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Forbidden Love in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Essay

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Don’t you hate it when something doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to? When you care so deeply about something and sacrifice so much just so that it can happen, but despite it all, ends in ruins. This is the theme of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In this tragic tale, two fated lovers risk everything, even life itself, to be with one another. They go against family, friends and fate to be together. Had premonitions in the play been taken more seriously by key characters, tragedy could have been avoided. In the play we read of many warnings which, had they been heeded, would have saved the lives of Romeo and Juliet. Warnings such as the Prologue and Romeo’s first dream, “From forth the fatal loins of these foes a pair of …show more content…

On, lusty gentlemen.” [Act 1.5. 107-113] Despite the warning of death, Romeo tells fate, which he believes to be controlling his life, to take over and “guide his sails.” Romeo and Juliet could have been spared had the Prologue, and Romeo’s first dream in the play, been seen as warnings. Many lives could have been spared had the characters paid closer attention to Romeo’s and Juliet’s actions and words. If key characters, such as Nurse and Frair Lawrence had paid closer attention to the events, and comprehended the threat, Romeo and Juliet’s death might not have been so premature. On the night of first meeting Romeo, Juliet has already decided that she is in love with him and wants to be married, “Go ask his name.-if he be married, my grave is like to my wedding bed… My love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed enemy.” [Act 1.5. 133-140] Nurse informs Juliet of Romeo’s family name, Montague, her family’s sworn enemies. If Nurse had stopped the progression of Juliet’s love for Romeo at that point, or if she had informed Lady and Lord Capulet soon after, Juliet and Romeo wouldn’t have had a chance to be together; also, Mercutio wouldn’t have died because Romeo’s love for Juleit wouldn’t have conflicted his fight with Tybalt. If Nurse had only weighed the danger in these very early lines, or thought about the drama that could entail,

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