William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy motivated by the forces of faith, accident, and character, and the reason the play is a tragedy is that these motivations are all bound with the overriding force of fate. The motivations noted here operate on the human level, but on a higher level the characters are doomed from the beginning because of forces greater than themselves. These forces include the long-running feud between the Montagues and the Capulets, something from which these lovers cannot escape no matter how hard they try. The inevitable downfall of the hero in a tragedy derives as a rule from some character flaw over which the individual has no control. For Romeo and Juliet, the "flaw" is their love for one another, a love which is not allowed given the antagonisms that exist between their families. They are living out their destinies, and the choices they make derive from their characters and the situations in which they find themselves. More than this, their choices have been limited for them by their parents and their parents' parents. They have inherited a family situation and a social and political structure that does not allow them to make choices that are completely free. In terms of the plot, decisions are made and events occur by the working of faith, accident, and character.
The sense of this story being determined by fate is made manifest in the opening lines of the play, a Prologue spoken by a Chorus. The Chorus sets up the situation of the two opposing households in Verona, "From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,/ Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean" (4-5). The Chorus states clearly that these are "star-cross'd lovers," a term that refers to the foretelling of the future involved in astrology and to the idea that the course of the stars in the sky has already decided what will happen. The human beings only act out what the stars have already indicated will happen. However, huma...