Fate
The idea of fate runs through all elements of the play. It has a very specific meaning in the Elizabethan world: a belief that the course of a person’s life could be determined by the motion and position of the stars. This means an individual has no control over their outcome – your life course has been decided at birth.
Key question:
The prologue gives away the events of the play, very deliberately, at the very start.
How is fate shown in Romeo and Juliet quotes?
The fate of Romeo and Juliet is first shown in the opening lines of the Prologue of Romeo and Juliet, which describes them as “star-crossed lovers” and states that “their deaths bury their parents’ strife.”
Fate is further foreshadowed through such lines as Juliet’s describing of her wedding bed as a grave, and in Friar Lawrence’s warnings to love more slowly.
“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.”
“What must be shall be.”
“If he be married my grave is like to be my wedding bed.”
“O, I am Fortune’s fool!”
“Go wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”
“I must be gone and live, or stay and die.”
“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
What does Romeo say about the stars?
“I defy you, stars[.]”
“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”
“I fear too early, for my mind misgives; Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin.”
“I defy you, stars.”
“Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
“O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!”