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The High Price of Love in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Decent Essays

In one of Shakespeare’s most masterful pieces, he depicts a tragic love story in which love conquers all…but at what cost? The truth is in this play, love is the victor, but with horrible consequences. Love lives on, love survives, but only at the loss of life. Not only in this play, but in many other Shakespearean works, the constant theme stands that any kind of marriage or deep emotional bond which is solely based on love ends tragically. Othello’s passionate love for Desdemona is the same passion that causes him to end her life. Antony, under the suspicion that Cleopatra has died, tries to commit suicide to only find out soon after that she is alive and in hiding, but all in vain for the fatal wound has already pricked it’s victim. …show more content…

Even though the match is clearly unsuitable, Juliet being a young teen and Paris in his thirties, the match is based on duty, reason, and responsibility. Juliet is not called to love this man, but rather, respect his position in society, be a noble and honorable wife, and even act as a business contract between Paris and the Capulets.

Even Romeo experiences the tension and pressures of deciding between duty and love. Romeo, by loyalty to his friends, has an unfathomable duty to them. However, Romeo and Juliet’s love, and “the exclusiveness and intensity of their love is clearly in tension with the bond that links Romeo to his male friends” (Greenblat 869). As the love harvests, the moat between Romeo and his peers deepens, “and the passionate love that divides Romeo from his friends set both lovers still more decisively against the values of their powerful families” (869).

Both Romeo and Juliet share the same fate in choosing their love over their powerful families. Their duty to their family is ignored to pursue love.

O Romeo, Romeo,
Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Of if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

(2.1.74-78)

In this moment, only after meeting Romeo once before, does Juliet already deny her birth and her family. She already chooses love over duty, thus sealing her fate for the outcome of the play. Even Romeo stumbles

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