Romeo and Juliet – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Act 1.0, Prologue (210, the Prologue emphasizes the “star-crossed” nature of Romeo and Juliet’s love match and the dreadful cost of the feud between the Montagues and the 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 own feuding families, “both alike in dignity” (1.0.1), which have worked at length to undo the very foundations of civil society. With regard to the influence of the planets—an extremely common belief in Shakespeare’s time—we may remember the pronouncement by Cassius in Julius Caesar that “the fault … is not in our stars, / But in ourselves.” [1] It’s fair to say that about the parents of the two families, who have evidently failed to patch up their differences.

Still, while the faults and feelings of the elder characters figure significantly in this play, it is not foremost about the elders’ suffering or perspectives. As Jonathan Bate points out, it is the young who litter the tomb of the Capulets at the play’s conclusion. [2] And since Romeo and Juliet are at the play’s center as tragic figures, it is often considered a tragedy of fate.

Unless one takes the side of fictive Verona’s rigid medieval expectations that marriage should be controlled by parental choice, Juliet is in no way to blame for the misfortune that she and Romeo suffer. And even though Romeo’s banishment comes from his own participation in the town’s cycle of violence, he is right to complain that he is no villain but rather “fortune’s fool.” [3]

That Shakespeare should write a tragedy of “fate” really should not surprise us. Shakespeare does not follow a unitary model of tragedy. He is not an Aristotelian playwright, or any kind of doctrinaire theorist. He generates his tragic intensities and situations circumstantially, from one set of materials to the next. A notion of tragedy as broad as “the fall of an illustrious person from good fortune to bad” [4] serves him as a point of departure. 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 at the very beginning of the very first scene shows how trivial the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets has become. Samson’s obscene innuendos about Montague maidens suggest that the family feud is easily made to serve selfish purposes, base appetites. Says Samson, “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 pronouncements—“Turn thee, Benvolio; look upon thy death” (211, 1.1.62)—are as absurd in prosecuting the quarrel as the low-born servants.

We see with what fearful celerity the hostilities ramp up, with the upper-class youth going at one another, and then the elders, the scions of their respective houses, threatening to join in the fray, 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 in the past. As in Measure for Measure, the ruler has allowed his subjects’ petty desires to wreak havoc in his realm. [5] This kind of behavior on the part of Shakespeare’s dukes, princes, and kings can lead to their own downfall.

But we may draw from the phrase “bred of an airy word” something darker still than the possible imperiling of the ruler: the power that will confront Romeo and Juliet is nothing less than chaos, the flaring-forth of mindless violence from the depths of human irrationality, which, to judge from Samson’s charged language, would include the sexual instinct as well as a generalized desire for dominance.

We first hear of Romeo when Lady Montague asks Benvolio where the young man has been hiding. He shuns company, and 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 temporal description! [6] At the aforementioned ornately described time, Benvolio says, he saw Romeo standing under a grove of melancholy sycamore trees, and the root of his troubles wasn’t yet clear.

But that aside, what’s more remarkable is that Old Montague genuinely seems to have no clue what is troubling his son. Has this aging father forgotten what it’s like to be young and infatuated with a girl for perhaps the first time? At least he is worried, though: as he says to Benvolio, “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 not so much in or out of love, but “Out of her favor where I am in love” (214, 1.1.163).

The “her” in question is Rosaline, though she isn’t named until the following scene. Romeo speaks with considerable wit, but his words are also full of Petrarchan extremes: “O heavy lightness, serious vanity, / Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms …” (214, 1.1.171-72), and so forth. His poetical cant aside, Romeo touches upon what is, indeed, beginning to happen to him now that he’s open to the power 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, a more experienced young man, advises Romeo to stop talking Petrarchanism and start looking around him. He is to compare as many beautiful women as possible with the one who seems to be troubling him: the solution to lovesickness and a felt loss of identity or self-certainty, he advises, is “giving liberty unto thine eyes” (215, 1.1.222). It sounds as if Romeo has never actually met the saintly Rosaline, and is simply spinning romantic nonsense about his mostly imagined “beloved” as passionately as can be. That’s what one does at his time of life. So Benvolio is wise to set the experience of the eyes against pure imagination.

Act 1, Scene 2 (215-18, when Count Paris expresses his desire to marry young 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 out for him; they see that Romeo’s much-desired Rosaline is among those invited, so they resolve to be there, too.)

