Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, is drenched in the mysterious juices of the fruits from the tree of all knowledge. This liquid, like others, can form in different ways, however, unlike all others it always points towards one thing, the inevitable end. This essay will explore the satisfaction of these juices entering your mind, and how William Shakespeare masterminded the perfect ingredients.

Right at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, the story is revealed, telling all the plot of the story, why do this? Because when you are told an outline, the human brain becomes enticed by the succulent juices of fate, and immediately wants to fill the whole contents of the glass. The tiny taste you are given at the bottom of the glass reads:

‘A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows,

Doth with their death bury their parents strife.’                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

This segment explains that two lovers commit suicide, because of misadventures, or unfortunate events, but their deaths bring an end to the conflict between their parents, thus outlining the play.

One of the keys to fate is metaphor, it’s ability to change form into anything the author can imagine, during the play Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses an on-going metaphor of the sea, Romeo as the passenger, and God as the wind.

‘But He, that hath the steerage of my course,

Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.’

A selected part of a short speech delivered by Romeo, just before he goes to the party, at which he meets Juliet. He calls to God to guide him through his course, and to direct his sail, or life. At the end, he makes another reference to the wind, using ‘lusty’.

Another flavour added to this divine fluid, is coincidence, believers in the idea of fate, think that coincidence, is the main ingredient to the mixture, as coincidences are formed in a way that wince you have found one, you can find a lot more, spiralling of into the final moment, the very heart of fate. An example of where coincidence can be discovered in the play Romeo and Juliet, is when the servant asks Romeo to read him the invitation to the party, at which he meets Juliet. If Romeo had not been the first person the servant had noticed, he wouldn’t meet Juliet, and therefore not die in such a way as he did, eternal drowning in the tantalising mixture that is fate.

Again, like coincide, a very important ingredient, however, perhaps more mild, is the placement of obstacles to alter timing or routes taken. Any given moment can change the whole of the future of time, placing an object, or obstacle in a characters path can change the future, as fate uses those moments to manipulate the future, into what will happen at the very end. In Romeo and Juliet, obstacles such as the quarantine, that stopped Friar John from informing Romeo of the plan, the Friar took one route, and Balthasar took another, fate had control of who made it there first, it chose Balthasar, sentencing Romeo to death. A different example of obstacles, could be Friar Lawrence stumbling over graves, on his way to collect Juliet and send word to Romeo, who fate again chose to get there first. If either of these obstacles had been removed, Romeo and Juliet would have finished in a much happier way.

Shakespeare, God of the play, but also God in the sense that he created his own ideas of fate, with which he could improve the mixture, and bring it to such a thickness that no further flavouring could be added. This is evident, in such areas of the play, that are so enriched with fate, that nothing could be added in to improve these ideas. Such as, the final scene, in which the coincidences, obstacles, the chorus’ lines and all the metaphors fit together, like a jigsaw, with all the aspects of fate are combined into the final product, a fully saturated, and flavoured glass of fate, but maybe not as innocent as one might imagine, as in Romeo and Juliet, it takes the form of a murderer, but worse than just that, it takes the form of death itself.

Concluding my analysis on fate, and William Shakespeare’s uses of it in his world-renowned  play Romeo and Juliet, a work of genius, or a masterpiece, one thick blend of fate, oozing out different ingredients, such as coincidence or metaphor. But you can’t always think of it as a divine blend, in Romeo and Juliet, it was the killer of multiple people including at least five main characters, but in other cases it can lead people way from exactly that end, veering them off into safety, it changes it’s form for each and every person. Ultimately, it can be said, that Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet is so shrouded in other happenings, the true creativity must be discovered underneath the outside, after all, you should never judge a book by it’s cover.