Shakespeare for the terminally terrified

You don't need to learn them all! Just choose the ones you understand. Fate : Prologue : ' fatal loins' ' Star-cross'd lovers' Why?   Links to the theme of fate throughout the play.  Links to   Romeo : Some consequence yet hanging in the stars (I.iv) - Just before the masked ball where he meets Juliet Romeo : 'black fate (III.i) - after Mercutio has been killed Romeo : I defy you stars (V.i) - after he has been told that Juliet is dead Romeo : 'inauspicious stars ' (V.iii) - just before he kills himself What does it tell us about Romeo's character? Love: Lots of different kinds of love in the play.   Romantic love : Romeo : Did my heart love till now? (I.v) - he has just glimpsed Juliet at the ball Romeo : It is my lady. Oh, it is my love (II.ii) - he has seen Juliet at her window  Juliet : be but sworn my love (II.ii) -  about Romeo, whom she does not know can hear her Juliet : If thou dost love , pronounce i...

All Shakespeare's tragic heroes have one - right ?  Macbeth - ambition Hamlet - indecision Othello - jealousy Lear - ? being old?  Romeo and Juliet - being in love? Antony and Cleopatra - being in love? Richard III - ambition? Julius Caesar - ambition? Titus Andronicus - being too conventional? Timon of Athens - being angry? Coriolanus - being angry? Wrong! The problem is that the theory is too simplistic to apply to all the tragedies - even all the great ones. It didn't exist before A C Bradley, who formulated it in 1904.  You can read the book here   We also tend to misunderstand 'fatal' as equating to leading to death, but it doesn't actually mean that in this case. It is concerned with Fate, not fatality.  It cannot be denied that in all the plays fate leads to the leading character's deaths, of course, but so many of the tragedies have characters who try, and fail, to defy Fate.  Romeo  'I defy you stars' Cassius   T...