These are some questions and observations whittled down and altered from my full commentary on Troilus and Cressida. They may prove useful for participating in class discussion. If you want to view the full questions and commentary set, just follow the relevant links in the sitewide menu bar above.
Shakespeare, William. The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Second Quarto. (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 209-77.)
Act 1.0, Prologue (210, the Prologue emphasizes the “star-crossed” nature of Romeo and Juliet’s love match and the cost of the feud between the Montagues and Capulets.)
The English sonnet spoken by the Prologue refers Romeo and Juliet’s tragic end both to the influence of the stars and to the “civil hands” of their equally wealthy feuding families. With regard to the influence of the planets, remember Cassius in Julius Caesar saying, “the fault … is not in our stars, / But in ourselves.” [1] It’s fair to say that about the parents of the two families.
Still, as Jonathan Bate points out, it is the young who litter the tomb of the Capulets at the play’s conclusion. [2] Romeo and Juliet are at the play’s center, so it is often considered a tragedy of fate. Juliet is not to blame for the couple’s misfortunes. And even though Romeo’s banishment comes from his own participation in the town’s violence, he is still “fortune’s fool.” [3]
Shakespeare does not follow a unitary tragic model. He generates his tragic intensities from his materials. A notion of tragedy as broad as “the fall of an illustrious person from good fortune to bad” [4] serves well. In Romeo and Juliet, we are dealing with a primal tragedy of youthful expectations checked by forces that they cannot control, from mindless, chaotic violence to middle-aged fears of impermanence, to the weight of the past upon the present.
Act 1, Scene 1 (210-15, Verona’s feuding families, the Montagues and Capulets, get into a street fight; Prince Escalus arrives to stop the fighting and threaten the culpable members of both families with dire penalties; Benvolio questions Romeo about the cause of his sadness, and Romeo confesses that the woman he loves doesn’t return his affection.)
The servants’ quibbling early on shows how trivial the Montague and Capulet feud has become. Samson’s obscene innuendos suggest that the family feud is easily made to serve base appetites: “I will push Mon- / tague’s men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall” (210, 1.1.15-16). There is no nobility in such factional strife. Tybalt and Benvolio, with their melodramatic taunts—“Turn thee, Benvolio; look upon thy death” (211, 1.1.62)—are also absurd.
We see with what fearful speed the hostilities ramp up, with the upper-class youth going at one another, and then the elders threatening to join in, too. The Prince breaks up this unseemly fighting, but from his mention of “Three civil brawls bred of an airy word” (212, 1.1.81), we may gather that he has dealt too leniently with such disorders. As in Measure for Measure, the ruler has allowed his subjects’ petty desires to wreak havoc. [5]
But we may draw from the phrase “bred of an airy word” something darker than the ruler’s vulnerability: the power that confronts Romeo and Juliet is mindless, chaotic violence from the depths of human irrationality, which, to judge from Samson’s charged language, would include the sexual instinct as well as a general desire for dominance.
We first hear of Romeo when Lady Montague asks Benvolio where the young man has been hiding. As Benvolio explains to Lady Montague, he came upon Romeo “an hour before the worshipped sun / Peered forth the golden window of the East” (213, 1.1.113-14). That is a delightfully Euphuistic description! [6] Benvolio says he has seen Romeo, but doesn’t know the root of his troubles.
Montague has no clue what is troubling his son. Has this aging father forgotten what it’s like to be young and infatuated? Still, he’s worried: “Black and portentous must this humor prove, / Unless good counsel may the cause remove” (213, 1.1.136-37).
With the Montague patriarch’s approval, Benvolio soon takes advantage of a chance encounter with Romeo to learn directly from the source that love is the cause: Romeo says that he is “Out of her favor where I am in love” (214, 1.1.163).
The “her” is Rosaline. Romeo speaks with wit, but in Petrarchan extremes: “O heavy lightness, serious vanity, / Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms …” (214, 1.1.171-72). Still, he touches upon what is happening now that he’s open to the sway of erotic attraction and idealistic infatuation: “I have lost myself; I am not here. / This is not Romeo: he’s some other where” (214, 1.1.192-93).
Benvolio advises Romeo to stop talking and start looking around. He is to compare as many beautiful women as possible: the solution to lovesickness and a felt loss of identity or self-certainty is “giving liberty unto thine eyes” (215, 1.1.222). It sounds as if Romeo has never actually met the saintly Rosaline.
Act 1, Scene 2 (215-18, when Count Paris expresses his desire to marry Juliet, the patriarch of the Capulet clan invites him to an evening feast at which Juliet will be present; an illiterate servant responsible for the feast’s guest list asks Romeo and Benvolio to read it; they see that Romeo’s much-desired Rosaline is among those invited.)
Capulet meets with Juliet’s new suitor Count Paris, and is pleased with the prospect of Prince Escalus’s kinsman marrying his daughter, though the girl “hath not seen the change of fourteen years” (215, 1.2.9). He would prefer to let a couple more summers pass before parting with her. Capulet also requires that Paris must win Juliet’s love: “My will to her consent is but a part …” (216, 1.2.17).
Capulet invites Paris to a public feast so that he may see Juliet shine brightest. He gives his serving man a slip of paper with the names of the guests, and fortunately, the illiterate fellow waltzes up to Benvolio and Romeo asking them to read him the guest list. One of the names is the heavenly Rosaline.
Benvolio is as happy as the serving man: now he can put his plans for Romeo into action. He tells him, “Take thou some new infection to thy eye …” (216, 1.2.50). Romeo would as well maintain his distant Rosaline’s matchless quality—after all, to him, she is a Petrarchan ideal. [7] But Romeo finally consents: “I’ll go along … / But to rejoice in splendor of mine own” (218, 1.2.103-04).