As he enters the scene in conversation with Juliet’s new suitor Count Paris, father Capulet is very pleased with the prospect of Prince Escalus’s kinsman marrying his daughter, though he is wistful because the girl “hath not seen the change of fourteen years (215, 1.2.9). In other words, she’s still thirteen, and he would prefer to let a couple more summers pass before parting with her in favor of a husband. Capulet also requires that Paris must be successful in winning Juliet’s love: as he says, “My will to her consent is but a part …” (216, 1.2.17). Plenty of young women were not so lucky as to have such a father in Medieval England or Europe.

Capulet invites Paris to a public feast so that he may see Juliet shine brighter than all the rest, and be reconfirmed in his choice. He gives his serving man a slip of paper with the names of the intended guests, and that turns out to be fortunate because the illiterate fellow promptly waltzes up to Benvolio and Romeo asking them to read him the guest list. As it turns out, one of the names on the list is none other but the heavenly Rosaline.

Benvolio is as happy as the servingman: 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) to drive out the old one. Romeo is dubious, and would as well maintain his impossibly distant Rosaline’s matchless quality—after all, to him, she is more of a Petrarchan ideal [7] than a flesh-and-blood human being. But Benvolio being the charming fellow that he is, it’s hard to resist his pleas, and Romeo finally consents, saying: “I’ll go along no such sight to be shown, / 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 ever the obedient child, she agrees to consider the offer.

Lady Capulet breaks the news to Juliet that she has a serious and respectable suitor. The nurse, called upon to second what her mistress says, prattles comically, but for all her silliness, there’s a deep truth to be drawn from what she says. Apparently, the Nurse has been with Juliet from infancy [8] to this very minute, 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 we might even say she’s aware that the “harvest-time” for Juliet is near.

The Nurse keeps airing a bawdy joke made by her now departed husband years ago, 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 are poignant in that they remind us just how short is the time between carefree childhood and the consequential realities of adulthood. To adapt a line from William Wordsworth’s poem, “My Heart Leaps Up,” the child is mother of the woman, and young though she still is, Juliet is moving towards institutional 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 she is no more than intrigued, she admits, since Paris is as yet only a name to her: “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move …” (220, 1.3.99) says Juliet, and as for marriage, she tells her mother in formal tone, “It is an hour that I dream not of” (219, 1.3.68), and follows up these words with more that import obedience to her parents’ will.

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 follows a dance and catches sight of Juliet; Tybalt storms when he recognizes Romeo’s voice, but Capulet scolds him for his ill will; Romeo and Juliet meet and instantly fall in love, even co-speaking a sonnet; as the entertainment ends, they realize that their belonging to rival houses should make them enemies.)

On the way to their uninvited attendance at Capulet’s feast, the worldly Mercutio parries wits with Romeo the idealist, who has been troubled by a bad dream. Mercutio ends up getting a bit carried away and turns to recounting the legend of Queen Mab [10] to Romeo and others present: this “fairies’ midwife” (221, 1.4.52), says Mercutio, is insanely busy stirring up mortals’ emotions: most pointedly, “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.

The substance of Mercutio’s fanciful speech is 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, and so Mab is another name for the imperious force of desire itself. [11] Shakespeare didn’t need Freud (or Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, for that matter) [12] to give him the idea that our unconscious dimension [13] has more to do with who we are, what we want, and how we behave than most of us are comfortable with.

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. At the end of the conversation, Romeo is in a mood: he fears that “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 just as smitten with her as he was with his former love: “O,” he exclaims, “she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” (224, 1.4.155) The phrase is wonderfully appropriate—who hasn’t felt that strange “singling out” effect that Romeo’s words evoke, at the moment when we first meet someone to whom we are deeply attracted?

But Romeo’s newfound attraction can’t undo sordid reality: while Old Montague and Capulet are willing enough to keep the peace, the younger generation is always spoiling for trouble. Romeo’s forebodings are fulfilled when 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, and it will prove disastrously consequential.

The first meeting between Romeo and Juliet is a fine moment in Shakespeare’s canon. Together the two speak an English sonnet (rhyming 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). So deftly encouraged by Juliet, our “pilgrim” Romeo takes the lead and 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]

At the end of the scene, Romeo and Juliet are almost simultaneously dispossessed of any notion that there is a clear path forward for them or their love: Romeo realizes that Juliet is a Capulet, and she realizes that 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, in such a predicament?

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 Capulets, harborers of a violent grudge against his house. 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. Where Romeo and Juliet are concerned, “passion lends them power, time means, to meet, / Temp’ring extremities with extreme sweet” (227, 2.0.13-14).

ACT 2

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 supposed otherworldliness of Romeo’s new affection. This experienced character stands for the view that any “idealizing of eroticism” [15] is silly and probably disingenuous, since raw sexuality is always at the bottom of any romantic pose a lover may strike up.

