Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare's Rome and Juliet is the tragic story of two star-crossed lovers whose lives come to a tragic end. In this assignment I intend to explore the question, “Who is to blame for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet?” There are many characters who could have helped or hindered the situation between them. The social context that forms the backdrop to the work and the parental expectations of each noble family will be explored as this assignment develops. The feud between the two families, Montague and Capulet, is the basis of the entire tragedy and is mainly responsible for the death of Romeo and Juliet. The feud was the scene of the tragedy. Without it, Romeo and Juliet would never have had to keep their marriage and love a secret. The feud pushed the characters to express anger towards their enemies, which led to fights that ended fatally and these fatal fights lead to the fatal deaths of Romeo and Juliet. Throughout the play, Benvolio often emerges as the peacemaker. We can see right from the beginning when he tries to stop a fight between the servants of two families in Act 1 Scene 1, “Partfools. Put down your swords, you don't know what you're doing,” he only fights when attacked, “I just keep the peace. Put away your sword, or see to it that you divide these men from me. At the beginning of the play, due to his nature, he convinces Romeo to crash the Capulets' party to take his mind off Rosaline. “Compare his face with some I will show. And I will make you believe that your swan is a raven,” is what he says to Romeo. It is thanks to him that they met. Even though he meant well, it was... middle of paper... there was no feud between the families, they might never meet, hate each other, or live happily ever after. Maybe if the families we are great friends with would have been forced to marry each other and would have killed themselves because they didn't want to get married. I believe that all of our lives as individuals would be different if we came from a different background, a different place to live. or from a richer background. I also learned that feuds should never last long. One party should have the maturity to attempt a reconciliation and, if that fails, have the maturity to walk away from the situation and let it play out. There should be no mistake in trying to make up whatever the reason behind the feud is. This is why I believe in "forgive and forget", because eventually people will get hurt due to immaturity.