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Aubrey Buttrey
Professor McCarthy
Humanities I
17 November 2016
The Great Destroyer
An American businessman and previous vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, once said,
Love is the most powerful force on Earth. This statement proves to be an accurate notion for
the protagonists in the play Romeo and Juliet, as well as Ophelia in Hamlet. The suicides
committed by these characters in their respective plays portray the powerful nature of love and
loyalty and the overwhelming passion and violence they can trigger. Examining how love
operates as a contributing factor in the double suicide of Romeo and Juliet compared to the way
in which love triggers the suicide of Ophelia reveals a powerful correlation between love, or the
lack of love, and violence.
In Shakespeares most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, love is a violent, overpowering
force that defies all other values and loyalties. The young couple refuses to be captives to their
names and respective social circles. Juliet wishes for Romeo to reject his given identity; she
articulates this desire by saying, Deny thy father and refuse his name (2.2.35). This love is one
that causes the lovers to revolt against the world, even against themselves. In act 3, scene 3,
Romeo, in his desperation, contemplates using a knife against himself as a result of his
banishment from Verona, and thereby Juliet. There is no world without Veronas walls, / but

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purgatory, torture, hell itself. / Is death mistermed. Calling death banished, / Thou cuttst my
head off with a golden ax and smilest upon the stroke that murders me (3.3.17-23). Romeos
words show his willingness to sacrifice his own life rather than be separated from his love. Just
three scenes later, Juliet is distraught that her father has ordered her to marry Paris when she is
already secretly married to her one true love, Romeo, and she comforts herself with the
knowledge that she can kill herself with her knife if her other plans fall through. She says, If all
else fail, myself have the power to die (3.5.242). These radical reactions to their separation
gives readers a sense of the profoundly passionate love that Romeo and Juliet possess for each
other and the violent, self-harming actions they are willing to take to defend their love.
The forceful love displayed by Romeo and Juliet manifests itself in the renowned doublesuicide that occurs in the final act of the play. The tragic resolution is a demonstration of the
destruction caused by love. If his love of Rosaline had not prompted Romeo to attend a Capulet
party uninvited in act 1, scene 1, he would never have encountered Juliet or become involved in
a violent conflict with Tybalt. If Romeo did not view the death of his lover as the most cruel fate
and the end of his world, he would not have been driven to commit suicide; if Romeo and Juliet
did not prize their immature, sexually-based love so highly, they would never have betrayed their
families in the first place to satisfy their own desires which, would end up causing the death of
themselves, as well as others.
Hamlet is another play by William Shakespeare, which also demonstrates the power of
love through a central character, Ophelia. However, in this play, it is the lack of love rather than
the manifestation of love which overpowers all else. Although Ophelia has many individuals in
her life who claim to care about her, she is surrounded by people who mistreat and oppress her,
using her in whatever way they see fit. Hamlet is the prime example of this. In the funeral scene

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in act 5, Hamlet exclaims, I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their
quantity of love make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her (5.1.247-249). However, in act 3,
Hamlet professes not to have ever loved Ophelia and tells her to, get thee to a nunnery
(3.1.131-132). Between Hamlets proclamation of love at Ophelias grave and Ophelias claim
that Hamlet had importuned her with love in honorable fashion and had given countenance to his
speech with almost all the holy vows of heaven, it is reasonable to assume that Hamlet did
genuinely love Ophelia (1.3.110). Hamlet extinguishes her hopes of happiness and makes her a
lady most deject and wretched which does not make sense if he loves her or has sincerely
loved her (3.1.169). However, because Hamlet suspects that Polonius is using Ophelia to spy on
him, he does not hesitate to take advantage of the girl or her feelings in order to convince others
of his lunacy. Ophelia is crushed by Hamlets assertions and the lack of love and value that he
has for her.
After Hamlet cruelly rejects Ophelia in front of her father and the King, one might think
that her father would have some words of comfort for her. Instead, he simply says that he and
King Claudius heard everything and then proceeds to ignore her, plotting how to handle Hamlet
rather than deal with his distraught daughter (3.1.162-189). Ophelia, once again, is simply a
pawn in a mans game of chess. The countless betrayals that Ophelia experiences from the men
who are supposed to love her compiled with the confusion and distress brought by Hamlet
murdering her father, Polonius, leads Ophelia to commit the tragic, if inevitable, suicide through
drowning. Despairing and defeated by the realization that love does not exist for her, Ophelia
reaches an unavoidable conclusion: love has failed her entirely.
Although the protagonists in Romeo and Juliet and Ophelia in Hamlet all commit suicide,
the plays have remarkably different endings. In the tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, the power of love

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and the fear of separation from that love drives each of the main characters to take violent action
against themselves in order to preserve their love. In the tragedy, Hamlet, Ophelia is driven to
kill herself because of the lack of love shown towards her. Despite the circumstances of the
characters, both of these plays vividly portray the forcefulness of love and the violence that love
ignites and prove that love truly is the great destroyer.

Works Cited
"Nelson Rockefeller Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.
Shakespeare, William, and Harold Jenkins. Hamlet. London: Methuen, 1982. Print.

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Shakespeare, William, and Peter Holland. Romeo and Juliet. New York: Penguin, 2000. Print.