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Kyu-cheol HwangThis essay aims to prove that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy of Providence. The critics who have discussed the nature of the play are categorized into three: critics who regard the play as a tragedy of fate; critics who regard it as a tragedy of character; critics who regard it as a tragedy on Providence. However, the greatest error of the first is that they don't recognize the deaths of the two lovers are due to their wrong choices, not the actions of fate. The blind point of the second is that the price of the weaknesses of the characters is too high if we consider the deaths of Mercutio, Tybalt, Lady Montague, Paris, Romeo, and Juliet. What the third don't recognize is that the reconciliation of the two households is not yet realized at the end of the play. This essay will prove that the lack of two protagonists' faith on God and their failure to realize the providence of God are the causes of their deaths. Both Romeo and Juliet are Catholics, but they frequently show anti-Catholic speeches and behaviors throughout the play. For example, they attribute the events which occur to them incomprehensibly and unexpectedly to fate, attempt to commit suicide twice respectively, utter blasphemies against God as they praise their love using religious metaphors, wholly depend on Love and then on Death, and disregard Friar Lawrence's advice. Especially, Romeo ignores two dreams in Act I and Act V which are the revelations of his Holy Spirit foreshadowing his near future. Therefore, Romeo and Juliet can be viewed as a tragedy of Providence in that the deaths of Romeo and Juliet are not caused by fate or character or are not the inevitable part of God's plan to end the feuds of the two households but by their own arrogant and blasphemous speeches and behaviors against God.