Mercutio calls to the absent Romeo, conjuring him like a crazed spirit, 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) More explicit still is Mercutio’s “Oh, that she were— / An open-arse, thou a popp’rin’ pear!” (228, 2.1.37-38)

In any case, while Mercutio is energetic and open-hearted, he is not inclined to lie around in a chilly “field-bed” (228, 2.1.40) to keep watch over Romeo’s passions, so off he and Benvolio go.

Mercutio’s exit causes him to miss one of Romeo’s most remarkable utterances. 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, believing she’s alone, poses her immortal question about Romeo’s name: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore [16] art thou Romeo?” followed not long after by “That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet” (229, 2.1.75, 85-86).

What Juliet says is a graceful sentiment, but most readers will see the difficulty with it: names, and words generally, are saturated with history and significance that are beyond the control even of those (the speakers, for example) who claim an intimate relationship with them.

Romeo is a Montague, and he doesn’t have much say about what that proper name means in Verona. A real-life Juliet would be right to say that what we call a rose ought to smell as sweet as it would if it were called a “reeking Montague.” Still, it might not get the same olfactory attention—such is the power of words. They may be as determinative for our experience of the intellectual and passional world as aromas are for our senses. To put things bluntly, people seldom, if ever, judge by “the thing itself”—their perceptions are strongly shaped by language.

Still, while Romeo’s romantic idealism is nearly absolute up to this point, Juliet’s idealism, though strong, shows more regard for the narrow dynastic concerns that hem in the two lovers. In the lines quoted above concerning names and roses, Juliet captures the dilemma of lovers up to Shakespeare’s time and beyond: love is a universal passion, and as such, it ought to generate community, but this same passion is hindered by a host of social demands and expectations, so it often creates rifts between individuals and the society within which they must live.

Juliet reveals her passion fully since at first she doesn’t know Romeo is listening, which spares both of them the awkward task of dissembling, the need for which is clear from her self-reproach when she finally becomes aware that Romeo is near: “I am too fond …” (230, 2.1.140).

When she and Romeo actually speak to each other, Juliet’s language is tinged with realistic (if unfounded) concerns. She at once gets down to brass tacks, asking him, “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). In particular, she fears that his propensity to swear by the moon may indicate rashness rather than constancy (230, 2.1. 151), and she insists, “I have no joy of this contract tonight. / It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden …” (231, 2.1.159-60).

Still, Juliet is steadfast in her eagerness to marry Romeo, whatever the obstacles. The language of falconry underscores her desire: “Oh, for a falconer’s voice,” she says, “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 something safe. We can find the same insight, though in a darker vein, in the poetry of Sir Thomas 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’s plan seems civilized enough, though, since he plans a trip to see 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; sleepless Romeo comes to him and says that he has switched his love from Rosaline to Juliet of the House of Capulet; the Friar is surprised, but 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 out early in the morning 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 combined 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, as the play’s action demonstrates, even the most well-intentioned effort still results in catastrophe. Laurence uses a pair of theological terms that should enlighten us. He mentions “grace” and “rude will” (233, 2.2.28), which we might take as references to the divine favor and good will that drives providence, and selfishness or cupidity, [19] respectively.

Friar Laurence can’t know it yet, but his soon-to-be-formulated plan—one that is both perilously ambitious and obviously 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, in fact, be following the correct path, in spite of the terrible outcome? Or should we think of his actions as a major factor in the tragedy that Romeo and Juliet will suffer? [20]

Surprised by Romeo’s sudden transference of his attentions from Rosaline to Juliet, Friar Laurence nonetheless agrees to perform the secret marriage rite Romeo wants, in hopes of ending Verona’s unrest. The Friar seems to think that the Montagues and Capulets will be charitable and reasonable once they understand that two of their own have chosen to marry. As 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 as much faith in his practical acumen as Romeo and Juliet place in him.

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 issued a challenge to Romeo. The young member of the Capulet clan has sent “a letter to his father’s house” (235, 2.3.7). Mercutio shows strong awareness of how silly the feuding amongst the two houses 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, and mocks the absurdly Euphuistic, honor-drenched language of dueling that he supposes Tybalt goes in for.

Mercutio soon engages with Romeo in a battle of wits, and then takes bawdy aim at Juliet’s nurse, who has come as 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—his servant will bring a rope ladder as a “convoy in the secret night” (239, 2.3.174). The scene closes with some wordplay regarding the first letter of Romeo’s name and the herb rosemary. The Nurse tells Romeo that Juliet has “the / prettiest sententious of it—of youand rosemary—” (239, 2.3.192-93).

