Romeo and Juliet

Elizabethans expected a tragedy to rest upon a twist of fate. Although Shakespeare made Romeo and Juliet more complicated than that, there are certainly numerous references to fate in the play, perhaps as a concession to the audience's expectations. The play opens with a reference to "star-crossed lovers" as if their fates are predetermined by their astrological signs. On the way to the Capulet party, Romeo has a sense that something will happen at the ball that will lead to doom. Later, with his dying breath, Mercutio calls a curse upon the feuding families: "A plague on both your houses!" Then Romeo says, after killing Tybalt, that he is "fortune's fool." When Romeo thinks that Juliet is dead, he tells the stars that he will defy them, as if he knows that fate wants to keep them apart, so he will win by joining Juliet in death. All the accidents of timing in the play seem to be fate working against the young lovers for the Elizabethan audience did not see these incidents as coincidences but rather as the hand of fate directing the action.