[Dickey asserts that fate, divine will, and the lovers' passion are inseparably linked in Romeo and Juliet, and all of these agents contribute to the catastrophe. According to the crit ic, the work is "a carefully wrought tragedy which balances hatred against love and which makes fortune the agent of divine justice without absolving anyone from his responsibility for the tragic conclusion. " In this sense, Dickey contends, Romeo and Juliet reflects the Elizabethan concept of moral responsibility, a tenet which stressed that all sinners must endure the punishment of God, whose will is carried out through the operation of fate.]

Romeo and Juliet, above everything a play of love, is also a play of hatred and of the mysterious ways of fortune. Although love in the first part of the play amuses us, in the end we pity the unhappy fate of young lovers, a fate which...