Fate quotes analysis

• ‘Star-cross’d lovers’


  Love and its ending are destined to happen
• ‘death-mark’d love’

  foreshadows the tragedy of their fae and how their love will eventually kill them

  in the prologue chorus warns the audience they are destined to die together

  this increases the dramatic impact of the plot as both the characters are helpless to stop the events unfolding, and the audience knows what is going to happen
• ‘too early, for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars’

  (before capulet party)

  verb ‘hanging’ shows something bad will happen, that hasn’t been revealed yet and could have any effect

  shows the lack of control the characters has over their fates

  sows theme of fate follow them around and that they are trapped by it

  no specific knowledge, just a feeling
• ‘by some vile forfeit of untimely death‘

  (before capulet party)

  adjective ‘untimely’ shows he won’t die at the right time - meaning he will die young

  again foreshadows the tragic double suicide at the end of the play, and reinforces that it is their fat to do young and nothing will change that
• ‘it is too rash, too soon, too like the lightning’


  (balcony scene)

  julitet presents the theme of fate while being reasonable and realistic but at the same time helplessly in love with Romeo

  adjectives ‘rash’ and ‘sudden’ shows she recognises theyre being hasty and impulsive, therefore foreshadowing there will be consequences beyond their control

  lightning burns bright and fast, suggesting they will burn bright but not last long
• ‘as one dead in the bottom of a tomb’


  (wedding night)

  juliets prophetic vision

  simile shows what is to come in the play and enforces the dramatic tension to the audience as they know what is coming and that it can’t be stopped

  sig as next time couple sees each other will be the tomb and Romeo will be dead
• ‘be fickle, fortune: for then I hope wilt not keep him long but send him back’

  goddess of fate often presented as unpredictable - Juliet begging for Romeo to be returned to her

  everything in the hands of fate and they can do nothing to change what will happen

  again shows Shakespeare’s idea that humans are controlled by fate and cannot change outcomes of events by their own free will
• ‘out you green sickness carrion! out, you baggage!

  (capulet telling Juliet she must marry Romeo)

  imagery compares her to a corpse - again foreshadows her untimely death and how she soon will be a corpse
• ‘I would the fool to be married to her grave’


  (capulet telling Juliet she must marry paris)

  noun ‘grave’ links again to young death, reinforcing by Shakespeare there is no escaping it

  referenced by many people including her father

  ca also be interpreted by audience a Juliet being wedded to calamity from the second she marries Romeo as their love eventually kills her
• ‘unhappy fortune’

  (failure to deliver letter to Romeo)

  adjective ‘unhappy suggest’ consequences will be negatuve

  ‘fortune’ suggests it is completely out of his hands
• ‘and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars’ 


  (death scene)

  Romeos soliloquy

  Suggests he is trying to defy fate but instead is playing into hands of it as his death will cause Juliets

  Once again shows characters cannot escape fate and free will has nothing to do with outcome of their actions