Romeo and Juliet

Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages
Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It Hamlet Henry IV (Part I) Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth The Merchant of Venice A Midsummer Nights Dream Othello Romeo and Juliet The Sonnets The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night
Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages
rom e o and j u li e t
Edited and with an introduction by

Sterling Professor of the Humanities Yale University Janyce Marson
Harold Bloom
Volume Editor
Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages: Romeo and Juliet Copyright 2008 by Infobase Publishing Introduction 2008 by Harold Bloom All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information contact: Blooms Literary Criticism An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Romeo and Juliet / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom ; volume editor, Janyce Marson. p. cm. (Blooms Shakespeare through the ages) This study guide contains a selection of criticism through the centuries on the play, plus an accessible summary, analysis of key passages, a comprehensive list of characters, and a biography of Shakespeare. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7910-9596-6 (hc : alk. paper) 1. Shakespeare, William, 15641616. Romeo and JulietExaminationsStudy guides. I. Bloom, Harold. II. Marson, Janyce. PR2831.R638 2008 822.33dc22 2007050854 Blooms Literary Criticism books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Blooms Literary Criticism on the World Wide Web at http://www.chelseahouse.com Series design by Erika K. Arroyo Cover design by Ben Peterson Printed in the United States of America Bang EJB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. All links and Web addresses were checked and verified to be correct at the time of publication. Because of the dynamic nature of the Web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.
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Series Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction by Harold Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Summary of Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Biography of William Shakespeare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 List of Characters in Romeo and Juliet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Criticism Through the Ages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 t Romeo and Juliet in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. . . . . . 37 1562Arthur Brooke. To the Reader, from The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 1635John Swan. From the Speculum Mundi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 1662Samuel Pepys. From The Diary of Samuel Pepys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 1672John Dryden. From The Conquest of Granada. Second Part. Defence of the Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 1680Thomas Otway. Prologue, from History and Fall of Caius Marius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
t Romeo and Juliet in the Eighteenth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

1767Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. From Hamburgische Dramaturgie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 1768Samuel Johnson. From Notes on Shakespears Plays . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 1794Charles Dibdin. From Shakespear, in A Complete History of the Stage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
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t Romeo and Juliet in the Nineteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

1809August Wilhelm Schlegel. From Criticisms on Shakspeares Tragedies, from Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 1817William Hazlitt. From Romeo and Juliet, from Characters of Shakespears Plays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 1818Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From Romeo and Juliet, from Shakespeare with Introductory Remarks on Poetry, the Drama, and the Stage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 1832Anna Jameson. Juliet, from Shakespeares Heroines: Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical and Historical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 1872Edward Dowden. From The First and Second Tragedy: Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet, from Shakespere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 1895Bernhard ten Brink. Shakespeare as Dramatist, from Five Lectures on Shakespeare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 1896Frederick S. Boas. Shakespere Italianate: Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice, from Shakespeare and His Predecessors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
t Romeo and Juliet in the Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

1902Walter de la Mare. Juliets Nurse, from Characters from Shakespeare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 1943Robert Penn Warren. Pure and Impure Poetry, from Kenyon Review. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 1951Harold C. Goddard. Romeo and Juliet, from The Meaning of Shakespeare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 1960Harry Levin. Form and Formality in Romeo and Juliet, from Shakespeare Quarterly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 1964Norman N. Holland. Romeo and Juliet, from The Shakespearean Imagination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 1970Francis Fergusson. Romeo and Juliet, from Shakespeare: The Pattern in His Carpet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 1970Susan Snyder. Romeo and Juliet: Comedy into Tragedy, from Essays in Criticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
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1973James H. Seward. The Height, from Tragic Vision in Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 1986Northrop Frye. Romeo and Juliet, from Northrop Frye on Shakespeare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 1986Harold Bloom. Introduction, from Romeo and Juliet (Blooms Modern Critical Interpretations) . . . . . . . . . 254 1991Thomas McAlindon. Romeo and Juliet, from Shakespeares Tragic Cosmos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 1993Maynard Mack. The Ambiguities of Romeo and Juliet, from Everybodys Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 1996Harold Bloom. Introduction, from Romeo and Juliet (Blooms Guides). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
t Romeo and Juliet in the Twenty-first Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

2001John Russell Brown. Romeo and Juliet: An Innovative Tragedy, from Shakespeare: The Tragedies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 2006Daryl W. Palmer. Motion and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, from Philosophy and Literature. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Series Introduction
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Shakespeare Through the Ages presents not the most current of Shakespeare criticism, but the best of Shakespeare criticism, from the seventeenth century to today. In the process, each volume also charts the flow over time of critical discussion of a particular play. Other useful and fascinating collections of historical Shakespearean criticism exist, but no collection that we know of contains such a range of commentary on each of Shakespeares greatest plays and at the same time emphasizes the greatest critics in our literary tradition: from John Dryden in the seventeenth century, to Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century, to William Hazlitt and Samuel Coleridge in the nineteenth century, to A.C. Bradley and William Empson in the twentieth century, to the most perceptive critics of our own day. This canon of Shakespearean criticism emphasizes aesthetic rather than political or social analysis. Some of the pieces included here are full-length essays; others are excerpts designed to present a key point. Much (but not all) of the earliest criticism consists only of brief mentions of specific plays. In addition to the classics of criticism, some pieces of mainly historical importance have been included, often to provide background for important reactions from future critics. These volumes are intended for students, particularly those just beginning their explorations of Shakespeare. We have therefore also included basic materials designed to provide a solid grounding in each play: a biography of Shakespeare, a synopsis of the play, a list of characters, and an explication of key passages. In addition, each selection of the criticism of a particular century begins with an introductory essay discussing the general nature of that centurys commentary and the particular issues and controversies addressed by critics presented in the volume. Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time, but much Shakespeare criticism is decidedly for its own age, of lasting importance only to the scholar who wrote it. Students today read the criticism most readily available to them, which means essays printed in recent books and journals, especially those journals made available on the Internet. Older criticism is too often buried in out-of-print books on forgotten shelves of libraries or in defunct periodicals. Therefore, many
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students, particularly younger students, have no way of knowing that some of the most profound criticism of Shakespeares plays was written decades or centuries ago. We hope this series remedies that problem, and more importantly, we hope it infuses students with the enthusiasm of the critics in these volumes for the beauty and power of Shakespeares plays.
Introduction by Harold Bloom

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Juliet, though she is early in Shakespeares career, is a superb creation, outshining even the brilliant Mercutio, who alone might have drawn away any of our interest from her. Mercutio dies, to save the play, and the Nurse dwindles into a savagely reductive pragmatist, until Juliet no longer can accept her. Though Romeo gathers our sympathetic attention, he is inadequate to the boundless depth and splendor of Juliet. As I age, I find myself less in agreement with A. C. Bradleys assertion that the only Shakespearean characters endless to mediation are Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, and Cleopatra. They are the richest in complexity and human range, but they have near-companions in Juliet, Shylock, Rosalind, Malvolio, Hal/Henry V, Lear and his Fool, Edgar and Edmund, Macbeth, Antony, Leontes, and Prospero. That bakers dozen have not exhausted my wonder in more than a half-century of pondering Shakespeare. Juliet induces in Romeo an heroic attempt to apprehend her fully and somehow to be worthy of her. Yet who could attain the sublimity of Juliet, who is absolute in her love? Rom. O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? Jul. What satisfaction canst thou have tonight? Rom. Thexchange of thy loves faithful vow for mine. Jul. I gave thee mine before thou didst request it, And yet I would it were to give again. Rom. Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love? Jul. But to be frank and give it thee again; And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep: The more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite. [II. Ii. 107-35] To be able to say: And yet I wish but for the thing I have is marvelous enough in this context, but to go on to the boundlessness, depth, and infiniteness
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of Juliets love is extraordinary. Shelley, in Juliets spirit, was to write that in true love the achieved difference was that to divide was not to take away. And yet even that vision of eros comes short of Juliets. We have become so accustomed to her play, and its place in culture, that we blind ourselves from seeing the natural perfection of her love. By the miracle of Shakespeares art she is at once a very young woman, part of our cosmos, and an exemplary saint of the religion of love. As a start, that may do, but her profundity is difficult for us to discern and absorb. Though Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeares first true tragedy, it differs from all the others in that its catastrophe is circumstantial and not inwardly founded upon the ethos of its protagonists. Whenever I teach the play I find myself still more moved by Juliet than before. Increasingly I distrust thinking about it as a tragedy, if only because Juliet necessarily moves the aware reader or theater-goer to a kind of celebratory awe. In herself she is a triumph even though the long and happy life in marriage she merits is not allowed to her. Shakespeare, through inventing Juliet, all but touches one of his rare limits. In what society could so exquisite a spirit as Juliets survive and flourish? The opera-like elements in the play are palpable, and have furnished the material for several valuable operas. If you start however with Juliets: My bounty is as boundless as the sea then the operatic aura dissolves. As a human heroine, Juliet was radically new in literature; she is healthy and precise in her love, and defeats any skepticism we could bring. Who would wish to be skeptical or ironical when confronting her authenticity? Gratitude joins wonder in any mature response to her greatness.
Biography of William Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon in April 1564 into a family of some prominence. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glover and merchant of leather goods who earned enough to marry Mary Arden, the daughter of his fathers landlord, in 1557. John Shakespeare was a prominent citizen in Stratford, and at one point, he served as an alderman and bailiff. Shakespeare presumably attended the Stratford grammar school, where he would have received an education in Latin, but he did not go on to either Oxford or Cambridge universities. Little is recorded about Shakespeares early life; indeed, the first record of his life after his christening is of his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582 in the church at Temple Grafton, near Stratford. He would have been required to obtain a special license from the bishop as security that there was no impediment to the marriage. Peter Alexander states in his book Shakespeares Life and Art that marriage at this time in England required neither a church nor a priest or, for that matter, even a documentonly a declaration of the contracting parties in the presence of witnesses. Thus, it was customary, though not mandatory, to follow the marriage with a church ceremony. Little is known about William and Anne Shakespeares marriage. Their first child, Susanna, was born in May 1583 and twins, Hamnet and Judith, in 1585. Later on, Susanna married Dr. John Hall, but the younger daughter, Judith, remained unmarried. When Hamnet died in Stratford in 1596, the boy was only 11 years old. We have no record of Shakespeares activities for the seven years after the birth of his twins, but by 1592 he was in London working as an actor. He was also apparently well known as a playwright, for reference is made of him by his contemporary Robert Greene in A Groatsworth of Wit, as an upstart crow. Several companies of actors were in London at this time. Shakespeare may have had connection with one or more of them before 1592, but we have no record that tells us definitely. However, we do know of his long association with the most famous and successful troupe, the Lord Chamberlains Men. (When James I came to the throne in 1603, after Elizabeths death, the troupes name
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changed to the Kings Men.) In 1599 the Lord Chamberlains Men provided the financial backing for the construction of their own theater, the Globe. The Globe was begun by a carpenter named James Burbage and finished by his two sons, Cuthbert and Robert. To escape the jurisdiction of the Corporation of London, which was composed of conservative Puritans who opposed the theaters licentiousness, James Burbage built the Globe just outside London, in the Liberty of Holywell, beside Finsbury Fields. This also meant that the Globe was safer from the threats that lurked in Londons crowded streets, like plague and other diseases, as well as rioting mobs. When James Burbage died in 1597, his sons completed the Globes construction. Shakespeare played a vital role, financially and otherwise, in the construction of the theater, which was finally occupied sometime before May 16, 1599. Shakespeare not only acted with the Globes company of actors; he was also a shareholder and eventually became the troupes most important playwright. The company included Londons most famous actors, who inspired the creation of some of Shakespeares best-known characters, such as Hamlet and Lear, as well as his clowns and fools. In his early years, however, Shakespeare did not confine himself to the theater. He also composed some mythological-erotic poetry, such as Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, both of which were dedicated to the earl of Southampton. Shakespeare was successful enough that in 1597 he was able to purchase his own home in Stratford, which he called New Place. He could even call himself a gentleman, for his father had been granted a coat of arms. By 1598 Shakespeare had written some of his most famous works, Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Nights Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Loves Labours Lost, as well as his historical plays Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, and King John. Somewhere around the turn of the century, Shakespeare wrote his romantic comedies As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Much Ado About Nothing, as well as Henry V, the last of his history plays in the Prince Hal series. During the next 10 years he wrote his great tragedies, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra. At this time, the theater was burgeoning in London; the public took an avid interest in drama, the audiences were large, the plays demonstrated an enormous range of subjects, and playwrights competed for approval. By 1613, however, the rising tide of Puritanism had changed the theater. With the desertion of the theaters by the middle classes, the acting companies were compelled to depend more on the aristocracy, which also meant that they now had to cater to a more sophisticated audience. Perhaps this change in Londons artistic atmosphere contributed to Shakespeares reasons for leaving London after 1612. His retirement from the theater is sometimes thought to be evidence that his artistic skills were waning. During this time, however, he wrote The Tempest and Henry VIII. He also
Biography of William Shakespeare
wrote the tragicomedies, Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winters Tale. These were thought to be inspired by Shakespeares personal problems and have sometimes been considered proof of his greatly diminished abilities. However, so far as biographical facts indicate, the circumstances of his life at this time do not imply any personal problems. He was in good health and financially secure, and he enjoyed an excellent reputation. Indeed, although he was settled in Stratford at this time, he made frequent visits to London, enjoying and participating in events at the royal court, directing rehearsals, and attending to other business matters. In addition to his brilliant and enormous contributions to the theater, Shakespeare remained a poetic genius throughout the years, publishing a renowned and critically acclaimed sonnet cycle in 1609 (most of the sonnets were written many years earlier). Shakespeares contribution to this popular poetic genre are all the more amazing in his break with contemporary notions of subject matter. Shakespeare idealized the beauty of man as an object of praise and devotion (rather than the Petrarchan tradition of the idealized, unattainable woman). In the same spirit of breaking with tradition, Shakespeare also treated themes previously considered off limitsthe dark, sexual side of a woman as opposed to the Petrarchan ideal of a chaste and remote love object. He also expanded the sonnets emotional range, including such emotions as delight, pride, shame, disgust, sadness, and fear. When Shakespeare died in 1616, no collected edition of his works had ever been published, although some of his plays had been printed in separate unauthorized editions. (Some of these were taken from his manuscripts, some from the actors prompt books, and others were reconstructed from memory by actors or spectators.) In 1623 two members of the Kings Men, John Hemings and Henry Condell, published a collection of all the plays they considered to be authentic, the First Folio. Included in the First Folio is a poem by Shakespeares contemporary Ben Jonson, an outstanding playwright and critic in his own right. Jonson paid tribute to Shakespeares genius, proclaiming his superiority to what previously had been held as the models for literary excellencethe Greek and Latin writers. Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show / To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. / He was not of an age, but for all time! Jonson was the first to state what has been said so many times since. Having captured what is permanent and universal to all human beings at all times, Shakespeares genius continues to inspire usand the critical debate about his works never ceases.
Summary of Romeo and Juliet

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Act I
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet begins with the appearance of the chorus, who introduces the work with a prologue in the form of a sonnet. The prologue informs the audience that this play is about two wealthy families in the city of Verona, Italy (the date is unspecified), who are engaged in a bitter feud. A son and a daughter from the two families fall in love, meet with ill fortune, commit suicide, and with their death bury their parents strife. The sad story line is repeated, and the chorus apologizes in advance for any deficiencies in the performance. The violence and the persistence of the Montague-Capulet feud, emphasized by the prologue, is immediately demonstrated in Act I, scene 1, of the play. Two servants of the Capulets, Sampson and Gregory, walk through the streets of Verona armed with swords and small shields. In the conversation it becomes clear that they are seeking to brawl with some Montagues. Their motivation seems somewhat vague, and their conversation is pugnacious and vulgar; Sampson in particular brags that he will beat all the Montague men and rape all the Montague women. This boasting is promptly put to the test with the arrival of two servants of the house of Montague, Abram and Balthasar, the latter being Romeos personal servant. Gregory and Sampson confer as to how to provoke a brawl while staying on the right side of Veronas laws, which forbid fighting or provoking fights in the streets. Sampson bites his thumb at Abram and Balthasar (a gesture of extreme disdain). But when Abram challenges Sampson, asking, Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?, Gregory informs Sampson that replying yes would be breaking the law, and Sampson is placed in the ridiculous position of claiming that while he did indeed bite his thumb, the gesture was not made toward anybody in particular. Not surprisingly, Sampsons disclaimer does little to pacify Abram, who challenges him to claim that he is the better man. At this point Benvolio, a member of the Montague family, enters the scene and is spied by Gregory. Gregory, assuming that Benvolio will protect them or be impressed by their