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 on Shakespeare, Coleridge implies that while the Nurse is eccentric, she is at the same time a universal type of the caring, elderly nurse. [21] It’s easy to see that quality in her: beset by the impatient Juliet, 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, says the Nurse, where “There stays a husband to make you a wife” (241, 2.4.68).

The Nurse’s circumstances and pace are not the same as young 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 almost to a fault, and certainly favorable to her pledge to Romeo, but always aware that the young girl is surrounded by a potentially hostile world of causes and effects, limitations and consequences. Pleasure and idealism are not free. [22]

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 marriage vows.)

Friar Laurence leads Romeo and Juliet off for the performance of the marriage ceremony. 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. Even so, Laurence insists on maintaining the propriety of the affair: he tells the two, “you shall not stay alone / Till holy church incorporate two in one” (242, 2.5.36-37).

Clumsy as his management style can be, Friar Laurence is granted the occasional flash of 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 whole set of utterances in this brief scene deliver some strain of what Wordsworth calls in his “Tintern Abbey” ode “the still sad music of humanity”—in this case, we can hear Laurence’s haunting sense of life’s fragility, his fear that these youngsters in his care are playing out a cautionary tale as old as civilization itself.

ACT 3

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 announced 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, as if to mock the mockers who treat violence as matter for comedy. Tybalt is determined to fight some Montagues, and Romeo’s attempt to play the role of proxy enforcer for the Prince leads him to get between Tybalt and Mercutio, which results in a mortal injury to the latter. Mercutio greets his fate with the 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 his characteristically tempered style of 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, and Capulet’s wife has demanded Romeo’s execution (246, 3.1.174-75).

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 wonderful romantic idealism around the time of the deadly quarrel: her words share something with the traditional lover’s complaint against the sun, but there’s more to them than that. Juliet’s words at this point are extraordinary: she welcomes the night, and imagines her own death, following it with the prayer for the absent 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, magic, and a time full of the magic of sex that all but blots out the memory of the brazen sun that stands in for the ordinary, everyday world she has known so far in her very short life. 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 (over which Juliet is genuinely aggrieved since he was her kinsman) 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, based on her knowledge that 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’ 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 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; meanwhile, Balthasar will keep Romeo informed of the goings-on in Verona.)

Banished 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 with some justice, “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 the depth of affection that the Friar, as a holy man, supposedly lacks: “tell me, / In what vile part of this anatomy / Doth my name lodge?” (252, 3.3.105-07) asks Romeo, offering to excise that part with his own knife.

Friar Laurence rebukes the young man’s “wild acts” (252, 3.3.109) and tells him he must soon make his way 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 the impatient Paris on Thursday rather than on the Monday date he has requested (254, 3.4.19-21). While father Capulet labors to sound humane and reasonable in tendering his “desperate” promise to Paris, his reassuring words to the young man—“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, courtesy of her father; Juliet firmly rejects this arranged union, and Capulet is furious with her for such disobedience, even threatening to disown her; the Nurse tries to counsel Juliet, but upsets her by urging her to forget Romeo and marry Paris; Juliet determines to go back to Friar Laurence and seek help.)

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, to whom her father has decided she should be wed “early next Thursday” (256, 3.5.112). Capulet’s rebuke of Juliet for her refusal is immediate and harsh: either she will marry Paris or he will disown her. He has gone from an apparently loving and human part to the traditional senex iratus (angry elder) of Classical comedy. [28]

More than that, however, Capulet is plain baffled by his ordinarily obedient 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, at least in a formal sense—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 of the household 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 and marry Paris, Juliet swears as soon as the old woman is gone 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, having instructed the Nurse to say she has gone to make her confession with Friar Laurence.

ACT 4

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 this 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 to take her away to Mantua.)

Count 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 with amorous words, but he gets nowhere with her—nothing but a false acceptance of the seemingly inevitable wedding this Thursday. As soon as Paris takes his leave, Juliet threatens to stab herself in Laurence’s presence—unless, that is, he can come up with some better plan.

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 an almost magical drug that will induce death-like symptoms lasting for exactly forty-two hours. Then Romeo, having been informed about what’s up, will travel from Mantua to the tomb of the Capulets and take his freshly awakened Juliet with him back to Mantua (261-62, 4.1.89-118).

What Juliet threatens is a common thing in literature: cheating the Grim Reaper, or at least attempting 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 in hopes of gaining more earthly time. [29]

The Friar, for a holy man, has a flair for quick-thinking deception, and 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). Strangely, Juliet’s promises of how far she would be willing to go to escape her marriage with Paris anticipate the Friar’s very 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, and she will go along with all of it, no matter how terrifying the prospect.

