Seeing as you've taken your inspiration from the prologue of the
play, you've gotten a key factor in your argument already. The play starts by informing the
audience what will happen. The "star-crossed lovers take their life." As such, Romeo and Juliet's
fates are determined both figuratively and literally. It's a wonder that the audiences even
bothered to stay for the show!
That being said, one other element
that you might look at is the fact that Romeo and Juliet's relationships are pre-determined by
the feud between their families and parents. They only find out about each other through chance
and once they do, their relationship is very dangerous. Considering the fact that their families
don't even know about their relationship, it's pretty significant what happens to
them.
Symbolically, we can turn to both Romeo's and Juliet's
desperate measures to maintain their love for each other. Romeo is banished, which comes about
through chance, but also through the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues. Juliet is
supposed to marry Paris, which is illustrative of her "locked fate," but she takes action to
prevent that. She was about to commit suicide when Friar Lawrence offers her a potion that will
make it look as though she has died.
O, bid me leap, rather than marry
Paris,
From off the battlements of any
tower,
Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me
lurk
Where serpents are. Chain me with roaring
bears,
Or hide me nightly in a charnel
house,
O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling
bones,
With reeky shanks and yellow
skulls.
Or bid me go into a new-made
grave
And hide me with a dead man in his
shroud
And I will do it without fear or
doubt,
To live an unstained wife to my sweet
love.
Here, Juliet is very much
committed to solving the problem with the potion. However, her language and circumstance
illustrate and foreshadow that this will not go as planned. She's locked into the fate of death,
both by the prologue and by her naive and rash committment to the actions she will
take.
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