Romeo and Juliet
fighting, tells the faltering Sampson to say that he is better than Abram; Sampson does, and the servants attack each other. Benvolio, far from encouraging the fight, forcefully breaks it up by beating down the servants swords with his own. He is spotted in his efforts by the hotheaded Tybalt, a Capulet and Juliets mothers nephew, who accuses Benvolio of attacking the servants. When Benvolio claims he was only trying to make peace, Tybalt sums up his own character by retorting, I hate the word / As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee, and attacks the hapless Benvolio. The altercation attracts a few fed-up Verona citizens, who, in addition to breaking up the fight with a variety of blunt instruments, cry out their disapproval of the feud: Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues! The elderly patriarch of the Capulets appears with his wife and promptly demands a sword when he sees the similarly decrepit head of the Montagues, who has also been attracted by the scene. The two men are easily prevented from fighting by their wives until the prince of Verona, Escalus, enters and soundly chastises the men for allowing their conflict (bred of an airy word, according to Escalus) to break out repeatedly in the city. If ever you disturb our streets again, Escalus warns the two men, your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace. The prince leaves the old Capulet, promising to see Montague that afternoon, and the crowd disperses, leaving Montague, Lady Montague, and Benvolio. The Montagues ask Benvolio to describe how the fight began, but the conversation soon turns to the whereabouts of their son, Romeo, who has been moody and withdrawn lately for unknown reasons. The topic of their conversation handily appears, and Benvolio bids the Montagues to depart so that he can query Romeo as to the cause of his sadness. Benvolio does not wonder long, for Romeo readily reveals that he is in love and that the woman he lovesRosalinedoes not return his favor. Romeos bewailing of his fate is, to say the least, self-indulgenthe interrupts his own request for an account of the recent brawl in order to continue bemoaning his plight. He speaks in elevated rhymed couplets, and his language is filled with apostrophes and similes. Although sympathetic, Benvolio obviously has a hard time taking Romeos passion seriously; he rather cynically suggests that Romeo can cure his love by simply meeting other pretty ladies and comparing Rosalines none-too-exceptional face to theirs. Scene 2 takes the reader to the Capulets and another sort of love. Old Capulet, accompanied by a servant, is discussing his recent chastisement by the prince with County (Count) Paris, a young nobleman who is kin to Prince Escalus (and thus of higher social rank than the Capulets). Paris quickly changes the topic of conversation: He has asked for the hand of Juliet, Capulets daughter, and wishes for a response. Capulet objects that Juliet is too young to marry. He also indicates that he is favorably inclined to the suit but that he will defer to Juliets wish.
The back-to-back scenes with Romeo and with Paris serve a number of purposes in the play. First, there is the inevitable establishment of barriers to the couples romance (the right coupleRomeo and Juliethaving been established in both the plays title and its prologue) that will just as inevitably be overcome later on in the play. In addition, there is the presentation in these scenes of a number of false lovesRomeos juvenile love for Rosaline, Capulets hypocritical statement of concern for Juliet that simply masks a deeper love of money and position, and Pariss seemingly sincere but totally unrequited love for Juliet. These loves (especially the first two) seem to serve as a foil to Romeo and Juliets later love; although it can be argued that their love is impulsive and ill advised, it is decidedly more attractive to the audience than Romeos whining or Capulets unscrupulousness. Such implicit contrasts reoccur throughout the play. Capulets interest in marrying his daughter to Paris becomes evident when he invites the count to a party at his house that evening. The two go off to confer, leaving Capulets servant with a list of people to invite. The servant, however, is illiterate and decides to find an educated person to decipher the list for him. Just then, Benvolio and Romeo appear, still arguing over whether or not Romeo can cure his passion for Rosaline by meeting other women. The servant asks them to read the list for him, and when they do so, he repays the favor by inviting them to the Capulets party (provided that they are not of the house of Montague, of course). The list of guests includes Rosaline and a number of other young women; Benvolio points out that this is an excellent opportunity for Romeo to see other beauties and realize that Rosaline is only one of many. Romeo disagrees with this contention, but agrees to go anyway in order to see his love. Scene 3 unfolds in the Capulet household, where Lady Capulet, Juliet, and Juliets nurse are engaged in a serious discussion. At first, they attempt to determine exactly how old Juliet is, and the nurse quickly reveals herself to be somewhat addlepated and overly talkative. Nonetheless, she is clearly quite fond of Juliet and is a trusted family confidante in matters concerning the girl. They determine that Juliet is almost 14, old enough to marry by the custom of the day, and Lady Capulet asks her daughter if she would like to marry Paris. Before Juliet can answer, the nurse and Lady Capulet burst out in praise of Pariss handsomeness. Lady Capulet informs Juliet that she will see Paris at the party tonight and lets her know that even if she is not impressed by his looks, she should be impressed by his status, which she would share if she were to become his wife. Juliet obediently promises to look favorably upon Paris, but only as favorably as her parents will allow. Scene 4 takes place outside the Capulets house, as Romeo, Benvolio, and a number of friends and fellow Montagues gather before entering the party. In order to protect their identities, the members of Romeos party are going to the ball as masked dancers, and they pause to discuss the details of their performance.
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo insists on being a torchbearer, claiming that he is too lovesick to dance. One of Romeos friends, Mercutio (who is also related to Prince Escalus), teases Romeo mercilessly for not dancing. Romeo states that he had an ominous dream, and Mercutio launches on a long and witty diatribe against taking dreams seriously, claiming that they are simply the mischief of Queen Mab, the fairy midwife. When Romeo accuses Mercutio of talking nonsense, Mercutio counters that dreams are nonsense, but Romeo remains apprehensive. Scene 5 moves to inside the Capulets house, where the servants are putting the finishing touches on the dance hall. The Capulets and their guests enter; the masked dancers begin to dance with the ladies as Juliets father and another elderly Capulet reminisce about their long-gone dancing days. Romeo, holding a torch, spies Juliet and is immediately smitten, asking a servant to identify her (he cannot) and declaiming on her beauty. Juliets feisty cousin Tybalt recognizes Romeos voice and promptly sends for his sword, claiming that he will kill him where he stands. Fortunately for Romeo, old Capulet stops Tybalt, claiming that he does not want a fight at his party and pointing out that Romeo is behaving himself appropriately. Tybalt, however, is still eager to fight and is only deterred by the threat of losing Capulets favor; he leaves the party, promising revenge. In the meantime, Romeo accosts Juliet, takes her hand, declares his affection, and kisses her twice before the nurse intervenes. Romeo learns from the nurse Juliets identity. Later, after the party breaks up, Juliet learns Romeos identity from the same source. Both are distraught by the knowledge, for they have irretrievably fallen in love. Act II begins with another sonnet from the chorus, who reassures the audience that Romeos old love is gone and that he and Juliet now love each other. The chorus points out that although the couple has little opportunity to interact, their passion lends them power, time, means to meet. Their meeting forms the subject of the act, as Romeo hides in the Capulets orchard in scene 1 while his friends, Benvolio and Mercutio, try to find him to take him home. Mercutio mocks Romeos passion, ridiculing it as vulgar lust. After the two friends finally give up and leave, Romeo bitterly remarks that Mercutio jests at scars because he never felt a wound. Romeos comment begins the famous balcony scene in Act II, scene 2. Juliet appears at her window in the house by the orchard, and Romeo is astonished yet again by her beauty. But soft he exclaims, what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Romeo continues to compare Juliet favorably to a host of heavenly beings, but hopes that she will steer clear of the moon, which is associated with Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon and also the patron of virgins. She appears as if she is going to speak; Romeo thinks for a moment of revealing himself, but hesitates to disturb her. He watches her lean
Act II
her cheek against her hand, and then she breaks out with an Ay me! which excites the hidden Romeo still more. Unbeknownst to Romeo, Juliet is equally distraught and lovestruck, and she has evidently gone to the balcony to be alone with her feelings. Thinking herself alone, she begins to bewail her fate in loving a man of a rival family, exclaiming: O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And Ill no longer be a Capulet. Romeo wonders whether to reveal himself, but chooses to hear more. Juliet continues to hope aloud that Romeo would forget his familial association and be her love: Whats in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo calld. Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title, Romeo doff thy name, And for thy name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself. Romeo, who can no longer contain himself, emerges from hiding, exclaiming, Call me but love, and Ill be new baptizd. Although Romeo refuses to identify himself by his hated name, Juliet quickly recognizes his voice. The two converse, and Juliet immediately demonstrates a certain practical streakher first concerns are to know how Romeo got into her garden and to warn him that if her kinsmen find him he will be killed. Romeo restores the romantic tone, however, exclaiming that he would willingly die for her and that love showed him the way to her window. His professions of love fluster Juliet, who declares that she loves him as well and hopes that he does not find her too quickly won or think [her] behavior light. Romeo attempts to vow his love, but Juliet worries that his promises will be false. She does swear her love, though, and when her nurse calls her away from the window, she tells Romeo to stay. She quickly reappears and tells Romeo that if his bent of love be honorable, he should arrange for them to be married the next day and send a message telling her where and when to meet him for the wedding. Her nurse calls her away again, and Romeo starts to leave. But Juliet reappears one last time, and the two of them exchange some genuine expressions of affection before she exits again. In scene 3, dawn is breaking on the living quarters of Friar Laurence (spelled in some texts as Lawrence), a Franciscan monk. The friar is preparing to gather
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healing herbs and reveals a wealth of knowledge of the medicinal properties of plantsknowledge that will figure prominently later on in the play. Romeo enters, and the friar, noting that he has not slept the night before, exclaims that he hopes Romeo was not engaging in illicit activities with Rosaline. Romeo explains that he has forgotten all about Rosaline; he is now in love with Juliet and wants the friar to marry them. The friar echoes the question that is perhaps foremost in the audiences mind: Hasnt Romeo been awfully quick to discard Rosaline? At the same time, the friar somewhat unwittingly reinforces the idea that Romeo and Juliets love is good and special by pointing out that everyone knew Romeo did not really love Rosaline, and that marrying the couple will help mend the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. The difference between Romeos love for Juliet and what the friar termed as doting on Rosaline is emphasized in scene 4, when Romeo, having left the friar, runs into Benvolio and Mercutio, who are discussing the challenge to a duel that Tybalt sent to the Montague house for Romeo that morning. When they meet up with Romeo, he is far from his former self-dramatizing, melancholy self and instead jests heartily with Mercutio. Juliets nurse enters with her servant Peter and asks to speak to Romeo alone (which results in an endless amount of snide commentary from Mercutio and Benvolio). Romeo tells her where and when he and Juliet are to marry, and in scene 5 the nurse returns home, where Juliet anxiously awaits the news. After some teasing and withholding of information (foreshadowing the later unreliable messenger of Friar Laurences), the nurse relays the message. Scene 6, the final scene of Act II, has Romeo and Friar Laurence waiting for Juliet in the friars quarters. The scene is not entirely happy, however, for the friar ominously informs the impassioned Romeo, These violent delights have violent ends. / And in their triumph die, like fire and powder. / Which as they kiss consume. Juliet appears, the two exchange pleasantries, and the friar leads them off to be married. Scene 1 begins with Benvolio and Mercutio walking the streets of Verona. Mercutio is obviously spoiling for a fight, and when Tybalt appears and begins to ask after Romeo, Mercutio makes it clear that he would like nothing better than to duel. The fight is momentarily delayed, however, when Romeo appears on the scene. Tybalt insults him, but Romeo (aware, as Tybalt is not, that they are now related through marriage) ignores the insult and declares his love for Tybalt. Mercutio, inflamed by what he sees as Romeos craven submissiveness, draws his sword and challenges Tybalt over Romeos objections. The two fight. When Romeo tries to break up the duel, Tybalt reaches under Romeos arm with his sword and stabs Mercutio, then leaves the scene. The wound proves fatal, and Mercutio, lying wounded on the streets of Verona, wishes A plague a both your houses! before Benvolio takes him
Act III
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indoors. Benvolio returns shortly with news of Mercutios death, just as Tybalt reappears. The grief-stricken Romeo challenges Tybalt, they fight, and Tybalt is slain. By this point the citizens of Verona have been alarmed, and Benvolio points out that if Romeo is accosted by the authorities, he will surely be put to death. Romeo flees the scene, crying, O, I am fortunes fool! The authorities enter, looking for the murderer of Mercutio. When Benvolio points out the dead Tybalt to them, he is taken into custody. Prince Escalus and the heads of the Montague and Capulet households appear, and Benvolio recounts the bloody events. Lady Capulet challenges his account, however, claiming that since he is a Montague, his word cannot be trusted. The prince decides to make an example of Romeo and exiles him from Verona on penalty of death. Scene 2 opens on a blissfully ignorant Juliet, who is breathlessly awaiting the coming of night, when Romeo is to sneak into her room by means of a rope ladder and they are to consummate their marriage. Her nurse, rendered almost speechless with grief, appears with the ladder; in her incoherence she garbles her message and causes Juliet to think that Romeo has been killed. Eventually she makes it clear that Romeo killed Tybalt and has been banished. Juliet is obviously none too happy at either piece of news, but she realizes that she would rather Romeo killed Tybalt than vice versa. The nurse promises to bring Romeo to comfort her. Scene 3 shows Romeo hiding out in Friar Laurences quarters. The friar enters and informs Romeo that he has been banished. Like Juliet, Romeo becomes distraught and suicidal at the thought of being separated from his love, and he refuses to hide himself when someone knocks at the door. Fortunately it is Juliets nurse, who draws the obvious parallel between the two lovers miseries. This fails to calm Romeo, however. Upon hearing that he has caused Juliet pain, he attempts to stab himself, but the nurse snatches the dagger away. The friar castigates Romeo for the suicide attempt, telling him that he is being selfindulgent and actually unloving to Juliet, who would certainly follow his example if he killed himself. This perceptive (if somewhat ominous) criticism is followed by the practical suggestion that Romeo see Juliet that night, then sneak out of Verona and stay in nearby Mantua until the prince can be convinced to forgive him. The nurse praises this sage advice and, after giving Romeo a ring of Juliets, leaves to give Juliet the news. The blunt passion of Romeo contrasts strongly with the insensitivity of old Capulet, who appears at home in scene 4 with his wife and County Paris. Capulet explains Juliets absence by pointing out that her cousin was murdered that day; then after claiming that he loved Tybalt, he dismisses his slain kinsman with a callous Well, we were borne to die. Although he has yet to hear his daughters opinion of Paris, he agrees to marry her to him that coming Wednesday. Upon hearing that it is now Monday night, he exclaims:
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Romeo and Juliet
Monday! ha! Well, Wenesday is too soon, A Thursday let it bea Thursday, tell her, She shall be married to this noble earl. In scene 5, as dawn rises the next day, Romeo and Juliet stand at Juliets balcony, savoring the last minutes of a night of conjugal bliss. Romeo must flee, however, when the nurse brings news that Lady Capulet is coming. The lady and Juliet discuss Tybalts death and his killer, and Juliet begins what is to become a habit of clever dissembling, wishing aloud that she herself could give poison to Romeo (she knows, as her mother does not, that this would guarantee Romeos safety). Her mother tells her to be happy, for she is to marry Paris. Juliet replies that she would rather marry Romeo, a statement Lady Capulet interprets as meaning that Juliet is absolutely uninterested in Paris. At this point, Capulet enters, and upon hearing of Juliets refusal, he lashes out at his daughter, claiming that he will drag her bodily to the church if he must. When his wife and Juliets nurse object to his abusive language, he rails against them as well, finally telling Juliet that he will throw her out on the street to starve if she does not marry Paris. He storms off, his wife follows, and the devastated Juliet turns to the nurse for advice. The nurses counsel, however, appalls her: She suggests that Juliet marry Paris because he is wealthier and more powerful than Romeoadvice that if followed would make Juliet a bigamist (since her first marriage was consummated and her first husband is alive). Hiding her feelings, Juliet tells the nurse that she is comforted and must go to Friar Laurence to make confession. The nurse goes to tell the parents where Juliet is heading; meanwhile, the young lady swears never to trust her nurse again and determines to stop the weddingeither by getting help from the friar or by killing herself. Scene 1 begins with Friar Laurence in his quarters discussing the planned wedding with County Paris. Not surprisingly, the friar attempts to discover if Paris has asked Juliet her opinion of the match. Paris, of course, has not, but he wishes to hold the wedding soon in any case, since it seems that Juliet is mourning Tybalt excessively and the wedding might cheer her up. Juliet enters and is not only unresponsive to Pariss solicitude, but also implies that the count thinks he owns her. He leaves her with the friar to make her confession, and she tells the friar that he must help her or she will commit suicide. The friar comes up with a dangerous plot: He has a potion that, when swallowed, makes a person fall into a deathlike coma for a period of 42 hours. Juliet is to return home and claim that she will accept the marriage, and then take the potion that night. The next day when her family finds her, they will believe her dead and inter her in the Capulet tomb. The friar will send a messenger to
Act IV
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Romeo in Mantua, who will go to the Capulet tomb and break it open just before she revives. The couple will then be free to live together in Mantua. The plot has its hazards, but Juliet is sure of her courage and readily approves. The morning comes in scene 4, as the Capulets and the nurse prepare for the wedding. In scene 5, the nurse goes into Juliets room to wake her and discovers her seeming corpse. The resulting scene, in which the nurse, Paris, and the Capulets mourn Juliets death, is almost comic. The phrases the mourners use are like a parody of grief and, at the least, seem to indicate a lack of real feeling for Juliet even at her death. For example, the nurse cries, Shes dead, deceasd, shes dead, alack the day! and Lady Capulet replies, Alack the day, shes dead, shes dead, shes dead! Paris claims that Juliet has been Beguild, divorced wronged, spited, slain! and old Capulet chimes in with Despisd, distressed, hated, martyrd, killd! Much as he earlier chastised Romeo, Friar Laurence (who arrives to perform the marriage) stops the hysterical mourners with a blunt Peace, ho, for shame! and berates the hypocritical Capulets. The friar also takes the opportunity to further his own agenda by suggesting that they place her in the tomb as soon as possible. The wedding party, now a funeral party, departs for the graveyard, leaving the servants and musicians behind to make jokes and connive to get free food. Scene 1 opens in Mantua, where Romeo is pondering another dream, one in which Juliet found him dead and brought him back to life with a kiss. His good mood is destroyed, however, when his servant Balthasar comes in, having just arrived from Verona. Juliet is dead, Balthasar tells Romeo; he saw her corpse being placed in the Capulet tomb. Romeo, disbelieving, plans to ride to Verona that night. He then asks Balthasar if there is any news from the friar and, hearing there is none, dismisses the man. Once Balthasar is gone, Romeo reveals his true intentionshe will kill himself with poison at Juliets tomb. He has noticed a rundown apothecarys shop in the city, and goes there on the assumption that the mans poverty will prompt him to sell poison, an illegal act in Mantua. His hunch proves correct; the apothecary seems a good man but is desperate for money, which Romeo gives him with the caveat that it is worse poison to mens souls, / Doing more murther in this loathsome world, / Than these poor compounds that thou mayest not sell. In scene 2, Friar Laurence runs into Friar John, a fellow Franciscan who was supposed to bring the message of Juliets ruse to Romeo. John has been trapped in a house afflicted with some sort of plague and was not able to go to Mantua or even send a message. Laurence, assuming that Romeo is simply ignorant of the whole affair, arranges to send him another message and prepares to break into the Capulet tomb and retrieve the revived Juliet himself, then hide her in his quarters until Romeo comes.
Act V
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Romeo and Juliet
Laurence is not the only one interested in the Capulet tomb; Paris has decided to strew Juliets grave with flowers and perfume every night in token of his affection. In scene 3, night finds him making these rites in the graveyard, while his page keeps watch and alerts him to the coming of two men. Paris conceals himself only to see Romeo and Balthasar come to the tomb, armed with equipment to break in. Romeo gives Balthasar a letter to give to his father and tells him in no uncertain terms to leave. Balthasar is suspicious of Romeos intentions, however, and decides to hide himself nearby. Romeo begins breaking into the tomb, but Paris, recognizing him and assuming he is in the graveyard to defile the Capulet bodies, steps out and challenges him. They fight, frightening off Pariss page, who goes to call the watch. Romeo fatally wounds his attacker (whose identity he does not know), and the count makes a dying request to be placed in the tomb with Juliet. Romeo realizes that he has killed Paris, Mercutios kinsman, and vaguely recalls hearing that Paris was to marry Juliet. Although Romeo is not sure that his memory is correct, he honors his rivals last request, bringing him into the tomb. There he sees Juliets body and, with unintended irony, he remarks on her beauty, which he thinks has been amazingly well preserved in death. He also notes Tybalts corpse and hopes that by killing himself he will somehow make amends for that murder. He swears his love for Juliet, embraces her body, and swallows the poison, which quickly kills him. Immediately after Romeos death, Friar Laurence enters the graveyard and happens upon Balthasar, who tells him that Romeo is in the Capulet tomb. In the entrance to the tomb, the friar sees the blood and weapons from the fight between Romeo and Paris; his worries are justified as he goes into the tomb and sees the corpses of the two men. Soon after he enters, Juliet revives, asking after Romeo. The friar, hearing the watch come, quickly tells her that Romeo and Paris are dead and tries to convince her to flee the scene with him. But Juliet stays and, as in Romeos dream, kisses his corpse, which is still warm. He does not revive, however; instead, Juliet hears the arrival of the watch and decides to kill herself with his dagger before they can find and stop her. She stabs herself and dies on Romeos corpse. The page and the watch arrive and discover the three bodies. They send messengers to the Montagues, Capulets, and Prince Escalus and scour the area for witnesses, picking up Balthasar and Friar Laurence. The prince and the Capulets arrive first, followed by old Montague, who reveals that Lady Montague has died of grief because of Romeos exile. The friar tells the assembled party about Romeo and Juliets secret marriage and subsequent suicide; the letter Romeo gave Balthasar to give to old Montague confirms the friars tale. The prince decides that this tragedy is divine retribution for the Capulet-Montague feud, telling the patriarchs:
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See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love And I for winking at your discords too Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punishd. Old Capulet and Montague swear to end their hostilities, and each offers to raise a gold statue of the others child. The prince ends the play on an appropriately mournful note: A glooming peace this morning with it brings, The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head. Go hence to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardond, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

q
Act I, iii, 16
Lady Cap.: Nurse, wheres my daughter? Call her forth to me Nurse: Now by my maidenhead at twelve year old, I bade her come. What, lamb. What, ladybird. God forbid. Wheres this girl? What, Juliet! Enter Juliet Juliet: How now, who calls? Nurse: Your mother. This is our first introduction to Juliets nurse, a presence to be reckoned with for she has been Juliets caregiver since birth, and is thus able to provide the audience with an eyewitness account of the girls brief history. As is immediately seen, the nurse loves to talk, mostly gibberish; according to one scholar, there was a proverb current in Shakespeares time that a Nurses tongue was privileged to talk. By the time we meet her, she has already become the confidante of her 13-year-old charge; clearly she is also a trusted counselor, for we see her being quickly recalled by Lady Capulet during a critical discussion with Juliet regarding her preparedness to make a socially acceptable marriage. An analysis of the above passage presents a portrait of the nurses very distinct personality, both earthy in her pragmatic understanding of how the world works and bawdy in her perception of love and marriage. Nevertheless, for all of her sexual joking, the nurse also relates her own lifes story and, in so doing, presents a poignant aspect to her persona. As will also become abundantly clear in subsequent scenes, the nurses vulgar outlook regarding the relationship between men and women stands in sharp contrast to Juliets romantic ideals. The scene opens with the nurse swearing by her maidenhead at twelve year old that she has already summoned Juliet in response to Lady Capulets question on the whereabouts of her daughter, since that is the age when her virginity was still intact. Once Juliet enters, it is interesting to note that although the nurse is initially dismissed, Lady Capulet immediately recalls her, since she is Juliets trusted advisorand Lady Capulets intended discussion of Juliets marriage
17
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prospects, now that she is nearly 14 years of age, is far too important for the nurse to be excluded. Interestingly, as the nurse is quick to point out, this scene takes place approximately two weeks before Lammas Eve, a harvest festival which, according to the early English church, took place on August 1, to celebrate the first ripe corn from which bread was made, both as food and for purposes of consecration (and an apt symbol for all the contrary themes within the play). Lammas also marked the end of summer and the beginning of fall, when the days grow shorter and the heat subsidessymbolization that is meaningful both as prophesy for Romeo and Juliet as well as in the nurses story. Furthermore, in addition to this date falling near Juliets birthday on July 31, the discussion of Juliets preparedness for marriage and childbearing takes place at a time and within the context of a celebration of fertility. Finally, since the church is involved, there is also the suggestion that Juliets marriage will be the fulfillment of a sacrament. As the nurse proceeds to digress with her own history, we learn the tragic story of her daughter, Susan, who died when only 12 years old, enabling her to then nurse Juliet as compensation. This fact adds poignancy to the nurses character and will become even more heartbreaking in retrospect, as it foreshadows Juliets untimely death as well. Following Susans demise, the nurse, while sitting under the dove-house wall, applied wormwood, a bitter herb with medicinal properties, to her breast in preparation for weaning Juliet. According to James Harting in The Birds of Shakespeare, the reference to a dove is the only instance in Shakespeare where this bird is synonymous with a pigeon, thus symbolizing fidelity. Further on, this reference will become an apt description of Juliets love for Romeo, and an ironic association for the nurse, who will betray the confidence entrusted to her. Typical of the nurses ramblings and digressions, following the sad story of her deceased child, her bawdy sense of humor soon returns as she relates an anecdote concerning her equally vulgar husband. Her story is of a memorable sexual joke he made at the expense of his young Susan when she fell and broke her forehead. In response to this accident, her husband made a double entendre of the childs falling on her face by stating that she will lie on her back once she reaches sexual maturity: Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit. Indeed, the nurse is so fond of this story that she repeats and enhances it, as she so often does, comparing the bump on Susans forehead to that of a young mans testicles, though Lady Capulet bids her to keep quiet. Once the nurse is finally convinced to leave off her ribaldry, a serious interrogation ensues in which Juliet is questioned regarding her willingness to marry, to which Juliet responds in the negative: It is an honour that I dream not of. She then learns that her mother has chosen the gallant Paris, kinsman of Escalus, Prince of Verona, whom the nurse describes as a man of wax and beyond comparison. Lady Capulet and the nurse continue to persuade and
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otherwise entreat Juliet to consider marrying Paris, claiming that his looks and character are nonpareil, comparing him to a beautiful manuscript that lacks only a woman for its exquisite binding: This precious book of love, this unbound lover, / To beautify him only lacks a cover. In this passage, such a comparison subtly introduces a theme that will become increasingly apparent, for love during the Renaissance had become a literary convention and, consequently, an artificiality insofar as its precepts were incorporated by poets and men of letters. This love convention was codified by Petrarch, as a way of expressing his love for the unattainable Laura, his young pupil. The Petrarchan convention is lavish and extensive and includes the lovers outpourings about the unparalleled beauty of the lady; it is also replete with poetic lamentations that the lady will not reciprocate. Having learned much from Dante, Petrarch drew on the thematic materials used by the poets, including such rhetorical devices as the power of a ladys looks, her angelic way of being, her unparalleled beauty, the torture of unrequited love, and the struggle of the poets soul between admiration and desire. In comparing Paris to a beautiful book, which can be understood as one filled with lovely rhetorical flourishes, the elaborate conceit and imagery give him the aura of a fiction from the start and, further, imply its impossibility for the idealistic Juliet. For her part, Juliets response is appropriate. Since she is being persuaded on the grounds of Pariss fair image, she will simply look upon his features and no further. Indeed, it will be Romeos refusal to profess love by the book that will prove a barometer of his sincerity and enable the love story of Romeo and Juliet to achieve true dignity, despite its tragic end.
QQQ
Act I, iv, 47113
Romeo: And we mean well in going to this masque, But tis no wit to go. Mercutio: Why, may one ask? Romeo: I dreamt a dream tonight. And so did I. Mercutio: Romeo: Well what was yours? Mercutio: That dreamers often lie. Romeo: In bed asleep, while they do dream things true. Mercutio: O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomi Over mens noses as they lie asleep. Her chariot is an empty hazelnut
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Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time-out o mind the fairies coachmakers; Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners legs, The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, Her traces of the smallest spider web, Her collars of the moonshines watery beams, Her whip of crickets bone, the lash of film, Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat, No half so big as a round little worm Prickd from the lazy finger of a maid; And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers brains, and then they dream of love; Oer courtiers knees, that dream on curtsies straight; Oer lawyers fingers who straight dream on fees; Oer ladies lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are, Sometime she gallops oer a courtiers nose And then drams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tite-pigs tail, Tickling a parsons nose as a lies asleep; Then dreams he of another benefice, Sometime she driveth oer a solders neck And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades, Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plaits the manes of horses in the night And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes, This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage. This is she Romeo: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace, Thou talkst of nothing. True, I talk of dreams, Mercutio: Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air
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And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north And, being angerd, puffs away from then Turning his side to the dew-dropping south. Benvolio: This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves; Supper is done and we shall come too late. Romeo: I fear too early, for my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this nights revels, and expire the term Of a despised life closd in my breast By some vile forfeit of untimely death, But he that hath the steerage of my course Direct my sail! This passage features Romeo and his close friend Mercutio, a highly imaginative character fond of wordplay, especially sexual innuendo, who offers a witty and ribald commentary regarding love and the anticipated feast to be given by the Capulet family. As it turns out, Romeo, through the mistake of an illiterate servant, is inadvertently invited to attend the banquet. (Capulet had sent one of his serving men on a mission to deliver personal invitations to all names on a written list, but the servant, who could not read, handed the paper to Romeo, who saw Rosalines name and determined to attend.) There is to be entertainment, a masque, during this banquet to which Romeo will go in disguise. Though the masque has its antecedents in medieval Europe, in the mummings and disguisings that had become popular during festive occasions, it is primarily a Renaissance innovation. A festive, courtly form of entertainment popular during the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, its basic elements were music and dancing with ornately masked and costumed participants, who donned the appearance of mythological or allegorical beings. The masque also had a strong political and social aspect as well, since it was during this entertainment that the royalty and nobility mingled and, in so doing, affirmed their social status, not to mention justifying their enormous expenditures for the sake of this agenda. Romeo vows that he will not participate in the dancing as he has a soul of lead, an obvious pun meaning his feet are not suitable for dancing. As they are on their way to the feast, Mercutio sees fit to launch into an elaborate speech meant to defuse all of Romeos sublime notions of love. To illustrate his point, Mercutio discourses on Queen Mab, an obscure figure probably a fairy from Celtic folklore, possibly Mabb of Wales, whose name Mab is also a reference to a promiscuous woman. According to folklore, Mab was able to influence mens dreams, visiting them by night and delivering their wishes (though she also assisted in delivering babies): Through lovers brains,
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and then they dream of love; / Oer courtiers knees, that dream on curtsies straight; / Oer lawyers fingers who straight dream on fees. This description of dreamers from a range of occupations is clearly meant as social satire, of both courtiers, who fawn with outward shows of respect, and lawyers, one group among many insincere practitioners who are interested only in money. Neither does the parson do well in Mercutios estimation, for he too is interested in personal profit: Tickling a parsons nose as a lies asleep; / Then dreams he of another benefice. It is interesting to note the amount of detail expended on Queen Mabs physical appearance and chariot. Shaped no bigger than an agate stone, a precious commodity on which small figures were often engraved, Mab commands a team of miniature beings who drive a wagon fashioned out of tiny insects, galloping through lovers brains. Indeed, the lavish depiction of Mabs wagon mirrors Mercutios elaborate speech on her influence over dreams and, further, actually provides an example of the rhetorical device known as the somnium animale, or dream which arises from agitation of the waking mind. In his article on the two types of dreams to be found in Elizabethan drama, Robert K. Presson identifies this dream as arising from ones waking desires and fears, as opposed to prophetic dreams, and a manifestation of Mercutios power: Whether scoffing at lovers, or elaborating on the clock, or moralizing over the medlar, the lively play of mind of youth and his copious fancy are character in the highest sense .... A rhetorical device here is characterization. Finally, Mabs powers extend to controlling mens fate, as Mercutio describes her braiding horses manes while they sleep in one moment and, in a rapid transition to humans, intertwining the hair of harlots who bring misfortune upon themselves when they attempt to untangle the knots. Clearly, through the medium of Queen Mab, who disdains sluts and sluttery, Mercutio conveys his disdain for all forms of affectation and insincerity, including idealized notions of love between the sexes. Romeo, however, cannot be dissuaded, despite all of Mercutios skillful and well-wrought attempts to convince him otherwise: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace, / Thou talkst of nothing. Nevertheless, for all of its fanciful talk, scene 4 ends on an inauspicious note, for Romeo has vague misgivings that the masque will prove unfortunate: If fear too early, for my mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date.
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Act II, iii, 530
Friar Laurence: Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye The day to cheer, and nights dank dew to dry, I must upfill this osier cage of ours
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With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth thats natures mother is her tomb; What is her burying grave, that is her womb; And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find. Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some, and yet all different. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities. For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give. For naught so good but, straind from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied, And vice sometimes by action dignified. Enter Romeo
Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence, and medicine power: For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed kings encamp them still In man as well as herbs: grace and crude will; And where the worser is predominant Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. This passage, in which Friar Laurence descants on philosophical matters, is important because it encapsulates many of the spiritual themes central to understanding the transcendent relationship of Romeo and Juliet, whose love surpasses the violence and evil of the earthly world and promises to continue for eternity as the two young lovers are joined in death. To begin with, the friar is a member of the Franciscan religious order and, as such, is ordained to act as a spiritual guide, having himself taken vows of chastity and poverty. As he will soon act on behalf of the young lovers, offering both spiritual guidance and performing the marriage ceremony, he fulfills his sacred offices. Moreover, Friar Laurence also has a passion for and an abiding interest in medicinal herbs and the powers inherent within them. This passion grants him an expertise in some of natures secrets, enabling him to become a practitioner of healing arts and, ultimately, qualifying him for his future role as the manufacturer of the love potion that will save Juliet from a coerced marriage that her parents are so determined in pressuring her into.
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Most important, however, is Friar Laurences sermon on virtue, which we are privileged to overhear as he gathers medicinal herbs in his wicker basket, referred to here as an osier cage. As he walks amidst a variety of plants and flowers, he points out the contrariness of nature, both sinister and beneficent, as he identifies the baleful weeds that live side by side with precious-juiced flowers. He also notes that the earth, which provides sustenance to her children, is always, at the same time, the site of their eventual tomb, adding on another important theme for the Renaissance known as the momento mori, or reminder of death. Indeed, the friars commentary on the dual aspect of nature is both a reminder of our mortality and an important moral lesson on the inherent duality of the natural world, where natures bounteous offerings can be either the means of healing and salvation, if used correctly, or, conversely, the pathway to destruction. Thus, Friar Laurence provides a succinct definition of the power to do either good or evil that exists in nature and which, by extension, exists in humankind. Just as the herbs and exotic flowers can become dangerous if used improperly, it is likewise up to each individual to choose the right way to live his life, virtuously, eschewing all wrongdoing, an achievement that is won only by recognizing right from wrong. In other words, the potential for good and evil resides in all of natures phenomena and it is up to each individual to decide how to use it. Perhaps the four lines from the friars sermon that precede Romeos entrance provide the best commentary on virtue, for they describe a great battle that can turn either way depending upon ones choices: For naught so good but, straind from that fair use, / Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. / Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied, / And vice sometimes by action dignified. Ironically, as it will turn out, the friars good intentions on Juliets behalf will turn tragically wrong by a series of human errors beyond his control. That he understands this ever-present potential for misfortune is made clear in his image of the medicinal plants acting like two opposed kings for whom the outcome is highly tentative and not at all assured: Within the infant rind of this weak flower / Poison hath residence, and medicine power: . . . Two such opposed kings encamp them still / In man as well as herbs: grace and rude will.
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Act III, ii, 135
Juliet: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus lodging. Such a waggoner As Phaeton would whip you to the west And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaways eyes may wink, and Romeo
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Leap to these arms untalkd-of and unseen Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match Playd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. Hood my unmannd blood, bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle, till strange love grown bold, Think true love acted simple modesty. Come night, come Romeo, come thou day in night, For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow upon a ravens back. Come gentle night, come loving black-browd night, Give me my Romeo; and when I shall die 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. O, I have bought the mansion of a love But no possessd it, and though I am sold, Not yet enjoyd. So tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them. O, here comes my Nurse. Enter Nurse with cords, wringing her hands. And she brings news, and every tongue that speaks But Romeos name speaks heavenly eloquence. Now, Nurse, what news? What hast thou there? The cords that Romeo bid thee fetch? As the scene opens, a very anxious Juliet appears at the window waiting to celebrate her wedding night with Romeo. Her soliloquy is both eloquent and moving, demonstrating a skillful use of poetic language and classical metaphors. At the same time, this passage serves as a prime example of a theme that runs throughout the play, namely a concern with time and an impatience that ultimately proves ruinous for the two young lovers. In the opening lines, Juliet makes reference to Phaeton, the Greek god and the sun of Helios, god of the sun. In Ovids Metamorphoses, Phaeton asks his father to let him guide the solar chariot for a day, but proves himself unable to manage the immortal horses that are likely to set the world on fire. Phaeton is ultimately killed by a thunderbolt from Zeus. Phaeton is an important mythological analogue in
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Romeo and Juliet because of his association with the sun; he is symbolic of the overwhelming heat and passion of the young lovers. Here, Juliet wishes Phaeton to return to his lodging far from the sun, which is to say that she implores darkness to descend in order that she may be with her new husband. With these words, Juliet is actually asking Phaeton to reverse his normal duties and, quite possibly, the runaway she refers to is the same Greek charioteer who ushers in the new dawn daythus it could be construed that she is asking the mythological god to conspire in and accelerate her secret assignation with Romeo: Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, / That runaways eyes may wink. It should be noted that in Greek mythology, the gods are forever intervening with human beings, sometimes coming to their aid and, at other times, playing tricks on them or meting out punishment. However, there is a very sobering aspect to Juliets appeal, since Phaeton ultimately destroys himself through impatienceimplying that, on some level, though she longs to be with Romeo, who will leap into her arms, Juliet is also aware that their situation is fraught with peril, given the furtive wedding ceremony and the secret between them. As Juliet continues to express her ardent desire for Romeo, we are reminded once again that her love is an ennobling one and that she, in contrast to her immoral nurse and the debauched perspective of Mercutio, has kept her virginity for her wedding night. In a word, Juliet proves herself a faithful wife, as yet inexperienced, who will hold her marriage vows sacred: Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks, / With thy black mantle, till strange love grown bold, / Think true love acted simple modesty. Juliets conceit is also notable for its bird imagery. Inasmuch as hood is a term of falconry, her comparison to an unmanned hawk refers to one that is not fully within the keepers grasp and therefore bats its wings in an effort to escape. Finally, the theme of impatience is succinctly intertwined with navet when Juliet likens herself to a child eager but constrained from following its impulses: So tedious is this day / . .. To an impatient child that hath new robes / And may not wear them.
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Act IV, i, 68108
Friar Laurence: Hold, daughter, I do spy a kind of hope. Which craves as desperate an execution? As that is desperate which we would prevent If, rather than to marry County Paris, Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself, Then it is likely thou wilt undertake A thing like death to chide away this shame,
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That copst with death himself to scape from it. And if thou darst, Ill give thee remedy. Juliet: O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris. From off the battlements of any tower, Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk Where serpents are. Chain me with roaring bears, or hide me nightly in a charnel-house Oer covered quite with dead mens rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls. Or bid me go into a new made grave, And hide me with a dead man in his shroud Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstaind wife to my sweet love. Friar Laurence: Hold then. Go home, be merry, give consent To marry Paris. Wednesday is tomorrow; Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone. Let not the Nurse lie with thee in thy chamber. Take thou this vial, being then in bed And this distilling liquor drink thou off; When presently through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse Shall keep his native progress, but surcease No warmth, no breath shall testify thou livest The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To wanny ashes, thy eyes window fall Like death when he shuts up the day of life. Each part deprivd of supple government Shall stiff and stark and cold appear, like death, And in this borrowd likeness of shrunk death Thou shalt continue two and forty hours And then awake as from a pleasant sleep. Now when the bridegroom in the morning comes To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou, dead. The first stanza of this passage has an eerie quality, in that the elaborate plan Friar Laurence is about to propose is both ironic and chillingly prophetic: The friar will soon become the agent of Juliets destruction, and the desperate execution will in fact turn out to be all too realand by his hand, no less. It should be noted that as a friar, suicide is a crime, and although he has the best of intentions, he nevertheless transgresses his religious offices and the moral guidance he is obligated to provide.
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Juliets response once again reminds us of the impatience and haste that have proven so dangerous for both Romeo and Juliet, and the implicit foreshadowing of death that has haunted their relationship all along. With only the thought that she must evade Paris at all costs, Juliet is ready to risk a violent death, be it jumping from a tower, plunging into a snake pit, or living in the most horrid conditions: a death-in-life scenario, dwelling in charnel houses amidst the remains of the dead. But the most chilling of these desperate suggestions is the last, in which she is willing to be buried alive rather than consummate an impossible marriage to Paris, a wish that will tragically and literally come to pass. Nevertheless, her protestations notwithstanding, Juliets love for Romeo is absolutely unshakeable and faithful: To live an unstaind wife to my sweet love. How ironic, then, when the friar bids her to leave off her worrying and go about her day, happy in the knowledge that she will be able to cheat this proposed marriage while remaining true to Romeo.
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Act V, i, 1486
Romeo: How doth my lady? Is my father well? How doth my Juliet? That I ask again, For nothing can be ill if she be well. Balthasar: Then she is well and nothing can be ill. Her body sleeps in Capels monument, And her immortal part with angels lives. I saw her laid low in her kindreds vault And presently took post to tell it you. O pardon me for bringing these ill news, Since you did leave it for my office, sir. Romeo: Is it een so? Then I defy you, stars! Thou knowst my lodging. Get me ink and paper, And hire posthorses. I will hence tonight. Balthasar: I do beseech you sir, have patience. Your looks are pale and wild and do import Some misadventure. Romeo: Tush, thou art deceivd. Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do. Hast thou no letters to me from the Friar? Balthasar: No, my good lord. Romeo: No matter. Get thee gone. And hire those horses. Ill be with thee straight. Exit Balthasar.
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Will Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight. Lets see for means. O mischief thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men. I do remember an apothecary And hereabouts a dwellswhich late, I noted In tatterd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones, And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff d, and other skins Of ill-shapd fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses Were thinly scatterd to make up a show. Noting this penury, to myself I said, And if a man did need a poison now, Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him. O, this same thought did but forerun my need, And this same needy man must sell it me. As I remember, this should be the house. Being holy-day, the beggars shop is shut. What ho! Apothecary! Enter Apothecary. Apothecary: Who calls so loud? Romeo: Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor. Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have A dram of poison; such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins That the life-weary taker may fall dead; And that the trunk may be dischargd of breath As violently as hasty powder fird Doth hurry from the fatal cannons womb. Apothecary: Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantuas law Is death to any he that utters them. Romeo: Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness, And fearst to die? famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back, The world is not thy friend, nor the worlds law; The world affords no law to make thee rich;
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Then be not poor, but break it, and take this. Apothecary: My poverty, but not my will consents. Romeo: I pay thy poverty, and not thy will. Apothecary: Put this in any liquid thing you will. And drink it off and if you had the strength Of twenty men it would dispatch you straight. Romeo: There is thy goldworse poison to mens souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. Farewell, buy food, and get thyself in flesh. Come, cordial, and not poison, go with me To Juliets grave, for there must I use thee. As this scene opens, we see yet another instance of faulty communication. Here, Romeos servant, Balthasar, announces that Juliet is dead, although she is actually just asleep from the magic potion she has swallowed. Though the friars deception has worked, and Juliet does indeed lie in the family tomb, Romeo has not been privy to the most important piece of informationnamely, that Juliets death has merely been staged. Indeed, Romeos misapprehension of the real facts is due to yet another mishap, when Friar Johns message does not reach him. Thus, the tragic coincidences and calamities continue to mount at a rapid pace, with Romeo resolving to get to Juliets tomb with the greatest haste so that he may lie beside her. Once again we are reminded of a theme that runs throughout Romeo and Juliet, one in which impatience and rash behavior turn to disaster. Here, Balthasars attempts to reason with Romeo and advise him to exercise caution are to no avail, as Romeo makes clear that he intends to commit suicide. Romeo is reminded of a desperately poor apothecary, a caitiff wretch whom he will visit without further ado. Apparently, this mans situation is so beleaguered that Romeo is convinced he will sell poison in order to make some money, and Romeo is indeed right in his estimation. With his planned visit to the apothecary, Romeo provides us with a catalog of the items to be found in a Renaissance apothecary shop, replete with all manner of curiosities such as the stuffed skins of alligators and other reptiles, as well as earthen green pots and musty seeds. Ironically, the image of the apothecary bears a strong resemblance to that of Friar Laurence, as Romeo describes him culling of simples, much like the friar gathering herbs in his osier cage. However, the friar is deeply committed to his study of nature and has only the best of intentions in offering his knowledge of herbs to the betterment of society, while the apothecary remains a vague and elusive man who is trying to stay alive and willing to trade anything he can in order to earn some money. Furthermore, while the friar is first and foremost a religious man, the apothecary, whose shop
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Romeo fears will be closed due to some unspecified holy day, is open and ready to perform the deadly transaction. Finally, when Romeo tells him that he wants to poison himself, as quickly as possible, the apothecarys first response is that the laws of Mantua forbid him to sell his drugs for the purpose of destroying life, but his financial straits are so great that he agrees to the request. The scene concludes with Romeo pointing out a paradoxical situation regarding this fatal transaction: Although Romeo gives the apothecary the money he needs to subsist, Romeo states that he has in fact sold the real poison while the apothecary has not. While this statement appears illogical, it can be understood as a manifestation of Romeos irrational thinking: He no longer wishes to stay alive, but has provided the means for the apothecary to do so, even as the apothecary has facilitated an end to the misery of Romeos mortal existence.
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List of Characters in Romeo and Juliet

