HUMAN ACTIONS IN ROMEO AND JULIET Essay Paper Example For Students

HUMAN ACTIONS IN ROMEO AND JULIET Essay Paper Word Count: 535In the play Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, two teenagers are controlled by achain of human actions. Act 4, scenes 1,3 and 5, are a good representation of the web of humanactions that cause tragedy between the pair of star crossed lovers (prologue). One example of human actions being dominant in those particular scenes is FriarLawrence. His actions, while being in good intent, caused much of the pain for the othercharacters in the book. His first action was to offer his help to the depressed Juliet, thinking thatmaybe he could spy a kind of hope (Act 4, sc i, ll 68). His actions then led him to think of thefake death which he tells to her. Hold then, go home, be merry (Act 4, sc i, ll 89), he tells her,while he gives her the poison and plans to give Romeo a message describing the plan. He doesnthowever, make sure Romeo gets the message which is probably the most crucial human action inthe play. The other example of human actions controlling the plot is Juliet. In those scenes she actsin ways which seriously affect her life and the rest of the play. First, she comes to the Friarlooking for help. I long to die, if what thou speakst speak not of remedy (Act 4, sc i, ll 66-67)is her attitude towards her situation. She then accepts the friars solution and decides to take thepoison. Give me, give me! Oh tell me not of fear (Act 4, sc 1, ll 121) are her words spoken tothe friar. Her actions here are to be brave and to rush into the plan. Her actions are moreimportant than the friars in this scene because she has all the control. The friars actions are mostlysuggestions and thoughts while her actions are the ones that are physical and are actually put intouse. This scene isnt the only scene that demonstrates human actions controlling the play. Forexample, in the very first scene, Tybalt and Benvolio fight causing a certain amount of tension thatsets the play up for some of the major events that happen later. Another example of this is whenRomeo and Juliet meet, Romeo goes out of his way to see her again, once more, setting up theplot. The web of human actions gets larger and stronger until finally, the two biggest humanactions occur and the two main characters lay dead. Lay dead because the actions they took ledthem to suicide. This incident, as tragic as it is, could probably have been avoided. If the actions that weretaken by the characters had been planned better and the consequences had been thought aboutmaybe a better outcome would have been reached. For example, if Friar Lawrence had thoughtabout what would happen if Romeo didnt receive the message in time, he probably would havetaken better precautions. Or maybe if Romeo had thought twice about killing Tybalt, he wouldhave realized that it couldnt help getting closer to Juliet. Therefore, my advice in this situation isto think hard about your actions. Dont be caught up in the outcomes of them like Romeo andJuliet did.