Romeo and Juliet. No One's Tragedy

"For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo." Romeo and Juliet is a tragic love story. Whose tragedy is it?

Many people see Romeo and Juliet as a tragic love story. Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet to show the world he lives in that love can empower and change. The death of the young couple is tragic but their death enriches and touches the lives of those who survive the violence unleashed into the society by the bitterness and vengeful circumstances surrounding them. Because of this, the love story is triumphant and not tragic. It turns the tragedy into one of gain, not lost.
Why you think their love is not tragic? Why is their love story not a tragic love story?
Shakespeare depicts love that can empower one to challenge the convention and the tradition in the world in which they live. In the patriarchal society, it is unthinkable for the daughter to defy her parents. Juliet goes against all social restraints when she contradicted her parents with, “I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear it shall be Romeo.” Even her father’s outburst of rage in “young baggage, disobedient wretch!” did not change her plans. And in the world where names mean more than just a way to address oneself, she advises Romeo to "Deny thy father and refuse thy name… And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’’ Young Juliet experiences love that gives her courage to challenge all that is expected of a young unmarried lady of noble background. Therefore her love liberates her from the bondage of the social mores of the time.
Shakespeare also draws our attention to the kind of love that empowers one to break from the bondage of peer influence and give courage in decision making in extreme circumstance. Romeo becomes a better man. He loses interest in the nonsensical banter with his cousin, Mercutio, as he gives in to the overwhelming passion and intensity of his love for Juliet. Mercutio notices the change and has to double check with Romeo with "now art thou Romeo". Romeo also resists the easy decision of staying away because he is banished. He returns, like a magnet, to Juliet. His love for Juliet is so intense that it tests his loyalty to both his friends and his country. It is different from his first love experience with Rosaline that he can easily give up. In both instances, he chooses Juliet. Shakespeare shows that their love an empowering love that takes over their responses to all and everyone around them.

Besides empowering the protagonists, Shakespeare uses their love to affect the lives of people around them. Romeo and Juliet showed Nurse and their parents that love can be pure and giving. It is not temporal and physical as understood by Nurse. It is not purely a physical pursuit and conquest as in ‘Prick love for pricking and you beat love down’ as understood by the bawdy Mercutio. It is intense, consuming and sacrificial. Nurse arranges for the couple to marry at Friar Lawrence. This surely shows how she must have given in to love’s path. Mercutio reacts as the two families do, in violence, when they meet. He dies without understanding love as Romeo does. As for the two sets of parents, they see the tragic death as something they could have prevented if they have not insisted on perpetuating the family feud. When the Prince says, ‘All are punished’, he must surely mean the loss of their children and the punishment as met by the feuding parties. So, not just for the two families for peace comes to Verona as the families and members of the families and the households resolve their inner bitterness.

Their tragic death has been foreshadowed in so many instances. It is written in the stars and it starts in the prologue with ‘A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.’ Juliet says, ‘If he be married/My grave is like to be my wedding bed.’ Both Romeo and Juliet pull out daggers to threaten suicide before Frair Lawrence when they think they cannot be together. Friar Lawrence’s says “These violent delights have violent ends / And in their triumph die”. Their death is an expression of sacrificial love that corrects a past that caused costly enmity between families, brings peace to the community and gives to all an example of the beautiful sacrificial and passionate love. Therefore, the death of Romeo and Juliet is tragic, but with it, peace and reconciliation come to all touched by the young couple in love. It is tragic but not a tragedy to anyone.