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Romeo is the son of the house of Montague, a wealthy Verona family. A young, romantic man, he seems relatively uninvolved in the feud between his family and the Capulets, another wealthy family in the city, and in the course of the play he falls deeply in love with the Capulets daughter, Juliet. They secretly marry, but events cause Romeo to kill her cousin, Tybalt, and be exiled from the city. Upon hearing a false account of Juliets death, Romeo goes to her tomb and poisons himself. Juliet is the daughter of the house of Capulet, which is engaged in a bloody feud with the Montagues. Juliet, who at the beginning of the play seems merely a young, naive, and obedient daughter, falls in love with Romeo and marries him. She reveals herself to be tough-minded and courageous when her secret marriage to Romeo is threatened by her fathers decision to marry her to Paris. She eventually participates in an elaborate plan to avoid the second marriage by feigning her own death. The plan backfires when Romeo, believing her dead, commits suicide; upon discovering his corpse, Juliet fatally stabs herself. Friar Laurence, a Franciscan monk, performs the secret wedding of Romeo and Juliet and devises the scheme by which Juliet attempts to avoid marrying Paris. The friar is a learned man and offers generally wise advice to a number of other characters; however, the scheme he proposes to Juliet eventually leads to the deaths of her, Paris, and Romeo. Juliets nurse is a dedicated and loyal, if somewhat empty-headed, ally of Juliet. She plays an important role in getting Romeo and Juliet secretly married. However, her lack of moral center causes Juliet to discard her as a confidante (after she suggests that Juliet marry Paris, who is richer, despite her existing marriage to Romeo). Paris, kin to Prince Escalus and Mercutio, is a wealthy nobleman who wishes to marry Juliet. Although he seems a decent man, he is blind to the fact that
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Juliet does not care for him and does not want to marry him. He is eventually killed by Romeo, whom he attacks when he thinks Romeo is breaking into the Capulet tomb to defile the bodies. Old Capulet is the head of the Capulet household and Juliets father. He condones the feud with the Montagues but displays a certain restraint when he prevents Tybalt from attacking Romeo at a party. His character becomes less sympathetic, however, when he attempts to force Juliet to marry the wealthy and powerful Paris. After the suicides of Romeo and Juliet, he swears friendship with old Montague. Lady Capulet, Juliets mother and Tybalts aunt, encourages Juliet to marry Paris but objects to her husbands abusive behavior when her daughter refuses. Tybalt, the nephew of Juliets mother, is an extremely violent and pugnacious young man who kills Romeos friend Mercutio and is in turn killed by Romeo, causing Romeo to be exiled from Verona. Old Montague is head of the Montague household and Romeos father. He obviously cares for his son, but encourages the feud that results in Romeos banishment. Lady Montague is Romeos mother, who dies from grief after her sons banishment from Verona. Mercutio is a witty and punning young nobleman and kin to both Paris and Prince Escalus. Although he is not a Montague, he takes that familys side in the feud, an attitude that causes him to challenge Tybalt, who kills him. Benvolio, the nephew of old Montague, is a calm and reasonable character who attempts to keep the peace in Verona in the face of an escalating feud. Prince Escalus is the ruler of Verona, who exiles Romeo in an attempt to end the Capulet-Montague feud, which he feels is a disturbance and a menace to the people of his city.
Criticism Through the Ages

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Romeo and Juliet in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

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Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet was written sometime between 1595 and 1596 at a time when the bard was experimenting with a wide range of poetic and dramatic styles. Prior to Shakespeare, the story of Romeo and Juliet existed in folklore, though its origin is both obscure and diverse. The story of Romeo and Juliet familiar to the Elizabethan audience developed in fifteenth-century Italy in the genre of the novella, or short tale. Among the well-known writers of the Italian Renaissance who created their own versions of the popular myth were Masuccio Salernitano, who included most of the plot in a collection of stories entitled Novellino, in 1476, and Luigi da Porto, whose Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti (c. 1530) drew on various legendary sources, as well as on Boccaccios Decameron. However, the most immediate sources for Shakespeare were a poem written by Arthur Brooke, entitled The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which Shakespeare apparently knew by 1591, and a prose work by William Painter, called The Palace of Pleasure (1567), which was based on older stories. Both Brooke and Painter depict a violent society, are sympathetic to the lovers, and stress the primary role of fate in the unfolding of events. However, of the two English works, Arthur Brookes is the more innovative. While expressing admiration for the two young lovers in his poem, Brookes introductory address to the reader exhibits striking contradictions regarding his attitude towards the story of Romeo and Juliet. Indeed, Brookes address becomes a scathing editorial about the deceitful and surreptitious relationship which they pursue despite all rules of propriety towards their elders. Furthermore, Brooke makes patently clear in this introduction that justice will ultimately be served, as Romeo and Juliet are headed towards their own demise: The glorious triumphe of the continent man upon the lustes of wanton fleshe, incourageth men to honest restraynt of wyld affections, the shamefull and wretched endes of such, as have yielded their libertie thrall to fowle desires, teache men to witholde themselves from the hedlong fall of loose dishonestie. ... And to this ende
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(good Reader) is this tragicall matter written, to describe unto thee a coople of unfortunate lovers, thralling themselves to unhonest desire, neglecting the authoritie and advise of parents and frendes, conferring their principall counsels with drunken gossyppes, and superstitious friers (the naturally fitte instruments of unchastitie) attemptying all adventures of peryll, for thattaynyng of their wished lust, usyng auricular confession (the kay of whoredome, and treason) for futheraunce of theyr purpose .. .. That Brooke is compassionate towards Romeo and Juliet and the tragic conclusion of their young lives is evidenced in the concluding lines of his poem. Here, Brooke is mindful of the need to pay respects to their memory, as he bestows nobility to their untimely death: And lest that length of time might from our myndes remove The memory of so perfect, sound, and so approved love, The bodies dead removed from vaulte where they did dye, In stately tombe, on pillers great, of marble rayse they hye. On every side above, were set and eke beneath, Great store of cunning Epitaphes, in honor of theyr death. And even at this day the tombe is to be seene So that among the monuments that in Verona been, There is no monument more worthy of the sight, Then is the tombe of Juliet, and Romeus her knight. In his 1635 poem on the natural sciences, John Swan makes an allusion to Romeo and Juliet. The full title of the poem is Speculum Mundi, or, A glasse representing the face of the world shewing both that it did begin, and must also end, the manner how, and time when. It is a summary of the natural history of his day. In the poem, Swan borrows from Friar Laurences speech in Act II, scene 3, in order to better express appreciation for the wonders of the physical world and its powers. In particular, Swan echoes Friar Laurences caution that there is an inherent contradiction in all natural phenomena, that the herbs and trees and stones that heal also possess the ability to be harmful. Swans poem makes clear that it is not only necessary to study nature, but also to share newly acquired knowledge with others: Oh mickle is the powerful good that lies In herbs, trees, stone, and their true qualities; For nought so vile that on earth doth live, But to the earth some secret good doth give.
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And nought so rich on either rock or shelf, But, if unknown, lies useless to it self. Therefore who thus doth make their secrets known, Doth profit others, and not hurt his own. During the reign of the Puritans, from 1642 to 1660, the British theaters were closed for political and ideological reasons. However, following the death of Oliver Cromwell and the ascension of Charles II to the throne, the theaters reopened and flourished once again. Shortly after the Restoration, a version of Romeo and Juliet was performed at a theater in Lincolns Inn Fields in what had previously been a tennis court. This performance was attended by Samuel Pepys and recorded in Pepyss diary, which is considered an invaluable primary source for the English Restoration period. In his entry for March 1, 1662, Pepys makes it clear that he thoroughly detested the first performance he attended of Romeo and Juliet and is emphatic that he will not be attending a second time. In fact, it is said elsewhere that the actors for this performance had apparently not learned their lines, which accounts for Pepyss derogatory commentary. Most older plays produced in the Restoration period, however, were restructured and revised to fit new cultural standards. Thomas Otways History and Fall of Caius Marius, published in 1680, is an example of a substantially changed Romeo and Juliet. In addition to essentially rewriting Shakespeares lines, Otway emphasizes a new political agenda, which is to stage the horrors of civil war, while the story of a passionate and complex love relationship recedes into the background. Caius Marius had ten performances between December 1677 and March 1682, and after it was revived in the 1690s, it had another 29 performances. During this time, Charles II was attempting to have his brother, James, excluded from the succession. In effect, Charles was attempting to send James into exile. Otways intention seemed to be to warn the audience of the dangers of social unrest, reminding them of the events of the 1640s that led to civil war. Consequently, among the alterations to be found in Caius Marius are two equally feuding and vicious families, with frightening images of civil disobedience, while the lovers, renamed Marius junior and Lavinia, function as symbols of natural virtue who fade out amidst the social turmoil. As the scholar John Wallace points out, Otways play reads like a sermon in which the youthful lovers function as symbols of good nature, filial affection, and a desire to obey ... the action is overwhelmed by ill-natured banishments and ambition. Based on the story of Marius in Plutarchs Lives, Otways play is focused on the national character of individuals. His prologue to the work praises Shakespeare, whom Otway calls the happiest Poet of
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his Time, and best, and apologizes for stealing and reworking Shakespeares play: Our this-days Poet fears hhas done him wrong. Like greedy Beggars that steal Sheaves away, Youll find hhas rifled him of half a Play. Two of Otways alterations to Romeo and Juliet stand out. First, when Marius junior arrives at Lavinias tomb, he finds her alive, and they speak to each other briefly before poisoning themselves. Lavinia announces her joy in being reunited with her husband, saying the Gods have heard my Vows and declaring her abiding confidence in Mariuss ability to revive the Dead, while Marius observes that the ill fate that has been visited upon them is also a release from cruel parents and oppressive laws: Thus to redeem me from this vale of Torments, / And bear me with thee to those Hills of Joys. / This Worlds gross air grows burthensome already. Marius dies two lines later, followed by Lavinia, who partakes of the poison from his lips. Secondly, the Mercutio figure, Sulpitius, actually survives and has the last word in Act V. In Otways play, Sulpitius, who has been wounded as a result of getting caught up in a riotous mob, rails against any possibility of redemption for the feuding families through the martyred deaths of their children: A curse on all Repentance! how I hate it! The play ends with Sulpitius writing his own epitaph: Sulpitius lies here, that troublesome Slave, That sent many honester men to the Grave, And dyd like a Fool when h had livd like a Knave. Perhaps the most interesting comment on the play in this century was a brief remark by the great poet and critic John Dryden, in an epilogue to one of his own plays, The Conquest of Granada, published in 1672. Writing about the refinement of Wit, Dryden refers to a statement supposedly made by Shakespeare himself: that he was forced to kill off Mercutio early in Romeo and Juliet to prevent being killed by him. Many critics, readers, and theatergoers have noted that the charismatic Mercutio seems to dominate the play until he dies in the third act. Whether or not Shakespeare actually said this, the comment reflects a widely held opinion that Mercutio had to die early on for the sake of the play. In later years, various other critics such as Samuel Johnson and Harold Bloom would refer to Drydens remark. Conversely, in Otways play, the Mercutio figure can survive because the focus of the work is more on politics than on the love story.
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1562Arthur Brooke. To the Reader, from The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet
Arthur Brooke (?1563) wrote what is usually regarded as the main source for Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet. He died in a shipwreck in 1563; little else is known of his life.
The God of all Glory created, universally, all creatures to set forth His praise; both those which we esteem profitable in use and pleasure, and also those which we accompt noisome and loathsome. But principally He hath appointed man the chiefest instrument of His honour, not only for ministering matter thereof in man himself, but as well in gathering out of other the occasions of publishing Gods goodness, wisdom, and power. And in like sort, every doing of man hath, by Gods dispensation, something whereby God may and ought to be honoured. So the good doings of the good and the evil acts of the wicked, the happy success of the blessed and the woeful proceedings of the miserable, do in divers sort sound one praise of God. And as each flower yieldeth honey to the bee, so every example ministereth good lessons to the well-disposed mind. The glorious triumph of the continent man upon the lusts of wanton flesh, encourageth men to honest restraint of wild affections; the shameful and wretched ends of such as have yielded their liberty thrall to foul desires teach men to withhold themselves from the headlong fall of loose dishonesty. So, to like effect, by sundry means the good mans example biddeth men to be good, and the evil mans mischief warneth men not to be evil. To this good end serve all ill ends of ill beginnings. And to this end, good Reader, is this tragical matter written, to describe unto thee a couple of unfortunate lovers; thralling themselves to unhonest desire; neglecting the authority and advice of parents and friends; conferring their principal counsels with drunken gossips and superstitious friars (the naturally fit instruments of unchastity); attempting all adventures of peril for th attaining of their wished lust; using auricular confession the key of whoredom and treason, for furtherance of their purpose; abusing the honourable name of lawful marriage to cloak the shame of stolen contracts; finally by all means of unhonest life hasting to most unhappy death. This precedent, good Reader, shall be to thee, as the slaves of Lacedemon, oppressed with excess of drink, deformed and altered from likeness of men both in mind and use of body, were to the free-born children, so shewed to them by their parents, to th intent to raise in them an hateful loathing of so filthy beastliness. Hereunto, if you apply it, ye shall deliver my doing from offence and profit yourselves. Though I saw the same argument lately set forth on stage with more commendation than I can look forbeing there much better set forth than I have or can doyet the same matter penned as it is may
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serve to like good effect, if the readers do bring with them like good minds to consider it, which hath the more encouraged me to publish it, such as it is.
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1635John Swan. From the Speculum Mundi

John Swan was an avid follower of the natural sciences of his day. His Speculum Mundi draws a sharp contrast between early times, when all things were in their full strength, and the present day.
Oh mickle is the powerful good that lies In herbs, trees, stone, and their true qualities; For nought so vile that on earth doth live, But to the earth some secret good doth give. And nought so rich on either rock or shelf, But, if unknown, lies useless to it self. Therefore who thus doth make their secrets known, Doth profit others, and not hurt his own.
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1662Samuel Pepys. From The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys (16331703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament. His private diary, published after his death, is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period and provides a fascinating combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London, in addition to various early performances of Shakespeares plays.
March 1, 1662 . . . thence to the Opera and there saw Romeo and Julett, the first time it was ever acted. But it is the play of itself the worst that ever I heard in my life, and the worst acted that ever I saw these people do; and I am resolved to go no more to see the first time of acting, for they were all of them out more or less.
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1672John Dryden. From The Conquest of Granada. Second Part. Defence of the Epilogue
John Dryden (16311700) was an English poet, dramatist, and literary critic who so dominated the literary scene of his day that it came to be known as the Age of Dryden. He produced the first substantive criticism of Shakespeare. Dryden also wrote An Essay on Dramatick Poesie (1668), All for Love (1678), Absalom and Achitophel (1681), and MacFleknoe (1682).
That the wit of this age is much more courtly, may easily be proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written in the last.... Shakespeare showed the best of his skill in his Mercutio; and said himself, that he was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being killed by him. But, for my part, I cannot find he was so dangerous a person: I see nothing in him but what was so exceeding harmless, that he might have lived to the end of the play, and died in his bed, without offence to any man.
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1680Thomas Otway. Prologue, from History and Fall of Caius Marius

Thomas Otway (16521685), one of the most popular of Restoration playwrights, was praised by contemporaries such as John Dryden. His other plays include Venice Preserved, or A Plot Discovered, a blank-verse tragedy about a conspiracy to murder Venetian senators; Alcibiades; Don Carlos, Prince of Spain ; The Orphan, or The Unhappy Marriage; and The Atheist.
In Ages past, (when will those Times renew?) When Empires flourisht, so did Poets too. When great Augusus the Worlds Empire held, Horace and Ovids happy Verse excelld. Ovids soft Genius, and his tender Arts Of moving Nature, melted hardest Hearts. It did th Imperial Beauty, Julia, move To listen to the Language of his Love. Her Father honourd him: and on her Breast, With ravishd sense in her Embraces prest,
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He lay transported, fancy-full, and blest. Horaces lofty Genius boldlier reard His manly Head, and through all Nature steerd; Her richest Pleasures in his Verse refind, And wrought em to the relish of the Mind. He lasht, with a true Poets fearless Rage, The Villanies and Follies of the Age. Therefore Mcenas, that great Favrite, raisd Him high, and by him was he highly praisd. Our Shakespear wrote too in an Age as blest, The happiest Poet of his Time, and best; A gracious Princes Favour cheard his Muse, A constant Favour he ner feard to lose. Therefore he wrote with Fancy unconfind, And Thoughts that were Immortal as his Mind. And from the Crop of his luxuriant Pen Ere since succeeding Poets humbly glean Though much the most unworthy of the Throng, Our this-days Poet fears hhas done him wrong. Like greedy Beggars that steal Sheaves away, Youll find hhas rifled him of half a Play. Amidst his baser Dross youll see it shine Most beautiful, amazing, and Divine. To such low Shifts, of late, are Poets worn, Whilst we both Wits and Csars Absence mourn. Oh! when will He and Poetry return? When shall we there again behold him fit Midst shining Boxes and a Courtly Pit, The Lord of Hearts, and President of Wit? When that blest Day (quick may it come) appears, His Cares once banisht, and his Nations Fears, The joyfull Muses on their Hills shall sing Triumphant Songs of Britains happy King. Plenty and Peace shall flouish in our Isle And all things like the English Beautysmile. You, Criticks, shall forget your natral Spite, And Poets with unbounded Fancy write. Evn This-days Poet shall be alterd quite: His Thoughts more loftily and freely flow; And he himself, whilst you his Verse allow, As much trasported as hes humble now.
Romeo and Juliet in the Eighteenth Century

