Many times a playwright has managed to force the audience to suspend their belief and be touched by an implausible ending. However, it is unlikely that anyone has done this with the precision or such clearly defined tools as Shakespeare did in the play of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare makes the implausible ending of Romeo and Juliet compelling by using dramatic devices to convince the audience that Romeo and Juliet are destined to die, expressing the idea that death leads to love and love leads to death and that their actions are for the greater good; Shakespeare also rectifies the lovers’ irrational actions by using other characters’ actions to raise the “emotional normality level,” to make the lovers’ actions seem more plausible.
Throughout the play, Shakespeare constantly repeats the theme of destiny through the use of classical references such as “star crossed” and “Cupids arrow.” This idea of destiny means that the audience does not blame the two lovers for their actions; they instead blame the gods, (Friar Lawrence), making it a lot easier for Shakespeare to attain the desired audience response. Shakespeare further strengthens the audiences’ idea that Romeo and Juliet are destined to die by demonstrating what happens when people love and what happens when people die, even before the death of the main two lovers. The best example of this is Mercutio; Romeo has just committed one of the most ultimate acts of love in Italy at the time, marriage. It is because of this love that he cannot fight Tybalt and thus, because of this “choice,” Mercutio is killed. This ultimately shows a part of Shakespeare’s rule; love leads to death.
The next part of this rule is shown by what happens after Mercutio’s death and after Romeo and Juliet’s death. Romeo was previously held back from attacking Tybalt (thereby protecting Mercutio) because his love for Juliet was greater than or equal to his love for Mercutio. However, Mercutio’s death increases Romeo’s love for Mercutio; it now outweighs his love for Juliet, allowing him to kill Tybalt. Furthermore, whilst Romeo and Juliet were alive, the Monatgues and Capulets didn’t care too much about them, however when they die, the families love for them is increased by such an amount that they are prepared to put to rest an age old feud in Romeo and Juliet’s name. Thus, the second part of Shakespeare’s rule is finished; death leads to love. Another example of this rule would be Paris’ death occurring imminently after revealing that he will “strew” Juliet’s “grave and weep,” so as soon as Paris reveals that he loves he dies.
This rule strengthens the idea that because Romeo and Juliet love, they will die, and that because they will die, their families will love, not only making everything seem for the greater good but also strengthening the idea of destiny and thus relinquishing all responsibility of any incorrect actions from the lovers and allowing the audience to suspend their belief. Possibly the most poignant example of Shakespeare’s use of the theme of destiny is the prologue. In the prologue, Shakespeare foreshadows the ending of the play telling the audience that the “lovers take their life.” This creates a dramatic irony by which the audience can see how single events lead to the fate they have already been told. They can see the couple dying before them, second by second, making the audience feel extreme sadness, pity and hope that can ignore all the doubts an emotionally uninvolved person may feel. This ultimately leads to a suspension of belief allowing the audience to be compelled by the ending of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
One of the final parts of the play in which Shakespeare reinforces the idea of destiny is in Juliet’s dying lines, “Oh happy dagger, this is thy sheath.” This indicates a few ideas to the audience, one of which being that as a dagger belongs in its sheath, Juliet proclaims herself to belong in death. This could be for numerous reasons; in line with a moral dilemma I will talk more about later, it could be Juliet feeling that she has sinned by choosing her love of Romeo over her family, and must now pay the price, also fitting in with the honour killings have occurred in the play before. This interpretation would evoke great sympathy from the audience as most of them would dream of doing what Juliet has done, through this connection they have forgiven her, and they are willing her to do the same.
Alternatively, you could say that Juliet is showing that the dagger belongs in her because she has to die to immortalise her love for Romeo. Some people would say this interpretation is wrong because it would go against Shakespeare’s theme of young love and its speed of beginning and ending. I would respond to this by arguing that by the end of the play, Shakespeare shows that Romeo and Juliet’s love is no longer young, demonstrated when Romeo calls Paris, an older man than him, a “youth.” This would show that Romeo believes he has matured, rendering his love for Juliet no longer young. A final interpretation of Juliet’s words could be that she knew her destiny (this could be enhanced if Juliet was in the chorus that said the prologue). This would mean that Juliet accepted death in the knowledge that it would unite the Montagues and the Capulets, putting her in a very heroic position. This forces the audience to respect their irrational decisions because they are for the greater good. All of these interpretations would strengthen the idea of Romeo and Juliet needing to do what they have done (irrational or otherwise) to put things in Verona back in balance.
The theme of destiny puts Romeo and Juliet in a helpless position, arousing pity within the audience despite the two lovers living the audience’s dream, described by Juliet as a “beauteous flower.” This mixture of pity and desire within the audience is hijacked with devastating effect by Shakespeare, the audience are seeing some of their biggest dreams acted out in front of them, young love; if they are old, they feel nostalgia for the love they used to have; if they are young, they enjoy all the feelings they have being played out to their extremities in front of them. However, because of Shakespeare’s use of the prologue, the audience also knows that this dream will come to a close. As a result, the audience savours every moment the dream lasts, wanting it to never end, when the lover’s die, the audience’s dream of young love is shattered. Another way of seeing Shakespeare’s development of destiny is that the playwright establishes an image in the mind of the audience of a battle between Love and Death, with Romeo and Juliet’s relationship representing love.
