Question

How is the theme of death developed in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet?

Accepted Answer

To analyze how an author develops a theme, one needs to look at the literary devices the author used to draw out the theme because it is through these devices that the author also develops the theme. Some literary devices to consider looking for in your analysis are "character development, setting, mood, plot, point of view, figurative language, allegory, symbolism, and irony" ("Identifying Themes and Literary Analysis"). The development of the theme of death should be a fairly easy one to analyze seeing as how the play ends with multiple deaths.One good way to analyze the development of the theme of death is by looking at character development. If we look closely, we see many of the characters who die share character traits in common that many of the characters who do not die don't share. What the characters who die have in common is a preference to act upon rash, impetuous, violent, passionate emotions rather than rational thought. Tybalt, for example, is the second character to die, and we see in the very first scene that he is quick to judge and has a fiery temper. We see both his quickness to judge and his fiery temper when he quickly assumes that Benvolio is starting a fight with the servants rather than trying to break up the fight. Tybalt's hasty, emotionally driven decision leads to a whole-city riot. Romeo and Juliet are also two characters that make rash, impetuous, emotionally driven decisions, as evidenced by their decisions to marry so suddenly as well as their convictions to commit suicide. In contrast to these characters, Benvolio is the one character who is rational, sensible, and the only peace lover. We see his rational, sensible side both when he tries to persuade Romeo to forget about Rosaline and when he tries to convince Mercutio to get off the street the day that Mercutio is killed, warning that if they should meet any Capulets, "[they] shall not scape a brawl" (III.i.3). We even see his all-important peace loving side in the very first scene when he tries to break up the fight between the servants, saying, "Part, fools! / Put up your swords. You know not what you do" (I.i.59-60).This contrast between the rational Benvolio who does not die and all of the emotionally driven characters who do die shows us that Shakespeare used character development to develop his theme of death, ultimately making the point that allowing oneself to be governed by irrational emotions rather than rational thought can lead to dire consequences.

Answer

Death emerges as a theme from the opening of the play. In the Prologue, beyond "civil blood," and mention of suicide, the word death is repeated twice:

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love ...
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage

From the start, therefore, we know that death will a theme of this play. This idea is reinforced in act 1, where the Prince, fed up with the feuding spilling into the streets, puts his foot down and declares he will kill any Montague or Capulet caught fighting.
 
Romeo and Juliet's love affair is always carried on with the fear of death hovering over it. Juliet, for example, early on in act 2, wants Romeo to hurry away from underneath her balcony lest he be caught and killed by her male relatives.
 
The death dynamic continues to unfold alongside love and marriage, as Tybalt kills Mercutio, and Romeo, despite his deep desire to steer clear of the fighting, kills Tybalt, leading to his banishment.
 
A threatened marriage to Paris leads to the final plot twist of Juliet feigning death. In Act 4, she has a long meditation on death before she drinks the potion, wondering, among other things, if the friar has betrayed her and is actually poisoning her. She also remembers Tybalt, noting he is buried in the vault where she will be, and worries about spirits haunting the place:

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,At some hours in the night spirits resort ...

Foreshadowing her end, she fears she will commit suicide by clubbing herself to death with a relative's bone if she awakes early in the crypt and sees the mangled corpse of Tybalt. In fact, she does kill herself, though the body she sees is Romeo's, and instead of bone, she uses a dagger.
 
Shakespeare never lets us get far from death in a play showing the futility and waste of a long term feud, and its devastating effect on the young.

Romeo and Juliet

How is the theme of death developed in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet?

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