Fate: star-crossed, or just fast?

The Prologue calls them star-crossed. Then the play shows you a letter that never arrives, a tomb somebody reaches first, and a man who drinks poison minutes before his wife wakes up. The play blames the stars, and then it keeps putting a person in the room for every disaster.

Fate gets its own video in this collection, and for the story from the first street fight to the tomb, go to the Overview.

The claim this video tests: in this play, fate is the name the characters give to their own speed. Fate is announced before a single scene. The Chorus, who speaks the Prologue, says: From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life. Star-cross'd means the stars are against them. Loins means where children come from, so they are born to these two enemies, and take their life means both being born and killing themselves. The Chorus goes on to call it The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love. Death-mark'd means labelled for death before it begins. Because you are told the ending, suspense is not what the play is for. It asks you to watch how the ending gets made, and by whom. Before the feast, Romeo tells his friend Mercutio about a dream. Three replies Mercutio could give: they are warnings from heaven, they come true for lovers, or they are worthless. Which of those three replies does Mercutio give? The third. I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy. An idle brain is an empty one, and vain fantasy is empty imagining. Shakespeare lets the play argue with itself, through the sharpest talker on stage. The play hands you a doubter before the first omen has come true, and an omen is a sign of what is coming.

Fate turns into a belief the characters carry around, because they keep saying it out loud themselves. At the feast, Juliet sends the Nurse to find out who Romeo is, and says to herself: My grave is like to be my wedding bed. She means that if he is already married, she will die unmarried. Four days later the line comes true in the tomb, and she was the one who said it. On Monday, moments after he has fought Tybalt and killed him, Romeo cries out: O, I am fortune's fool. Is fortune's fool the play's verdict, or Romeo's excuse, and why? His excuse. Fortune's fool means luck's plaything, but he drew his sword by choice, so the line hands luck a decision he made himself. Each time a character blames the stars, Shakespeare has just shown you somebody making a choice.

Friar Lawrence, the priest Romeo trusts, names the danger before the wedding, and it is not the stars. Just before he marries them, he warns Romeo: These violent delights have violent ends. Violent here means sudden and extreme. The warning is about speed: joy that arrives this fast ends just as fast. The play is built at that speed. They meet on Sunday night, they marry on Monday, and they are dead by Thursday dawn. Wednesday, in Mantua, the banished Romeo wakes happy from a dream and says it out loud. If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand. Presage means foretell. The last omen in the play is read backwards by the man it is about, because his servant Balthasar is arriving to say that Juliet is dead. Romeo hears it. He could send to Friar Lawrence for word, wait a day in Mantua, or ride to Verona tonight. Which of those three does Romeo choose, in the very next breath? The last. His first words are Is it e'en so? Then I defy you, stars! Then he hires horses and buys poison before he leaves.

That is the play's answer. Fate here is the name the characters give to their own speed, and every disaster has a person in the room. Free will means choosing for yourself, and the one time Romeo claims it, defying the stars, is the moment he causes the ending.

One examiner's report records answers that took this same line. Some candidates explored the idea of free will and the extent to which certain characters such as Friar Lawrence and Romeo are responsible for their own actions in the play, despite blaming fate or misfortune. The habit behind that is plain: for every event someone calls fate, name the person who chose it. Now an essay question to plan. How far does Shakespeare suggest that what happens to the lovers is fate rather than their own choices? Three nudges. List the events people call fate, then ask who was in the room for each. Find the one line where somebody claims a choice. And check what the Friar says the danger is. Can you sketch three paragraphs on that? Pause and work it out. One plan. Open on the Prologue's star-cross'd lovers, and why being told the ending makes an audience watch the decisions instead. Next, the characters who name fate themselves, with Romeo crying fortune's fool straight after he chose to fight. Last, the Friar's warning about speed against Romeo defying the stars, the decision that brings the ending. Two turns to avoid. A paragraph of star-lore from Shakespeare's time before you answer anything, and the word hamartia used as a label. Hamartia is a tragic hero's fatal flaw, so it has to be a flaw in a person, and fate is not a person. One examiner's report puts it this way: It is important that such terminology is properly understood by candidates and that they can use it in a relevant way.

Turn the argument round now and test it on five lines, and the last one is a decision this video has not looked at. First, the Chorus: what does star-cross'd mean? The stars are against them. A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life. Next, Mercutio: dreams are the children of an idle what? Brain. Begot of nothing but vain fantasy. Now the Friar at the tomb: what does he blame for the failure of his plan? Heaven. A greater power than we can contradict Hath thwarted our intents. Thwarted means blocked, and he is the man whose plan it was. Here's a harder one: which is Romeo's line, fortune's fool or I defy you, stars? Both are his. One blames luck after a choice, and the other claims a choice that makes the ending. Try a new one: Capulet moves the wedding forward a day. Fate, or a choice? A choice, and it is Capulet's. It makes Juliet drink the drug a night early, and the Friar's letter now has a day less to reach Romeo.

Name three events called fate and who chose each, and this one's sorted, so your thumbs up can say as much. Not there yet is normal too: save the video and explain the argument to somebody else, since saying it out loud shows you where the gaps are.

Next in the chapter: Suffering, despair and hope: grief performed at somebody.

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