Romeo and Juliet themes

What each theme means, in a few lines. Tap one for its quotes.

Love →

Fast, total, and young. Romeo and Juliet fall in love in a night and marry in a day. The play never says they are wrong. It says the world is.

Two families who cannot remember why they fight. The hate is older than the lovers and it kills them.

Star-crossed. Fortune's fool. I defy you, stars. The play keeps saying it was always going to end this way.

Juliet is thirteen. Romeo is not much older. Everything happens too fast because the people it happens to are young.

Six people die. Juliet talks about her grave before her wedding. Love and death are tangled together from the first scene.

Four days from meeting to death. Everyone is in a hurry. The Friar says slow down. Nobody does.

Fathers who own their daughters. A cousin who must be avenged. A name that decides who you can love.

Juliet is the sun, the stars, a torch. Love happens at night. Morning is the enemy.