Tragic Elements in Romeo & Juliet

For few of William Shakespeare's plays is popular acclaim and critical opinion so widely at variance as for that tale of the star-crossed young lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Though it is one of the most popular of all of Shakespeare's plays, Romeo and Juliet seems to have attracted relatively little critical notice. The play comes in for a certain amount of praise, being identified as coming at just about the point in his career where he was fully hitting his stride: "For the first time, Shakespeare is gripped by his story" (Vyvyan, 1968, p. 141). Nevertheless, it is far from being a center of critical attention by Shakespeare specialists. The reasons, from a critical standpoint, are perhaps not difficult to fathom. Romeo and Juliet is not a profound work of tragedy. It has been a commonplace of criticism of tragedy since classical times that the essence of high tragedy is the tragic hero (or heroine): a character of noble and heroic qualities who is doomed through some internal flaw, a flaw typically associated with hubris, or excessive pride in some form or other.

In contrast, the doomed hero and heroine of Romeo and Juliet come to grief not through deep internal flaws of their characters, but because they fall in love with the wrong person:

Whereas Aristotle demanded a "glimpse into the nature

of things" beyond theatrical sensationalism and

required of tragedy "an overwhelming sense of inevit-

ability," Romeo and Juliet die, critics often tell us,

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nearly reminiscent of a girl's boarding school than of a private home; a number of young female Howard relations lived in dormatory-like quarters in one wing of the hall. There they were evidently subjected to a minimum of supervision. Catherine Howard was presently secured a position as a lady-in-waiting to the then Queen, the short-reigned Anne of Cleves. She was a diminuative girl of about eighteen. There is no authenticated portrait of her (the one commonly presented is evidently mis-attributed, see Fraser, 1992, p. 309), but she must have been appealing, perhaps in a blatantly erotic way, because she quickly won the attention of Henry VIII, who doted upon her as his "rose without a thorn," and made her his fifth queen (Fraser, 1992, pp. 309ff). Her mental capacities are perhaps best expressed by her evident willingness, even eagerness, to accept this most dangerous of honors, and even more by her subsequent want of discretion. After two years of marriage, information spread about the Court that strongly indicated that the young Queen had engaged in infidelity. Subsequent examination revealed that Catherine Howard had been anything but inexperienced when she came to the royal bed. At the age of thirteen, while living

Category: Literature - T