What life lessons do Romeo and Juliet teach?

Shakespeare's offers a
number of possible lessons for life. Perhaps the most important is that we should not love
recklessly. Thethat bothandsuffer is, arguably, not primarily because of the feud between their
families, but because they love too recklessly, impatiently, and immoderately.repeatedly
entreats Romeo and Juliet to "love moderately," and he advises them that "violent
delights have violent ends." He compares the way in which Romeo and Juliet love one another
to "fire and powder," connoting a trail of gunpowder, and the inevitable explosion at
the end of the trail. It might even be argued that Romeo and Juliet's love is childish and
immature. Indeed, the only obvious difference between Romeo's love for Juliet and his love for
Rosaline before Juliet is that his feelings for Juliet are reciprocated, whereas his feelings
for Rosaline are not. The implication is that Romeo is full of adolescent lust, as opposed to
love.

Another possible lesson for life, offered by the play, is that one
should not ignore one's responsibilities. As an authority figure and an adult, Friar Laurence
has a responsibility not to marry Romeo and Juliet, who, after all, are children. He should, as
the responsible authority figure, inform the parents. Instead he marries them because he thinks,
naively, that their "alliance" might "turn (the two) households' rancour to pure
love." This is indeed a noble intention, but it is, nonetheless, irresponsible, naive, and,
ultimately, very damaging. Later in the play, Friar Laurence also decides to help Juliet to fake
her own death, and thus knowingly (and unnecessarily) subjects Juliet's parents to the
experience of their own daughter's (seeming) death.

A third life lesson one
can take from the play is that violence begets violence. The play begins with a scene in which
members of the two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, brawl in the streets. This
indirectly leads tolater confronting Romeo, and in the succeeding melee, killing . Romeo then
kills Tybalt, to avenge Mercutio's death. And ultimately of course, the play ends with the
deaths of its two protagonists, Romeo and Juliet. The message here seems rather clear. No good
comes from any of the violence in the play. Violence merely begets more
violence.