Act 1, Scene 3 (218-220, Lady Capulet tells Juliet that Count Paris wants to marry her, and praises his fine qualities; Juliet seems startled, but obedient.
Lady Capulet breaks the news to Juliet that she has a suitor. The Nurse prattles comically, but there’s a deep truth in what she says. She has been with Juliet from infancy, [8] with her fourteenth birthday coming up on Lammas Eve, [9] a festival day for the wheat harvest (198, 1.3.19). She sees the girl’s life as a whole, and she’s aware that the “harvest-time” for Juliet is near.
The Nurse keeps airing a bawdy joke made by her now departed husband, which implies that she has long been preparing Juliet for this time. When baby Juliet took a tumble, the Nurse’s husband said, “Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit …” (219, 1.3.44). The words remind us how short is the time between carefree childhood and the consequential realities of adulthood.
Juliet sounds intrigued about her aristocratic suitor when Lady Capulet informs her that she is to “Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face, / And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen” (219, 1.3.83-84). But Paris is as yet only a name: “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move …” (220, 1.3.99) says Juliet.
Act 1, Scene 4 (220-27, A masked Romeo and Benvolio make their way to the Capulets’ feast along with Mercutio; Romeo has had a bad dream, but Mercutio spins out the story of Queen Mab, the fairy who fills humans with dreams that drive them to pursue their desires. Capulet welcomes Romeo and the others; Romeo catches sight of Juliet; Tybalt recognizes Romeo’s voice, but Capulet scolds him; Romeo and Juliet meet and instantly fall in love, even co-speaking a sonnet; they know their belonging to rival houses is a problem.)
On the way to Capulet’s feast, the worldly Mercutio parries wits with Romeo, who has been troubled by a bad dream. Mercutio ends up recounting the legend of Queen Mab [10] to Romeo: this “fairies’ midwife” (221, 1.4.52), says Mercutio, is busy stirring up mortals’ emotions: “she gallops night by night / Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love …” (222, 1.4.55, 68-69). But she also stuffs with fantasies the brains of courtiers, lawyers, parsons, and soldiers.
Mercutio’s fanciful speech says that this midwife to fairies inspires all sorts to follow their own desires. By implication, we don’t have a great deal of control over our emotions and desires, so Mab is another name for the imperious force of desire itself. [11] Shakespeare didn’t need Freud (or Nietzsche or Kierkegaard) [12] to reveal that our unconscious dimension [13] has much to do with who we are, what we want, and how we behave.
All of this wild talk abut Queen Mab is probably meant to deflate Romeo’s dream, but the deeper significance of Mercutio’s speech is to put everyone in the same condition as Romeo: a follower of idle dreams. Romeo is in a mood: “Some consequence yet hanging in the stars / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date / With this night’s revels …” (223, 1.4.105-07). Perhaps the young man senses the immemorial connection between two extremes: love and death.
Benvolio’s plan doesn’t go quite as he had intended since Romeo, upon seeing Juliet, becomes smitten with her: “O,” he exclaims, “she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” (224, 1.4.155) Who hasn’t felt that strange “singling out” effect that Romeo’s words evoke, when we meet someone to whom we are attracted?
But Romeo’s attraction can’t undo sordid reality: while Montague and Capulet are willing to keep the peace, the younger generation is spoiling for trouble. Tybalt conceives a hatred for him at the very moment he falls in love with Juliet. Tybalt’s “I’ll not endure him” (225, 1.4.187) earns only Uncle Capulet’s annoyance, but it’s no less intense for that. It will prove disastrous.
The first meeting between Romeo and Juliet is a fine moment in Shakespeare’s canon. The two speak an English sonnet (abab cdcd efef gg), with the ending “gg” couplet running, “[Juliet:] Saints do not move, though grant for prayer’s sake. / [Romeo:] Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take” (225-26, 1.4.216-17). Deftly encouraged by Juliet, Romeo kisses the heavenly lady. Juliet is as surely his destination as the pilgrim’s sought-for shrine, while she herself, though passionate too, remains as poised as a votary statue throughout. [14]
Romeo and Juliet are at once dispossessed of any notion that there is a clear path forward: Juliet is a Capulet, and he belongs to the Montagues. He laments, “Oh, dear account! My life is in my foe’s debt” (226, 1.4.229), and she cries out, “My only love sprung from my only hate!” (226, 1.4.249) What’s to do?
Act 2.0, Chorus (227, the Chorus’s English sonnet marks Romeo’s transference of his love from Rosaline to Juliet.)
The Chorus to Act 2 marks the transference of Romeo’s idealistic, unrequited passion for the fair Rosaline to a more reality-grounded love for Juliet, daughter of the dangerous Capulets. The obstacles (both in terms of the language of love and the space necessary for love to unfold) that this poses to romantic “access” are easily, if not safely, overcome: “passion lends them power, time means, to meet, / Temp’ring extremities with extreme sweet” (227, 2.0.13-14).
Act 2, Scene 1 (227-32, Benvolio and Mercutio look for Romeo after he walks away from a conversation, but they don’t find him; Mercutio jokes with Benvolio about Romeo’s idealism; Romeo is desperately in love with Juliet, so he scales the Capulets’ wall and enters the garden, where he idealizes Juliet as “the sun”; Juliet, meanwhile, appears above outside her chamber, and muses about the power of words; Romeo overhears Juliet, and the two confess their love and plan a secret marriage.)
