Juliet's Dilemma

Of all the characters, I have sympathy for Juliet. Her mother and father are determined to have her marry Paris, probably for his wealth and because they want Juliet to marry into a good family. However, Juliet is already in love with and already married to Romeo and is determined not to marry Paris. She says,

“O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, from off the battlements of any tower, or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears, or hide me nightly in a charnel-house, O’er-cover’s quite with dead men’s rattling bones, with reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; or bid me go into a new-made grave and hide me with a dead man in his shroud, - Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble; and I will do it without fear or doubt, to live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love” (Shakespeare 234).

Juliet tells her Friar Lawrence that she would rather do all these things rather than marry Paris.

I also have sympathy for Juliet because she is not allowed to marry her one true love, Romeo. They are not allowed to marry because of the long-standing feud between their families, the Montagues and Capulets. However they are so in love that they go to Friar Lawrence be wed them in secret.

Juliet is crying because Romeo is exiled.

Tybalt and Mercutio get into a fight in the streets of Verona. Tybalt kills Romeo’s close friend, Mercutio, which angers Romeo and he kills Tybalt. Because of his actions, Romeo is banished from Verona to Mantua. I feel sympathy towards Juliet because she will hardly ever get to see Romeo because of his banishment, and may never see him again.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Romeo is banished for killing Tybalt
who killed Mercutio

Vocabulary:

arbitrating - deciding; judging

distraught - upset; distressed

immoderately - wastefully; extravagantly

inundation - flooding; outpouring

resolution - solution to a problem

spited - acted maliciously or with ill will

supple - flexible; plaint