AQA GCSE English Literature Paper 2 Romeo and Juliet

Fate and freewill

Fate & freewill

Dramatic – prologue ruins it but audience fights for their freewill; adds to drama; doesn't want them

Moment 1: Prologue

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

Language & structural features – "star-crossed" means "opposed by stars". "Take their life" is a pun: it means that the lovers were born from the "fatal loins" of their parents, and it also means that the lovers will kill themselves.

Effect on play and audience – The outcome of the play has been decided even before the play had begun; a "greater power" is at play here, i.e. the author. This adds excitement and anticipation as the audience wonders how this came to be.

Moment 2: Act 1 Scene 4

"Some consequence yet hangs in the stars... With this night's revels... By some vile forfeit of untimely death"

Effect on play and audience – foreshadowing something bad happening in the party, as the audience wonders what this premonition of Romeo's means. Instead, something good happens – Romeo meets Juliet.

Shakespeare's ideas –

Moment 1: Act 1 Scene 5

"My only love sprung from my only hate!... That I must love a loathed enemy."

Effect on play and audience – audience feels sympathy for Juliet because

Language & structural features – rhyming couplets, showing Juliet's heightened emotions and her utter despair at the fact that fate has decided to make her fall in love with a "loathed enemy"; juxtaposition shows her conflicting emotions.

Moment 2: Act 3 Scene 1

"O, I am fortune's fool."

Effect on play and audience – audience feels sympathy for Romeo, as he feels as if he his soul is being "betossed" by fate. This moment drives the play forward, acting as a catalyst for the tragedy, as the main character who talks in puns and riddles is dead.

Language & structural features – sharp fricative sounds reflecting the gravity of matters at hand.

New ideas being revealed – although Romeo decided to kill Tybalt of his own accord (freewill), he blames it on fate; Romeo's fatal flaw of impetuousness comes across at this moment, as he did not think through the consequences before acting. Shakespeare does this to highlight that some part of our future is in our own hands, but some people, especially tragic heroes like Romeo, will choose to squander it.

Moment 3: Act 3 Scene 5

"Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems / Upon so soft a subject as myself!"

Effect on [play and] audience – the audience feels very sympathetic towards Juliet at this moment, as she feels as if fate is playing cruel tricks on her, a "soft" subject;

Language & structural features – Juliet's use of the word "soft" to describe herself means that, by devaluating her worth, she seems more vulnerable to fate's "stratagems", making the audience more sympathetic towards her.

Moment 4: Act 5 Scene 1

"then I defy you stars!"

Effect on play and audience – the audience is shaken about the fact that Romeo is willing to "defy" fate itself, a greater power than anyone, and feel sympathy towards him, as they already know the outcome of Romeo's sudden decision to leave for Verona (the deaths of Romeo and Juliet). This moment to acts as a catalyst for the play's tragedies to unfold, as it is Romeo's impetuousness again that leads to the protagonists' deaths.

New ideas being revealed – this also shows Shakespeare trying to show how Romeo's decision (freewill) is what led to his downfall; Romeo took his fate into his own hands when he decided to go to Verona, showing that he had some freedom from fate.

Shakespeare's ideas on fate and freewill – While his writings show inferences of destiny through fate, he leaned towards Aristotle's theory, that one's fate is determined in part by hamartia, or fatal flaw, or by one's own errors.

Context – During the Elizabethan era, one's destiny or fate was viewed by most as predetermined. Most of the people in Shakespeare's time believed in astrology, the philosophy that a person's life was partly determined by the stars and the planets. Shakespeare uses this common Elizabethan idea to add excitement and anticipation to the tragedies, as seen in the prologue.