Romeo, alone, makes a fateful decision to get closer to his beloved, and as soon as he runs off to scale the Capulets’ wall, in come Mercutio and Benvolio. Mercutio jokes with Benvolio about the otherworldliness of Romeo’s new affection. This character stands for the view that any “idealizing of eroticism” [15] is disingenuous, since raw sexuality lies at the bottom of any romantic pose.
Mercutio calls to the absent Romeo, conjuring him, with a Rosaline-based invocation: “By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, / And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, / That in thy likeness thou appear to us!” (228, 2.1.19-21) Mercutio is energetic and open-hearted, but he is not inclined to lie around in a chilly “field-bed” (228, 2.1.40) to keep watch over Romeo’s passions.
Romeo says, “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the East, and Juliet is the sun” (228, 2.1.44-45). Juliet poses her immortal question: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore [16] art thou Romeo?” followed by “That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet” (229, 2.1.75, 85-86). But words are saturated with history and significance beyond our control!
Words may be as determinative for our experience of the intellectual and emotional world as aromas are for our senses. To put things bluntly, people seldom judge by “the thing itself”—their perceptions are shaped by language.
Still, while Romeo’s romantic idealism is nearly absolute, Juliet’s idealism regards the dynastic concerns that hem in the two lovers. Juliet captures the dilemma: love is a universal passion, so it ought to generate community. But this passion is hindered by a host of social demands and expectations, so it often creates rifts between individuals and their society.
Juliet reveals her passion fully since at first she doesn’t know Romeo is listening, which spares both of them from dissembling. She soon reproaches herself: “I am too fond …” (230, 2.1.140). When she and Romeo actually speak to each other, Juliet’s language is tinged with realistic concerns: “Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay,’ / And I will take thy word; yet, if thou swear’st, / Thou mayst prove false” (230, 2.1.132-34).
Still, Juliet is steadfast. The language of falconry underscores her desire: “Oh, for a falconer’s voice” … “To lure this tercel-gentle back again!” (232, 2.1.203-04) [17]
There is recognition in such language that desire is a wild thing, not safe. We can find the same insight in Wyatt and other Tudor authors preceding Shakespeare. In “Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind,” Wyatt makes King Henry VIII’s mistress Anne Boleyn describe herself as “wild for to hold, though I seem tame.” [18] Romeo plans to visit Friar Laurence: “Hence will I to my ghostly friar’s close cell / His help to crave and my dear hap to tell” (232, 2.1.230-31).
Act 2, Scene 2 (232-34, Friar Laurence gathers herbs and muses to himself about the properties of nature; Romeo says he has switched his love from Rosaline to Juliet of the Capulets; the Friar agrees to perform the secret wedding Romeo requests since he thinks it may help end the feuding in Verona.)
Friar Laurence’s pronouncement near the beginning of this scene is instructive: on his way to pick some medicinable herbs, he says, “Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, / And vice sometime by action dignified” (233, 2.2.21-22). The Friar is collecting a basket with “baleful weeds and precious-juicèd flowers” (233, 2.2.8), which may help or harm depending on the amount and the application.
Like the saving-and-killing flower that the Friar uses as a prime example (233, 2.2.23-26), the world presents both dangers and beneficial things, sometimes setting them so close together that great care is required in distinguishing and using them. Sometimes, too, even well-intentioned efforts result in catastrophe. Laurence mentions “grace” and “rude will” (233, 2.2.28), which respectively refer to the divine good will that drives Providence, and selfishness or cupidity. [19]
Friar Laurence can’t know it yet, but his soon-to-be-formulated plan—one that is both ambitious and well-meaning—to help two young lovers while healing Verona’s city-wide familial rift will invite speculation about whether he “got it right.” Will Laurence be following the right path, in spite of the outcome? [20]
Friar Laurence agrees to perform Romeo’s secret marriage to Juliet in hopes of ending Verona’s unrest. He tells Romeo, “For this alliance may so happy prove / To turn your households’ rancor to pure love” (234, 2.2.91-92). The Friar is a good man, but perhaps too naïve to deserve much faith in his practical acumen.
Act 2, Scene 3 (234-39, Mercutio and Benvolio encounter a happy Romeo, and he bests Mercutio in an exchange of jests; the Nurse finds Romeo, but must first put up with Mercutio’s bawdy teasing; Romeo entrusts to her a message addressed to Juliet; Juliet is to meet Romeo at Friar Laurence’s quarters in the afternoon, where the two will be secretly married; Romeo also explains to the Nurse his plans to visit Juliet on their wedding night.)
Mercutio and Benvolio discuss the news that Tybalt has challenged Romeo. Tybalt has sent “a letter to his father’s house” (235, 2.3.7). Mercutio shows strong awareness of how silly this feuding is. He takes on the persona of a grandsire to denounce dandified “fashionmongers” like Tybalt (235, 2.3.30). Mercutio is in on the hostilities, but he isn’t entirely circumscribed or defined by them—he seems more in tune with his own wit and imagination.
Mercutio soon engages with Romeo in a battle of wits, and then takes bawdy aim at Juliet’s nurse, the girl’s emissary. When she says good morning, Mercutio says, “the bawdy hand of the / dial is now upon the prick of noon” (237, 2.3.101-02).
The Nurse is not amused, and belts out, “Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about / me quivers. Scurvy knave!” (238, 2.3.147-48) But she soon recovers and addresses Romeo, who promises her that he will arrive in time to spend the night with Juliet after they are married.
Act 2, Scene 4 (239-41, Juliet is on edge as she waits for the Nurse to return, and then becomes still more anxious when the Nurse can’t seem to get to the point; finally, she passes along the substance of Romeo’s marriage plan: she must show up at Friar Laurence’s cell later the same day.)
