware of the plan, learns she has died and decides to end his own life. Juliet sees Romeo dead and then also kills herself. Romeo has many flaws but the most prominent is his impulsiveness. He tends to make irrational and quick decisions without thinking about the consequences of his actions. Romeo’s impulsiveness motivates his choices when falling in love and while in love, as well as when choosing to get into fights and ultimately when he decides to commit suicide, leading to the downfall of the tragic hero, Romeo.From the beginning of the book, Romeo is quick and reckless when falling in love as well as while in love. An example is when Romeo seems to fall in love with Juliet very suddenly. Romeo is at a ball at the Capulet’s house. He thinks he is in love with a woman named, Rosaline, until he sees Juliet. At first sight of Juliet he proclaims

, “Did my heart ever love till now? Forswear it, sight, / For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night” (1.5. 59-60).

Romeo is immediately convinced he is in love with Juliet because of her beauty, even though he has never talked to her and does not know who she is. His rash decision-making causes him to feel he is in love without knowing Juliet or thinking about the fact that she might be a Capulet as well as the consequences that loving an enemy might have. Romeo continues to be impulsive when he is in love with Juliet. Romeo goes to the Capulet mansion, climbs the walls and finds Juliet. While explaining how he had gotten there and found her he says,

“And what love can do, that dares love attempt. / Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me” (2.2. 73-74).

Romeo is desperate to see Juliet because he thinks he is in love. He knows he is in danger of being caught and subsequently killed for being on enemy property. He risks his life to see Juliet out of impulse without fully thinking through the danger he is putting himself in. The absence of this thought process allows him to fall in love with his enemy, which eventually leads to his demise.The Friar also notices Romeo’s impulsive behavior. Romeo goes to see the Friar after falling out of love with Rosaline. At the beginning of the book, Romeo says he is completely in love with Rosaline. Soon after he confesses his love of Rosaline, he falls in love with Juliet. When telling the Friar about this change he says,

“With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No. / I have forgot that name and that name’s woe” (2.3. 48-49).

Romeo is quick to wipe Rosaline from his head within a matter of days of saying he was in love with her. He doesn’t stop and think about Rosaline compared to Juliet and just decides to forget her. The Friar goes on to say,

“If e’er thou was thyself and these woes thine,/ Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline./ And art thou changed?” (2.3. 81-83)

The Friar realizes Romeo’s erratic and impulsive behavior. He notices that Romeo quickly dropped Rosaline without thinking very much. Romeo rushes through most decisions in his life, including love. The Friar continues on and says,

“Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast” (2.4. 101).

The Friar is warning Romeo about his rash and sudden decision-making. The Friar knows that this behavior can lead to a mistake. He tells Romeo to slow down, stop and think before acting on something or making a decision. This warning could have stopped Romeo from fighting Tybalt or immediately killing himself. Unfortunately, Romeo ignores the Friar’s warning. He continues to be impulsive when making decisions, which leads to Romeo’s death. Romeo’s impulsiveness also tends to allow him to get into fights. Romeo irrationally gets into a fight with Tybalt. Romeo’s friend, Mercutio, is in the streets on Verona and sees Tybalt. They get into a duel and Mercutio is killed. Romeo, seeking revenge for his friend’s death says

“And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now.-/… Either thou or I, or both, must go with him” (3.1 129, 134).

Romeo lets his emotions take over and guide his actions. He decides to fight which results in Tybalt’s death while having no regard for his own life. He doesn’t think about possibly getting killed in the fight or getting in trouble for fighting in the streets. The Prince eventually punishes Romeo for fighting but is lenient because Romeo was seeking revenge for Mercutio, one of the Prince’s kinsmen. The prince banishes Romeo from Verona. This causes Juliet and the Friar to come up with a plan to fake Juliet’s death in order to see Romeo. Since Romeo is banished and the messenger is unable to contact him, Romeo doesn’t know about the plan. Romeo thinks Juliet is actually dead, which causes him to commit suicide, bringing about his own downfall. Romeo’s impulsiveness also causes him to get into a fight with Paris. On his way to go to Juliet’s tomb after he hears she is dead, he encounters a man. Immediately he says,

“Wilt thou provoke me? The have at thee boy!” (5.3 70)


Romeo doesn’t even see whom he is fighting but continues to fight and kill the man. When he sees he has killed Paris, a close kinsman of the Prince, he gets himself into deeper trouble, making him more desperate and more inclined to end his own life.Finally, Romeo’s impulsive behavior continues all the way until the end of his life. Romeo’s friend goes to visits him after he is banished from Verona. His friend tells him that Juliet is dead, when in fact she is still alive. Romeo goes into a state of despair and desperation. Upon hearing the news of Juliet’s death, he says to his friend, Balthasar,

“Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight. / Let’s see for means. O mischief, thou art swift/ To enter in the thoughts of desperate men” (5.1. 38-40).

Romeo’s thoughts immediately go to suicide. He thinks he is so attached to Juliet that he cannot possibly continue on without her. He makes his decision without investigating further as to what happened with Juliet. He finds a pharmacist and buys a bottle of poison. Romeo plans to go to Juliet’s tomb, drink the poison and die next to her.Rather than go to the Friar first, Romeo decides he will take his own life because of his impulsive nature. Romeo’s impulsiveness causes him to commit suicide when in fact Juliet was not even dead and the whole tragedy could have been avoided. Romeo’s constant impetuousness while dealing with love, when getting into fights and when he commits suicide, eventually leads to his downfall. His carelessness when falling in love with Juliet allows him to fall in love with an enemy. His spontaneous behavior gets him into fights with both Tybalt and Paris. In the end, this spontaneous behavior causes him to commit suicide without finding out more about what happened to Juliet. Romeo, the tragic hero of the play, is eventually brought to an end because of his impassivity. All heroes are imperfect in one-way or another, but the ones that let their flaw take control are eventually meet their demise.

