QUESTION ONE:
William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet early in his career, between 1594-1595. A long vendetta between the Montague and Capulet families disrupts the city of Verona and causes tragic results for Romeo and Juliet who fall in love, but cannot be together. A secret marriage force the young star-crossed lovers to grow up quickly for Juliet is to be wed to another. Juliet takes a sleeping potion that makes her appear to be dead for 42 hours -- in this time Romeo is to be told that she is still alive, however he was not so he illegally purchased a poison so that he could be with Juliet in death. He goes to her tomb and takes the poison. When Juliet awakes she sees this and kills herself with a dagger.

QUESTION TWO:
Fate, for something to be destined to happen. In the quote ‘From forth the fatal loins of these two foes. A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life’. This quote is referring to two lovers that have been fated together and are meant to be. ‘Take their life’ does not mean kill. It is a part of the thought from the previous line ‘from fourth the fatal loins of these two foins… take their life’. That means they were born enemies (Capuletes and Montegues).

QUESTION THREE:
Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. William Shakespeare’s play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ displays many important kinds of themes. The themes vary from love, hate, fate, death vs life, loyalty and honesty.

Love is naturally the play’s dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the passion of love at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. The powerful nature of love can be seen in the way it is described, or, more accurately, the way descriptions of it so consistently fail to capture its entirety. It is described like magic: “Alike bewitched by the charm of looks”.

The themes of death and violence spread Romeo and Juliet, and they are always connected to passion, whether that passion is love or hate. The love between Romeo and Juliet is linked from the moment of its point with death: ‘Tybalt notices that Romeo has crashed the feast and determines to kill him just as Romeo catches sight of Juliet and falls instantly in love with her.’ From that point on, love seems to push the lovers closer to love and violence, not further from it.

Fate, most people don’t even believe in it; in fact some don’t even know what it is. There are many definitions of Fate, but most seem to revolve around something like a force—in which no one can control—in life. But one of the few people—in that small percentage—that do believe in fate, so happens to include William Shakespeare himself.

A fated