Romeo and Juliet's deaths

[curiosity]

In the current coursework rush my daughter randomly shouted to me, "who or what was the cause of Romeo and Juliets deaths?" I replied (mid coronation street) "a lack of communication". Now she has done an excellent piece of work discussing haste,fate,coincidences,character flaws and feuds. But she doesn't mention basic communication, yet the overall feeling I remember the play left with me was that it was a tragedy because better communication could have prevented it. Is there a standard literary debate for this question and does communication vs fate come into it? or am I not getting it. I'd be interested in others views.
Thanks

[fairkatrina]

Malign fate is usually cited as the cause of their deaths, as it is a string of unfortunate coincides that lead to it (the message from the friar going astray, Romeo's friend seeing Juliet "dead" and rushing striaght off to tell him). Of course these are communication problems (if only the message had been sent sooner, if only his friend had spoke to the friar before hurrying off to Mantua...) but Shakespeare was writing a morality tale about the danger of suppressed love, and of course his greatest love story, and to simply have the characters commit suicide through something as simple as a "lack of communication" would have left the audience unhappy. That they are fated to die is apparent at the beginning - they are "star cross'd" lovers, whose deaths will end the period of civil strife caused by the animosity between their families.

[Bev2007]

The impression that has stayed with me is that they died because of a lack of faith. In one another, that things would be OK, that they aren't always what they seem.

Guess Ive always been an optimist!

[pingping]

I've always thought that familial pride and prejudice also played huge part of the story. If either of the families had allowed the relationship, then neither Romeo or Juliet would have resorted to poison.

[curiosity]

Thanks, I find this interesting. I agree fairkatrina that if it was blatently obvious that the only cause was poor communication then it wouldn't be very interesting, but maybe I look for the simple answers. I do think that the various levels of communication within the play are responsible in some way and therefore influence the outcome or peoples views of it, eg a lack of faith as Bev's impression is could have been lessened by better communication or the family pride & predjudice maybe sorted by it. Maybe I'm putting a modern day perspective on it, but then I was left with this impression 30 years ago, which I know is still modern day! But maybe not as much communication/relationship hype then.

[sherlockian]

There's an interesting parallel in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the Durbevilles - when Tess writes a confessional letter to Angel and pokes it under his door on the eve of their wedding. He says nothing about it so she assumes he has accepted her youthful 'misdemeanour' but to her horror she later discovers that she pushed the letter under the carpet so he hadn't seen it - the whole outcome of the novel would probably have been radically different but for this one twist of Fate - just as Romeo's suicide would have been prevented if he had received the Friar's message and knew about the plot to fake Juliet's death.