In his lectures, Coleridge implies that while the Nurse is eccentric, she is also a universal type of the caregiver. [21] It’s easy to see that quality: the Nurse holds her ground for a while, but finally gives the girl the information she wants: she is to go to Friar Laurence’s cell to marry Romeo.
The Nurse’s pace is not the same as Juliet’s. As she says to Juliet, “I am the drudge, and toil in your delight, / But you shall bear the burthen soon at night” (241, 2.4.74-75). She is fond of Juliet, and favorable to her pledge to Romeo, but she seems aware that the girl is surrounded by a potentially hostile world of causes and effects, limitations and consequences. Pleasure and idealism are not free: they are always swimming upstream against a rough current. [22]
But the Nurse won’t be of much use to Juliet going forward—that is beyond her insight. Marjorie Garber has it right in her published lecture on Romeo and Juliet: Friar Laurence is all authority, no experience, while the Nurse is the opposite.
Act 2, Scene 5 (241-42, Friar Laurence prepares Romeo and Juliet in his cell for their marriage ceremony, and they go with the Friar to take their vows.)
Friar Laurence leads Romeo and Juliet off for the performance of their marriage. Romeo is in the mood for absolutes: the marriage once completed, he says, let “love-devouring death do what he dare …” (241, 2.5.7). The Friar’s advice to Romeo to “love moderately” (241, 2.5.14) is almost comically ineffectual, given his willingness to facilitate such a hasty, secret wedding.
Friar Laurence is granted the occasional deep insight, as in the lines, “A lover may bestride the gossamers / That idles in the wanton summer air / And yet not fall, so light is vanity” (241, 2.5.18-20). Laurence’s utterances in this brief scene deliver some strain of what Wordsworth calls in his “Tintern Abbey” ode “the still sad music of humanity”—we can hear Laurence’s haunting sense of life’s fragility, his fear that these youngsters are playing out an ancient cautionary tale.
Act 3, Scene 1 (242-46, Mercutio and Benvolio jest about each other’s taste for violence; Tybalt shows up on the same street and goads Romeo, who doesn’t want any trouble; Mercutio takes up the quarrel and is fatally wounded when Romeo interrupts; Romeo challenges and kills Tybalt in revenge, then runs away; the Prince arrives and Lady Capulet insists that Romeo be sentenced to death, but the sentence is banishment from Verona.)
The scene begins with Mercutio ribbing Benvolio about his readiness to involve himself in trouble: “Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat …” (242, 3.1.21). But soon events take a more serious turn. Tybalt is determined to fight Montagues, and Romeo’s attempt to play the role of proxy enforcer for the Prince leads him to get between Tybalt and Mercutio. Mercutio greets his fate with bitter condemnation: “A plague o’ both houses! I am sped” (244, 3.1.89). [23]
Romeo is honor-bound to avenge his kinsman, and having duly slain Tybalt, he laments that he is now “fortune’s fool” (245, 3.1.134). [24] The Prince steps in and dispenses tempered justice, banishing Romeo on pain of death and levying a fine on the House of Montague (246, 3.1.192-93). This decree is mild since, after all, Tybalt is the Prince’s own kinsman.
Act 3, Scene 2 (246-49, Juliet waits for Romeo to arrive, and envisions him patterned in the stars; the Nurse tells her that Tybalt has been slain and Romeo, his killer, banished; Juliet grieves for Tybalt and expresses anger at the absent Romeo, but then turns to grieving for the banishment of her newlywed husband; the Nurse confides to Juliet that Romeo is hiding with Friar Laurence, and says she will convey him to her tonight.)
Juliet is indulging herself in romantic idealism around the time of the quarrel: her words rehearse the traditional lover’s complaint against the sun, but there’s more to them than that. Juliet’s welcomes the night, and imagines her own death, following it with a prayer for Romeo, “Take him and cut him out in little stars, / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun” (247, 3.2.22-25).
This passage seems to mark Juliet’s rapid movement toward a fully sexual union with Romeo—she embraces the night as a time of creativity, a time full of the magic of sex that blots out the brazen sun of the ordinary, everyday world she has known so far. One thinks of, say, John Donne’s fine poem, “The Sun Rising,” with its bold declaration, “She’s all states, and all princes, I, / Nothing else is.” [25]
But Juliet’s triumphant mood doesn’t last long, as the Nurse soon brings her the bad news about Tybalt’s death and Romeo’s guilty flight, along with the bitter asseveration that men are “all perjured, / All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers” (248, 3.2.86-87). Juliet’s own understanding flows from a medieval sense for the grotesque: “I’ll to my wedding bed, / And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead” (249, 3.2.136-37). [26]
In the end, the Nurse provides hope since for the time being, Romeo is safe, hiding with Friar Laurence. She tells Juliet, “Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night. / I’ll to him; he is hid at Laurence’s cell” (249, 3.2.140-41).
Act 3, Scene 3 (249-53, Friar Laurence tells Romeo that the Prince has sentenced him to banishment; Romeo despairs at the Nurse’s report of Juliet’s distress, and offers to stab himself; Friar Laurence reproaches Romeo’s wild grief and advises him to stay with Juliet for one night only, and then go into exile in Mantua; the Friar says time will be needed to make everything right in Verona, and then Romeo will be able to return happier than ever.)
Romeo has taken refuge with Friar Laurence, and is unable to imagine a “world without Verona walls” (250, 3.3.17). When the Friar tries to show him the bright side of the whole affair, Romeo complains, “Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel” (251, 3.3.65). Romeo’s willingness to kill himself if it will assuage Juliet’s grief over Tybalt shows depth of affection. Friar Laurence rebukes the young man’s “wild acts” (252, 3.3.109) and tells him he must go to Mantua.
