In his plays, Shakespeare uses all kinds of language devices. His uses of devices makes his work better, stronger and more interesting. Romeo and Juliet is a clear example of this. Shakespeare applies metaphors to construct a semantic field in his play Romeo and Juliet. He makes it seem that the characters in the play are directed by fate. Shakespeare does this by establishing metaphors onto other metaphors, elaborating on each other. It’s not just Romeo and Juliet where he achieves this. In his other play, Macbeth, fate is also a major theme. Shakespeare produces this idea of fate right from the beginning of the play. Within the prologue. The prologue states, that Romeo and Juliet will kill themselves, ‘A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life‘. It says this as if they were destined to die. As if it was in their fate.
Later in the play Capulet’s servant went out looking for somebody that could read the names, on the party invite list, given to the servant by Capulet. The servant ‘conveniently’ happened to bump into Romeo, who could read, ‘God ‘i’ good e’en. I pray, sir, can you read?’. Romeo read the list for him and found the name of the girl he loves, on it. This sets the plot of the play into motion. Romeo would now go to this party. However, instead of seeing his crush, he will find Juliet and fall in love with her. Now this could all just be a coincident that he bumped into the servant, or it was already written out in his fate.
Before going to the party, Romeo and his friends meet up. Here, Romeo says how he feels uncomfortable going to this party and that he dreamt something dreadful could happen at the party. Something that could result in his near timely death. But Romeo dismisses this, and says he will let the person that controls his fate lead him. ‘By some vile forfeit of untimely death. But he that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail.’ Romeo describes himself as a boat. Shakespeare added an extra metaphor in there. What Romeo refers to as ‘course’ is his fate and ‘sail’ is himself. Hence he is saying that he will let whoever controlling his fate guide him.
October 13, 2015 at 9:54 pm
October 13, 2015 at 10:13 pm
Great work, Aahnaf – you successfully unlocked the Semantic Field badge with this analysis of the idea of fate in Romeo and Juliet. You’ll be interested to see how this theme develops further as the play progresses.
The area for development in this piece is in the fluency of the writing. Everything you need to say to express your ideas clearly is there, but the language you’re using to communicate your thoughts may soon limit your ability to clearly express what you want to say.
The following advice might be of use to you:
1) Avoid a conversational tone in analytical writing. The third person viewpoint is the best: “Lets take Romeo and Juliet as an example.” – which would be ideal for a speech – could be more powerfully expressed in writing like this: “Romeo and Juliet exemplifies this approach”
2) Some of your shorter sentences limit your ability to demonstrate the relationships between the ideas you’re expressing. Try developing more complex sentence structures to support your increasingly sophisticated thinking: “Through out the play, Shakespeare uses metaphors and semantic field a lot. Building on each other constantly. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare builds up on this idea of fate” could be re-developed thus: “Shakespeare uses metaphors to develop a semantic field throughout his play Romeo and Juliet. He adds layers of meaning to the script by building metaphor upon metaphor to generate an idea about the characters’ lives being ruled by their fate.” – this is your thinking: more carefully expressed, it reveals a confident sophistication in your understanding of the mechanism of metaphor employed by Shakespeare.
I’d be thrilled if you went back to this piece and developed the language further. Once this is done, might I be able to use your work as an exemplar for the “Semantic Field” badge?