Romeo And Juliet Unity Essay

Unlike many other tragedies, Romeo and Juliet has two central characters that drive the plot and add to the tragic nature of the work. We have seen through the work and opinions of Aristotle that only having one main character in tragedies allows the work to have a sense of “unity” throughout, making it easy to assume that if a tragedy has two central figures there cannot be unity (Aristotle citation). However, upon reading and reflecting on the play, one could argue that having Romeo and Juliet together be at the center of the tragedy does not undermine any sense of unity nor take away any sense of tragedy from the play. One can see unity merely by the fact that both characters are always talked about together. It seems that one cannot simply analyze one of the characters without analyzing the other. Rarely does one …show more content…
It is during this scene where Romeo and Juliet profess their love to one another and decide how they want to live the rest of their lives (Romeo and Juliet citation). The way in which the two characters are linked in this scene is that they are alone together for the first time. They are not concerned with wooing each other; although there is brief concern for if they are caught, the fact that they love each other helps them bear the thought of that concern coming true. It is important to note that here, during this scene, the audience gets a sense of what the characters’ tragic flaw is: impulsiveness (first enotes citation). Impulsiveness can be seen as the tragic flaw among the characters because the whole romance between the two lasts merely five days. As gleaned from the dialogue in the play, they meet at the Capulet party, fall in love, confess their love, get married, and die all within a week—if they were not impulsive, these events would not have played out so quickly (Romeo and Juliet citation). In the scene the two exchange words asking what it means to be in love and it they are serious about it. Juliet leaves but then