Act 3, Scene 4 (253-54, Paris visits the Capulet patriarch again about his proposal to Juliet; Capulet promises that Juliet will obey his will, and that the wedding will take place sooner than first proposed, now in three days.)
Capulet tells his wife that Juliet should be married to Paris on Thursday (254, 3.4.19-21). While Capulet labors to sound humane in tendering his “desperate” promise to Paris, his reassuring words—“I think she will be ruled / In all respects by me …” (253, 3.4.13-14)—sound very much like an offer that Juliet can’t refuse.
Act 3, Scene 5 (254-59, Romeo and Juliet spend their wedding night together in her bedroom at the Capulet mansion; Lady Capulet brings her the news that she is soon to be married to Count Paris; Juliet firmly rejects this union, and Capulet is furious, even threatening to disown her; the Nurse tries to counsel Juliet, but upsets her by urging her to forget Romeo and marry Paris.)
In the fifth scene, Romeo and Juliet spend their first night together in the Capulet stronghold, and engage in a variation of the traditional “dawn song” [27] of European troubadour lineage: Juliet begins the dialogue, “Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day” (254, 3.5.1), but she is also the partner who finally admits that the day is upon them: “O, now be gone! More light and light it grows” (255, 3.5.35). Juliet is filled with dread, and tells Romeo, “Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb …” (255, 3.5.55-56).
When Lady Capulet professes her desire to poison Romeo in Mantua (256, 3.5.87-92), Juliet pretends to share the wish, but she can’t bring herself to feign joy in the prospect of marrying Count Paris. Capulet’s rebuke of Juliet for her refusal has him going from a humane parent to the traditional senex iratus (angry elder) of Classical comedy. [28]
More than that, however, Capulet is baffled by his daughter’s obstinacy, and laments, “still my care hath been / To have her matched …” (258, 3.5.178-79). In his view—and he isn’t entirely off the mark—he is only doing what any caring, diligent father would do for a beloved daughter (and for his own dynastic wellbeing) in the Medieval Era on down to Shakespeare’s time.
Juliet is the Capulets’ only child, and in her stubbornness, the father sees his hopes of vicarious immortality frustrated. When the Nurse gets hold of Juliet and professes that it would be best to give in to father Capulet’s wishes, Juliet swears that she will have nothing more to do with her: “Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain” (259, 3.5.241). Off Juliet goes to be advised by Friar Laurence.
Act 4, Scene 1 (259-62, Paris is conferring with Friar Laurence about his upcoming wedding to Juliet when she arrives; Juliet tells Friar Laurence she will kill herself if he can’t put a stop to the wedding; Laurence outlines a desperate plan that calls for Juliet to drink a potion whose symptoms mimic death, and be carried to the Capulet vault, where Romeo will be waiting.)
Paris is as eager to seal his match with Juliet as Capulet is, so he goes to Friar Laurence to make arrangements, and there he courts Juliet, but he gets nothing from her but a false acceptance of the seemingly inevitable wedding. As soon as Paris takes his leave, Juliet threatens to stab herself in Laurence’s presence.
Friar Laurence sees that Juliet’s situation is desperate, and her extreme language and gesture of suicide gives him the idea for an equally desperate remedy: Juliet will go home, pretend to agree to the match with Paris, and take a drug that will induce death-like symptoms lasting forty-two hours. Then Romeo will travel to the Capulets’ tomb and take Juliet back to Mantua (261-62, 4.1.89-118).
What Juliet threatens to do is cheat the Grim Reaper, or at least try to negotiate a better deal with him. Film buffs may recall Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, in which a medieval man plays a game of chess with Death. [29]
For a holy man, the Friar has a flair for quick-thinking deception, and he is able to put his earlier sententia [30] about virtue and vice to good use: he had said, “Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, / And vice sometime by action dignified” (233, 2.2.21-22). Juliet’s promises of how far she would be willing to go to escape marriage with Paris anticipate the Friar’s plan, right down to the Gothic trappings: “hide me nightly in a charnel house, / O’ercovered quite with dead men’s rattling bones …” (261, 4.1.81-82), she tells Laurence.
Friar Laurence is helping two young people to marry without their parents’ permission, and much that he is doing amounts to a species of dishonesty. In spite of that, it’s almost impossible not to side with him and the youngsters. His real opponent is a harsh and unfair set of people and circumstances.
Act 4, Scene 2 (262-63, Juliet makes a false show of submission to Capulet’s will; excited, Capulet moves up the wedding yet another day, to tomorrow, and busily gives orders for the joyous event.)
Juliet executes her pretended agreement to marry Paris, even though, as she had said in Act 4, Scene 1, she would rather do almost anything else. Now, she tells her father, “I have learnt me to repent the sin / Of disobedient opposition / To you and your behests …” (262, 4.2.17-19). Capulet is overjoyed.
Act 4, Scene 3 (263-64, Juliet bids goodnight to Lady Capulet and the Nurse, and—frightened but courageous—drinks the contents of the Friar’s vial.)
Juliet rehearses her anxieties about feigning death. The main question she poses is “How, if when I am laid into the tomb, / I wake before the time that Romeo / Come to redeem me?” (264, 4.3.30-32) Such fears are the stuff of Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic fiction, for which many of Shakespeare’s macabre passages no doubt provided inspiration. [31] Indeed, what if Juliet goes mad while fully awake?
Still, Juliet does not shrink from swallowing her potion, even when she conjures the angry ghost of Tybalt “Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body / Upon a rapier’s point” (264, 4.3.56-57).
