An Existentialist Approach to William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”

Abstract

Existentialism is the approach to define the human being not only as the thinking being but also as the acting and feeling human individual. In terms of Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of freedom, one must let go of the past, make a choice, act on it, and then take its responsibility. This study aims to analyse William Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet" in terms of existentialist approach, namely human’s existence of freedom which depends on the on-going relationships between the aspects of ‘being as a subject’ and ‘being as an object’. The play depicts the love between Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet who are the children of hostile families. At the beginning of the play, Romeo and Juliet are considered ‘being as an object’ because they accept an age-old blood feud between their families into which they are born. As an uninvited guest at a Capulet party, Romeo falls instantly in love with Juliet. After they learn to be the children of hostile families, they let go of the past and make free-choices by continuing to love each other, decide to marry and keep it in secret, so they become ‘being as a subject’. Then Romeo acts on his decision and attempts to halt a fight leading to the death of Juliet’s cousin for which Romeo is banished. In order not to marry her father’s choice of bridegroom, Juliet acts on her decision and fakes her own death to be reunited with Romeo. The message of her plot about the fake death fails to reach Romeo. Believing Juliet dead, Romeo takes the responsibility of his decision and drinks poison in her tomb. Juliet who wakes to find Romeo’s corpse beside her takes the responsibility of her decision and kills herself.