ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
Shakespeare’s craft has given us a finely turned peripeteia in which the protagonist
is responsible for his actions, though he is not accountable for the circumstances in
which he must act, and in which these actions recoil ironically upon his own head.
His despairing cry “O, I am fortunes fool” [sic] richly expresses his sense of the
uncalled for, unchosen, outrageous event. (p. 245)
Romeo arrives on the scene, as Nevo notes, “aglow from his marriage ceremony, a
vessel of good will,” but “happens by the sheerest accident upon the truculent Mercutio and the irate Tybalt” (p. 244). It is true that Romeo, newlywed to Juliet, does attempt to pacify Tybalt, and thus, this situation is “unchosen” (p. 245). But Nevo goes
too far when she states that “the plot of Romeo and Juliet stresses the accidental” (p.
241). Romeo was born into an environment of individuals copying ancestral behavior
(traditions), including the feud, that formed the circumstances of his life, without
which none of the events of the play – including the fights between Mercutio and
Tybalt and between Romeo and Tybalt – would have transpired. Certainly inconvenient timing (there was not enough time for Romeo and Juliet to make their marriage
public), that Romeo should traverse Veronese streets on his way from one place to
another is no accident, nor is the fact that Tybalt, seeking Romeo, should eventually
find him on those streets. Considering the events of the first scene, Romeo knows
well, as Benvolio puts it, that “the day is hot” (3.1.2) – that there is a danger of Montagues running into Capulets. Romeo is “fortune’s fool” inasmuch as he is a victim of
the ancestral behavior that prescribed the feud, and while his killing of Tybalt is indeed unfortunate, it is nevertheless also (in addition to the influence of ancestral behavior) the effect of his own actions (whereby he is not a victim), for (for the first
time), though revenging a friend and fellow citizen, he participates in the feud by killing a Capulet. Such is the turning point of the play.
Romeo has behaved traditionally by killing the descendent of his ancestor’s foe. The
audience experiences the outcome of behavior and can imagine alternative outcomes
had he done otherwise. The plot stresses unfortunate effects of a discernible cause,
rather than the accidental, and therein lies the tragic element. The titular characters,
once met, fall in love, immediately resolving to abandon the traditions that would
keep them apart, displaying improper kinship behavior, but at the same time demonstrating proper citizenship, for the tradition to which the members of each house adheres – that of the feud – is the obstacle to their love, and macroscopically, the obstacle to the state. That is, the model of society that would allow for Romeo and Juliet’s
love – the state model – is not possible save through proper citizenship, which is
placed throughout the play direct in opposition to proper kinship and the kinshipbased model of society (wherein individuals distinguish kin from non-kin). The Prince
soberly expresses the tragic element while noting its irony: “Where be these enemies?
Capulet, Montague, / See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, / That Heaven finds
means to kill your joys with love” (5.3.290-292). The problem of the blood feud tradition for the houses of Montague and Capulet had a simple solution all along: to ignore
their ancestors and forgive, if not love, their ancestral enemies, as did Romeo and Juliet. The tragedy is that it took, though need not have taken, the deaths of their offspring for the patriarchs to see this solution and abandon the feud; the characters, and
through them the audience, can imagine an alternative outcome through alternative
behaviors – that this could have been a happy ending.
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