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The eighteenth century marked the burgeoning of Shakespeare studies, as evidenced by the numerous editions of his complete works. The first standard collected edition of Shakespeares plays was produced by Nicholas Rowe (1709). This was followed by the editions of Alexander Pope (1725), Lewis Theobald (1734), Samuel Johnson (17651768), George Steevens (1773 and 1778), and many others. Of the major comments on Romeo and Juliet in this century, what is most striking is the critics appreciation of Shakespeares understanding of human nature. The critical essays below note Shakespeares keen insight into human behavior as well as his vivid poetic depiction of the passion of love. In general, they see Shakespeare as a spokesman for all time rather than a reflection of the spirit of Elizabethan England. Gotthold Ephraim Lessings commentary lauds Shakespeares achievement in Romeo and Juliet as having created a living picture whereby the playwright breathes life into the very concept of Love. For Lessing, Shakespeare has endowed the love between Romeo and Juliet with a viable force that thinks and acts creatively on its own behalf, to the extent that it establishes sovereignty over those whose bodies it inhabits, until it is the autocrat of all our desires and all our aversions! Samuel Johnson is widely considered to be the greatest critic in English history, as well as one of the greatest commentators on Shakespeare in particular. His edition of Shakespeare contained his famous notes on the plays. His General Observation on Romeo and Juliet is full of praise for Shakespeares attempt to display gentlemanly conversation and juvenile elegance and for the thoroughly human aspects of individual characters. Johnson begins by stating his absolute delight in Mercutios wit, gaiety and courage, and his ability to attract friends and admirers who wish him well. He openly disagrees with Dryden, who, according to Johnson, said that Shakespeare admitted that he was forced to kill off Mercutio, lest he should have been killed by him (here Johnson somewhat misquotes Dryden). Johnson says instead that Mercutio has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play and further suggests that Dryden, despite his intelligence, lacked the temperament to appreciate Shakespeares artistry.
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Johnson also comments on the famous character of the nurse. He believes that Shakespeare clearly enjoyed creating her, with her character a marvelous display of contrasts. Overall, while Johnson appreciates Shakespeares enormous talent, he does also find fault: His comick scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic strains are always polluted with some unexpected depravations. Charles Dibdin praises Romeo and Juliet for its brilliant portrayal of love, which, he declares, is without comparison in any other language. Dibdin admires Shakespeares charting of the tumultuous course of all adolescent love along with its ennobling aspects, so beautifully and poetically expressed, while retaining an inherent truthfulness regarding the vagaries and vicissitudes of youthful love: Were I to go on investigating the various ways in which Shakespeare has treated this one passion, I should greatly exceed the limits I am obliged to prescribe for myself.
1767Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. From Hamburgische Dramaturgie

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (17291781) was a German writer, philosopher, publicist, and art critic, and an important figure in the era of the Enlightenment. He is the author of The Young Scholar (Der junge Gelehrte) (1748), Laokoon (1766), and The Education of Humankind (1780).
It was Love itself that dictated La Zare to Voltaire, says a critic prettily enough. It would have been nearer the mark had he said that it was la Galanterie. I know of but one drama that Love itself elaborated, and this Romeo and Juliet. It must be confessed that Voltaire makes his enamoured Zare express her feelings very prettily, very discreetly, but what are all these expressions in comparison with that living picture of all the little secret wiles whereby love creeps into our souls, of all the imperceptible advantages that it gains there, of all the artifices wherewith it acquires the ascendancy over every other passion, until it is the autocrat of all our desires and all our aversions!
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1768Samuel Johnson. From Notes on Shakespears Plays

Samuel Johnson (17091784), often referred to simply as Dr. Johnson, was one of Englands greatest literary figures: a poet, essayist, and lexicographer, and often considered the finest critic of English literature. He was also a great wit and prose stylist and is still frequently quoted.
Romeo and Juliet in the Eighteenth Century His work includes Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets (17791781). Although his edition of Shakespeare required further revisions by successors, his critical preface to the edition, as well as his many notes and observations, remain classic statements in the history of Shakespeare criticism. Included below is a selection of the most interesting of his notes on the text of Romeo and Juliet.
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III, i, 182 Affection makes him false . . . The charge of falshood on Bonvolio, though produced at hazard, is very just. The author, who seems to intend the character of Bonvolio as good, meant perhaps to shew, how the best minds, in a state of faction and discord, are detorted to criminal partiality. ... IV, iii, 3 For I have need of many orisons . . . Juliet plays most of her pranks under the appearance of religion: perhaps Shakespeare meant to punish her hypocrisy. ... IV, iii, 46 Alas, alas! it is not like that I . . . This speech is confused, and inconsequential, according to the disorder of Juliets mind. ... V, i, 3 My bosoms lord sits lightly on his throne; And all this day an unaccustomd spirit Lifts me above the ground with chearful thoughts These three lines are very gay and pleasing. But why does Shakespeare give Romeo this involuntary cheerfulness just before the extremity of unhappiness? Perhaps to shew the vanity of trusting to these uncertain and casual exaltations or depressions, which many consider as certain foretokens of good and evil. ... V, iii, 229 Friar: I will be brief . . . It is much to be lamented, that the poet did not conclude the dialogue with the action, and avoid a narrative of events which the audience already knew. ... This play is one of the most pleasing of our authors performances. The scenes are busy and various, the incidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires.
General Observation
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Here is one of the few attempts of Shakespeare to exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakespeare, that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him. Yet he thinks him no such formidable person, but that he might have lived through the play, and died in his bed, without danger to a poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth, that, in a pointed sentence, more regard is commonly had to the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mercutios wit, gaiety, and courage, will always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakespeare to have continued his existence, though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime. The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted: he has, with great subtilty of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest. His comic scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic strains are always polluted with some unexpected depravations. His persons, however distressed, have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit.
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1794Charles Dibdin. From Shakespear, in A Complete History of the Stage

Charles Dibdin (17451814) was an English songwriter and theatrical entrepreneur whose sea songs and operas made him one of the most popular composers of the late eighteenth century. He also wrote A Complete History of the Stage.
The general merit of Shakespear manifests itself in a thousand various ways. Take any one of the passions which he has moulded at will to serve the general purpose of instruction and amusement, and see to what an astonishing pitch he has affected the human heart by a critical and interesting display of it. Is the passion love? See how he has followed it through all its vicissitudes. The delicate tenderness, the fond impatience, the impetuous ardour, the noble constancy of Romeo and Juliet, perhaps, has not a parallel in language. To youthful love every thing is possible; and the exquisite nonsense that Shakespear has put into the mouth of the doating, enamoured, yet delicate Juliet, is full of
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poetic beauty, so boundlessly, so extravagant, and yet so truly natural, that we are equally captivated with her love and her innocence. The love of Romeo is no less admirably drawn. It is impetuous, thoughtless, and rash, yet manly, noble, and generous; but its characteristic is nature. He leaps the orchard wall and braves the resentment of Juliets relations, out of love, yet presently, out of this very love, he becomes a coward and puts up with an insult from of those relations; nor is he roused out of this apathy till called upon to revenge the death of his friend. In the garden scene, surely nothing can be so beautiful as the enchanted, yet respectful, manner in which he listens to the unaffected tenderness, the timid honesty, the techy impatience of Juliet. His love, profound, and awful, recedes from his tongue to his heart; hers, inconsiderate and volatile, flies from her heart to her tongue, till, at length impelled to reply to her fond confession, which disdains all hypocrisy, and derides all subterfuge, they join in interchanging vows, tender and affectionate on her part, manly and honourable on his. Absence only renders more amiable the noble and exalted minds of those lovers. His despair at hearing the sentence of banishment, his horror at the news of Juliets death, and his solemn determination to follow her; and her resigned compliance with the friars stratagem, her awful manner of executing it, and her destroying herself, after every hope has failed her, are masterly pictures of exquisite love. (1) Were I to go on investigating the various ways in which Shakespear has treated this one passion, I should greatly exceed the limits I am obliged to prescribe for myself. I shall, therefore, for the present pass by the noble and persevering constancy of Imogen, the patient and endearing tenderness of Desdemona, the generous and enterprizing affection of Rosalind, the silent and devouring passion of Viola, and all those great and unexampled proofs of consummate strength of mind and profound judgment of the human heart in which Shakespear, though he may have been in one instance now and then equalled by a particular author, taking his writings on the passion of love in their full and comprehensive sense, he has clearly excelled every author.
1. Merrier was so charmed with Romeo and Juliet, and so distressed that the lovers should become victims to the unjust and unreasonable enmity of their families, that he has given the plot a new turn. The play never was performed, but it has all the delicacy, finesse, and truth of that admirable author. Benvolio, having long foreseen the consequence of this family hatred, does his utmost to excite the love of Romeo and Juliet, in order to bring about a reconciliation. He finds both the families averse to his project, and, therefore, connives at a private marriage. Every thing happens as in Shakespears play. Benvolio, however, in the place of the friar, having from his infancy studied chemistry, administers a potion to Juliet; and, contriving that Romeo should be informed of the death, furnishes him with another.
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Romeo opens the tomb and finding Juliet apparently dead, drinks the potion and falls down at her side. In the mean, Benvolio having alarmed the two fathers they presently behold their two children in this state. After reading to them a severe lecture, and reproaching them for their conduct and the dreadful consequences of their mutual enmity, he honestly confesses that he has wrought all this; tells them that this seeming death of these lovers is but a sleep; that he alone, however, knows the charm to revive them; and that, if they will discard their unjust anger and vow perpetual amity, their children shall wake and revive the double pleasure of being restored to life and to the arms of their parents; but that, if they hesitate, it will be too late. In that case he knows he shall be considered as their murderer, but that he would rather die than witness a rancour so dishonourable to themselves and such a scandal to human nature. The result is obvious. The lovers revive, and their affection is crowned with the approbation and blessing of their fathers. I shall only add that the Frenchman merely alters the story; he does not attempt to improve upon Shakespear, whose genius he reverences, and to whose productions he had upon all occasions most willingly paid a warm tribute of admiration.
Romeo and Juliet in the Nineteenth Century