This is shown explicitly in the scene of marriage when Romeo proclaims, “death do what he dare.” Unsurprisingly, most audience members will side with the slightly less frightening side of Love, and in doing so, they side with Romeo and Juliet and the success of their relationship. This means that, whilst the audience ultimately knows how the “battle” will end, they have emotionally invested in the success of the lover’s relationship. Shakespeare exploits this by using the stock characteristic of Friar Lawrence, destinies messenger. Shakespeare shows the Friar, making plans that go wrong, such as the marriage of Romeo and Juliet. This plants a doubt in the mind of the audience that the plans of destiny don’t always go as planned, thus, maybe destiny’s plan for Romeo and Juliet will go wrong? This further increases the audiences’ emotional investment in the lovers, making the ending more compelling.
Shakespeare develops this idea of a battle between Love (Romeo and Juliet) and Death even more by repeatedly using the imagery of Darkness and Light; such words as “a jewel sparkling in the night” and “whiter than snow upon a ravens back,” describe the idea of the love between Romeo and Juliet being surrounded by Darkness; representing hate and particularly in the second quote; death. The lovers’ moral dilemma is shown by the lovers (Light) conducting all their activities in the night, whilst the House Feud (Hatred/Death – Darkness) take place in broad daylight, this imagery paradox shows the dilemma of the choice between love and family. In the prince’s end speech, he describes the morning as being “gloomy” and the “sun hiding its face for sorrow.” This shows that Romeo and Juliets death has healed Verona so that all has returned to its natural order. One, final example of the imagery of light and dark within the play would be Shakespeare extending the previous words about light to arrive at the simile (or dramatically ironic metaphor) at which Juliet says that her relationship with Romeo is “too like lightning”. This simile, pictures a smaller white, or light part, surrounded by darkness.
The “lightning” is clearly a representation of the lovers relationship, highlighting certain key features about the young love they share; the speed it at which it comes and goes, foreshadowing their death and also coming close to a prediction of what will happen if they continue their love; teasing the audience as at this stage in the play they see the way of avoiding death as the lovers not getting together, so the audience would want Juliet to realise that if their relationship continues they will die. Juliet also goes on to say “it lightens,” this could be interpreted as Juliet referring to the peace that is created by the love between her and Romeo. This simile puts young love forward as a healing agent, lightening the darkness, (hatred) around them, therefore making all that Romeo and Juliet do necessary to fix the problems between their families, increasing the plausibility of the ending as it is for the greater good; making it more compelling.
Shakespeare alters the emotional normality in the reality of Verona. From the beginning of the play, Act1 Scene1, the men of Capulet are talking about extreme things (especially in the Elizabethan period), such as love, death and sex. There is also an instant action fight scene very early on. Because everything in Verona is very extreme, the extremities of Romeo and Juliet’s actions are diluted as they are surrounded by equally extreme actions. This makes the ending seem a lot more plausible than it would have if it were based in a normal setting. This suspense of belief caused by the increase of plausibility in the lovers’ actions allow the audience experience only the thoughts that Shakespeare wants them to feel, this allows the ending to be much more powerful and emotive. Another example of Shakespeare altering the emotional normality in the play is his creation of the character Friar Lawrence. Being a priest, people of the Elizabethan era would look to him as a guide of the emotional course of action, Friar Lawrence becomes emotionally involved with the love story of Romeo and Juliet very early on, encouraging the audience to also do the same.
You could also interpret that Friar Lawrence, being a priest, has the characteristic of neutrality, because of Friar Lawrence’s emotional actions, such as the marriage of Romeo and Juliet, the base level of neutrality is raised, rendering all extreme actions slightly less extreme, more believable and thus more powerful and compelling for the audience. Another technique Shakespeare uses to help the audience accommodate the strong emotions running throughout the play is the incessant use of superlatives, particularly when referring to emotions such as “love” and “hate,” there is no middle ground. As a result, the audience is less surprised when the playwrights’ characters commit exceptionally strong actions, because the audience is used to the characters using exceptionally strong language. This use of superlatives could also be extended to coincide with the idea of Shakespeare making the audience feel that Romeo and Juliet have every type of emotion, that they are every character variable (even to the point of gender swapping). Because Romeo and Juliet are anyone, they can do anything and because they can do anything, any ending is plausible.
Shakespeare makes the implausible ending of Romeo and Juliet believable and emotive by establishing the people and places of Verona as conflicting extremities; wise, foolish; heroes, sinners; lovers, haters; young, old and many, many more. Shakespeare can harness this wall of malleable characteristics so that he can do anything with his characters in the story will make sense when compared to the audiences view of the character, a technique so effective that it inspired Robert Plutchik to devise his spectrum of psycho evolutionary emotions. This technique ties in with Shakespeare’s repeated use of the theme of destiny to the point of creating a predetermined rule.
The theme of destiny means that the characters of the play are completely bereft of responsibility for their actions. This set-up that Shakespeare achieves is literary perfection when trying to combat the implausibility of his desired ending. Many writers after him have tried to repeat this technique, including Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange and also in his following essays Clockwork Oranges, but none have ever done it with such acclaimed success as Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet.
