Did Shakespeare Glorify Suicide in Romeo and Juliet?

Romeo and Juliet is a beautifully written tragic love story about how two lovers born with the wrong name, into the wrong family, fight for their belief of true love. In the play, Shakespeare leads the readers/audiences on an exciting roller-coaster ride of lows and highs, plummeting down a looming cliff right after reaching the summit, when hopes for Romeo and Juliet succeeding on running away are at its peak. One of the most heart-wrenchingly sad scenes of all time that will go down in the history of tragedy, the beautiful scene where Juliet plunges the dagger into her heart moments after Romeo dies from poison in her arms, will no doubt leave readers/audiences shaken and completely in shock of how everything could’ve gone so horribly wrong in every way possible. However, is there a hidden message behind these actions? This is not the first time suicidal thoughts have crossed two lovers’ minds. There are good reasons to believe that Shakespeare glorifies suicide in this play because of the continual appearance of suicidal thoughts, the ways he sees death as an escape, the peacefullness used in describing death, and the era of time Shakespeare lives in taken into consideration.

The idea of suicide appears many times throughout the entire play, and here is an excerpt from the first time it was mentioned:

Juliet

Do thou but call my resolution wise,

And with this knife I'll help it presently.

God join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands;

And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,

Shall be the label to another deed,

Or my true heart with treacherous revolt

Turn to another, this shall slay them both:

Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time,

Give me some present counsel, or, behold,

'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife

Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that

Which the commission of thy years and art

Could to no issue of true honour bring.

Be not so long to speak; I long to die,

If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy.

This was Juliet’s desperate cry in an effort to stop the marriage between her and County Paris. Readers can almost touch the sorrow and the pure longing for death in these brief verses, the pain of being unable to marry the man she loved. Juliet persuaded, or rather threatened, Friar Lawrence to help her with the plan that involves feigning death in her family’s tomb. Romeo himself also said that he’d rather be dead than banished, saying that he will not live a life where he won’t be able to see the face of his beloved Juliet when every unworthy creature can:

Romeo

Hadst thou no poison mix'd, no sharp-ground knife,

No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean,

But 'banished' to kill me?--'banished'?

O friar, the damned use that word in hell;

In modern values, it is quite unnerving to see, or even to imagine, the idea of a thirteen-year-old child willing to stab herself to death over a whirlwind romance, but since Shakespeare gave both of his leading protagonists a craving desire to want to die, he must’ve, to a certain degree, quite liked the idea of it. Digging deeper into the history of all Shakespeare’s plays, there are thirteen characters that chose to end their lives that way, through suicide. In no way would Shakespeare be writing so much about suicide, unless the exact same idea had crossed his mind, unless it has never left, dwelling in the background, whispering for him to kill off his characters in such a specific mean, accomplishing what could never happen in real life, only through his stories. Shakespeare is obviously attracted by the idea, therefore glorifying it in his plays isn’t really much of a surprise.

In Romeo and Juliet, suicidal thoughts show up right after something bad happens. Romeo wanted to end his own life when he was announced to be banished from Verona, and he really did finish the job after he thought he saw the “corpse” of Juliet. Juliet also wanted to stab herself to death when Lord Capulet threatened to disown her if she didn’t marry Paris, and she really did get it done when she saw Romeo kill himself for her. The lovers took their lives because they felt there was no hope left, and didn't want to continue fighting for that slim chance that life would turn out right. In creating these two characters, Shakespeare skillfully projected his thoughts onto them. It can be inferred that even he doesn’t want to hold any hope in his worst days, and apparently, he does not reject the idea of ending his own life to end whatever trouble he was facing. He sees suicide as an escape. In the end of Romeo and Juliet, everything did turn out right after the death of the two lovers. The Montague and Capulet families let go of their old grudge, and the lovers die side-by-side, hand-in-hand. All things considered, this is actually not a bad ending for a tragedy. If there were some, if not any, hidden message in this play, it is that life is painful and death might be the better option sometimes.

Shakespeare’s life was not easy. In his time, it was the plague that shadowed his world in a mass of darkness, bringing sickness and death in its wake. Romeo and Juliet was written one year after it struck London with an onslaught of pain and misery, so no doubt his work would reflect the overall mood of that time period, possibly ending tragically. The plague wiped out one third of Europe’s entire population, and it must’ve been really tough for Shakespeare to see people falling all around him, neighbors, friends, families… he would’ve felt like a cornered animal, with the plague chasing right behind his heels, relentlessly beating down on every last survivor. There would’ve been a high possibility that he wanted to die. Living life was too unbearably painful, death was kinder with less suffering. In the play, the process of dying was described peacefully. In real life, if you die by plunging a knife into your chest, there will be a high chance you miss your heart and don’t end up dying, or you might die from blood loss or infection. Either way, the process would be slow and cruciating, not fast and clean, unless Juliet was a professional surgeon or experienced serial killer, which was highly unlikely. Romeo, on the other hand, would need to have modern drugs to find a poison that kills so efficiently and effectively, which, by all means, is quite impossible as well. But the way Shakespeare wrote the death scene, he wrote them with quite an amount of peace, no agonized screaming, no torturing struggles. Everything was done neat and calm without prolonged suffering. This may be due to the fact that he understood the hardships in life, and therefore, could relate to wanting to die. He had a good reason to glorify suicide, and so he did.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, not because the lovers didn’t end up together, but because they weren’t alive to enjoy being together. Being able to breathe is obviously better than being buried in the ground, but in Shakespeare’s time, life isn’t exactly always better than death. It is only natural for him to glorify suicide, though quite subtly, in his plays. He continually brings up the idea of it, giving a little prod in that direction when something seemingly impossibly bad happens. He also beautifies the process of dying, censoring it down to a peaceful sleep, erasing the painful last moments, so it lessens readers/audience’s natural fear of the unknown. With these in mind, it is hard to reread his plays and not see the discreetly hidden details within. Whether intentionally or not, Shakespeare glorifies suicide, and it has always been on the back of his mind, nagging on his conscience, so his works or more or less affected by the concept, as readers can tell just but reading Romeo and Juliet, one of his best-known plays.