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Critics in the nineteenth century continued to appreciate Romeo and Juliet, with the Romantic writers represented here, Schlegel, Hazlitt, and Coleridge, focusing on Shakespeares understanding of the psychology of love and his brilliant display of imagination, and also praising his poignant presentation of real human emotion and passion and his sublime poetry. Later critics in the century deepened this analysis by adding other concerns. For example, Anna Jameson, who likewise shares in the Romantic celebration of deep human emotions, praises in particular Juliet, as a female character who manifests a wide range of emotions and growth and, as a result, embodies many ennobling qualities. Still later critics began to manifest important disagreements. The critics Edward Dowden and Bernhard ten Brink agree on the transcendent and therefore uplifting message to the lovers tragic deaths, but disagree on the importance of the play. Dowden, who upheld Hamlet as the supreme tragedy, maintains that Romeo and Juliet was Shakespeares early and not very profound experiment in this genre, while ten Brink commends the play as high tragedy, exemplifying those elements outlined by Aristotles definition. By way of contrast, Frederick S. Boas maintains that there is no transcendence to be found in the story of star-crossed lovers who fall victim to Fate. The following is a more detailed discussion of the individual critics. In his commentary on Romeo and Juliet, August Wilhelm Schlegel maintains that the pathos of this play can only be understood when looked at in its entirety, rather than in an analysis of its constituent parts. Though there are comic and enjoyable moments in the play, as there are individual characters created to function in comic roles, the two young lovers are doomed from the outset. They act on an irresistible impulse to live in one another, in defiance of the familial feuds and treacherous political implications, and are destined to be united only through death. Schlegel admires Shakespeares ability to instill a passionate love story with sweetness and decorum, elevating the lovers tragic history to sublime poetry, and thereby granting an uplifting transcendence despite the tragic conclusion: Under his handling, it has become a glorious song of praise on that inexpressible feeling which ennobles the soul, . . . while at the same time it is a
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melancholy elegy on its inherent and imparted frailty; it is at once the apotheosis and the obsequies of love. Schlegel also praises Romeo and Juliet for its dramatic arrangement and the appropriateness of every character and circumstance. William Hazlitt begins his essay by admiring what Shakespeare has accomplished in Romeo and Juliet, namely the creation of a tragedy based wholly on a love story and, further, a narrative made all the more excellent by its poignant imagery of a sweet and genuine love that is both new and passionate but never maudlin. Responding to those critics who faulted the plays focus on the absurd passion between an immature and inexperienced boy and girl, Hazlitt argues that Shakespeare has expressed passions more strenuously by showing what the lovers have not yet experienced, rather than employing the time-worn formula found in other literary works or contemporary philosophy, where beauty and infatuation are sought from older or more experienced lovers. Desire has no limit itself. Passion, the love and expectation of pleasure, is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible, till experience comes to check and kill it. Hazlitt concludes that in following the enduring fundamentals of human nature, Shakespeare has fashioned a story that is true to the progress of human life, which embraces the circle of the affections from childhood to old age. Samuel Taylor Coleridge praises Shakespeares consummate skill in fashioning a viable and living portrait of a family drama while adhering to the classical prescription of a unity of action so important to the ancient Greeks, a unity which he prefers to identify as homogeneity and proportionateness. In an effort to demonstrate Shakespeares artistry, Coleridge makes the comparison between a mechanical work of art, similar to a watch where parts may be substituted as needed, versus an organic work of art, which creates and preserves an inviolable integrity of the whole. For Coleridge, Romeo and Juliet presents us with a lively picture similar to the beautiful shapes and colors of a landscape. In her essay on Juliets character, Anna Jameson speaks in superlatives, stating that her heroine is the incarnation of love itself. Jameson celebrates the full range of emotions in her female heroine, who is calm and contemplative in one moment and vehement and passionate in the next, and states that the defining moment for the character is when she takes umbrage at the nurses derogatory comments about Romeo: This scene is the crisis in the character; and henceforth we see Juliet assume a new aspect. The fond, impatient, timid girl puts on the wife and the woman: she has learned heroism from suffering, and subtlety from oppression. Edward Dowden begins his essay with the premise that Romeo and Juliet was a brief foray into tragedy during Shakespeares early years and that the playwright, recognizing that he and the play lacked profound understanding of human nature and passion, returned to the history plays for several years before writing his best tragedy, Hamlet. Assessing Romeo and Juliet as a product of Shakespeares youth, Dowden maintains that the two young lovers achieve adulthood during
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the course of the play and that there is a feeling of hope and accomplishment through their deaths. It is interesting to note that Dowden sees a qualitative distinction in their coming-of-age, in that he sees Romeos maturation as the emerging from a dream-like state, while Juliets emotional development is quite different, for she is Romeos savior: Romeo had attained to manhood. Juliet had suddenly blossomed into heroic womanhood. Through her, and through anguish and joy, her lover had emerged from the life of dream into the waking life of truth. Juliet has saved his soul. Comparing Shakespeare to his sources, Bernhard ten Brink praises Romeo and Juliet for its characterization, appropriateness of language, and dramatic structure. Ten Brink contends that Shakespeare intended a transcendental ending to the tragic death of his two young lovers, that in death they are lastingly united, and that this peaceful resolution of all conflict within the play was the impetus upon which he based his play. Furthermore, ten Brink maintains that it was Shakespeares objective to arouse sympathy and fear and, at the same time, to elevate our spirits so that we, too, may experience the nobility of their deaths: The sacrifices which love demanded have appeased the old hatred also; the prince stands there a woeful, sympathetic looker-on, a witness of the peace concluded over the open grave. Frederick S. Boas is enamored of Shakespeares Italianate plays, Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice. He admires the magical atmosphere conveyed in these two works, the result of Shakespeares early travels. After providing a detailed summary of Shakespeares sources, Boas concentrates on the importance of the political plot, which dictates the final tragic outcome for Romeo and Juliet: No a priori ideas that Shakspere is pre-eminently the poet of free will as opposed to necessity should prevent us recognizing that in Romeo and Juliet, following the steps of Brooke, and treating a characteristically medieval theme, he has given to Fate a prominence unique in his writings.
1809August Wilhelm Schlegel. From Criticisms on Shakspeares Tragedies, from Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature
August Wilhelm Schlegel (17671845) was an influential German poet, translator, and critic, as well as a key figure in the German Romantic movement. He translated a number of Shakespeares plays into German.
Romeo and Juliet, and Othello, differ from most of the pieces which we have hitherto examined, neither in the ingredients of the composition, nor in the manner of treating them: it is merely the direction of the whole that gives them
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the stamp of Tragedy. Romeo and Juliet is a picture of love and its pitiable fate, in a world whose atmosphere is too sharp for this the tenderest blossom of human life. Two beings created for each other feel mutual love at the first glance; every consideration disappears before the irresistible impulse to live in one another; under circumstances hostile in the highest degree to their union, they unite themselves by a secret marriage, relying simply on the protection of an invisible power. Untoward incidents following in rapid succession, their heroic constancy is within a few days put to the proof, till, forcibly separated from each other, by a voluntary death they are united in the grave to meet again in another world. All this is to be found in the beautiful story which Shakspeare has not invented, and which, however simply told, will always excite a tender sympathy: but it was reserved for Shakspeare to join in one ideal picture purity of heart with warmth of imagination; sweetness and dignity of manners with passionate intensity of feeling. Under his handling, it has become a glorious song of praise on that inexpressible feeling which ennobles the soul and gives to it its highest sublimity, and which elevates even the senses into soul, while at the same time it is a melancholy elegy on its inherent and imparted frailty; it is at once the apotheosis and the obsequies of love. It appears here a heavenly spark, that, as it descends to the earth, is converted into the lightning flash, which almost in the same moment sets on fire and consumes the mortal being on whom it lights. All that is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring,all that is languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, all alike breathe forth from this poem. But even more rapidly than the earliest blossoms of youth and beauty decay, does it from the first timidly-bold declaration and modest return of love hurry on to the most unlimited passion, to an irrevocable union; and then hastens, amidst alternating storms of rapture and despair, to the fate of the two lovers, who yet appear enviable in their hard lot, for their love survives them, and by their death they have obtained an endless triumph over every separating power. The sweetest and the bitterest love and hatred, festive rejoicings and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchral horrors, the fulness of life and self-annihilation, are here all brought close to each other; and yet these contrasts are so blended into a unity of impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single but endless sigh. The excellent dramatic arrangement, the significance of every character in its place, the judicious selection of all the circumstances, even the most minute, have already been dwelt upon in detail. I shall only request attention to a trait which may serve for an example of the distance to which Shakspeare goes back to lay the preparatory foundation. The most striking and perhaps incredible circumstance in the whole story is the liquor given by the Monk to Juliet, by which she for a number of hours not merely sleeps, but fully resembles a corpse, without however receiving the least injury. How does the poet dispose us to believe that Father Lorenzo possesses such a secret?At his first appearance he
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exhibits him in a garden, where he is collecting herbs and descanting on their wonderful virtues. The discourse of the pious old man is full of deep meaning: he sees everywhere in nature emblems of the moral world; the same wisdom with which he looks through her has also made him master of the human heart. In this manner a circumstance of an ungrateful appearance, has become the source of a great beauty.
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1817William Hazlitt. From Romeo and Juliet , from Characters of Shakespears Plays
William Hazlitt (17781830) was an English writer and literary critic. He is the author of Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth and Characters of Shakespears Plays (1817), Lectures on the English Poets (1818), and The Spirit of the Age (1825).
Romeo and Juliet is the only tragedy which Shakespear has written entirely on a love-story. It is supposed to have been his first play, and it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in every line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the bitterness of despair. It has been said of Romeo and Juliet by a great critic, that whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, is to be found in this poem. The description is true; and yet it does not answer to our idea of the play. For if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has its freshness too; if it has the languor of the nightingales song, it has also its giddy transport; if it has the softness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in love, but they are not love-sick. Every thing speaks the very soul of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions: the heart beats, the blood circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand from poems and plays,made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of fancies wan that hang the pensive head, of evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature! It is the reverse of all this. It is Shakespear all over, and Shakespear when he was young. We have heard it objected to Romeo and Juliet, that it is founded on an idle passion between a boy and a girl, who have scarcely seen and can have but little sympathy or rational esteem for one another, who have had no experience of the good or ills of life, and whose raptures or despair must be therefore equally
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groundless and fantastical. Whoever objects to the youth of the parties in this play as too unripe and crude to pluck the sweets of love, and wishes to see a first-love carried on into a good old age, and the passions taken at the rebound, when their force is spent, may find all this done in the Stranger and in other German plays, where they do things by contraries, and transpose nature to inspire sentiment and create philosophy. Shakespear proceeded in a more strait-forward, and, we think, effectual way. He did not endeavour to extract beauty from wrinkles, or the wild throb of passion from the last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. It was not his way. But he has given a picture of human life, such as it is in the order of nature. He has founded the passion of the two lovers not on the pleasures they had experienced, but on all the pleasures they had not experienced. All that was to come of life was theirs. At that untried source of promised happiness they slaked their thirst, and the first eager draught made them drunk with love and joy. They were in full possession of their senses and their affections. Their hopes were of air, their desires of fire. Youth is the season of love, because the heart is then first melted in tenderness from the touch of novelty, and kindled to rapture, for it knows no end of its enjoyments or its wishes. Desire has no limit but itself. Passion, the love and expectation of pleasure, is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible, till experience comes to check and kill it. Juliet exclaims on her first interview with Romeo My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep. And why should it not? What was to hinder the thrilling tide of pleasure, which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without stint or measure, but experience which she was yet without? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure, which her heart and her senses had just tasted, but indifference which she was yet a stranger to? What was there to check the ardour of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment which she had not yet felt! As are the desires and the hopes of youthful passion, such is the keenness of its disappointments, and their baleful effect. Such is the transition in this play from the highest bliss to the lowest despair, from the nuptial couch to an untimely grave. The only evil that even in apprehension befalls the two lovers is the loss of the greatest possible felicity; yet this loss is fatal to both, for they had rather part with life than bear the thought of surviving all that had made life dear to them. In all this, Shakespear has but followed nature, which existed in his time, as well as now. The modern philosophy, which reduces the whole theory of the mind to habitual impressions, and leaves the natural impulses of passion and imagination out of the account, had not then been discovered; or if it had, would have been little calculated for the uses of poetry.
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It is the inadequacy of the same false system of philosophy to account for the strength of our earliest attachments, which has led Mr. Wordsworth to indulge in the mystical visions of Platonism in his Ode on the Progress of Life. He has very admirably described the vividness of our impressions in youth and childhood, and how they fade by degrees into the light of common day, and he ascribes the change to the supposition of a pre-existent state, as if our early thoughts were nearer heaven, reflections of former trails of glory, shadows of our past being. This is idle. It is not from the knowledge of the past that the first impressions of things derive their gloss and splendour, but from our ignorance of the future, which fills the void to come with the warmth of our desires, with our gayest hopes, and brightest fancies. It is the obscurity spread before it that colours the prospect of life with hope, as it is the cloud which reflects the rainbow. There is no occasion to resort to any mystical union and transmission of feeling through different states of being to account for the romantic enthusiasm of youth; nor to plant the root of hope in the grave, nor to derive it from the skies. Its root is in the heart of man: it lifts its head above the stars. Desire and imagination are inmates of the human breast. The heaven that lies about us in our infancy is only a new world, of which we know nothing but what we wish it to be, and believe all that we wish. In youth and boyhood, the world we live in is the world of desire, and of fancy: it is experience that brings us down to the world of reality. What is it that in youth sheds a dewy light round the evening star? That makes the daisy look so bright? That perfumes the hyacinth? That embalms the first kiss of love? It is the delight of novelty, and the seeing no end to the pleasure that we fondly believe is still in store for us. The heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts, and is unable to sustain the weight of hope and love that presses upon it.The effects of the passion of love alone might have dissipated Mr. Wordsworths theory, if he means any thing more by it than an ingenious and poetical allegory. That at least is not a link in the chain let down from other worlds; the purple light of love is not a dim reflection of the smiles of celestial bliss. It does not appear till the middle of life, and then seems like another morn risen on mid-day. In this respect the soul comes into the world in utter nakedness. Love waits for the ripening of the youthful blood. The sense of pleasure precedes the love of pleasure, but with the sense of pleasure, as soon as it is felt, come thronging infinite desires and hopes of pleasure, and love is mature as soon as born. It withers and it dies almost as soon! This play presents a beautiful coup-doeil of the progress of human life. In thought it occupies years, and embraces the circle of the affections from childhood to old age. Juliet has become a great girl, a young woman since we first remember her a little thing in the idle prattle of the nurse. Lady Capulet was about her age when she became a mother, and old Capulet somewhat impatiently tells his younger visitors,
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Ive seen the day, That I have worn a visor, and could tell A whispering tale in a fair ladys ear, Such as would please: tis gone, tis gone, tis gone. Thus one period of life makes way for the following, and one generation pushes another off the stage. One of the most striking passages to show the intense feeling of youth in this play is Capulets invitation to Paris to visit his entertainment. At my poor house, look to behold this night Earth-treading stars that make dark heavn light; Such comfort as do lusty young men feel When well-appareld April on the heel Of limping winter treads, even such delight Among fresh female-buds shall you this night Inherit at my house. The feelings of youth and of the spring are here blended together like the breath of opening flowers. Images of vernal beauty appear to have floated before the authors mind, in writing this poem, in profusion. Here is another of exquisite beauty, brought in more by accident than by necessity. Montague declares of his son smit with a hopeless passion, which he will not reveal But he, his own affections counsellor, Is to himself so secret and so close, So far from sounding and discovery, As is the bud bit with an envious worm, Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the sun. This casual description is as full of passionate beauty as when Romeo dwells in frantic fondness on the white wonder of his Juliets hand. The reader may, if he pleases, contrast the exquisite pastoral simplicity of the above lines with the gorgeous description of Juliet when Romeo first sees her at her fathers house, surrounded by company and artificial splendour. What ladys that which doth enrich the hand Of yonder knight? O she doth teach the torches to burn bright; Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiops ear.
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It would be hard to say which of the two garden scenes is the finest, that where he first converses with his love, or takes leave of her the morning after their marriage. Both are like a heaven upon earth; the blissful bowers of Paradise let down upon this lower world. We will give only one passage of these well known scenes to shew the perfect refinement and delicacy of Shakespears conception of the female character. It is wonderful how Collins, who was a critic and a poet of great sensibility, should have encouraged the common error on this subject by sayingBut stronger Shakespear felt for man alone. ... Romeo is Hamlet in love. There is the same rich exuberance of passion and sentiment in the one, that there is of thought and sentiment in the other. Both are absent and self-involved, both live out of themselves in a world of imagination. Hamlet is abstracted from every thing; Romeo is abstracted from every thing but his love, and lost in it. His frail thoughts dally with faint surmise, and are fashioned out of the suggestions of hope, the flatteries of sleep. He is himself only in his Juliet; she is his only reality, his hearts true home and idol. The rest of the world is to him a passing dream. How finely is this character pourtrayed where he recollects himself on seeing Paris slain at the tomb of Juliet! What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet. And again, just before he hears the sudden tidings of her death If I may trust the flattery of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand; My bosoms lord sits lightly on his throne, And all this day an unaccustomd spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. I dreamt my lady came and found me dead, (Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think) And breathd such life with kisses on my lips, That I revivd and was an emperour. Ah me! how sweet is love itself possessd, When but loves shadows are so rich in joy! Romeos passion for Juliet is not a first love: it succeeds and drives out his passion for another mistress, Rosaline, as the sun hides the stars. This is perhaps an artifice (not absolutely necessary) to give us a higher opinion of the lady, while the first absolute surrender of her heart to him enhances the richness of the prize. The commencement, progress, and ending of his second passion are however
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complete in themselves, not injured if they are not bettered by the first. The outline of the play is taken from an Italian novel; but the dramatic arrangement of the different scenes between the lovers, the more than dramatic interest in the progress of the story, the development of the characters with time and circumstances, just according to the degree and kind of interest excited, are not inferior to the expression of passion and nature. It has been ingeniously remarked among other proofs of skill in the contrivance of the fable, that the improbability of the main incident in the piece, the administering of the sleeping-potion, is softened and obviated from the beginning by the introduction of the Friar on his first appearance culling simples and descanting on their virtues. Of the passionate scenes in this tragedy, that between the Friar and Romeo when he is told of his sentence of banishment, that between Juliet and the Nurse when she hears of it, and of the death of her cousin Tybalt (which bear no proportion in her mind, when passion after the first shock of surprise throws its weight into the scale of her affections) and the last scene at the tomb, are among the most natural and overpowering. In all of these it is not merely the force of any one passion that is given, but the slightest and most unlooked-for transitions from one to another, the mingling currents of every different feeling rising up and prevailing in turn, swayed by the master-mind of the poet, as the waves undulate beneath the gliding storm. Thus when Juliet has by her complaints encouraged the Nurse to say, Shame come to Romeo, she instantly repels the wish, which she had herself occasioned, by answering Blisterd be thy tongue For such a wish! He was not born to shame. Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit, For tis a throne where honour may be crownd Sole monarch of the universal earth! O, what a beast was I to chide him so? Nurse: Will you speak well of him that killd your cousin? Juliet: Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Ah my poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that father, mother, nay, or both were dead, rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being banished from her.Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting that ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr. Keans manner of doing this scene and
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his repetition of the word, Banished. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his author.
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1818Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From Romeo and Juliet , in Shakespeare, with Introductory Remarks on Poetry, the Drama, and the Stage.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) was an English poet, critic, and, with his good friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the English Romantic movement. He is best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Khan (1816). His major prose work is the largely philosophical Biographia Literaria (1817).
I have previously had occasion to speak at large on the subject of the three unities of time, place, and action, as applied to the drama in the abstract, and to the particular stage for which Shakspeare wrote, as far as he can be said to have written for any stage but that of the universal mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in demonstrating that the former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences attached to the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last alone deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of this unity Shakspeare stood preeminent. Yet, instead of unity of action, I should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and uncouth, words homogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of interest, expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the essential difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent, and the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius. In the former each part is separately conceived, and then by a succeeding act put together;not as watches are made for wholesale,(for there each part supposes a preconception of the whole in some mind)but more like pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes,in the relative shapes of rocks, the harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning spring,compared with the visual effect from the greater number of artificial plantations?From this, that the natural landscape is effected, as it were, by a single energy modified ab intra in each component part. And as this is the particular excellence of the Shakspearian drama generally, so is it especially characteristic of the Romeo and Juliet.
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The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events of the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the eyes of party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly some real or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and though but the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation for electrical pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an assimilation to an outline. But in family quarrels, which have proved scarcely less injurious to states, wilfulness, and precipitancy, and passion from mere habit and custom, can alone be expected. With his acustomed judgment, Shakspeare has begun by placing before us a lively picture of all the impulses of the play; and, as nature ever presents two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one for Democritus, he has, by way of prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of it reaching the servants, who have so little to do with it, but who are under the necessity of letting the superfluity of sensoreal power fly off through the escape-valve of wit-combats, and of quarrelling with weapons of sharper edge, all in humble imitation of their masters. Yet there is a sort of unhired fidelity, an ourishness about all this that makes it rest pleasant on ones feelings. All the first scene, down to the conclusion of the Princes speech, is a motley dance of all ranks and ages to one tune, as if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the scenes. Benvolios speech Madam, an hour before the worshippd sun Peerd forth the golden window of the east and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old Montague Many a morning hath he there been seen With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew prove that Shakspeare 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. And if we are right, from the internal evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakspeares early dramas, it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the nature of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already love-bewildered. The necessity of loving creates an object for itself in man and woman; and yet there is a difference in this respect between the sexes, though only to be known by a perception of it. It would have displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as fancying herself so;but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeos forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of
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Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really near the heart. When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires! ... One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun Neer saw her match, since first the world begun. The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakspeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class,just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them,so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done to the poets hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mothers affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her superiors! Yes, madam!Yet I cannot choose but laugh, &c. In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of others, and yet to be interested in them, these and all congenial qualities, melting into the common copula of them all, the man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio!
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1832Anna Jameson. Juliet, from Shakespeares Heroines: Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical and Historical
Anna Murphy Brownell Jameson (17941860), born in Dublin, is best remembered for her character studies of Shakespeares heroines. In
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Romeo and Juliet addition to her work on Shakespeare, she kept a diary of her travels on the Continent as governess to a wealthy family, later published as The Diary of an Ennuye (1826). She also edited Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters (1845) and wrote Sacred and Legendary Art (184860; edited by E. M. Hurll, 1896).
O Love! thou teacher, O Grief! thou tamer, and Time, thou healer of human hearts!bring hither all your deep and serious revelations! And ye too, rich fancies of unbruised, unbowed youthye visions of long-perished hopesshadows of unborn joysgay colorings of the dawn of existence! whatever memory hath treasured up of bright and beautiful in nature or in art; all soft and delicate imagesall lovely formsdivinest voices and entrancing melodiesgleams of sunnier skies and fairer climesItalian moonlights, and airs that breathe of the sweet south,now, if it be possible, revive to my imaginationlive once more to my heart! Come thronging around me, all inspirations that wait on passion, on power, on beauty; give me to tread, not bold, and yet unblamed, within the inmost sanctuary of Shakespeares genius, in Juliets moonlight bower and Mirandas enchanted isle! * * * * * It is not without emotion that I attempt to touch on the character of Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of heronly to be exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them!it is impossible to say anything better; but it is possible to say something more. Such, in fact, is the simplicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliets character, that we are not at first aware of its complexity, its depth, and its variety. There is in it an intensity of passion, a singleness of purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we feel as a whole; and to attempt to analyze the impression thus conveyed at once to soul and sense is as if, while hanging over a half-blown rose, and revelling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder, leaflet by leaflet, the better to display its bloom and fragrance. Yet how otherwise should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do justice to the skill of the divine hand that hath thus fashioned it in its beauty? Love, as a passion, forms the groundwork of the drama. Now, admitting the axiom of Rochefoucauld, that there is but one love, though a thousand different copies, yet the true sentiment itself has as many different aspects as the human soul of which it forms a part. It is not only modified by the individual character and temperament, but it is under the influence of climate and circumstance. The love that is calm in one moment, shall show itself vehement and tumultuous at another. The love that is wild and passionate in the south, is deep and contemplative in the north; as the Spanish or Roman girl perhaps poisons a rival, or stabs herself for the sake of a living lover, and the German or Russian girl pines into the grave for love of the false, the
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absent, or the dead. Love is ardent or deep, bold or timid, jealous or confiding, impatient or humble, hopeful or desponding;and yet there are not many loves, but one love. All Shakespeares women, being essentially women, either love or have loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The passion is her state of being, and out of it she has no existence. It is the soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the life-blood along her veins, blending with every atom of her frame. The love that is so chaste and dignified in Portiaso airy-delicate and fearless in Mirandaso sweetly confiding in Perditaso playfully fond in Rosalindso constant in Imogenso devoted in Desdemonaso fervent in Helenso tender in Violais each and all of these in Juliet. All these remind us of her; but she reminds us of nothing but her own sweet self; or if she does, it is of the Gismunda, or the Lisetta, or the Fiametta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not in the character or circumstances, but in the truly Italian spirit, the glowing, national complexion of the portrait. There was an Italian painter who said that the secret of all effect in color consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How perfectly did Shakespeare understand this secret of effect! and how beautifully has he exemplified it in Juliet! So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, As yonder lady oer her fellows shows. Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are all love, surrounded with all hate; all harmony, surrounded with all discord; all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artificial life. Juliet, like Portia, is the fosterchild of opulence and splendor; she dwells in a fair cityshe has been nurtured in a palaceshe clasps her robe with jewelsshe braids her hair with rainbowtinted pearls; but in herself she has no more connection with the trappings around her than the lovely exotic transplanted from some Eden-like climate has with the carved and gilded conservatory which has reared and sheltered its luxuriant beauty. But in this vivid impression of contrast there is nothing abrupt or harsh. A tissue of beautiful poetry weaves together the principal figures and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the costume, and the exquisite gradations of relief with which the most opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and Juliet are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are they, like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid the darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of humanity; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade of character in each, tends to the development of the sentiment which is the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly be conceived,
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is interfused through all the characters; the splendid imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodigality of genius; and the whole is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect, as though Shakespeare had really transported himself into Italy and had drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been said, that although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not lovesick! What a false idea would anything of the mere whining amoroso give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakespearethe noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Julietwith even less truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture in Twelfth Night of the wan girl dying of love, who pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy, would never surely occur to us when thinking on the enamoured and impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love keeps a fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm into passion, passion into heroism! No, the whole sentiment of the play is of a far different cast. It is flushed with the genial spirit of the south: it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth; of life, and of the very sap of life. We have indeed the struggle of love against evil destinies and a thorny world; the pain, the grief, the anguish, the terror, the despair; the aching adieu; the pang unutterable of parted affection; and rapture, truth, and tenderness trampled into an early grave: but still an Elysian grace lingers round the whole, and the blue sky of Italy bends over all! In the delineation of that sentiment which forms the groundwork of the drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace: the passion which has taken possession of Juliets whole soul has the force, the rapidity, the resistless violence of the torrent; but she is herself as moving delicate, as fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which hurries beneath them. But at the same time that the pervading sentiment is never lost sight of, and is one and the same throughout, the individual part of the character in all its variety is developed, and marked with the nicest discrimination. For instance,the simplicity of Juliet is very different from the simplicity of Miranda: her innocence is not the innocence of a desert island. The energy she displays does not once remind us of the moral grandeur of Isabel, or the intellectual power of Portia;it is founded in the strength of passion, not in the strength of character; it is accidental rather than inherent, rising with the tide of feeling or temper, and with it subsiding. Her romance is not the pastoral romance of Perdita, nor the fanciful romance of Viola; it is the romance of a tender heart and a poetical imagination. Her inexperience is not ignorance; she has heard that there is such a thing as falsehood, though she can scarcely conceive it. Her mother and her nurse have perhaps warned her against flattering vows and mans inconstancy, or she has even
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. . . turned the tale by Ariosto told. Of fair Olympia, loved and left, of old! Hence that bashful doubt, dispelled almost as soon as felt Ah, gentle Romeo! If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully. That conscious shrinking from her own confession Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny What I have spoke! The ingenuous simplicity of her avowal Or, if thou thinkst I am too quickly won, Ill frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay, So thou wilt woobut else, not for the world! In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, And therefore thou mayst think my haviour light; But trust me, gentleman, Ill prove more true Than those who have more cunning to be strange. And the proud yet timid delicacy with which she throws herself for forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for the love she bears him Therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discovered. In the alternative, which she afterwards places before her lover with such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity, there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the slightest hesitation in her selfabandonment; for she does not even wait to hear his asseverations: But if thou meanst not well, I do beseech thee To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief. Romeo: So thrive my soul Juliet: A thousand times, good night!
