Sample Introduction: Romeo and Juliet

Sample Introduction: Romeo and Juliet

SAQ: Do you think that Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is suggesting that societal conventions, fate or the motivations of individuals, play the greatest role in the tragedy within the narrative.

(1) It could be suggested that Shakespeare is inferring either societal conventions, fate or the motivations of individuals play the greatest role in the tragedy that is central to Romeo and Juliet. (2) Within the text such devices can lead to both the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet's death and the infeasibility of their love. The tragedy can be described as symptomatic of the draconian society Romeo and Juliet inhabit and exists as both the death of the characters and inability of the lovers the to be agents in the facilitation of their own romance. (3) In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet it is the convoluted social dichotomy apparent within Verona that causes the tragedy that is central to the play. (4) The tragedy is facilitated because of the inflexibility of social tradition within Verona, the social binary that acts as a tool of fate and rigid family (familial) confliction that prevents Romeo and Juliet from being in love.