Themes

• love

  Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. Love is naturally the play's dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions.
• fate

  From the beginning, we know that the story of Romeo and Juliet will end in tragedy. We also know that their tragic ends will not result from their own personal defects but from fate, which has marked them for sorrow. Emphasizing fate's control over their destinies, the Prologue tells us these "star-cross'd lovers'" relationship is deathmark'd."
• light& darkness

  One of the play's most consistent visual motifs is the contrast between light and dark, often in terms of night/day imagery. This contrast is not given a particular metaphoric meaning—light is not always good, and dark is not always evil. On the contrary, light and dark are generally used to provide a sensory contrast and to hint at opposed alternatives.
• authority&youth

  Throughout Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare establishes the ideological divide that often separates youths from adults. The characters in the play can all be categorized as either young, passionate characters or older, more functional characters. The youthful characters are almost exclusively defined by their energy and impulsiveness - like Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, and Tybalt. Meanwhile, the older characters all view the world in terms of politics and expediency.
• Violence

  Conflict is a central theme in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare presents the theme of conflict through two warring families: the Montagues and the Capulets. The two families have been taught to hate each other, and this hatred impacts on the family members and the citizens of Verona. The citizens of Verona are unwillingly a part of the conflict as they witness the ongoing battles between the two families - battles which often result in death.

  Shakespeare also presents the themes of conflict through inner familial conflict and individual conflict.
• Love Quotes

  - "O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything of nothing first create"

  - "O she doth teach the torches to burn bright"

  - "my grave is like to be my wedding bed"

  - "O speak again, bright angel"
• DeathQuotes


  - "Death lies on her like an untimely frost"

  - "Death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead"

  - "Death is amorous, And that lean abhorréd monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramore"
• Family and RelationshipsQuotes

  - "He shall be endured"

  - "My will to her consent is but a part"

  - "My only love sprung from my only hate"

  - "I would the fool be married to her grave"

  - "O sweet my mother, cast me not away! [...] or if you do not, make the bridal bed in that dim monument where Tybalt lies"
• Conflict Quotes

  - "Do you bite your thumb at me sir?"

  - "Where ancient blood breaks to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean"

  - "For blood of ours shed blood of Montague"

  - "You'll make a mutiny among my guests"
• FateQuotes

  - "Unhappy fortune!"

  - "O, I am Fortune's fool"

  - "Is it e'en so? - Then I defy you stars!"

  - "a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life"