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But all these flutterings between native impulses and maiden fears become gradually absorbed, swept away, lost, and swallowed up in the depth and enthusiasm of confiding love. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to you The more I havefor both are infinite! What a picture of the young heart, that sees no bound to its hopes, no end to its affections! For what was to hinder the thrilling tide of pleasure, which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without stint or measure, but experience, which she was yet without? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure, which her heart had just tasted, but indifference, to which she was yet a stranger? What was there to check the ardor of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment, which she had never yet felt? Lord Byrons Haide is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but the development is epic, not dramatic.1 I remember no dramatic character conveying the same impression of singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the Thekla of Schillers Wallenstein; she is the German Juliet; far unequal, indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit. I know not if critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is supposed to have had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his fancy when he portrayed Thekla; but there are some striking points of coincidence, while the national distinction in the character of the passion leaves to Thekla a strong cast of originality. The Princess Thekla is, like Juliet, the heiress of rank and opulence; her first introduction to us, in her full dress and diamonds, does not impair the impression of her softness and simplicity. We do not think of them, nor do we sympathize with the complaint of her lover The dazzle of the jewels which played round you Hid the beloved from me. We almost feel the reply of Thekla before she utters it Then you saw me Not with your heart, but with your eyes! The timidity of Thekla in her first scene, her trembling silence in the commencement, and the few words she addresses to her mother, remind us of the unobtrusive simplicity of Juliets first appearance; but the impression is different: the one is the shrinking violet, the other the unexpanded rosebud.
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Thekla and Max Piccolomini are, like Romeo and Juliet, divided by the hatred of their fathers. The death of Max, and the resolute despair of Thekla, are also points of resemblance; and Theklas complete devotion, her frank yet dignified abandonment of all disguise, and her apology for her own unreserve, are quite in Juliets style I ought to he less open, ought to hide My heart more from theeso decorum dictates: But where in this place wouldst thou seek for truth If in my mouth thou didst not find it? The same confidence, innocence, and fervor of affection distinguish both heroines: but the love of Juliet is more vehement, the love of Thekla is more calm, and reposes more on itself; the love of Juliet gives us the idea of infinitude, and that of Thekla of eternity; the love of Juliet flows on with an increasing tide, like the river pouring to the ocean, and the love of Thekla stands unalterable, and enduring as the rock. In the heart of Thekla love shelters as in a home; but in the heart of Juliet he reigns a crowned kinghe rides on its pants triumphant! As women, they would divide the loves and suffrages of mankind, but not as dramatic characters: the moment we come to look nearer, we acknowledge that it is indeed rashness and ignorance to compare Schiller with Shakespeare.2 Thekla is a fine conception in the German spirit, but Juliet is a lovely and palpable creation. The coloring in which Schiller has arrayed his Thekla is pale, sombre, vague, compared with the strong individual marking, the rich glow of life and reality, which distinguish Juliet. One contrast in particular has always struck me: the two beautiful speeches in the first interview between Max and Thekla, that in which she describes her fathers astrological chamber, and that in which he replies with reflections on the influence of the stars, are said to form in themselves a fine poem. They do so; but never would Shakespeare have placed such extraneous description and reflection in the mouths of his lovers. Romeo and Juliet speak of themselves only; they see only themselves in the universe; all things else are as an idle matter. Not a word they utter, though every word is poetry, not a sentiment or description, though dressed in the most luxuriant imagery, but has a direct relation to themselves, or to the situation in which they are placed and the feelings that engross them: and besides, it may be remarked of Thekla, and generally of all tragedy heroines in love, that, however beautifully and distinctly characterized, we see the passion only under one or two aspects at most, or in conflict with some one circumstance or contending duty or feeling. In Juliet alone we find it exhibited under every variety of aspect, and every gradation of feeling it could possibly assume in a delicate female heartas we see the rose, when passed through the colors of the prism, catch and reflect every tint of the divided ray, and still it is the same sweet rose.
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I have already remarked the quiet manner in which Juliet steals upon us in her first scene, as the serene, graceful girl, her feelings as yet unawakened, and her energies all unknown to herself, and unsuspected by others. Her silence and her filial deference are charming Ill look to like, if looking liking move: But no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent shall give it strength to fly. Much in the same unconscious way we are impressed with an idea of her excelling loveliness: Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! and which could make the dark vault of death a feasting presence full of light. Without any elaborate description, we behold Juliet, as she is reflected in the heart of her lover, like a single bright star mirrored in the bosom of a deep, transparent well. The rapture with which he dwells on the white wonder of her hand; on her lips, That even in pure and vestal modesty Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin. And then her eyes, two of the fairest stars in all the heavens! In his exclamation in the sepulchre, Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair? there is life and death, beauty and horror, rapture and anguish combined. The Friars description of her approach, O, so light a step Will neer wear out the everlasting flint! and then her fathers similitude, Death lies on her, like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field; all these mingle into a beautiful picture of youthful, airy, delicate grace, feminine sweetness, and patrician elegance.
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And our impression of Juliets loveliness and sensibility is enhanced, when we find it overcoming in the bosom of Romeo a previous love for another. His visionary passion for the cold, inaccessible Rosaline forms but the prologue, the threshold, to the true, the real sentiment which succeeds to it. This incident, which is found in the original story, has been retained by Shakespeare with equal feeling and judgment; and far from being a fault in taste and sentiment, far from prejudicing us against Romeo, by casting on him, at the outset of the piece, the stigma of inconstancy, it becomes, if properly considered, a beauty in the drama, and adds a fresh stroke of truth to the portrait of the lover. Why, after all, should we be offended at what does not offend Juliet herself? for in the original story we find that her attention is first attracted towards Romeo by seeing him fancy sick and pale of cheer for love of a cold beauty. We must remember that in those times every young cavalier of any distinction devoted himself, at his first entrance into the world, to the service of some fair lady, who was selected to be his fancys queen; and the more rigorous the beauty, and the more hopeless the love, the more honorable the slavery. To go about metamorphosed by a mistress, as Speed humorously expresses it;3 to maintain her supremacy in charms at the swords point; to sigh; to walk with folded arms; to be negligent and melancholy, and to show a careless desolation, was the fashion of the day. The Surreys, the Sydneys, the Bayards, the Herberts of the timeall those who were the mirrors in which the noble youth did dress themselveswere of this fantastic school of gallantry, the last remains of the age of chivalry; and it was especially prevalent in Italy. Shakespeare has ridiculed it in many places with exquisite humor; but he wished to show us that it has its serious as well as its comic aspect. Romeo, then, is introduced to us with perfect truth of costume, as the thrall of a dreaming, fanciful passion for the scornful Rosaline, who had forsworn to love; and on her charms and coldness, and on the power of love generally, he descants to his companions in pretty phrases, quite in the style and taste of the day.4 Why, then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs: Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers eyes; Being vexd, a sea nourishd with lovers tears. But when once he has beheld Juliet, and quaffed intoxicating draughts of hope and love from her soft glance, how all these airy fancies fade before the soul-absorbing reality! The lambent fire that played round his heart burns to that hearts very core. We no longer find him adorning his lamentations in picked
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phrases, or making a confidant of gay companions; he is no longer for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in; but all is concentrated, earnest, rapturous, in the feeling and the expression. Compare, for instance, the sparkling antithetical passages just quoted with one or two of his passionate speeches to, or of, Juliet: Heaven is here, Where Juliet lives! &c. Ah, Juliet! if the measure of thy joy Be heapd like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich musics tongue Unfold the imagind happiness, that both Receive in either by this dear encounter. Come what sorrow may, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. How different! and how finely the distinction is drawn! His first passion is indulged as a waking dream, a reverie of the fancy; it is depressing, indolent, fantastic: his second elevates him to the third heaven, or hurries him to despair. It rushes to its object through all impediments, defies all dangers, and seeks at last a triumphant grave in the arms of her he so loved. Thus Romeos previous attachment to Rosaline is so contrived as to exhibit to us another variety in that passion which is the subject of the poem, by showing us the distinction between the fancied and the real sentiment. It adds a deeper effect to the beauty of Juliet; it interests us in the commencement for the tender and romantic Romeo; and gives an individual reality to his character, by stamping him like an historical, as well as a dramatic portrait, with the very spirit of the age in which he lived. It may be remarked of Juliet as of Portia, that we not only trace the component qualities in each as they expand before us in the course of the action, but we seem to have known them previously, and mingle a consciousness of their past with the interest of their present and their future. Thus, in the dialogue between Juliet and her parents, and in the scenes with the nurse, we seem to have before us the whole of her previous education and habits; we see her on the one hand kept in severe subjection by her austere parents; and on the other, fondled and spoiled by a foolish old nursea situation perfectly accordant with the manners of the time. Then Lady Capulet comes sweeping by with her train of velvet, her black hood, her fan, and her rosarythe very beau-idal of a proud Italian matron of the fifteenth century, whose offer to poison Romeo in revenge for the death
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of Tybalt, stamps her with one very characteristic trait of the age and country. Yet she loves her daughter; and there is a touch of remorseful tenderness in her lamentation over her, which adds to our impression of the timid softness of Juliet, and the harsh subjection in which she has been kept: But one, poor one!one poor and loving child, But one thing to rejoice and solace in, And cruel death hath catchd it from my sight! Capulet, as the jovial, testy old man, the self-willed, violent, tyrannical father,to whom his daughter is but a property, the appanage of his house, and the object of his pride,is equal as a portrait: but both must yield to the Nurse, who is drawn with the most wonderful power and discrimination. In the prosaic homeliness of the outline, and the magical illusion of the coloring, she reminds us of some of the marvellous Dutch paintings, from which, with all their coarseness, we start back as from a reality. Her low humor, her shallow garrulity, mixed with the dotage and petulance of age, her subserviency, her secrecy, and her total want of elevated principle, or even common honesty, are brought before us like a living and palpable truth. Among these harsh and inferior spirits is Juliet placed; her haughty parents, and her plebeian nurse, not only throw into beautiful relief her own native softness and elegance, but are at once the cause and the excuse of her subsequent conduct. She trembles before her stern mother and her violent father; but, like a petted child, alternately cajoles and commands her nurse. It is her old fostermother who is the confidante of her love. It is the woman who cherished her infancy who aids and abets her in her clandestine marriage. Do we not perceive how immediately our impression of Juliets character would have been lowered, if Shakespeare had placed her in connection with any commonplace dramatic waiting-woman?even with Portias adroit Nerissa, or Desdemonas Emilia? By giving her the Nurse for her confidante, the sweetness and dignity of Juliets character are preserved inviolate to the fancy, even in the midst of all the romance and wilfulness of passion. The natural result of these extremes of subjection and independence is exhibited in the character of Juliet as it gradually opens upon us. We behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged girl, for whose impatience the nimblest of the lightning-winged loves had been too slow a messenger; in her petulance with her nurse; in those bursts of vehement feeling which prepare us for the climax of passion at the catastrophe; in her invectives against Romeo, when she hears of the death of Tybalt; in her indignation when the Nurse echoes those reproaches, and the rising of her temper against unwonted contradiction:
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Nurse: Shame come to Romeo! Juliet: Blisterd be thy tongue For such a wish! he was not born to shame. Then comes that revulsion of strong feeling, that burst of magnificent exultation in the virtue and honor of her lover: Upon his brow Shame is ashamed to sit, For tis a throne where Honour may be crownd Sole monarch of the universal earth! And this, by one of those quick transitions of feeling which belong to the character, is immediately succeeded by a gush of tenderness and selfreproach Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? With the same admirable truth of nature, Juliet is represented as at first bewildered by the fearful destiny that closes round her; reverse is new and terrible to one nursed in the lap of luxury, and whose energies are yet untried. Alack, alack, that Heaven should practise stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself! While a stay remains to her amid the evils that encompass her, she clings to it. She appeals to her father, to her mother Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak one word! * * * * * Ah, sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month,a week! And, rejected by both, she throws herself upon her nurse in all the helplessness of anguish, of confiding affection, of habitual dependence O God! O nurse! how shall this be prevented? Some comfort, nurse! The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry Paris;
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and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and the baseness of her confidante is the moment which reveals her to herself. She does not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which takes possession of her mind. She assumes at once and asserts all her own superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair. Juliet: Speakest thou from thy heart? Nurse: Ay, and from my soul too;or else Beshrew them both! Juliet: Amen! This final severing of all the old familiar ties of her childhood Go, counsellor. Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain! and the calm, concentrated force of her resolve If all else fail, myself have power to die; have a sublime pathos. It appears to me also an admirable touch of nature, considering the master-passion which, at this moment, rules in Juliets soul, that she is as much shocked by the Nurses dispraise of her lover, as by her wicked, time-serving advice. This scene is the crisis in the character; and henceforth we see Juliet assume a new aspect. The fond, impatient, timid girl puts on the wife and the woman: she has learned heroism from suffering, and subtlety from oppression. It is idle to criticize her dissembling submission to her father and mother; a higher duty has taken place of that which she owed to them; a more sacred tie has severed all others. Her parents are pictured as they are, that no feeling for them may interfere in the slightest degree with our sympathy for the lovers. In the mind of Juliet there is no struggle between her filial and her conjugal duties, and there ought to be none. The Friar, her spiritual director, dismisses her with these instructions: Go home,be merry,give consent To marry Paris; and she obeys him. Death and suffering in every horrid form she is ready to brave, without fear or doubt, to live an unstaind wife: and the artifice to which she has recourse, which she is even instructed to use, in no respect impairs the
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beauty of the character; we regard it with pain and pity, but excuse it, as the natural and inevitable consequence of the situation in which she is placed. Nor should we forget that the dissimulation, as well as the courage of Juliet, though they spring from passion, are justified by principle: My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven: How shall my faith return again to earth, Unless that husband send it me from heaven? In her successive appeals to her father, her mother, her nurse, and the Friar, she seeks those remedies which would first suggest themselves to a gentle and virtuous nature, and grasps her dagger only as the last resource against dishonor and violated faith: God joind my heart with Romeosthou our hands. And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seald, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart, with treacherous revolt, Turn to another,this shall slay them both! Thus, in the very tempest and whirlwind of passion and terror, preserving, to a certain degree, that moral and feminine dignity which harmonizes with our best feelings, and commands our unreproved sympathy. I reserve my remarks on the catastrophe, which demands separate consideration; and return to trace from the opening another and distinguishing trait in Juliets character. In the extreme vivacity of her imagination, and its influence upon the action, the language, the sentiments of the drama, Juliet resembles Portia; but with this striking difference. In Portia, the imaginative power, though developed in a high degree, is so equally blended with the other intellectual and moral faculties, that it does not give us the idea of excess. It is subject to her nobler reason; it adorns and heightens all her feelings; it does not overwhelm or mislead them. In Juliet, it is rather a part of her southern temperament, controlling and modifying the rest of her character; springing from her sensibility, hurried along by her passions, animating her joys, darkening her sorrows, exaggerating her terrors, and, in the end, overpowering her reason. With Juliet, imagination is, in the first instance, if not the source, the medium of passion; and passion again kindles her imagination. It is through the power of imagination that the eloquence of Juliet is so vividly poetical: that every feeling, every sentiment comes to her, clothed in the richest imagery, and is thus reflected from her mind to ours. The poetry is not here the mere adornment, the outward garnishing of the character; but its result, or, rather, blended with its essence. It is indivisible from it, and interfused
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through it like moonlight through the summer air. To particularize is almost impossible, since the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Juliet is one rich stream of imagery; she speaks in pictures. And sometimes they are crowded one upon another: thus in the balcony scene I have no joy of this contract to-night: It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightning which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens. This bud of love, by summers ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet Again, O, for a falconers voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again! Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud; Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeos name. Here there are three images in the course of six lines. In the same scene, the speech of twenty-two lines, beginning, Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face, contains but one figurative expression, the mask of night; and every one reading this speech with the context must have felt the peculiar propriety of its simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the situation and in the feeling of the moment; where confusion, and anxiety, and earnest self-defence predominate, the excitability and play of the imagination would be checked and subdued for the time. In the soliloquy of the second act, where she is chiding at the Nurses delay: O, she is lame! Loves heralds should be thoughts, That ten times faster glide than the suns beams, Driving back shadows over lowring hills: Therefore do nimble-piniond doves draw Love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings!
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How beautiful! how the lines mount and float responsive to the sense! She goes on Had she affections, and warm youthful blood, Shed be as swift in motion as a ball; My words should bandy her to my sweet love And his to me! The famous soliloquy, Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds, teems with luxuriant imagery. The fond adjuration, Come night! come Romeo! come thou day in night! expresses that fulness of enthusiastic admiration for her lover which possesses her whole soul; but expresses it as only Juliet could or would have expressed it,in a bold and beautiful metaphor. Let it be remembered, that in this speech Juliet is not supposed to be addressing an audience, nor even a confidante; and I confess I have been shocked at the utter want of taste and refinement in those who, with coarse derision, or in a spirit of prudery yet more gross and perverse, have dared to comment on this beautiful Hymn to the Night breathed out by Juliet in the silence and solitude of her chamber. She is thinking aloud; it is the young heart triumphing to itself in words. In the midst of all the vehemence with which she calls upon the night to bring Romeo to her arms, there is something so almost infantile in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the imagery and language, that the charm of sentiment and innocence is thrown over the whole; and her impatience, to use her own expression, is truly that of a child before a festival, that hath new robes and may not wear them. It is at the very moment, too, that her whole heart and fancy are abandoned to blissful anticipation, that the Nurse enters with the news of Romeos banishment; and the immediate transition from rapture to despair has a most powerful effect. It is the same shaping spirit of imagination which, in the scene with the Friar, heaps together all images of horror that ever hung upon a troubled dream. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower; Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears; Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house Oercoverd quite with dead mens rattling bones; Or bid me go into a new-made grave; Or hide me with a dead man in his shroud; Things that, to hear them told have made me tremble! But she immediately adds,
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And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstaind wife to my sweet love. In the scene where she drinks the sleeping potion, although her spirit does not quail nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till gradually, and most naturally, in such a mind once thrown off its poise, the horror rises to frenzyher imagination realizes its own hideous creations, and she sees her cousin Tybalts ghost.5 In particular passages this luxuriance of fancy may seem to wander into excess. For instance, O serpent heart, hid with a flowery face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-featherd raven! wolfish ravening lamb, &c. Yet this highly figurative and antithetical exuberance of language is defended by Schlegel on strong and just grounds; and to me also it appears natural, however critics may argue against its taste or propriety.6 The warmth and vivacity of Juliets fancy, which plays like a light over every part of her characterwhich animates every line she utterswhich kindles every thought into a picture, and clothes her emotions in visible images, would naturally, under strong and unusual excitement, and in the conflict of opposing sentiments, run into some extravagance of diction. With regard to the termination of the play, which has been a subject of much critical argument, it is well known that Shakespeare, following the old English versions, has departed from the original story of Da Porta;7 and I am inclined to believe that Da Porta, in making Juliet waken from her trance while Romeo yet lives, and in his terrible final scene between the lovers, has himself departed from the old tradition, and, as a romance, has certainly improved it; but that which is effective in a narrative is not always calculated for the drama; and I cannot but agree with Schlegel, that Shakespeare has done well and wisely in adhering to the old story. Can we doubt for a moment that he who has given us the catastrophe of Othello, and the tempest scene in Lear, might also have adopted these additional circumstances of horror in the fate of the lovers, and have so treated them as to harrow up our very soulhad it been his object to do so? But apparently it was not. The tale is one, Such as, once heard, in gentle heart destroys All pain but pity.
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It is in truth a tale of love and sorrow, not of anguish and terror. We behold the catastrophe afar off with scarcely a wish to avert it. Romeo and Juliet must die: their destiny is fulfilled: they have quaffed off the cup of life, with all its infinite of joys and agonies, in one intoxicating draught. What have they to do more upon this earth? Young, innocent, loving and beloved, they descend together into the tomb: but Shakespeare has made that tomb a shrine of martyred and sainted affection consecrated for the worship of all hearts,not a dark charnel-vault, haunted by spectres of pain, rage, and desperation. Romeo and Juliet are pictured lovely in death as in life; the sympathy they inspire does not oppress us with that suffocating sense of horror which in the altered tragedy makes the fall of the curtain a relief; but all pain is lost in the tenderness and poetic beauty of the picture. Romeos last speech over his bride is not like the raving of a disappointed boy: in its deep pathos, its rapturous despair, its glowing imagery, there is the very luxury of life and love. Juliet, who had drunk off the sleeping potion in a fit of frenzy, wakes calm and collected I do remember well where I should be And there I am:Where is my Romeo? The profound slumber in which her senses have been steeped for so many hours has tranquillized her nerves, and stilled the fever in her blood; she wakes like a sweet child who has been dreaming of something promised to it by its mother, and opens her eyes to ask for it . . . . Where is my Romeo? She is answered at once, Thy husband in thy bosom here lies dead. This is enough: she sees at once the whole horror of her situationshe sees it with a quiet and resolved despairshe utters no reproach against the Friar, makes no inquiries, no complaints, except that affecting remonstrance O churldrink all, and leave no friendly drop To help me after! All that is left her is to die, and she dies. The poem, which opened with the enmity of the two families, closes with their reconciliation over the breathless remains of their children; and no violent, frightful, or discordant feeling is suffered to mingle with that soft impression of melancholy left within the heart, and which Schlegel compares to one long, endless sigh.
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A youthful passion, says Goethe (alluding to one of his own early attachments), which is conceived and cherished without any certain object, may be compared to a shell thrown from a mortar by night: it rises calmly in a brilliant track, and seems to mix and even to dwell for a moment with the stars of heaven; but at length it falls, it bursts, consuming and destroying all around, even as itself expires. * * * * * To conclude: love considered under its poetical aspect is the union of passion and imagination; and accordingly to one of these, or to both, all the qualities of Juliets mind and heart (unfolding and varying as the action of the drama proceeds) may be finally traced: the former concentrating all those natural impulses, fervent affections, and high energies, which lend the character its internal charm, its moral power, and individual interest; the latter diverging into all those splendid and luxuriant accompaniments which invest it with its external glow, its beauty, its vigor, its freshness, and its truth. With all this immense capacity of affection and imagination, there is a deficiency of reflection and of moral energy arising from previous habit and education; and the action of the drama, while it serves to develop the character, appears but its natural and necessary result. Le mystre de lexistence, said Madame de Stal to her daughter, cest le rapport de nos erreurs avec nos peines.
1. I must allude, but with reluctance, to another character, which I have heard likened to Juliet, and often quoted as the heroine par excellence of amatory fiction I mean the Julie of Rousseaus Nouvelle Hlose! I protest against her altogether. As a creation of fancy the portrait is a compound of the most gross and glaring inconsistencies; as false and impossible to the reflecting and philosophical mind as the fabled Syrens, Hamadryads, and Centaurs to the eye of the anatomist. As a woman, Julie belongs neither to nature nor to artificial society; and if the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau has garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted. Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the commonest clay of the earth, does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit into her, and then calls the impetticoated paradox a woman. He makes her a peg on which to hang his own visions and sentiments;and what sentiments! but that I fear to soil my pages, I would pick out a few of them, and show the difference between this strange combination of youth and innocence, philosophy and pedantry, sophistical prudery and detestable grossiret, and our own Juliet. No! if we seek a French Juliet, we must go far, far back to the real Hlose, to her eloquence, her sensibility, her fervor of passion, her devotedness of truth. She, at least, married the man she loved, and loved the man she married, and more than died for him;but enough of both. 2. Coleridge, Preface to Wallenstein. 3. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Notes
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4. There is an allusion to this court language of love in Alls Well that Ends Well, where Helena says, There shall your master have a thousand loves * * * * * A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign, A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear, His humble ambition, proud humility, His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world Of pretty, fond, adoptious Christendoms, That blinking Cupid gossips.Act i. scene I. The courtly poets of Elizabeths time, who copied the Italian sonneteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint conceits. 5. Juliet, courageously drinking off the potion, after she has placed before herself in the most fearful colors all its possible consequences, is compared by Schlegel to the famous story of Alexander and his physician. 6. Perhaps tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm! Perhaps tis tender, too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what if in a world of sin (O, sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom, save from rage and pain, So talks as its most used to do?Coleridge These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliets wild exclamations against Romeo. 7. The Giulietta of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In a popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before Shakespeare wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of faithful love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. Juliet, a noble maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last poisoned himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with his dagger. This note, which furnishes, in brief, the whole argument of Shakespeares play, might possibly have made the first impression on his fancy. In the novel of Da Porta the catastrophe is altogether different. After the death of Romeo, the Friar Lorenzo endeavors to persuade Juliet to leave the fatal monument. She refuses; and throwing herself back on the dead body of her husband, she resolutely holds her breath and dies.E voltatasi al giacente corpo di Romeo, il cui capo sopra un origliere, che con lei nell arca era stato lasciato, posto aveva; gli occhi meglio rinchiusi avendogli, e di lagrime il freddo volto bagnandogli, disse: Che debbo senza di te pi in vita piu fare, signor mio? e che altro mi resta verso te se non colla mia morte seguirti? E detto questo, la sua gran sciagura nell animo recatasi, e la perdita del caro amante ricordandosi, deliberando di pi non vivere, raccolto a se il fiato, e per buono spazio tenutolo, e poscia con un gran grido fuori mandandolo, sopra il morto corpo, morta ricadde.
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There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. The Veronese, says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliets story, insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual gardenonce a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend being blighted as their love. He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its amphitheatre and its Palladian structures, lies level with the earth, the very spot on which it stood will still be consecrated by the memory of Juliet. When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then dans le genre romantique, wore a fragment of Juliets tomb set in a ring.
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1872Edward Dowden. From The First and Second Tragedy: Romeo and Juliet ; Hamlet , from Shakespere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art
Edward Dowden (18431913), born in Cork, Ireland, was a poet, critic, and literature professor at the University of Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge. He wrote a number of books on Shakespeare as well as a biography of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. He also edited The Sonnets of William Shakespeare (1881).
During the first ten years of Shaksperes dramatic career he wrote quickly, producing (if we suppose that he commenced authorship in 1590 at the age of twenty-six), on an average, about two plays in each year. These eighteen or twenty plays written between 1590 and 1600, include some eight or nine comedies, and the whole of the great series of English historical dramas, which, when Henry V. was written, Shakspere probably looked upon as complete. To this field he did not return, except in one instance when it would seem that a portion of a play on the subject of Henry VIII. was written, and while still incomplete was handed over on some special occasion to the dramatist Fletcher to expand from three acts into five. In the first decade of Shaksperes authorship (if we set aside Titus Andronicus as the work of an unknown writer), a single tragedy appears,Romeo and Juliet. This play is believed to have engaged Shaksperes attention during a number of years. Dissatisfied probably with the first form which it assumed, Shakspere worked upon the play again, rewriting and enlarging it.1 But it is not unlikely that even then he considered his powers to be insufficiently matured for the great dealing as artist with human life and passion, which tragedy demands; for, having written Romeo and Juliet, Shakspere returned to the histories, in
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which, doubtless, he was aware that he was receiving the best possible culture for future tragedy; and he wrote the little group of comedies in which Shaksperian mirth obtains its highest and most complete expression. Then, after an interval of about five years, a second tragedy, Hamlet, was produced. Over Hamlet, as over Romeo and Juliet, it is supposed that Shakspere laboured long and carefully. Like Romeo and Juliet the play exists in two forms, and there is reason to believe that in the earlier form in each instance we possess an imperfect report of Shaksperes first treatment of his theme.2 It may be thought paradoxical to infer from the absence of tragedy in the earlier years of Shaksperes dramatic career, that he looked upon the writing of tragedy as his chief vocation as author; yet the inference is not unconfirmed by facts in Shaksperes subsequent career. Almost from the first it would appear that he had before him the design of Romeo and Juliet. When after five or six years it was actually accomplished, there still appeared in the play unmistakable marks of immature judgment. Shakspere accordingly, who in his histories had abundance of work planned out for him, wisely abstained for some time further from writing tragedy. But as soon as Hamlet was completed, and it became a demonstrated fact to the poet that he had attained his full maturity, and was master of his craft, then he no longer hesitated or delayed, and year by year from 1602 to 1612 he added to the great roll of his tragedies, accomplishing in those years by sustained energy of heart and imagination as marvellous a feat of authorship as the world has seen. When Shakspere began to write for the stage, as was noticed in the preceding chapter, he was by no means misled by self-confidence. He began cautiously and tentatively, feeling his way. And there was one cause which might reasonably make him timid in the direction of tragedy. Shakspere, at the age of twenty-six, was not afraid to compete with contemporary writers in comedy and history. He co-operated, it may be, in the writing of historical plays, The First Part of the Contention, and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, at an early age, and afterwards by revision and addition made these plays still more his own.3 But the department of tragedy was dominated by a writer of superb genius, Christopher Marlowe. Shakspere, whose powers ripened slowly, may at the time when be wrote The Comedy of Errors, and Loves Labours Lost, have well hesitated to dispute with Marlowe his special province. Imitators and disciples had crowded around the master. All the vices of his style had been exaggerated. Shakspere saw one thing clearly, that if the time ever came when be would write tragedy, the tragedy must be of a kind altogether different from that created upon Marlowes method,the method of idealising passions on a gigantic scale. To add to the pieces of the school of Marlowe a rhapsody of blood commingled with nonsense was impossible for Shakspere, who was never altogether wanting in a sane judgment, and a lively sense of the absurd.
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Thus it came about that Shakspere at nearly forty years of age was the author of but two or three tragedies. Of these, Romeo and Juliet may be looked upon as the work of the artists adolescence; and Hamlet as the evidence that he bad become adult, and in this supreme department master of his craft. To add to the interest of these plays as subjects of Shaksperian study, each, as was observed above, exists in two very different forms; and from these something may be learnt as to the poets method of rehandling his own work. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, we possess the English original, a poem by Arthur Brooke, upon which Shakspere founded his drama, and which in many particulars he minutely followed. It is therefore possible in the case of this play, to investigate with peculiar advantage Shaksperes method of treating his original. The first two tragedies having been so carefully and deliberately thought out, having been looked upon by their author as of chief importance among his writings, we might anticipate that the second could hardly have been written without conscious reference to the first. In his early tentative plays Shakspere made trial of various styles; he broke out now on this side, now on that, in directions which were wide apart; now he was engaged upon a history, now upon a comedy of incident, almost a farce; now a comedy of dialogue; and again a comedy of tender and graceful sentiment He evidently had resolved that he would not repeat himself, that he would not allow his invention to come under control of any one of its own creatures. Too often a distinguished literary success is the prelude to literary failure. The artist in fainter colours, and with a more uncertain outline repeats his admired figures and situations. Shakspere instinctively and by resolve put himself into relation with facts of the most diverse kinds, and preferred a comparatively slow attainment of a comprehension of life to a narrow intensity of individuality. The broad history of the nation interested him; but also, the passion of love and death in two young hearts; he could laugh brightly, and mock the affectations and fashionable follies of his day; but he must also stand before the tomb of the Capulets possessed by a sense of mystery, and that strenuous pain, in which something else than mere sorrow is predominant. Now when writing Hamlet, his second tragedy, Shakspere, we must needs believe, determined that he would break away from the influence of his first tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is steeped in passion; Hamlet is steeped in meditation. Contrast the hero of the one play, the man of the South, with the chief figure of the other, the Teuton, the man of the North. Contrast Hamlets friend and comforter, Horatio, possessed of grave strength, self-government, and balance of character, with Romeos friend, Mercutio, all brilliance, intellect, wit, and effervescent animal spirits. Contrast the gay festival in Capulets house with the brutal drinking of the Danish king and courtiers. Contrast the moonlit night in the garden, while the nightingales song is panting forth from the pomegranate tree, with the silence, the nipping and eager air of the platform of Elsinore, the beetling height to seaward, and the form of terror which