Act 4, Scene 4 (264-68, Capulet and Lady Capulet, along with the Nurse, spend the night preparing for the wedding day; Capulet hears Paris approaching with his musicians, and tells the Nurse to wake Juliet; the Nurse discovers Juliet seemingly dead, and reveals the news to the Capulet parents; they and Paris grieve; Friar Laurence arrives and starts making Juliet’s funeral arrangements; the musicians and Capulet’s servant Peter, to whom a wedding is just another gig, are alone free from the moment’s tragic mood.)
The fourth scene leaps from joy to despair in a heartbeat, a characteristic pattern in this play and a common way of treating death in medieval texts. The Capulet parents believe they have suffered an irretrievable loss. There is a strongly medieval quality to the grotesque imagery here: old Capulet says to Paris, “—O son, the night before thy wedding-day / Hath Death lain with thy wife” (266, 4.4.62-63), and in the wake of Friar Laurence’s otherworldly cold comfort, he laments, “All things that we ordainèd festival / Turn from their office to black funeral” (267, 4.4.111-12). [32]
Everything is transformed now that Juliet is supposedly dead: gone is any prospect of the harsh, impatient words spoken by Capulet and Lady Capulet. Juliet was the “one thing to rejoice and solace in …” (266, 4.4.74), says Lady Capulet, and now death has taken her suddenly. [33] Capulet captures the mood when he says, “All things that we ordainèd festival / Turn from their office to black funeral” (267, 4.4.111-12). [34]
The scene ends with a comic exchange between some musicians sent along by Paris (265, 4.4.20-22). They introduce a self-absorbed attitude into the midst of unspeakable woe. These musicians seek their own security and comfort: “Come, we’ll in here, tarry / for the mourners, and stay dinner” (268, 4.4.164-65). The scene doesn’t reach the synthesized profundity and silliness of the Gravedigger scene in Hamlet, but it offers a new perspective on the play’s unfolding tragedy. [35]
Act 5, Scene 1 (268-70, Romeo’s servant Balthasar comes to Mantua and tells Romeo that Juliet is dead, and he sends Balthasar to get some horses for their trip to Verona; Romeo, thinking Juliet is dead, determines to lie by her side; wishing only to join Juliet in the Capulets’ vault, Romeo buys poison from a poor apothecary, who protests but must comply with the request.)
Romeo hears from Balthasar that Juliet’s body lies in the tomb of the Capulets (268-69, 5.1.17-23), and he determines to purchase a dram of deadly stuff from a poor apothecary, and die next to Juliet. The Apothecary becomes a casualty of this noble tragedy, protesting, “My poverty, but not my will, consents” (270, 5.1.75). The transaction completed, Romeo is ready to ride to Verona.
Act 5, Scene 2 (270-71, Friar John enters Friar Laurence’s cell in Verona to return the letter that he was tasked with delivering to Romeo in Mantua; he says he was prevented from making the trip due to others’ suspicions that he might have the plague; Friar Laurence heads for the tomb so he can be there to tend to Juliet when she wakes up from her drug-induced sleep.)
Friar Laurence learns that Friar John was detained by townsmen concerned about the plague, so he wasn’t able to deliver his friend’s letter to Romeo in Mantua (270, 5.2.5-12, 14-16). The irony of this circumstance is palpable: Verona’s larger tragedy—the plague that killed droves of Europeans in the Middle Ages—is also driving the smaller domestic one in Verona. In part, Romeo and Juliet’s tragedy comes down to this undelivered letter. Even so, Laurence has a plan—he will go to the Capulet vault and take Juliet to his own cell until Romeo arrives.
Act 5, Scene 3 (271-77, Paris arrives at the Capulets’ tomb and, seeing Romeo about to open the vault, challenges him; Romeo kills Paris, enters the tomb, verbally confronts Death, and drinks poison, his last act being to kiss the seemingly dead Juliet; Friar Laurence arrives, and Juliet wakes up to find Romeo dead; a noise scares Laurence from the tomb; alone, Juliet stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger; the watchmen discover Paris, Romeo, and Juliet dead; the Prince arrives with the Capulets and Montagues, and Laurence and Balthasar tell what they know; the Prince declares that both houses are justly punished; Capulet and Montague finally end their feud.)
As misfortune would have it, Paris has come to the Capulets’ tomb to do his obsequies to his intended bride. The Count stations his page nearby to listen for any sound that might indicate approaching danger.
Danger is, in fact, nearby—Romeo gives final instructions and money to Balthasar, threatening him with death should he return. All the same, Balthasar mistrusts Romeo’s state of mind, and hides at a distance.
Romeo intends to enter the vault, but first he encounters Paris. Juliet, he imagines, died from the shock and grief of Tybalt’s death. The two draw their weapons, and Romeo kills Paris, learning the young count’s identity afterward.
Now Romeo boldly confronts death. Addressing the tomb itself as “Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, / Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,” he defies its power: “Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open, / And, in despite, I’ll cram thee with more food” (272, 5.3.45-48). [36]
Romeo then enters the tomb to have one last look at Juliet’s body: the “ensign” of her beauty, the color, is still visible in her face (273, 5.3.94), but the aggrieved Romeo is able to process this fact only in a romantic or idealistic way, so surrounded are he and Juliet by the trappings of death.
This mode of perceiving dooms him along with his bride: “Here, here will I remain / With worms that are thy chambermaids” (273, 5.3.108-09; see 85-120), he addresses the seemingly dead Juliet, and swallows the Apothecary’s poison. His last words are, “Thus, with a kiss, I die” (273, 5.3.120).
