William Shakespeare (1585–1613) wrote some exceptional plays about love, death, kings, queens, betrayal and loss. All of these are impressive pieces of literacy because of his remarkable way with words and his abilities to use certain techniques to enhance hie work and add seperate ideas to keep the audience entertained. One of these techniques is a semantic field. The semantic field creates a separate idea using metaphors throughout the play and elaborating on them. One example is the idea of fate in Romeo and Juliet which is brought in before the actual play begins. There is a line in the prologue, ‘A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life‘ which immediately brings in the idea a couple will die even before we know who the couple is. We know they will kill themselves but we don’t know why, it has been decided in fate.
Early in the play, Lady Capulet gives her illiterate servant a letter of all the guests names that would attend a party tonight at their house. The servant (being illiterate) sets out to find a person who can read the list so he can find the guests. The first person he comes across is Romeo and lets him read the list when Romeo discovers that the love of his life, Rosaline, would be there. Coincidence or fate? He sets out to the party and shortly before entering the house he says, ‘But he that hath the steerage of my course direct my sail.‘ This essentially means that he is surrendering to fate and letting it take him wherever he is supposed to be since what has been decided, has been decided and some higher power knows what happens yet.
At the party he meets… Juliet! Romeo meets Juliet and the play is named after them so they were going to meet whatever happened. There could not have met so easily, the servant could not have found Romeo, the party could have been delayed or canceled, either one of them could have been killed in earlier years in the war between their families but the still met. Fate? Then the play gets into its stride and throughout the play when something goes wrong to Romeo, like when Juliet is put to sleep in act five scene one, he blames fate and says, ‘Then I defy you, stars!’ And sets off to kill himself, like the play foretold.