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stalked before the sentinels. Contrast the perfect love of Juliet and her Romeo, with the piteous foiled desire for love in Hamlet and Ophelia. Contrast the passionate seizure upon death, as her immediate and highest need, of the Italian wife, with the misadventure of the crazed Ophelia, so pitiful, so accidental, so unheroic, ending in muddy death. Yet, with all their points of contrast, there is one central point of affinity between the plays. Like Mr Brownings Paracelsus and his Sordello, the poems are companion poems, while they are set over one against the other; they are contrasted but complementary.4 Hamlet resembles Romeo in his inability to maintain the will in a fruitful relation with facts, and with the real world. Neither is a ruler of events. Luck is for ever against Romeo; the stars are inauspicious to him, and to such men the stars will always be inauspicious, as to a Henry V. they will always prove auxiliary. With Hamlet to resolve is to stand at gaze before an action, and to become incapable of achieving it. The necessary coupling between the purpose and the deed has been fatally dissolved. There is this central point in common between Hamlet and Romeothe will in each is sapped; but in each it is sapped by a totally different disease of soul.5 The external atmosphere of the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, its Italian colour and warmth, have been so finely felt by M. Philarte Chasles that his words deserve to be a portion of every criticism of that play.Who does not recall those lovely summer nights, in which the forces of nature seem eager for development, and constrained to remain in drowsy languora mingling of intense beat, superabundant energy, impetuous power, and silent freshness? The nightingale sings in the depths of the woods. The flower-cups are half closed. A pale lustre is shed over the foliage of the forests, and upon the brow of the hills. The deep repose conceals, we are aware, a procreant force; the melancholy reserve of nature is the mask of a passionate emotion. Under the paleness and the coolness of the night you divine restrained ardours, and flowers which brood in silence, impatient to shine forth. Such is the peculiar atmosphere with which Shakspere has enveloped one of his most wonderful creationsRomeo and Juliet. Not only the substance, but the forms of the language come from the South. Italy was the inventor of the tale: she drew it from her national memorials, her old family-feuds, her annals filled with amorous and bloody intrigues. In its lyric accent, its blindness of passion, its blossoming and abundant vitality, in the brilliant imagery, in the bold composition, no one can fail to recognise Italy. Romeo utters himself like a sonnet of Petrarch, with the same refined choice, and the same antitheses; there is the same grace and the same pleasure in versifying passion in allegorical stanzas. Juliet, too, is wholly the woman of Italy; with small gift of forethought, and absolutely ingenuous in her abandon, she is at once vehement and pure.6 The season is midsummer. It wants a fortnight and odd days of Lammastide (August 1st). Wilhelm Schlegel, and after him Hazlitt, have spoken as if the
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atmosphere of the play were that of a southern spring.7 Such a criticism indicates a want of sensibility to the tone and colouring of the piece. The mid-July heat broods over the five tragic days of the story. The mad blood is stirring in mens veins during these hot summer days.8 There is a thunderous feeling in the moral element. The summer was needed also that the nights and mornings might quickly meet. The nights are those luminous nights from which the daylight seems never wholly to depart, nights through which the warmth of day still hangs over the trees and flowers. It is worth while to pause and note Shaksperes method of treating external nature as the milieu or enveloping medium of human passion; while sometimes, in addition, between external nature and human passion Shakspere reveals acute points of special contact. We recall in King Lear the long and terrible day which begins at moonset before the dawn, when Kent is put in the stocks, and which ends with the storm upon the heath. The agony is intensified by the stretch of time, strained with passion and events, until the time tingles and is intense; it culminates in the night of furious wind and spouting rain, of lightning and of thunder, when the roots of nature seem shaken in the same upheaval of things which makes a daughter cruel. We remember bow Duncan breathed a delicate air when he entered under the martlet-haunted portals of Macbeth, as though nature insinuated into Duncans senses a treacherous presentiment of peace and security; and there followed upon this the night when the earth was feverous and the air was filled with lamentings and strange screams of death. We remember that other night of tempest and prodigy which preceded the fall of Julius Caesar, when Cassius, catching exhilaration and energy from the mutiny in the heaven, walked about the streets unbraced, submitting him unto the perilous night. Then in contrast with these we think of the lyric love of Lorenzo and Jessica under the star-sown sky, every orb of which sings in its motion like an angel still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; we think of the Forest of Arden, with its tempered light and shade, its streams where the deer comes to drink, and green haunts in which adversity grows sweet; we think of the mountain country of Wales, and the salutations to the heaven of the royal youths whom Cymbeline had lost. The air which surrounds the island of Prospero is one of enchantment fit to breathe upon marvel and beauty: The isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. In the play of Pericles we are for ever in presence of the waters furious or serene, and their voices of tumult or of calm are for ever mingling with the human voices, with the sorrow of the bereaved father, and the magical singing of the sea-pure and sea-sensitive Marina. Once again, in Timon, we are in presence of the sea,but it is not the stormy waters of Pericles that we gaze at; it is not
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the yellow sands of Prosperos island, where the sea-nymphs dance, and curtsy, and take hands; in Timon it is neither the strength nor the beauty of the waves we are made to feel: Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beachd verge of the salt flood; Who once a day with his embossed froth The turbulent surge shall cover. We see the cold white lip of the wave curling over, and curling over again, with bitter monotony upon the sand; and it is there, touched by the salt and pitiless edge of the sea, that the corpse of the desperate man must lie abandoned. Romeo is not the determiner of events in the play. He does not stand prominently forward, a single figure in the first scene, as does Marlowes Barabas, and Shaksperes Richard III., soliloquising about his own persons and his plans. The first scene of the play prepares a place for Romeo, it presents the moral environment of the hero, it exhibits the feud of the houses which determines the lovers fate, although they for a brief space forget these grim realities in the rapture of their joy. The strife of the houses Capulet and Montague appears in this first scene in its trivial, ludicrous aspect; threatening, however, in a moment to become earnest and formidable. The serving-men Gregory and Samson biting thumbs at the serving-men Abraham and Balthasar,this is the obverse of the tragic show. Turn to the other side, and what do we see? The dead bodies of young and beautiful human creatures, of Tybalt and Paris, of Juliet and Romeo, the bloody harvest of the strife. This first scene, half ludicrous, but wholly grave, was written not without a reference to the final scene. The bandying of vulgar wit between the servants must not hide from us a certain grim irony which underlies the opening of the play. Here the two old rivals meet; they will meet again. And the prince appears in the last scene as in the first. Then old Capulet and Montague will be pacified; then they will consent to let their desolated lives decline to the grave in quietness. Meanwhile serving-men with a sense of personal dignity must bite their thumbs, and other incidents may happen. Few critics of the play have omitted to call attention to the fact that Shakspere represents Romeo as already in love before he gives his heart to Juliet, in love with the pale-cheeked, dark-eyed, disdainful Rosaline. If we are right, Coleridge wrote, . . . in pronouncing this one of Shaksperes early dramas, it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the nature of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already love-bewildered. The circumstance is not of Shaksperes invention. He has retained it from Brookes poem; but that he thought fit to retain the circumstance, fearlessly declaring that Romeos supreme love is not his first love, is noteworthy. The contrast in the mind of the earlier poet between Rosaline, who
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From her youth was fostered evermore With vertues foode, and taught in schole, of wisdomes skilfull lore, and Juliet, who yields to her passion, and by it is destroyed, was a contrast which Shakspere rejected as a piece of formal and barren morality. Of what character is the love of Romeo for Rosaline? Romeos is not an active practical nature like Henry V.; neither is he great by intellect, a thinker in any high sense of the word. But if he lives and moves and has his being neither heroically in the objective world of action, like Henry V., nor in the world of the mind like Hamlet, all the more he lives, moves, and has his being in the world of mere emotion. To him emotion which enriches and exalts itself with the imagination, emotion apart from thought, and apart from action, is an end in itself. Therefore it delights him to hover over his own sentiment, to brood upon it, to feed upon it richly. Romeo must needs steep his whole nature in feeling, and, if Juliet does not appear, he must love Rosaline. Nevertheless the love of Rosaline cannot be to Romeo as is the love of Juliet. It is a law in moral dynamics, too little recognised, that the breadth, and height, and permanence of a feeling depend in a certain degree at least upon the actual force of its external cause. No ardour of self-protection, no abandonment prepense, no self-sustained energy, can create and shape a passion of equal volume, and possessing a like certainty and directness of advance with a passion shaped, determined, and for ever re-invigorated by positive, objective fact. Shakspere had become assured that the facts of the world are worthy to command our highest ardour, our most resolute action, our most solemn awe; and that the more we penetrate into fact the more will our nature be quickened, enriched, and exalted. The play of Romeo and Juliet exhibits to us the deliverance of a man from dream into reality. In Romeos love of Rosaline we find represented the dream-life as yet undisturbed, the abandonment to emotion for emotions sake. Romeo nurses his love; he sheds tears; he cultivates solitude; he utters his groans in the hearing of the comfortable friar; he stimulates his fancy with the sought-out phrases, the curious antitheses of the amorous dialect of the period.9 Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! He broods upon the luxury of his sorrow. And then Romeo meets Juliet. Juliet is an actual force beyond and above himself, a veritable fact of the world. Nevertheless there remains a certain clinging self-consciousness, an absence of perfect simplicity and directness even in Romeos very real love of Juliet. This is
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placed by Shakspere in designed contrast with the singleness of Juliets nature, her direct unerroneous passion which goes straight to its object, and never broods upon itself. It is Romeo who says in the garden scene, How silver-sweet sound lovers tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears. He has overheard the voice of Juliet, and he cannot answer her call until he has drained the sweetness of the sound. He is one of those men to whom the emotional atmosphere which is given out by the real object, and which surrounds it like a luminous mist, is more important than the reality itself. As he turns slowly away, loath to leave, Romeo exclaims, Love goes toward love, as school-boys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. But Juliets first thought is of the danger to which Romeo is exposed in her fathers grounds. It is Juliet who will not allow the utterance of any oath because the whole reality of that nights event, terrible in its joy, has flashed upon her, and she, who lives in no golden haze of luxurious feeling, is aroused and alarmed by the sudden shock of too much happiness. It is Juliet who uses direct and simple words Farewell compliment! Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say Ay, And I will take thy word. She has declared that her bounty is measureless, that her love is infinite, when a sudden prosaic interruption occurs; the nurse calls within, Juliet leaves the window, and Romeo is left alone. Is this new joy a dream? O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard, Being in night, all this is but a dream, Too flattering-sweet to be substantial. But Juliet hastily reappears with words upon her lips which make it evident that it is no dream of joy in which she lives. Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed. If that thy bent of love be honourable, Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow, By one that Ill procure to come to thee,
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Where, and what time thou wilt perform the rite, And all my fortunes at thy foot Ill lay, And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world. The wholeness and crystalline purity of Juliets passion is flawed by no double self. She is all and entire in each act of her soul. While Romeo, on the contrary, is as yet but half delivered from self-consciousness. If Shakspere ventured upon any generalization about women, it was perhaps thisthat the natures of women are usually made up of fewer elements than those of men, but that those elements are ordinarily in juster poise, more fully organized, more coherent and compact; and that, consequently, prompt and efficient action is more a womans gift than a mans. Man delights not me, nor woman neither, confessed Hamlet; and the courtiers declare they smiled to think if he delighted not in man, what lenten entertainment the players would receive from him. The playersfor the drama is founded on mere delight in human personality. Man delighted Shakspere, and woman also; but the chief problems of life seemed to lurk for Shakspere in the souls and in the lives of men, and therefore he was more profoundly interested in the natures of men than in those of women. His great tragedies are not Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia, Volumnia; but Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Coriolanus. Shaksperes men have a history, moral growth or moral decay; his women act and are acted upon, but seldom grow and are transformed. We get from Shakspere no histories of a womans soul like the history of Romola, or of Maggie Tulliver, or of Dorothea Brooke; noneunless, perhaps, that of Cleopatraat all so carefully studied and curiously detailed as may be found in the novels of Goethe. Shakspere creates his women by a single strong or exquisite inspiration; but he studies his men. His witty women are not a complex of all various qualities like Falstaff; his wicked women are simply wicked like Goneril and Regan, not an inscrutable mystery of iniquity like Iago; his women of intellect are bright, are effective with ideas which they use as the means of action or of enjoyment, but among them there is not a female Hamlet.10 Yet the women of Shakspere have almost always the advantage of his men. Although their natures are made up of fewer elements, yet because those elements are quite vital and coherent, his women are in the highest degree direct in feeling and efficient in action. All the half-organised power of men is not a match for their directness and efficiency. Portia in the Merchant of Venice can bring all her wits at a moments notice into play; every faculty is instinct with a single and indivisible energy; set over against the great masculine force of Shylock she proves more than a match for him. In Helena (Alls Well that Ends Well) there is perfect rectitude of intellect and will, and a solid unity of character which enables her to shape events as she has decided it is well they should be shaped, and secures her from all distraction and all illusion. She imposes herself
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as a blessing upon the high-born youth, who, for his part, had been sufficiently blind and dull; at length he perceives that while he stumbled and seemed to go astray, Helena was the providence which forced him to stumble into security, and strength, and the abiding-place of love. Volumnia, by the unfaltering insistence of her single moral motive subdues Coriolanus. Macbeth is brave and cowardly, sceptical and superstitious, loyal and treacherous, ambitious and capable of service, at once restrained and stimulated by his imagination. Lady Macbeth is terribly efficient; at one time a will strung tense, at another a conscience strung tense; possessed of only that active kind of imagination which masters practical difficulties. She has violently wrenched her nature; and the wrench is fatal. But Macbeth can live on, sinking farther and farther from reality and strength and joy, dropping away into the shadow, undergoing gradual extinction, decay, and disintegration of his moral being; never a sudden and absolute ruin. Juliet at once takes the lead. It is she who proposes and urges on the sudden marriage. She is impatient for complete self-surrender, eager that the deed should become perfect and irreversible. When, after the death of Tybalt, Romeo learns from the lips of the Friar that he has been condemned to banishment he is utterly unmanned. He abandons himself to helpless and hopeless despair. He turns the tender emotion upon himself, and extracts all the misery which is contained in that one word banished. He throws himself upon the ground and grovels pitifully in the abjectness of his dismay. His will is unable to deal with his own emotions so as to subdue or control them. Upon the next day, after her casting away of her own kindred, after her parting with her husband, Juliet comes to the same cell of Friar Laurence, her face pale and traces of tears upon it which she cannot hide. Paris, the lover whom her father and mother have designed for Juliet, is there. She meets him with gay words, gallantly concealing the heart which is eager and trembling, and upheld from desperation only by a high strung fortitude. Then when the door is shut her heart relieves itself, and she urges the Friar, with passionate energy, to devise forthwith a remedy for the evil that has befallen. In her home Juliet is now without adviser or sustainer; a girl of fourteen years, she stands the centre of a circle of power which is tyrannous, and pledged to crush her resistance; old Capulet (the Capulets are a fiery self-willed race, unlike the milder Montagues) has vehemently urged upon her the marriage with Count Paris. She turns her pale face upon her father, and addresses him appealingly.11 Good father, I beseech you on my knees Hear me with patience but to speak a word. She turns to her mother,the proud Italian matron, still young, who had not married for love, whose hatred is cold and deadly, and whose relation with the child, who is dear to her, is pathetically imperfect:12
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Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the bottom of my grief? O sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month, a week. Last she looks for support to her Nurse, turning in that dreadful moment with the instinct of childhood to the woman on whose breast she had lain, and uttering words of desperate and simple earnestness: O God! O nurse! how shall this be prevented? . . . . . . . Some comfort, nurse. The same unfaltering severity with which a surgeon operates is shown by Shakspere in his fidelity here to the nurses character. The gross and wanton heart, while the sun of prosperity is full, blossoms into broad vulgarity; and the raillery of Mercutio deals with it sufficiently. Now in the hour of trial her grossness rises to the dignity of a crime. The Count is a lovely gentleman; Romeos a dishclout to him; the second match excels the first; or if it does not, Juliets first is dead, or as good as dead, being away from her. This moment, Mrs Jameson has finely said, reveals Juliet to herself. She does not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which takes possession of her mind. She assumes at once and asserts all her own superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair. Here Juliet enters into her solitude.13 The Friar has given Juliet a phial containing a strange, untried mixture, and she is alone in her chamber. Juliets soliloquy ends with one of those triumphant touches by which Shakspere glorified that which he appropriated from his originals. In Brookes poem, Juliet swallows the sleeping-potion hastily lest her courage should fail. Shakspere, Coleridge wrote, provides for the finest decencies. It would have been too bold a thing for a girl of fifteen;but she swallows the draught in a fit of fright. This deprives Juliet of all that is most characteristic in the act. In the night and the solitude, with a desperate deed to do, her imagination is intensely and morbidly excited. All the hideous secrets of the tomb appear before her. Suddenly in her disordered vision the figure of the murdered Tybalt rises, and is manifestly in pursuit of some one. Of whom? Not of Juliet, but of her lover who had slain him. A moment before Juliet had shrunk with horror from the thought of confronting Tybalt in the vault of the Capulets. But now Romeo is in danger. All fear deserts her. To stand by Romeos side is her one necessity. With a confused sense that this draught will somehow place her close to the murderous Tybalt, and close to Romeo whom she would save, calling aloud to Tybalt to delay one moment,Stay, Tybalt, stay!she drains
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the phial, not in a fit of fright, but with the words Romeo! I come; this do I drink to thee. The brooding nature of Romeo, which cherishes emotion, and lives in it, is made salient by contrast with Mercutio, who is all wit, and intellect, and vivacity, an uncontrollable play of gleaming and glancing life. Upon the morning after the betrothal with Juliet, a meeting happens between Romeo and Mercutio. Previously, while lover of Rosaline, Romeo had cultivated a lover-like melancholy. But now, partly because his blood runs gladly, partly because the union of soul with Juliet has made the whole world more real and substantial, and things have grown too solid and lasting to be disturbed by a laugh, Romeo can contend in jest with Mercutio himself, and stretch his wit of cheveril from an inch narrow to an ell broad. Mercutio and the nurse are Shaksperes creations in this play. For the character of the former he had but a slight hint in the poem of Arthur Brooke. There we read of Mercutio as a courtier who was bold among the bashful maidens as a lion among lambs, and we are told that he had an ice-cold hand. Putting together these two suggestions, discovering a significance in them, and animating them with the breath of his own life, Shakspere created the brilliant figure which lights up the first half of Romeo and Juliet, and disappears when the colours become all too grave and sombre. Romeo has accepted the great bond of love. Mercutio, with his ice-cold hand, the lion among maidens, chooses above all things a defiant liberty, a liberty of speech, gaily at war with the proprieties, an airy freedom of fancy, a careless and masterful courage in dealing with life, as though it were a matter of slight importance. He will not attach himself to either of the houses. He is invited by Capulet to the banquet; but he goes to the banquet in company with Romeo and the Montagues. He can do generous and disinterested things; but he will not submit to the trammels of being recognised as generous. He dies maintaining his freedom, and defying death with a jest. To be made worms meat of so stupidly, by a villain that fights by the book of arithmetic, and through Romeos awkwardness, is enough to make a man impatient. A plague o both your houses! The death of Mercutio is like the removal of a shifting breadth of sunlight, which sparkles on the sea; now the clouds close in upon one another, and the stress of the gale begins.14 The moment that Romeo receives the false tidings of Juliets death, is the moment of his assuming full manhood. Now, for the first time, he is completely delivered from the life of dream, completely adult, and able to act with an initiative in his own will, and with manly determination. Accordingly, he now speaks with masculine directness and energy: Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars! Yes; be is now master of events; the stars cannot alter his course;
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Thou knowst my lodgings: get me ink and paper, And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night. Balthasar: I do beseech you, sir, have patience. Your looks are pale and wild, and do import Some misadventure. Tush! thou art deceivd. Romeo: Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do. Hast thou no letters to me from the Friar? Balthasar: No, my good lord. Romeo: No matter; get thee gone, And hire those horses; Ill be with thee straight. Nothing, as Maginn has observed, can be more quiet than his final determination, Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. It is plain Juliet. . . . There is nothing about Cupids arrow, or Dians wit; no honeyed word escapes his lips, nor again does any accent of despair. His mind is so made up; the whole course of the short remainder of his life so unalterably fixed that it is perfectly useless to think more about it.15 These words because they are the simplest are amongst the most memorable that Romeo utters. Is this indeed the same Romeo who sighed, and wept, and spoke sonnet-wise, and penned himself in his chamber, shutting the daylight out for love of Rosaline? Now passion, imagination, and will, are fused together, and Romeo who was weak has at length become strong. In two noteworthy particulars Shakspere has varied from his original. He has compressed the action from some months into four or five days.16 Thus precipitancy is added to the course of events and passions. Shakspere has also made the catastrophe more calamitous than it is in Brookes poem. It was his invention to bring Paris across Romeo in the church-yard. Paris comes to strew his flowers, uttering in a rhymed sextain, (such as might have fallen from Romeos lips in the first Act) his pretty lamentation. Romeo goes resolutely forward to death. He is no longer young Romeo, but adult, and Paris is the boy. He speaks with the gentleness, and with the authority of one who knows what life and death are of one who has gained the superior position of those who are about to die over those who still may live: Good, gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man. Fly hence and leave me; think upon these gone; Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,
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Put not another sin upon my head, By urging me to fury. He would save Paris if that might be. But Paris still crosses Romeo, and he must needs be dealt with: Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy! Romeo has now a definite object; be has a deed to do, and he will not brook obstacles.17 Friar Laurence remains to furnish the Prince with an explanation of the events. It is impossible to agree with those critics, among others Gervinus, who represent the Friar as a kind of chorus expressing Shaksperes own ethical ideas, and his opinions respecting the characters and action. It is not Shaksperes practice to expound the moralities of his artistic creations; nor does he ever by means of a chorus stand above and outside the men and women of his plays, who are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. The nearest approach perhaps to a chorus, is to be found in the person of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra. Hamlet commissions Horatio to report him and his cause aright to the unsatisfied and Horatio placing the bodies of the dead upon a stage is about, in judicial manner, to declare the causes of things; but Shakspere declines to put on record for us the explanations made by Horatio. No! Friar Laurence also is moving in the cloud, and misled by error as well as the rest. Shakspere has never made the moderate, self-possessed, sedate person, a final or absolute judge of the impulsive and the passionate; the one sees a side of truth which is unseen by the other; but to neither is the whole truth visible. The Friar had supposed that by virtue of his prudence, his moderation, his sage counsels, his amiable sophistries, he could guide these two young, passionate lives, and do away the old tradition of enmity between the houses. There in the tomb of the Capulets is the return brought in by his investment of kindly scheming. Shakspere did not believe that the highest wisdom of human life was acquirable by mild, monastic meditation, and by gathering of simples in the coolness of the dawn. Friar Laurence too, old man, had his lesson to learn. In accordance with his view that the Friar represents the chorus in this tragedy, Gervinus discovers as the leading idea of the piece a lesson of moderation; the poet makes his confession that excess in any enjoyment, however pure in itself, transforms its sweet into bitterness, that devotion to any single feeling, however noble, bespeaks its ascendancy; that this ascendancy moves the man and woman out of their natural spheres.18 It is somewhat hard upon Shakspere to suppose that he secreted in each of his dramas a central idea for a German critic to discover. But if there be a central idea in Romeo and Juliet can this be it? What! did Shakspere then mean that Romeo and Juliet loved too well? That
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all would have been better if they had surrendered their lives each to the other less rapturously, less absolutely? At what precise point ought a discreet regard for another human soul to check itself and say, Thus far towards complete union will I advance, but here it is prudent to stop? Or are not Romeos words at least as true as the Friars? Come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring Death do what he dare, It is enough I may but call her mine. Doubtless, also, Cordelia misunderstood the true nature of the filial relation; upon perceiving a possibility of defeat, she ought to have retreated to the safe coast of France. Portia upon hearing that the enemies of Brutus were making head, weakly fell distract, and swallowed fire, not having learned that a wellbalanced heart bestows upon a husband only a regulated moderation of love; Shakspere, by the example of Portia, would teach us that a penalty is paid for excess of wifely loyalty! No; this method of judging characters and actions by gross awards of pleasure and pain as measured by the senses does not interpret the ethics or the art of Shakspere, or of any great poet. Shakspere was aware that every strong emotion which exalts and quickens the inner life of man at the same time exposes the outer life of accident and circumstance to increased risk. But the theme of tragedy, as conceived by the poet, is not material prosperity or failure; it is spiritual; fulfilment or failure of a destiny higher than that which is related to the art of getting on in life. To die under certain conditions may be a higher rapture than to live. Shakspere did not intend that the feeling evoked by the last scene of this tragedy of Romeo and Juliet should be one of hopeless sorrow or despair in presence of failure, ruin, and miserable collapse.19 Juliet and Romeo, to whom Verona has been a harsh step-mother, have accomplished their lives. They loved perfectly. Romeo had attained to manhood. Juliet had suddenly blossomed into heroic womanhood. Through her, and through anguish and joy, her lover had emerged from the life of dream into the waking life of truth. Juliet had saved his soul; she had rescued him from abandonment to spurious feeling, from abandonment to morbid self-consciousness, and the enervating luxury of emotion for emotions sake. What more was needed? And as secondary to all this, the enmity of the houses is appeased? Montague will raise in pure gold the statue of true and faithful Juliet; Capulet will place Romeo by her side. Their lives are accomplished; they go to take up their place in the large history of the world, which contains many such things. Shakspere in this last scene carries forward our
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imagination from the horror of the tomb to the better life of man, when such love as that of Juliet and Romeo will be publicly honoured, and remembered by a memorial all gold.20
1. The opinion of Mr Richard Grant White deserves to be stated. It is That the Romeo and Juliet which has come down to us (for there may have been an antecedent play upon the same story), was first written [in 1591], by two or more playwrights, of whom Shakspere was one; that subsequently [in 1596], Shakspere re-wrote this old play, of which he was part author, making his principal changes in the passages which were contributed by his co-labourers. Mr R. G. White believes the first quarto of Romeo and Juliet to be an imperfect and garbled copy, obtained by the aid of a reporter, of Shaksperes new work, the defects of which were supplied partly by some verse-mongers of the day, and partly from the old play in the composition of which Shakspere was one of two or more co-labourers. 2. The editors of the Cambridge Shakspere believe that there was an old play on the subject of Hamlet, some portions of which are still preserved in the quarto of 1603. For various bits of evidence (some good, some bad), to prove that the text of this quarto was obtained orally, and not directly from a manuscript, see Tschischwitzs Shakspere-Forschungen I. Hamlet, pp. 1014. 3. The latest study of 2 and 3 Henry VI. and the relation of these to The Contention and True Tragedie is the admirably careful essay by Miss Jane Lee, Transactions of the New Shakspere Society 187576. The opinion arrived at by Miss Lee is that in 2 and 3 Henry VI. Shakspere and Marlowe are revisers of work by Marlowe, Greene and perhaps Peele. 4. See the writers lecture on the poetry of Mr Tennyson and Mr Browning: Afternoon Lectures, vol. v. p. 178. 5. Romeo is Hamlet in love. There is the same rich exuberance of passion and sentiment in the one, that there is of thought and sentiment in the other. Both are absent and self-involved; both live out of themselves in a world of imagination.Hazlitt: Characters of Shakespeares Plays, p. 177 (ed. 1818). 6. tudes sur W. Shakspeare, Marie Stuart, et LArtin, pp. 14142. 7. So also Flathe: Shakspeare, &c. Part ii., p. 188. 8. Benvolio For now these hot days is the mad blood stirring. See the extract from Dr Theodor Strter in H. H. Furnesss Variorum Edition of Romeo and Juliet, pp. 46162. 9. Mrs Jamieson has noticed that in Alls Well that Ends Well Helena mockingly reproduces this style of amorous antitheses (Act i. Sc. 1, ll. 180189). Helena, who lives so effectively in the world of fact, is contemptuous towards all unreality and affectation. 10. See on this subject Mrs Jamesons Characteristics of Women, Introduction; also a remarkable passage in Mr Ruskins Sesame and Lilies, pp. 12631. Rmelin maintains that in consequence of his position as player, Shakspere was excluded from the acquaintance of women of fine culture and character, and therefore drew upon his fancy for his female portraits. At the same time Shakspere shared with Goethe, Petrarch, Raphael, Dante, Rousseau, Jean Paul (a strange assemblage!) a mystical veneration for the feminine element of humanity as the higher and more divine. For a comparison of Shakspere with Goethe in this respect, see Rmelin
Notes
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Shakespeare Studien pp 288292. It is clever and superficial, like much of the realistic criticism of Rmelin. Leos Shakespeares Frauen-Ideale is a somewhat misleading title. In the few pages on Shaksperes women (pp. 3544), there is contained little that is new or valuable. 11. Shakspere, as Mr Clark notices, contrives to bring before no the paleness of Juliets face in this great crisis of her life, dramatically, by means of old Capulets vituperative terms: Out you green-sickness carrion! out you baggage! You tallow face! 12. Shakspere reduces Juliets age from the sixteen years of Brookes poem to fourteen. He loved the years of budding womanhoodMiranda is fifteen years of age, Marina fourteen. Lady Capulet says to Juliet: By my count I was your mother much upon these years That you are now a maid. Act i., Scene 3. Therefore she is perhaps under thirty years of age. But it is thirty years since old Capulet last went masking (Act i., Scene 5). Observe Lady Capulets manner of speech with her husband in Act iv., Scene 4, and note her announcement (intended to gratify Juliet) that she will despatch a messenger to Mantua to poison Romeo. Act iii., Scene 5. 13. The nurse has a certain vulgarised air of rank and refinement, as if, priding herself on the confidence of her superiors, she had caught and assimilated their manners to her own vulgar nature. In this mixture of refinement and vulgarity both elements are made the worse for being together. . . . She abounds, however, in serviceable qualities. Hudson. Shakesperes Life, Art and Characters, vol. ii., pp. 214, 215. Mrs Jameson observes justly that the sweetness and dignity of Juliets character could hardly have been preserved inviolate if Shakspere had placed her in connection with any common-place dramatic waiting-woman. 14. The German Professor sometimes does not quite keep pace with Shakspere, and is heard stumbling heavily behind him. Gervinus thus describes Mercutio: A man without culture, coarse and rude, ugly, a scornful ridiculer of all sensibility and love. 15. Shakespeare Papers, p. 99. 16. The following passage quoted by H. H. Furness (Variorum Romeo and Juliet, pp. 226, 27), from Mr Clarke may be serviceable as giving some of the notes of time which occur in this play, In Scene 1, the Prince desires Capulet to go with him at once, and Montague to come to him, this afternoon. In Scene 2, Capulet speaks of Montague being bound as well as himself, which indicates that the Princes charge has just been given to both of them, and shortly after speaks of the festival at his house this night. At this festival Romeo sees Juliet when she speaks of sending to him to-morrow, and on that morrow the lovers are united by Friar Laurence. Act iii. opens with the scene where Tybalt kills Mercutio, and during which scene Romeos words, Tybalt, that an hour hath been my kinsman show that the then time is the afternoon of the same day. The Friar, at the close of Scene 3. of that Act bids Romeo good night; and in the next scene, Paris, in reply to Capulets inquiry, What day is this? replies, Monday, my lord. This, by the way, denotes that the old accustomed feast of the Capulets, according to a usual practice
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in Catholic countries, was celebrated on a Sunday evening. In Scene 5. of Act iii. comes the parting of the lovers at the dawn of Tuesday, and when at the close of the scene, Juliet says she shall repair to Friar Laurence cell. Act iv. commences with her appearance there, thus carrying on the action during the same day, Tuesday. But the effect of long time is introduced by the mention of evening mass, and by the Friars detailed directions and reference to to-morrows night; so that when the mind has been prepared by the change of scene, by Capulets anxious preparations for the wedding, and by Juliets return to filial submission, there seems no violence done to the imagination by Lady Capulets remarking, Tis now near night. . . . Juliet retires to her own room with the intention of selecting wedding attire for the next morning, which her father has said shall be that of the marriage, anticipating it by a whole dayWednesday instead of Thursday. The sleeping-potion is expected by the Friar to operate during two and forty hours, Act iv. Scene 1. Juliet drinks it upon Tuesday night, or rather in the night hours of Wednesday morningdelaying as long as she dare. On the night of Thursday she awakens in the tomb and dies. Maginn believed that there must be some mistake in the reading two and forty hours; but there is no need to suppose this. The play, as Maginn observes, is dated by Shakspere throughout with a most exact attention to hours. 17. In the first quarto Benvolio dies. Montague, Act v. Scene 3, announces the death of his wife,the quarto adds the line, And young Benvolio is deceased too. 18. Shakespeare Commentaries, by Gervinus, translated by F. E. Bunnett. 1863. Vol. i. p. 293. 19. Kreyssig writes with reference to this tragedy:Nicht zufllig ist die ideale, leidenschaftliche Jugendliebe in Sage und Gedicht aller Vlker die Schwester des Leides. Sie hat ihren Lohn in sich selbst. Des Leben hat ihr Nichts weiter zu bieten.Shakespeare Fragen, p. 120. In the Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vol. ix. p. 328, will be found a notice of a study of Romeo and Juliet (Leipzig, 1874) by the celebrated author of the Philosophie des Unbewussten, E. von Hartmann. He pronounces that the love between Juliet and Romeo is not the deep, spiritual, German ideal of love, but a sensuous play of passionate fancy. (Did not this latest leader of German thought previously teach that love at its best and truest is an illusion imposed upon the individual by the Unconscious Somewhat which displays itself through nature and man, an illusion which serves the important purpose of securing the continuance of the species?) To such criticism the true answer was given long since by Franz Horn,Shakspeare knows nothing, and chooses to know nothing, of that false division of love into spiritual and sensual; or rather, he knows of it only when he purposely takes notice of it, that is, when he wishes to depict affectation striving after a misconceived platonism; or on the other hand, when he portrays a coarse, brutish, merely earthly passion (Translated in Furnesss Romeo and Juliet, p. 446.) Contrast Juliet with Cressida; or Goethes Mignon with his Philina. See Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vol. vii. p. 16; and Mrs Jamesons Characteristics of Woman, especially the passage in which she comments upon Juliets soliloquy, Gallop apace. 20. Among the critics of this play, one of the most intelligently appreciative is George Fletcher in his Studies of Shakespeare, 1847. Fletchers interpretation of Juliets soliloquy before she drinks the sleeping-potion differs from that given above; and I will not assert that Fletcher may not be right, pp. 349355. It may be worth while to add a note on the chief critical crux of the play, Runnawayes Eyes, Act iii.
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1895Bernhard ten Brink. Shakespeare as Dramatist, from Five Lectures on Shakespeare

