When it comes to the hamartia between the characters Romeo and Juliet, to put it simply, they love too much and too quickly. At the beginning of the play Romeo is still very much in love with Rosaline, and that same evening some of the Montagues go to a party, he forgets she exists and moves on to loving Juliet.
"If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss." (1, 5, 91)
This quote is just a few minutes into them being at the party and Romeo has completely forgotten about Rosaline and is trying to convince Juliet to kiss him. He is already in love with this girl who he doesn’t really know yet. It was just a few pages ago when he said how much he was in love with Rosaline and how upset he was that she wouldn’t sleep with him. “Out of her favor, where for I am in love.” (1, 1, 161) Throughout the first four scenes, Romeo is still clearly in love with Rosaline and then in the fifth scene of the play, he suddenly has no interest in her and only has feelings for Juliet, even though he hasn’t gotten to know her. Juliet along with Romeo both fall in love far too quickly, so this begs the question of whether they were really in love or not. When Romeo is still very in love with Rosaline, a group of Montagues go to the Capulet party to help Romeo forget the fact that Rosaline won’t sleep with Romeo. Since Romeo is still very sad he decides to sit on the sideline and hold a torch for the beginning of the party, this decision is one that is not very loyal to the Montagues since the Capulets are their enemies. Levin wrote an essay that was about this topic that was published by Shakespeare Quarterly. Shakespeare Quarterly is a group that chooses and publishes the best essays at Oxford University.
...but Romeo unwilling to join the dance had resolved to be an onlooker and carry a torch. That torch may have burned symbolically for, but not for Juliet. (Levin, Form and Formality in Romeo and Juliet, 3)
It would make sense that Romeo would feel uncomfortable at the Capulet party since he spent his whole life hating the Capulets but once he sees Juliet that feeling goes away completely. That sense of being uncomfortable was his loyalty to his family and then once he catches sight of a pretty girl he almost forgets that he’s a Montague. In the very next scene, he renounces his family name. “By a name, I know not how to tell thee who I am. My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word.” (2, 2, 53) Romeo is quite literally saying that if he had the chance he wouldn’t be part of the Montague family, this shows a deep sense of love for Juliet and absolutely no loyalty to his family.
When it comes to anagnorisis, Romeo has his when Mercutio is killed while Romeo is trying to break up the fight between him and Tybalt. Romeo realizes that because of his love for Juliet, he hasn’t been loyal to his family. “O sweet Juliet, thy beauty hath made me effeminate and my temper softened by valor’s steel!”(3, 1, 109) Romeo is clearly saying that if he was not in love with Juliet he would have fought alongside Mercutio and he would not have died. Romeo then proceeds to kill Tybalt in an attempt to seek revenge for killing his friend. This action sends Romeo into a downward spiral of bad decisions. Juliet never really has an anagnorisis, she never realizes how much her love for Romeo really affects her so she never does anything to fix it she just does anything she can to be with Romeo, even down to faking her own death so she can run away with him since the Prince exiled Romeo for the murder of Tybalt. “A thing like death to chide away this shame, that copest with death to ‘scape from it.” (4, 1, 75) In this scene, the Friar is explaining the position that Juliet will take to fake her own death in the final scene. In the previous scene, Romeo and Juliet had just slept together for the first time. Juliet is willing to have her family believe that she is dead as long as she can be with Romeo; she just doesn’t care about anything but Romeo. Her loyalty to her family is at an all-time low and remains that way for the rest of the play. Utterback is another writer from Shakespeare Quarterly who had an interesting take on Romeo and Mercutio are displayed
Only in the wit-combat act of Act 2, scene 4 when Romeo has dropped his affected posture as the despairing lover of Rosaline, do the two young men appear as dramatic equals. (Utterback, The Death of Mercutio, 105)
Before Mercutio dies he and Romeo are finally seen as equals instead of the rest of the play When Mercutio is seen as more of a big brother to Romeo. Then once Mercutio dies Romeo finally realizes his fatal flaw.
At the end of the play Romeo and Juliet both kill themselves due to the fact they think the other is dead, they killed themselves over someone who they have only known for a few days. At the end of the play both of these characters have lost all their loyalty towards their families they only feel love for each other, and absolutely no one else. Romeo kills himself because he finds Juliet while she is still in her death-like coma and Juliet then kills herself because Romeo is dead. Before this happens Romeo has a moment of extremely low loyalty. “I will tear thee joint by joint and strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs” (5, 3, 35) Romeo is showing signs of almost hate towards a character that has done nothing but help him through this situation, Balthasar even hid him from the Prince. He hasn’t seen Juliet in a day or so and he wants to see her so bad that he threatens his friend so he’ll leave him alone. He is also planning to kill himself in the tomb so he gives Balthasar some money which may show a little bit of morality. After Romeo killed himself Juliet wakes to see the Friar and then tells her Romeo has killed himself and she then goes into the tomb and kills herself. “Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger, this is thy sheath. There rust and let me die” (5, 3, 169) Both Romeo and Juliet killed themselves for a person they met three days ago and with this the two families' feud is resolved, they resolved their differences over the death of two of their children. The Writer William Carroll has an interesting perspective on this topic. Their article was published by Comparative Drama which is associated with Western Michigan University.
The average audience of Romeo and Juliet would have regarding the behavior of the young lovers as deserving everything they got (Carroll, 'We were born to die: "Romeo and Juliet", 54)
Carroll describes the audience of Romeo and Juliet thinking that the characters getting what they deserve. Carroll would be correct, this play was designed to be a comedy and the audience would likely feel no remorse for the characters at all.
Romeo and Juliet simply love too much and fall in love too quickly. They don’t see this as an issue, we see this when Mercutio dies Romeo really doesn’t do anything to change his habits. Even when Romeo realizes his love for Juliet has been his downfall he just lets it control him. Both Romeo and Juliet kill themselves thinking that the other is dead, even though they only knew each other for three days they both killed themselves.
Work Cited
Levin, Harry. “Form and Formality in Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 1, 1960, pp. 3–11. JSTOR, https://doi.org/1 0.2307/2867423. Accessed 5 June 2023.
Utterback, Raymond V. “The Death of Mercutio.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 2, 1973, pp. 105–16. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2868849 . Accessed 5 June 2023.
Carroll, William C. “‘We Were Born to Die’: ‘Romeo and Juliet.’” Comparative Drama, vol. 15, no. 1, 1981, pp. 54–71. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41152929. Accessed 6 June 2023.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Edited by John C. Crowther, Spark Pub., 2003.
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