Half an hour later, Friar Laurence approaches the tomb, having stumbled over some stones along the way. Balthasar soon presents himself to the Friar and explains that he has accompanied his master Romeo here. Laurence discovers Paris slain and the bloody swords next to him. He has just barely entered the tomb, it seems, when Juliet awakes, asking “Where is my Romeo?” (274, 5.3.150)
Laurence is quickly frightened by the approaching watchmen, and calls to Juliet. His reluctance to stay within the tomb marks him as something other than the savior-figure he would like to be. As the verse from Matthew 26:41 goes, “the spirit indeed is ready, but the flesh is weak.” [37] At the last moment, Laurence shies away from danger, crying out, “I dare no longer stay” (274, 5.3.159).
Juliet is now alone. The conventional fate that Friar Laurence had imagined for her—delivery to “a sisterhood of holy nuns” (274, 5.3.157)—is not for her. She kisses Romeo’s poison-tinged lips, then embraces his dagger and dies bravely: “This is thy sheath; there rust and let me die” (274, 5.3.170).
Soon, Friar Laurence (along with Balthasar) is called to give an account of what has happened, and is forgiven his less than wise or heroic interventions (276-77, 5.3.229-69). As the Prologue promised, the feuding of the Montagues and Capulets is “buried” by the death of their son and daughter. These families that have dealt in hatred, says the Prince, are justly punished: “heaven finds means to kill your joys with love” (277, 5.3.292). Lady Montague, her husband informs us, has departed this life, overcome with the grief of Romeo’s exile.
The Prince does not exempt himself from guilt, declaring, “I, for winking at your discords, too / Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished” (277, 5.3.294-95). Ignoring chaos leads to disastrous results, in Verona or anywhere else. Love has brought the warring houses together, but the price is the death of what they held most dear. As for Romeo and Juliet, we can console ourselves by opining with Lord Byron’s narrator in Don Juan, “‘Whom the gods love die young’ was said of yore. / And many deaths do they escape by this.” [38]
Both family patriarchs vow to build golden statues—Montague will offer his old rivals a precious image of Juliet, and Capulet will commission an equally fine statue of Romeo. That gesture, though small comfort for the newly reconciled houses (and the audience), ends the “two hours’ traffic” of Shakespeare’s stage.
[1] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 288-343. See 293, 1.2.140-41.
[2] See Jonathan Bate, Soul of the Age, pg. 7. New York: Random House, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0812971817.
[3] The phrase “fortune’s fool” invokes the traditional understanding of how “Lady Fortune” deals with humankind. Fortuneis the medieval equivalent of the Greek goddess Tyche, chance. An excellent early medieval treatment is that of Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy. See Book II, Ch. 2, “Fortune’s Malice.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9/1/2024. See also this image of Fortune’s Wheel from a French translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. Wikipedia. Accessed 9/1/2024.
[4] The Latin phrase de casibus comes from a collection of stories by Giovanni Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, “Concerning the falls/accidents of illustrious men.” A Latin manuscript copy is available to view from the German-based repository MDZ. An early English translation is John Lydgate’s The Fall of Princes. HathiTrust. Accessed 12/29/2024.
[5] Duke Vincentio is guilty of a certain laxness in Measure for Measure. See Shakespeare, William. Measure for Measure. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 901-59.
[6] With regard to Euphues and Euphuism, see Lyly, John. Euphues. The Anatomy of Wit (HathiTrust) and Euphues and His England. EEBO/U-Mich. Accessed 12/29/2024. Euphuism was a very elaborate and witty style of prose that flourished for a time in the 1580s. See Britannica’s entry, Euphuism.
[7] On Petrarch and the Petrarchan sonnet, see https://poemanalysis.com/poetic-form/petrarchan-sonnet/. Accessed 9/1/2024.
[8] It was common for upper-class households to have a nurse for their children—the nurse, not the mother, would breastfeed the child. See Dr. Julia Martins, “Motherhood and Wet Nurses: Breastfeeding in Early Modern Times.” Living History. (Note: contains semi-nude paintings in academic context.) Accessed 12/29/2024.
[9] See “Lammas Eve.” Lammas eve (August 1) is called “Loaf Mass” in Anglo-Saxon, and it was one of the holidays associated with harvest-time. Seb Reilly. Accessed 9/1/2024.
[10] On Queen Mab, see “Romeo and Juliet: Queen Mab.” Accessed 9/1/2024.
[11] A Midsummer Night’s Dream is another play in which the actions of “faeries” drives the actions of desperate lovers, though in that comic play, as Robin Goodfellow puts it rather generically, “Jack shall have Jill, / Naught shall go ill, / the man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well” (438, 3.3.461-63). See Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53.
[12] On Nietzsche, see Gary Borjesson’s Jan. 2024 article, “The Ways of the Unconscious: Nietzsche’s Influence on Freud.” How We Help blog. On Kierkegaard, see “Kierkegaard and the Value of Despair.” Academy of Ideas. Accessed 12/29/2024.
[13] The Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold’s phrase “the buried life” seems apt. See his poem “The Buried Life.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 12/29/2024.
[14] In his Notes and Lectures, Coleridgewrites with regard to the present play, “Shakespeare meant the Romeo and Juliet to approach to a poem, which, and indeed its early date, may be also inferred from the multitude of rhyming couplets throughout.” Gutenberg e-text, pg. 147. Accessed 12/29/2024.
[15] The phrase “idealizing eroticism” refers to the common tendency to spiritualize what might otherwise be a frankly sexual desire, relationship, or act. It underlies, for example, the romantic dimension of medieval chivalry and Troubadour poetry, including the Petrarchan love poetry tradition (Petrarch’s beloved, Laura), Dante’s Beatrice, etc.
