Were Romeo and Juliet Really in Love? the Perils of Blind Trust in Tragedy

Juliet’s Blind Trust in Decision Making

“Therefore love moderately: long love doth so; Too swift as tardy as too slow.” In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses the character Juliet to demonstrate how when one trusts blindly in a person, it may lead to disaster or sometimes death.

In the novel, Juliet gets approached by her mother and the nurse about how it is time for her to think about getting married. They then tell her that they have already picked out who she is going to marry, meaning that Juliet will have to trust that her mother has picked out the right man to be her future husband.

Later that day, Juliet finds out that her husband-to-be is going to be Paris. Juliet is not happy with this decision because she has never met the guy, but agrees to give it some thought, saying: “I’ll look to like if looking liking move, but no deeper will end art mine eye. Then your consent gives me strength to make it fly.”

Romeo and Juliet: A Love Found and Forbidden

While Juliet is uneasy with this decision, she agrees to go to the ball to meet Paris; she ends up meeting and falling in love with Romeo. This creates a problem because falling in love with Montague is forbidden. Juliet’s actions in this scene lead to Juliet seeking out a forbidden marriage without her parents’ consent. While trusting the blind has its benefits, it also has its downsides. In this instance, Juliet trusted her mother’s decisions which then led her to rebel and get married without anyone’s knowledge.

When Juliet goes to meet Paris at the ball, she falls in love with Romeo. She lets him kiss her by only exchanging 14 lines. This meant that he was confident about how he treated Juliet in order to end up kissing her. The effect in this scene is demonstrated by when Romeo finds out Juliet is a Capulet, and she finds out he is a Montague. Knowing they are forbidden to be with each other, Romeo goes to Juliet’s balcony later that night and spies on her. When she finds out he is there, she falls even more in love with him because of his commitment. The next day after only sharing 14 lines before their first kiss, they decide the next morning they should get married even though it is prohibited. This shows how Juliet blindly fell in love with somebody while knowing the consequences of not knowing the true identity of who she was falling in love with.

Desperate Measures for Love

Later in the novel, Juliet believes that the only way she and Romeo could be together is if they faked their deaths. She decides this after finding out that Romeo has been banished from Verona while her marriage to Paris is still being planned. In order to fake her death, she goes to Friar Lawrence to buy a potion that puts her to sleep long enough for people to think she died. She trusts blindly in Friar Lawerence that the potion will for sure put her to sleep and will not end up killing her. She hears from her mother that the wedding has been moved to that morning and decides to take the potion without knowing the effects of what might happen. She then says: Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear! Without completely thinking this decision through. The effect that comes out of this is that everyone, including roles, thinks she has actually died. Everyone is devastated that Juliet just died before her big day of getting married to Paris. Her decisions ended up leading to Romeo taking his own life because he was under the impression that the love of his life had passed.

Was Romeo and Juliet Really in Love?

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses the character Juliet to demonstrate how when one trusts blindly in a person, it may lead to disaster or sometimes death. The very tragic ending to this romantic love story is the result of Juliet trusting blindly in others. If Juliet didn’t trust Friar Lawrence, Romeo, and Juliet’s mother, their ending might have been a romantic love story other than a tragedy.

References:

1. Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.
2. Belsey, Catherine. Romeo and Juliet: Language and Writing. Routledge, 2013.
3. Wells, Stanley, and Michael Dobson. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2001.
4. Kirsch, Arthur. “The Tragedy of Love and Politics.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 4, 2005, pp. 400-419.
5. Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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