It could be said that the person who is responsible for Romeo and Juliet’s death is Lord Capulet. After all, he is the one who forced Juliet to marry Paris, which eventually led her to drink the potion and “kill” herself. Lord Capulet was so intent on saving his reputation; he did not realize all the pain he was putting his child through. However, one could also argue that the Nurse is at fault. When Juliet found that her future was to be with Paris, the Nurse sided with Lord Capulet, advising Juliet that it would be best for her to be with Paris. With the Nurse having abandoned Romeo and Juliet, it puts them in a vulnerable position. Under helpless and stressed conditions, both Romeo and Juliet plan irrational decisions, which prove to be deathly. Then again, Balthasar, Romeo’s page, could indeed be responsible. It is his fault Romeo found out about Juliet’s “death”. Had he kept quiet, Romeo would not have hastily ended his life. However, in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it is inevitable that the person who is responsible for Romeo and Juliet’s death is Romeo himself, for he was over dramatic, he lacked in foresight, and he was awfully impulsive. In the play, the readers can infer that Romeo is quite a melodramatic character who cannot control his emotions. It is evident that when ill misfortune swallows Romeo, he becomes a spineless and unnerved person. Friar Lawrence seemed to also think this as well when he chastises to Romeo,

“’Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, / Digressing from the valor of a man’” (III. i. 136-137)

During the time in which Romeo has just found that he is to be banished from Verona. Friar Lawrence’s words speak of how Romeo’s body is just a cover up for his insecurities and weaknesses within him. Learning that he has to leave Verona and Juliet, Romeo is totally devastated and breaks down into fits of tears. Seeing this, the Nurse demands Romeo to stand up and be a man for Juliet’s sake. However, full of grief, Romeo attempts to plunge a dagger into himself, only to be stopped by Friar Lawrence. It is obvious that Romeo is highly unstable and because of his weakness, Juliet also suffers. One would believe that after seeing Romeo like this, he is far too emotional to take care of himself, let alone be married and look after Juliet. Lastly, when Romeo finds Juliet dead, he is terribly distraught and can’t stand to see her dead. Due to his inability to control his distressed emotions, Romeo finally ends his life to be with Juliet in death. In addition to being overemotional, Romeo also lacks in foresight. Besides being quite temperamental, Romeo greatly lacks in foresight. A significant amount of tragedy and suffering could have been avoided had Romeo thought ahead with his plans and actions. When Friar Lawrence tells Romeo,

“’Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask, /Is set afire by thine own ignorance, / And thou dismembered with thine own defense’” (III. iii. 142-144),

He meant that Romeo operates his actions like a soldier lighting powder without thinking. Due to Romeo’s own incompetence to contemplate his doings, he is thrown into a whirlwind of problems and despair. One of his major faults was murdering Tybalt, as a result of his ineptitude to process the aftermath of killing him; Romeo goes on ahead, only to realize that he is too late to take back what he did. Further more, it is unmistakable that Romeo is too selfish to realize how his actions negatively affect those around him, especially Juliet. If Romeo hadn’t been senseless enough to kill Tybalt without thinking of the consequences, then maybe, Juliet wouldn’t have “killed” herself and maybe Friar Lawrence’s plan to bring peace would have succeeded. On account of Romeo’s lack of foresight, it led him and Juliet to their demise. Romeo’s character in Romeo and Juliet could be viewed as a tragic hero, for he has flaws that steer Juliet and him to their graves. One of them, as said before, is his inability to judge outcomes; another one of his flaws is his impulsive nature. Romeo, after having just met Juliet, decides he wants to marry her. Friar Lawrence even warned Romeo about moving with too much haste when he told him, “’Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast’” (II. iv. 101). Throughout the play, Romeo made many unwise decisions and for all of them, he had to suffer afterwards. Evidence of his impulsive nature is highlighted in his journey to Juliet’s house to express his love for her when he barely knows her. He acts on his impulses when he decides to jump over the wall to the Capulets' house. The thing that was stupid and dangerous was that he never once thinks about whether he would get in trouble or be killed by one of the guards. Even Juliet was surprised that he managed to climb the wall without being caught. Further more, as the play progresses, after multiple impulsive acts, Romeo decides to kill himself when he finds Juliet “dead”. If he had chosen to simply think about what he was going to do or went to Friar Lawrence to make sure that Juliet was truly dead, Juliet would have been able to wake up and none of them would be dead. Ultimately, it was Romeo’s ignorant choices combined with his impulsive ways that ended up killing him and his love.In Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Romeo is undoubtedly at fault for his own death as well as Juliet’s. He was highly dramatic and emotional to withstand the difficulties that arose as a result of his inability to make wise decisions and plan them thoroughly mixed together with his impulsive character. Additionally, Romeo, as a character, was a great example of one of the major themes that was emphasized in this play. One could point out that he was the epitome of the theme impulsivity of youth. It seemed as though that in every major choice he made, Romeo acted on pure impulse, such as the time when he kills Tybalt, or his speedy marriage with Juliet. In the end, it was his own tragic flaws that truly led Romeo to his destruction and poor Juliet became a victim of his flaws.

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