[16] “Wherefore,” as the Norton editors indicate, means “why” in this context: “Why does Romeo have to be called Romeo?”
[17] On falconry, a good starting point is “Falconry and Hawking” in Internet Shakespeare Editions. U. of Victoria, Canada. Accessed 9/1/2024. See also George Turberville’s 1611 Book of Falconry.
[18] See ”Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind.” Sir Thomas Wyatt. Accessed 12/29/2024.
[19] The theological binary terms would be caritas (generosity of spirit, mainly—in Augustine, love for god through his creatures; charity) and cupiditas (Augustine defines this as selfishness or selfish desire; we can also define it as covetousness or stinginess in both a spiritual and material sense). See On the Trinity, Book 9, Ch. 8. New Advent. Accessed 12/29/2024.
[20] In Shakespeare’s main source text, the Friar is not punished, but he voluntarily banishes himself. Arthur Brooke’s text runs, “[O]f himself he went into an hermitage, / Two miles from Verone town, where he in prayers passed forth / Till that from earth to heaven his heavenly sprite did fly, / Five years he lived an hermit and an hermit did he die.” Brooke, Arthur. Romeus and Juliet, lines 3000-04. HathiTrust. Accessed 12/29/2024.
[21] Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Romeo and Juliet” in Notes and Lectures. Accessed 9/1/2024.
[22] The sentiment seems common in Shakespeare that, as Feste the Clown warns the Duke in Twelfth Night, “pleasure will be paid one time or / another” (764, 2.4.68-69). Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97.
[23] Plague is on the march in Verona, so it’s no airy matter when Mercutio refers to it. See Jonathan Bate, Soul of the Age, pg. 7. New York: Random House, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0812971817.
[24] The expression “fortune’s fool” mentioned in an earlier note captures the ultimate relationship between Dame Fortune and even the most exalted of mortals. In the end, the idea goes, everyone is betrayed by Donna Fortuna, and Romeo, despite his youth, is no exception.
[25] See John Donne’s poem “The Sun Rising.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 12/29/2024.
[26] The memento mori tradition was very powerful during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. See the DailyStoic.com’s article on this tradition, “History of Memento Mori.” Accessed 6/10/2024.
[27] These dawn songs were called aubades in French, and a variant on the ideas were the albas of Occitan poetic tradition. See “Aubade” at Poetry Foundation and “Aubade” at poets.org, Academy of American Poets. Accessed 9/1/2024.
[28] The senex iratus is one of several stock characters in Greek and Roman comedy; his role is generally to impose obstacles and make a fool of himself. The miles gloriosus or braggart soldier is another such foolish character—his vanity and ego get him into trouble every time.
[29] On Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film, see “The Seventh Seal.” IMDB. Accessed 9/1/2024.
[30] Sententia, pl. sententiae, are pithy sayings and summations, often taken from an ancient or otherwise respected source. Polonius’s advice to Laertes in Hamlet, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be …” is one example. See Wikipedia’s article Sententia. Accessed 7/29/2024.
[31] Shakespeare’s work bristles with proto-Gothic language and sensibility: Macbeth’s “weird sisters” and their strange prophecies, for example; Hamlet’s “graveyard scene” with the Prince of Denmark meditating on the skull of a man, Yorick the Jester, whom he knew and loved; the grotesque scenes and descriptions of Richard III, and the gruesome, macabre ways of invoking Death in Romeo and Juliet.
[32] Such language captures the medieval sense of life’s brevity. Moreover, as mentioned in a note above, the term “proto-Gothic” seems appropriate as a description of such language.
[33] See Pearl, by the Gawain Poet. The Gawain Poet: Complete Works: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, Cleanness, Pearl, Saint Erkenwald. Trans. Marjorie Borroff. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011. ISBN-13: 978-0393912357. The speaker in Pearl has lost his infant daughter, and in middle English original, he laments her as “my precious perle wythouten spot” (line 48). Pearl. Ed. Sarah Stanbury. Mets: Middle English Texts Series. Accessed 12/30/2024. This poem, along with Dante’s Divine Comedy, is among the best Medieval texts for illustrating the era’s emphasis on the gap between human understanding and divine or spiritual understanding.
[34] The term “office” bears more gravity than our usage of the word today. It refers to more a fundamental way of determining a person’s identity and value during the Middle Ages. In, say, Chaucer, to ask what a person’s “office” is would be to ask who that person really is. People were largely defined by the set of duties to which they were bound.
[35] The attitude of artists and craftspeople towards their often profound subject matter may surprise some of us: Andrew Stewart reminds us that J. S. Bach “famously complained to his friend Erdmann of the good health of Leipzig’s citizens in relation to his so-called Accidentien or funeral fees ….” In other words, if part of your income comes from writing funeral music, the rate of deaths per capita may take on a different meaning. See “Big Boys Don’t Cry? Attitudes towards Death in Bach.” Bach Network. Accessed 9/1/2024.
[36] The memento mori tradition was very powerful during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. See the Dailystoic.com’s article on this tradition, “History of Memento Mori.” Accessed 9/01/2024. Throughout this play, death-imagery has underlain the graceful words and actions of the young hero and heroine like the grotesque underside of a medieval decorative panel or casket. The play itself, we might argue, functions in its entirety as an extended memento mori.
[37] See Matthew 26:41, 1599 Geneva Bible. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 12/30/2024.
[38] Lord Byron. Don Juan, Canto 4.12. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9/1/2024. The stanza begins, “‘Whom the gods love die young,’ was said of yore, / And many deaths do they escape by this: / The death of friends, and that which slays even more— / The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is, / Except mere breath ….”
Last Updated on March 20, 2025 by ajd_shxpr