In strict terms, 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 whose interests he means to advance. His real opponent, to be fair, is simply a harsh and unfair set of people and circumstances. He does not act with any expectation of gain or for any corrupt purpose.

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 but that. Now, she smoothly tells her father, “I have learnt me to repent the sin / Of disobedient opposition / To you and your behests …” (262, 4.2.17-19). Her father is overjoyed to hear of this supposed reformation, and all is set.

Act 4, Scene 3 (263-64, Juliet bids goodnight to Lady Capulet and the Nurse, and—frightened but courageous—drinks the contents of the vial that the Friar gave her.)

Juliet rehearses her anxieties about the plan’s call for her to feign death. The main question she poses is a good one: “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, as she conjectures fearfully, she goes mad while fully awake in the Capulet vault, and does herself in?

Her fears notwithstanding, Juliet shows remarkable courage and 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 hired musicians, and tells the Nurse to wake Juliet; the Nurse discovers Juliet seemingly dead, and reveals the terrible news to the Capulet parents; they and Paris grieve deeply for Juliet’s apparent death; 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, and spend their time bantering.)

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 especially. The Capulet parents suffer (or rather think they suffer) an irretrievable loss of the sort all parents fear. There is a strong 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 shines forth as the great joy of their existence. She is, or 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). Together, they introduce a devil-may-care, self-interested attitude into the midst of unspeakable woe. These musicians have little to do with the goings-on of great houses. They are working-class stiffs, and they seek their own security and comfort. The Second Musician speaks for them all when he says, “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 limiting perspective on the unfolding tragedy in the Capulet household. [35]

ACT 5

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 really is dead, determines to lie in death by her side; wishing only to join Juliet in death 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, to borrow a phrase from Hamlet, he determines “with wings / As swift as meditation or the thoughts of love” [36] to purchase a dram of deadly stuff from a poor apothecary, and die next to Juliet. The Apothecary becomes a low-born casualty of this noble tragedy, protesting, “My poverty, but not my will, consents” (270, 5.1.75). The transaction completed, Romeo is ready to set out for the Capulet tomb in which Juliet sleeps.

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 to his discomfiture 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 that is the subject of this play. Even so, Laurence still has a plan—he will go to the Capulet vault and remove Juliet to his own cell until Romeo makes it back to Verona.

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, a grieving 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, a letter for his father, and some money to Balthasar, threatening him with death should he return to spy on his master. All the same, Balthasar mistrusts Romeo’s state of mind, and hides at a distance in case his help should be needed.

Romeo intends to enter the vault, but before he can do so, he encounters the hapless Paris, who is convinced that this young man is responsible not only for the death of his kinsman Tybalt but also for the untimely end of Juliet, who, he imagines, died from the shock and grief of that loss. The two draw their weapons, and Romeo kills Paris, only learning the young count’s identity afterward, to his sorrow.

But there is no time to grieve for Paris. Romeo now boldly confronts death and all its accoutrements. 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). [37]

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 architecture and 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 promptly swallows the Apothecary’s poison. He has chosen death over a lifetime of lamenting Juliet’s loss. His last words are, “Thus, with a kiss, I die” (273, 5.3.120).

Half an hour later, old Friar Laurence manages to come near the tomb, having stumbled over the stones along the way through the cemetery. Balthasar soon presents himself to the Friar and explains that he has accompanied his master Romeo here to the cemetery. Laurence moves close to the vault and discovers Paris slain and the bloody swords next to him. He has just barely entered the tomb, it seems, when Juliet awakes. All she needs to know is, “Where is my Romeo?” (274, 5.3.150)

Laurence is almost at once set into a fright over the noise of the approaching watchmen, and tries to call Juliet out of the tomb. His reluctance to stay within the inner recesses of the tomb marks him, we might say, as something other than the savior-figure he would like to be for Juliet. As the verse from Matthew 26:41 goes, “the spirit indeed is ready, but the flesh is weak.” [38] At the last moment, it seems, Laurence shies away from the prospect of danger and death, 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 in any case 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). In stage versions, Juliet often falls directly onto Romeo’s body.

At the tragedy’s end, 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 “strife” of the Montagues and Capulets is “buried” by the death of their beloved 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 in this sad state of affairs, 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 indeed 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.” [39]

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, small comfort for the newly reconciled houses (and the audience) though it must remain, ends the “two hours’ traffic” of Shakespeare’s stage.

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[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, 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 era’s emphasis on the gap between human 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] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 375, 1.5.29-30.

[37] 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.

[38] See Matthew 26:41, 1599 Geneva Bible. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 12/30/2024.

[39] 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 ….”

Commentaries onShakespeare’s Tragedies

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

ENDNOTES

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Tragedies