Key points
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet tells the tale of a young couple who fall in love but are destined for tragedy.
Themes are the main ideas that appear repeatedly in a play. Some of the important themes in Romeo and Juliet are:
Love - different types of love are shown in the play, including romantic love.
Fate - the idea that Romeo and Juliet’s lives are already mapped out, and that events cannot be changed.
Duality - paired or opposite ideas or feelings, for example, love and hate or conflict and peace.
Did you know?
Shakespeare often used similar themes across his plays. For example:
The theme of fate is important in Macbeth.
The theme of love can be found in Much Ado About Nothing.
Love
Watch this video about love in Romeo and Juliet:
Narrator: Love: it’s complicated. There’s Romeo, in love. With Rosaline. But when Juliet turns up, Rosaline’s history. What Shakespeare’s showing us is that although love feels like it’s forever, who we love can change in an instant.
When Romeo and Juliet are in love, they don’t care about anything else. The play shows us how great that can feel. But love’s not just about winning. Love can make us lose other things. Romeo and Juliet are prepared to lose their families for each other. What would you give up for the one you love? I was asked to give up crisps. It’s not easy.
Love can also make you stupid. They were unlucky, yes, but they didn’t take much time to think about anything. And so it ends badly for Romeo and Juliet. It takes their tragic deaths for the warring families to call a truce. Do you think they’ll merge and become the Montalets or the Capugues? Or the Monta-capu-gue-alets?
Love is the main theme in Romeo and Juliet. At the start of the play, Romeo is in love with a character called Rosaline. She does not feel the same way and Romeo feels hurt and frustrated.
Romeo and Juliet fall in love at first sight. Their love is full of passion and energy – they decide to get married very soon after meeting. The A speech, usually addressing the audience, at the start of the play. A prologue typically gives background information about what the audience is about to see. tells the audience that their love is unfortunately “death mark’d” and will end in tragedy.
The love within friendship is also explored in the play. Benvolio and Mercutio have a loving relationship with Romeo, and Mercutio dies after he takes Romeo’s place in a fight.
There is also strong loyalty and love within the two families, which is shown in the grief that follows Tybalt’s death.
How do Romeo and Juliet meet?
Romeo attends a masked party at the Capulet household. He falls in love with Juliet the moment he sees her, and she falls quickly in love with him too. They start by sharing a sonnet, which is a fourteen-line poem with a rhyming pattern that is typically about love. Their language is playful and teasing, as Romeo starts the sonnet and Juliet carries on the pattern.
Fate
Watch this video about fate in Romeo and Juliet:
Narrator: Fate. In Shakespeare’s day, people believed in fate in the same way that we believe in gravity today. So when the play begins by telling us that Romeo and Juliet are star crossed and death marked, the audience know that they’re in for it.
It’s not just the audience, Romeo and Juliet seem to have a sixth sense about their gloomy fate. Before the Capulet party, Romeo is worried that something bad is hanging in the stars and worries about an untimely death. Juliet sees Romeo outside her window as one dead in the bottom of a tomb.
When Romeo kills Tybalt he calls himself “fortune’s fool”. Oh dear. And when it all goes pear-shaped in the tomb the Friar thinks that a greater power has thwarted their plans. Romeo and Juliet can’t escape their fate. Ask that pair if they think astrology is a bit of harmless fun.
In Shakespeare’s time many people believed in the power of fate and that the position of the stars controlled life events.
How does Shakespeare show that Romeo and Juliet will have a tragic fate?
The prologue tells the audience that their love is fated to end in tragedy – this increases the dramatic impact of the events as the characters are powerless to stop the events unfolding.
The characters also sense that their love is doomed. Before the party, Romeo talks about something “hanging in the stars” and an “untimely death”. Juliet also says that “My grave is like to be my wedding bed.”
The audience can see that Romeo and Juliet are trapped by their fate.
Duality
Watch this video about duality in Romeo and Juliet:
Narrator: Shakespeare liked pairs. Not pears. Like a pair of ideas or things that can be better understood together. A good word for this double nature is duality.
Duality can be opposites like hot and cold. Or just different, but complimentary, like cheese and onion, or salt and vinegar. Mmm. Thanks.
Our young lovers definitely complement each other. They ignore the opposition of their families. Characters oppose each other too: Paris versus Romeo, Mercutio versus Tybalt.
Opposing ideas and concepts are explored too: passion versus reason, home versus exile, freedom versus obedience.
Shakespeare’s genius is that he usually avoids the obvious duality of good versus evil. He knew that life is often far more complicated than that. See? Evil brought a dip. Ooh. I bet it’s spicy.
Duality is paired or opposite ideas or feelings. For example, the pair of feuding families, the Montagues and the Capulets, and the opposite ideas of love and hate. For example, Romeo and Juliet are expected to hate each other because their families are enemies. However, even after finding out each other’s identities, the couple are still in love. Friar Lawrence hope the couple’s marriage will unite their families in peace.
There are other examples of duality in the play, for example:
- Conflict versus peace
- Life versus death
How does the language in the play show the theme of duality?
The imagery of the play uses duality, for example:
- Light versus dark
- The Sun versus the moon
Duality can also be found in the speech of both Romeo and Juliet. They both use oxymorons, which is when two words that have opposite meanings are put together, to show their mixed emotions. For example:
- Romeo says “sick health” and “cold fire” when describing his feelings for Rosaline - he is in love with her but also in pain because she does not love him.
- Juliet continues to love Romeo even after he has killed her cousin Tybalt, and calls him a “beautiful tyrant” and “fiend angelical”.
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