Bernhard ten Brink (18411892) was a German philologist. He is the author of the History of English Literature (18951896) and The Language and Meter of Chaucer (1884).
Much as judgments may differ regarding Shakespeare, all critics may be said to agree in acknowledging him to be preeminent among dramatists, either of all times, or at least of modern ages as contrasted with classic antiquity. And to dispute this judgment would least of all befit Germans, whose own classic writers, and especially those distinguished for dramatic power, have evidently learned so much from Shakespeare; to whose stage, since it cannot subsist upon the novelties of the day alone, Shakespeare is more indispensable than any other poet. If we want to see clearly at a glance what Shakespeare signifies to us as a dramatist, let us imagine the repertory of our stage without Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, A Midsummer Nights Dream, The Winters Tale, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, and whatever other Shakespearean plays are presented to us; imagine us without Schiller, or at least with an entirely different, much tamer Schiller in his place; imagine that we had only half a Lessing, half a Grillparzer, no Kleist, and no Hebbel; then estimate what this would mean in the development of our drama, of the histrionic art, and, furthermore, in the realm of poetry, of aesthetics, nay, in our whole culture. No modern dramatist can even approach comparison with Shakespeare. Just figure to yourself the prodigious fertility of this poet, the multitude of his dramatic productions; and in this multitude we find no zeros, nor any mere numbers, pieces which the memory is in danger of confounding one with another, as may easily happen with the purely superficial Spanish writers, who were even more prolific than Shakespeare. For each one of his dramas has a distinct form and physiognomy which stamp themselves indelibly upon the mind; each one represents a small world within itselfand in each of these worlds what teeming abundance of life! what rich variety of characters! Nothing enables us to estimate so clearly the creative power of a dramatist as the effort to bring before our minds bodily, as it were, the characters who owe him their being. No poet can enable us to do this as readily as Shakespeare; no poet can summon up such a host of spirits, with forms so palpable, colouring so vivid. It holds good of all works produced from the depths of the human soul that we think the work does not give the full measure of the artist. The greatness of the work leads us to imagine the greatness of the artist, and we conceive him as rising above it. High as his achievement may have been, his design, or at least
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his aim, was still higher. Much of what the artist has seen and felt is lost on its arduous passage through the material at his commandbecomes, as it were, entangled in it. This is true of the poet, too, who for his representations has to make use of the most volatile, the most spiritual, of all substanceslanguage. This is true, too, of Shakespeare. We conceive the poet Shakespeare greater than what he has created. But he was fortunate beyond many others in that he could express so great a part of what he felt in a form so entirely conformable to his naturethe dramatic form. None of our great poets was so wholly possessed by the genius of the drama as Shakespeare. It is impossible to conceive of him as other than a dramatist. The loss would be irreparable were we to be deprived of the sonnets, those little masterpieces of art, like chiselled marble, so clear cut, so delicately wrought, breathing such glowing life. But even the sonnets recall the dramatic poet, not only because taken in connection they are related to a real and most moving drama, but because at many points the poem in its stormy course and its daring use of metaphors betrays real dramatic intensity. But the dramatist appears much more clearly in his epic attempts, in Venus and Adonis and in Lucrece, not to the advantage of the effect produced by these poems. The very thing that constitutes the greatest strength of the poet here appears as a weakness. The abundance, the clearness, the intensity, of his conceptions prove an injury to him here, because the means to which he is accustomed are not here at his disposal. The stage he knows intimately; he comes into daily and closest contact with his audience; he knows what will produce an effect upon the stage, and what kind of an effect; all its artifices are at his command. If he wishes to represent a character, a situation, he has the greatest variety of means at his disposal, besides the speech, the play of features, and the gestures of the actors, to whom he need but give hints. Here, furthermore, the meaning of everything is brought out by its accompanimentsthe cause by the effect it produces, the character of a man by the impression he makes upon others, the speech by its answer. Shakespeare has all the resources of theatrical illusion in his mind when writing his dramas, and he has complete command of them. In epic poetry he must renounce the methods so familiar to him. He knows this; he knows that it is his words alone which must produce the effect upon the senses; he thinks, therefore, that he must give more than mere allusions if he wants to make his readers see things as he sees themand he always sees them vividly, bodily, before him. He endeavours to express everything, and the consequence is that we have an overwhelming abundance of details which do not combine to give us a comprehensive view of the whole; it is poetry which, in spite of the wonderful beauty of its lavishly scattered details, as a whole leaves us unmoved. Nothing of epic delight in these poems; everywhere the most intense tension, keeping the reader in almost breathless suspense. Full of passionate sympathy
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for his subject, the poet endeavors to exploit all the elements of it, to illuminate them on every side; everywhere we wish the action to proceed, and we feel it retarded. And there is, besides, the true dramatic striving to attribute a symbolic significance to every part of the action, to spiritualize every material detail. We find this illustrated in the description of Tarquins passage in the night from his own chamber to that of the heroine: how he forces open the locks of the doors through which he must pass, and how at this every lock cries out indignantly; how the door creaks on its hinges to betray him; how the weasels prowling about at night frighten him with their screeching; how the wind, penetrating through the cracks and crannies, wages war with the torch he holds in his hand, blowing the smoke into his face, and extinguishing the light; but how he rekindles it with the breath hot from his burning heart. All this is conceived in a dramatic, by no means in an epic, sense. But here arises the question: How can it be accounted for that Shakespeare, so normal, healthy, and simple a nature, is gifted so exclusively for the drama, not at all for epic poetry, while it is precisely epic poetry that flourishes in ages characterized by a simple, healthy spirit? Let us pause a moment at this question. Real epic poetry proceeds from a joyous love of life, and its effect is to enhance that joy. A thorough optimism characterizes the true epic bard, and he presupposes his readers to be endowed with the same quality. He calculates mainly upon their impulse to admire great heroic figures, mighty deeds, strange destinies; even where deep sympathy is aroused in the fate of the hero it is grounded upon admiration: an Achilles who dies an early death, a Siegfried who is treacherously murdered. And how characteristic of the ancient Homerid that they do not represent at all the death of Achilles, but simply let us feel that it is an event certain before long to take place. To the epic poet almost all that he describes is beautiful and worthy; that which is ugly or contemptible is only introduced for the sake of contrast; and he knows how to idealize even what is ugly and contemptible. He invests the objects and concerns of everyday life with a golden glow which makes them appear attractive and important; every warrior becomes to him upon occasion a hero; the hero rises to a demigod, nay, at times dares to engage in combat with the gods themselves. The epic poet is instinct with exuberant life, and he enhances this feeling, and the feeling of joy in existence, in his hearers. Naturally he arouses a longing, too, for a beautiful, vanished age; but it is longing of a kind which childhood, living in a fairy world, experiencesa kind that finds its gratification in the poem itself. This is true of even so tragic an epic as Miltons Paradise Lost; here, of course, the representation turns upon the irrevocable loss, but very essentially, too, upon a vivid presentment of what was lost, upon a description of paradise. How totally different the drama! The dramatist, also, leads us into an ideal world, but never to show it to us in its unclouded purity, always picturing it in a
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state of conflict and confusion. The drama, too, places heroes before us, but what renders these heroes dramatically effective is not the qualities which make them heroes, but those which make them men. The dramatic hero is, above all else, a manthat is to say, a combatant. Conflict is the essential thing in the dramaconflict in all its detail, in its origin and its development; it does not depend for its effect upon the strength and the courage of the victor; on the contrary, those dramatic struggles are the most impressive where the hero is finally vanquished. In the drama we do not want to have our admiration aroused, but to be stirred by a living sympathy; even if it moves us to tears of intensest pity, if it convulses the very depths of our being, we want to share, within ourselves, in the heros struggle, whether it have a happy or an unhappy issue, whether it be followed by the heros ruin, or only by his punishment or mortification. But to this end we must become most intimately acquainted with the cause and the circumstances of the conflict, as well as with the character of the hero. We must see the inevitableness of the struggle, how it is evolved through the action and reaction between the character, desires, aims, of the hero, on the one hand, and his environment on the other. We must feel convinced that the hero in a given situation could, to be true to his nature, have acted only as he did, and not otherwise. Only then shall we see ourselves pictured in him, only then put ourselves in his place, identify ourselves with him, suffer with his sorrow and rejoice in his joy; only then, too, will the laughter which he compels be the outburst of a full heart, affording us genuine spiritual relief. The drama, then, as opposed to the epic, is at once more spiritual and more effective. It allows us to penetrate more deeply into the inner being of the characters; cause and effect are closely linked together; we are more powerfully moved by it to laughter or to tears. These highest effects of the drama are only attainable, however, if we actually witness the action; and, on the other hand, if a dramatic performance were presented before us without producing any such effects, it would soon grow wearisome and annoying. The more ambitious, the more powerful, the artistic means employed to impress the sense, the more powerful should the effect prove. Only an action that really stirs us, and keeps us in vivid suspense, should be dramatically represented. To create this effect there must be a consonance between the matter and the form and between both and the theatrical presentation. As the epic is the poetry of the youth of mankind, so is the drama the poetry of its manhood. It flourishes in epochs which no longer cherish much faith in the golden age, among men who see life as it is, as a struggle, and who, at the same time, seek strength and refreshment for this struggle in the contemplation of ideal conflicts which bring before them an image of their own inmost life. To return to Shakespeare. His early youth passed like an idyl replete with epic joyousness, but without rousing within him the desire to enhance that joyousness artistically. To this simple man the calm life in communion with the nature
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which surrounded him was sufficient; no models pointed the way toward epic creation; no vision of literary renown passed in alluring colors before his soul. Perfect content needs no artistic utterance; great inner wealth is self-sufficient. Scarce had he entered upon manhood when the idyl drew to its close; his heart was stirred by mighty passions, a tremendous conflict rent his soul, the battle of life had begun for him, and uninterruptedly through the best years of his life, nay, beyond that period, he had to fight this battle in many forms, and was thus ever reminded of the limitations of human nature. So it fell out that Shakespeare came to London, became acquainted with the stage, where Marlowes art, then enjoying its first triumphs, took our poets fancy captive. Need we wonder that Shakespeare became a dramatist, that he developed with a certain exclusiveness into a dramatic artist, since his outward as well as his inward life, since the whole time to which he belonged, impelled him to it? But it is time that we should observe more accurately how Shakespeare conceived and carried out his art. It is the task of every art, in every individual instance, to so fashion an object out of a given substance that it will represent an idea or arouse a certain state of feeling. The material, be it stone or bronze, colour or tone or word, determines the manner of representation in one art as distinguished from another. The drama, like all poesy, has language as its material to work in, but it commands, besides this, the histrionic art. The entire personality of the actors, the whole stage apparatus, form a part of the dramatic artists material; he is thus not the sole, but only the foremost, the leading artist. Language is the stuff in which he works, but he must picture to himself as he labours the effect which the theatrical presentation of his work is to produce. The subject of the dramatic poets work consists in the story or plot. It may be handed down by history, or be based upon some event of the day; it may belong to myth or legend, or be the result of pure invention. In the last case the poet may himself have invented the plot, but this rarely happens; as a rule, the story is handed down to the poet, and it is indeed the greatest poets who trouble themselves least with the invention of a new plot. The reason of this may be easily comprehended. The story is the substance which the dramatist shapes in accordance with his own ideas. Shall he, then, first create this substance, and afterward elaborate it to suit his higher purposes? If so, it were much simpler for him to be governed by these purposes in inventing his plot; that is, to take an idea which he wishes to convey as a starting point, and seek a concrete embodiment of that idea. Many dramas are formed on this principle,the modern French stage might offer us numerous examples,and such dramas may be very effective. Yet, as a rule, there is something artificial about them; they are apt to create an impression, fatal to the success of any poetic production, of something forced. It appears too evident that the whole thing is
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conceived merely to illustrate an idea, that the action takes place only to prove some abstract propositionand the consequence is that it is our intelligence alone that is concerned, our hearts remain cold; we may be pleasantly animated, perhaps excited, but we are not thrilled by it. The normal course is that some occurrencein life, in history, in conversationor the substance of some tale, has so powerfully wrought upon the poet that it has stirred the creative vein within him. And so it was in the case of Shakespeare. Rarely, perhaps never, did he invent his plot for himself, different as the extent and the significance of what he owes to his sources may be. He shows himself most independent, perhaps, in Loves Labours Lost, where, although we can prove certain motives and situations to be reminiscences of older works, we can nowhere find a model for the groundwork of the action as a whole. Yet who knows but that life itself offered what literature has so far not disclosed to us? As a rule, we are able to authenticate his sources, be they histories, novels, or dramas; and a comparative study teaches us with what freedom, with what entire absence of timidity, he drew from those sources. Shakespeare has been called the great adapter, and with justice; but he who thinks that by this designation he can rob him of even the smallest leaf of his laurel crown knows not what poetic originality signifies in the history of literature. Je prends mon bien o je le trouve, said Molire, and this is the maxim that all great conquerors in the realm of the mind have followed. The essential question is not how much one has appropriated, but what he makes of the thing he appropriates. And who, indeed, could urge grounds of complaint against Shakespeares proceeding? The authors whom he has made use of? But did they not themselves likewise, nay, still more comprehensively, make use of their predecessors? And thendo not most of them owe their immortality solely to Shakespeare? Who would now read their writings were it not on account of Shakespeare? The dramatist, then, must shape the story handed down to him into dramatic action. In this he is governed by the ideas which possess his soul, often without his full consciousness, as a vague impulse, a compelling force. How does Shakespeare proceed to mold the story into dramatic action? Regarded on the surface, we observe the greatest variety in his methods, and in vain should one labour to extract from a study of his dramas any sort of prescription for the benefit of incipient dramatists. Now we see Shakespeare following his sources as closely as possible, deviating only in details, apparently in matters of no significance, and again we find him transforming the story in its most essential points; now endeavouring to simplify the story, and again complicating it by combining it with other tales and other motives. Already in one of his first dramasA Comedy of Errorsthe poet makes use of no less than four different sources in order to produce a most highly involved and yet readily comprehended action; in his next comedy the action is as simple as possible, one might almost say
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inadequate.What is it, then, that is common to methods differing so widely from each other, that is characteristic of them all? One might say: Shakespeare always condenses the dramatic action, draws it together more closely, in order to bring out forcibly the chief elements of the play, and glides lightly over the mere connecting links. True as this may be, yet in view of the fact that he frequently amplifies the main plot, interweaves it with others, or introduces some episode into the action, the truth of the remark would hardly be evident. One might, on the other hand, say: Shakespeare is always intent upon joining the members of the action in closer union by strengthening the motive, laying greater stress upon the relation between cause and effect, impressing upon the whole development of the piece the stamp of necessity. This might also be very true; yet here, too, individual instances can be cited in apparent contradiction to that proposition. We find that Shakespeares plots, particularly toward the close of his dramas, are occasionally somewhat loosely constructed. Or how else should we term it when, in As You Like It, the usurper Frederick, who has driven his brother, the good duke, from the throne, toward the end of the drama, as we are told (for we see none of it), surrounds the wood where the latter abides with his army, intending to seize and kill him; there he meets with an old monk or hermit, who after some talk converts him, so that he not only abandons his purpose, but retires from the world and restores to his brother the crown of which he had robbed him. Here Shakespeare has, indeed, been easy-going in the matter of motive. Did we wish to characterize Shakespeares method in a manner that should fitly apply to all cases, we should have to make prominent, above all, the unfailingness with which he seizes the gist of his plot, and develops the whole from that point; the mastery with which he so organizes it that, starting with very simple premises, all seems to follow with the inevitableness of natures laws; that we are prepared in advance for every incident, and that it, in its turn, prepares us for what is to follow, all the wheels working into each other; every feature, even the most insignificant, contributes to the development of the whole. All this, however, is only to say that Shakespeare is unapproached in the dramatic conception of a given material, in the genius with which he molds the story in accordance with his ideas. Everything, therefore, depends upon the idea which fills the poets mind or which is aroused by the story. What, then, are we to understand by this idea in Shakespeare? German sthetics laboured many years to prove that there is in every Shakespearean drama a so-called fundamental idea concealed behind the action. Particularly in those plays where the action is a complicated one, not easily to be grasped as a unity, did they seek with all the more ardor for a unity of idea. By this they understood, as a rule, some general proposition, or, at any rate, an abstract formula: for instance, the relation of man to possession; or the necessity of guarding against extremes in passionfor instance, in love; or the inquiry as to the just balance between reflection and action. Wearied by
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the multitude of artificial deductions by means of which they arrived at such often very trivial results, they have, indeed, more recently gone over to the other extreme, throwing out the child along with the bath. Many deny the necessity of a unity of idea for the drama, and the existence of such an idea has, in Twelfth Night, for example, been even lately disputed. It all depends upon what is understood by the dramatic idea. In reality, this means nothing but the point of view from which the poet regards the plot. This point of view must be unitary, yet we often feel the resulting unity of action without distinctly recognizing it. We are not always able to trace it back to a general proposition. Yet it were perhaps better to abandon the field of abstractions, and make our meaning clearer by taking a concrete example. For this purpose let us select a drama which is familiar to you allone, besides, where, regarded purely on the surface, the dramatist owes apparently almost everything to the source from which he drew: Romeo and Juliet. Gustav Freytag has, in his Technology of the Drama, compared in a very attractive manner the action in this tragedy with the story upon which it is founded; yet his presentation contains some errors, which are to be mainly attributed to his lack of acquaintance, or at least to his insufficient acquaintance, with the actual source of the drama. The distinction between the mere action of the play and the story which the poet made use of is not nearly as great as Freytag points out; the difference, however, between the tragedy and the tale upon which it is based is none the less great; but this difference does not lie alone, nor even chiefly, in the construction of the plot, but in the treatment of the characters, in the dramatic structure in the aptness of the language for the stagein short, in the execution in its most comprehensive sense. The play will, on that account, serve best to teach us how all these elements are related to each other. The sources of the Romeo and Juliet legend are, as is well known, Italian. Shakespeare, however, became acquainted with it through two English adaptations, both of which can be traced back through a French medium to the Italian original: the prose presentation by William Paynter, which appeared in the year 1567, and especially the versified tale of Arthur Brooke, which was printed as early as 1562. Paynters prose is essentially a close reproduction of his French model, whereas we find a considerable development in Brookes poetical version, the details variously modified and enriched. Notwithstanding its somewhat Old Frankish tone, this poem evinces genuine feeling and pronounced talent; that Shakespeare made it the groundwork of his drama is its highest acknowledgment. Shakespeare found his material in Brookes poem, by no means in a raw state, but in a very advanced stagenot only the chief characters, but nearly all the minor ones, all the more important and a great number of subordinate motives, the plan of entire scenes, the ideas of numerous passages. What remained, then,
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for the poet to do, and what was his share of the work? Well, Shakespeare has created an irresistibly fascinating, thrilling tragedy out of an interesting, touching romance, a work of art of imperishable worth out of a poem of ephemeral value. This, I think, were enough. But how has he done it? He who would give a categorical, objective account of the contents of Shakespeares tragedy, on the one hand, and of Brookes versified romance, on the other, would present two tales which deviate very little from each other, nay, which superficial readers would regard as exactly identical. But what a difference in their way of looking at the story, in the idea which each conceives of his subject! Both Shakespeare and Brooke have taken the trouble to intimate briefly in a sonnet the substance of their poems. It is instructive to compare the two sonnets with each other. This is how Brooke conceives his subject: Love has enkindled two hearts at first sight, and they accomplish their desires. They are secretly united by a monk, and enjoy for a time the highest bliss. Inflamed to fury by Tybalts wrath, Romeo kills him and is obliged to flee into banishment. Juliet is to be forced into another marriage; to escape this she takes a draught which has the effect of making her appear as if dead; while in this sleep she is buried alive. Her husband receives information of her death, and takes poison. And she, when she awakes, kills herself with Romeos dagger. This is all; not a word about the feud between the two houses of Verona, the Montagues and Capulets; although the poem makes mention of all these things, they are evidently of no real interest to the poet; he perceives no deeper connection between the family feud and the fate of his main characters. It is a touching love story to him, and nothing more. And Shakespeare? I will not translate here the familiar sonnet which precedes the tragedy. But this is his idea of the story: Two young beings endowed by Nature with her most charming gifts, created as if for each other, glow with the purest, most ardent love. But fate has placed them in a rude, hostile world; their passion blossoms and grows in the midst of the most inflamed party and family hatred. A peaceful development, one that would lead to a happy consummation, is here impossible. Completely possessed by their love, they forget the hate which divides their families, enjoy for a few brief moments a happiness which transports them to the summit of human experience. Then they are torn asunder by the hostile powers. A last flickering of hope, a daring attempt to lead the Fates in accordance with their desires, and immediately thereafter the fatal error which plunges them in the cold embrace of death. But in death they are lastingly united, their burning longing is now stilled forever; and as they themselves have found peace, so does their blood quench the flames of the hatred which has disunited their families. Over their lifeless bodies the fathers join their hands in a brotherly grasp, and their monument becomes a symbol of the love that conquered hate.
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This is the way that Shakespeare regarded his subject; this, the idea he sought to impress upon his material; from this conception sprang all the deviations from his model, sprang the entire structure of the tragedy. Shakespeares object is to arouse the deepest sympathy, the most heartfelt pity, for his lovers, to thrill us with their tragic destiny, but at the same time to lift us to a point whence we can feel a reconciling element even in this cruel fate. All that can serve this double purpose is brought into play, all opposing elements are discarded. Let us consider a few details. In Brookes narrative the action extends over a greater period of time, over several months; Shakespeare has concentrated it into a few days. Why this change? It was not the arrangements or the usages of his stage which determined him to it. In these respects, on the contrary, Shakespeare exercised the utmost freedom. He was guided solely by his sure dramatic instinct. For how was that long space of time in the narrative filled up? Three months does Brooke allow the secretly united pair to enjoy their happiness in peace. Then only does the event occur which parts them. Who does not feel that the delicate bloom which clings to Shakespeares characters would be at once dispelled by the admixture of this feature? Who does not feel that the infinite pathos of their fate, as well, would sink to an everyday level? Besides, if they could be secretly happy for three months, why does not their happiness last longer? It is mere chance which brings it to an end. How different with Shakespeare! These two glorious creatures are made for each other; but the world, the Fates, do not will them to be united. And not for a moment does the poet leave us in uncertainty about their tragic destiny. They may enjoy their love but a few short hours, and that only when their fate is already sealed, when Tybalt is dead and Romeo banished. Not for a moment the feeling of undisturbed possession, and upon this brief joy follows at once the eternal parting. This is poetry, this is tragedy. You see how infinitely much depends upon this one little deviation in regard to time. And still more depends on it. This concentration of the action is in most perfect keeping with the condensed structure of this dramatic gem. This quicker tempo at the same time attunes us to the heated atmosphere which breathes in this tragedy, to the sudden kindling, the rapid development, of glowing love, the rude outburst of wild hatred. The striking truth to nature of the tone and colouring of Romeo and Juliet has long been commented upon. One is everywhere reminded that the action takes place under an Italian sky. Neither does the poet neglect to bring clearly before us the season in which the tragedy develops, although some critics have been mistaken about it. It was in the hot summer days: I pray thee, good Mercutio, lets retire; The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,
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And if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl; For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring. The dawn follows close upon the twilight. In the scenes between the two lovers we seem to breathe the air of the brief Italian night. Over this scene Shakespeare has spread all the witchery of his art, infused it with all the ardor of his young and loving heart. Only three times does the poet represent Romeo and Juliet together, living, and in a fully developed scene: first, the decisive meeting at the ball; then the balcony scene immediately following it; finally, the farewell of the young pair after their first and last night of love. Nothing more touching or beautiful has ever been written. The climax, however, is perhaps reached in the balcony scene. The fact alone that here lay the most dangerous rock in the path makes it pre-eminent, for there is nothing more difficult and dangerous for the dramatist than the attempt to rival the musician and the lyric poet, to which such extremely simple situations invite him. Other great poets,and Shakespeare as well, on certain occasions,have recourse to this or that artifice: they allow the dialogue to be interrupted once or even oftener,I may remind you of the celebrated garden scene in Goethes Faust,they intimate more than they represent, allow the largest and best part to be divined, while some attractive, childish byplay lends animation to the scene. The lovers do not entertain each other with speaking of their emotions; they relate incidents of their past, talk of their everyday life. There is nothing of all this in Romeo and Juliet. With a genuine scorn of death Shakespeare launches the ship of his fancy, with all sails set, upon the high sea of emotion, regardless of the perils which threaten its course, but which cannot harm it. At such points we ought to compare Brookes poem with the drama. In the poem Juliet sees Romeo first, then he her; both are elated with joy, yet she the most; then she thinks of the danger hovering over him, and begins to speak amid her tears. In Shakespeare Romeo beholds Juliet appear at the window, and listens, unseen by her, to her monologue. When he has thus learned her tender secret, he discovers himself to her. Admirable, too, is the art with which Shakespeare shows how the character of his lovers is developed in and through their love. Admirable, yet not astonishing! For the conception of his characters is with him indissolubly united with his conception of the dramatic action. Therein lies his greatness: that just as he regards all things in their connection, so does he create them in their connection. The psychological depth and truth of his characters, the fullness of life they breathe, the consistency of their development, the necessity with which their actions follow from their nature and position, are universally marvelled at; but the greatest wonder, after all, is how these characters in their gradations, in the way they complement, and, by their contrast, stand out in bold relief against each other, are so totally controlled by the idea of the action.
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Let us observe Romeo and Julietwhat they were before their love, and what love makes of them. The greatest transformation takes place in Romeo. A youth with noble sentiments, fine culture, keen powers of observation, and ready wit, he seems at the beginning of the play to be pining away from a superabundance of emotion and fancy. The world that surrounds him is too rough and too sober for him. He isolates himself from it entirely, beholds it only as through a veil, and adapts himself more and more to his inner worlda world of dreams, of imaginary joys and sorrows. The poet has retained from Brookes poem Romeos sentimental, unrequited love for Rosaline, without presenting Rosaline herself. Her personality is of no concern to usit might be she or another. Her image is only meant to fill a void in Romeos inner world; she is merely the object toward which Romeos deep longing first turns until the proper object appears. From the moment when he beholds Juliet a transformation takes place within him. He is still the youthful dreamer, the poet, that he was, but he begins to act. The consciousness that his love is returned restores him to himself and to the world. His changed being at once strikes his friend: Why, is not this better than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art by art as well as by nature. When he is hurled from the heaven of bliss into the wretchedness of banishment, he loses all self-control, breaks out into unmeasured lamentations, into impotent rage against fate. Hope once more revives him. Then, when he finally learns that all is at an end, his decision is at once taken; all gone is his youthful loquacity; happiness and misfortune have completed his education: he has become a man. In Shakespeare, Juliet is a girl of fourteen, two years younger than in his model. She is for that reason so much more touching a figure: a child who through a great, pure love becomes a woman. She, too, stands isolated in the world, yet not, like Romeo, because she is by nature a dreamer. She is at first quite unconscious of her position; it is only her experiences after she has met Romeo that reveal to her how foreign to her her parents and surroundings really are. Her nature is simpler, but stronger, her love much more unselfish, than Romeos. Completely possessed by one idea, she at once comes to a decision, is intent upon practical action. The strength of her love overcomes maidenly shyness, womanly timidity, and allows her to look death in the face. The unfolding of her character in the course of the soliloquy before she takes the sleeping potion is significant. In that nightly hour, on the threshold of the decisive moment, horrid visions rise up before her. Finally she fancies she beholds the awful form of the murdered Tybalt. We find this feature also in Brookes poem. But there Juliet finally hastily drinks down the contents of the vial, lest fear, after longer reflection, should deter her. Shakespeares Juliet beholds her Romeo threatened by Tybalt, and swiftly seizes the only means of sharing his danger:
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Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. Regarding the characters which group themselves partly about the hero and partly about the heroine, I shall speak but briefly. Excellently drawn is the figure of the old, hasty, passionate Capulet. His wife, very much younger than himself, appeals very feebly to our sympathies; her relations to her husband are in the main of a superficial nature, and even to her child she is bound only by the ties of blood, not by any soulful or spiritual union. And then the nurse, a type of the vulgar, garrulous female, her individuality brought out with masterly realism, and, in spite of Goethes well-known dictum, an indispensable figure to the drama, serving as a foil to the character of Juliet, as well as to make us comprehend her total isolation in her parents house. Romeos parents, as befits the story, remain more in the background. On the other hand, we become acquainted with his friends: the calm, moderate Benvolio; the light-hearted, good-natured, impudent, witty Mercutio. This last figure is altogether Shakespeares creation; in Brookes poem he is introduced only once, and then merely by allusion. Mercutio,an image of the exuberance of virile youth in the plenitude of its strength; a humorist who enjoys life and is, at the same time, a shrewd observer,throws a bright radiance over the first half of the drama. His figure is of the greatest significance, not only in so much as it elucidates Romeos character, but also on account of the manner in which Shakespeare involves him in the drama of the family feud. To this side of his subject, to the tragedy of hate, Shakespeare has devoted scarcely less care than to the tragedy of love, which, indeed, only becomes a tragedy through the other. Shakespeare does not content himself with presenting to our minds the tragic end of his lovers as a motive, strong as this motive, furnished by the story, was. He is intent from the first upon working upon our feelings, prepares us at the outset for the tragic result, knows how to produce in us by a thousand artifices the impression that this thing cannot now or ever reach a happy consummation. Everything must serve this purpose: the character of his lovers, Juliets youth, her complete isolation, her ignorance of the world, the fatal rapidity with which her love is developed, the dark presentiments which, at the decisive moment, arise in her soul. But this end is served above all by the family feud, so vividly presented to our view; and here we see the art with which Shakespeare constructs his drama, brings his various motives before us. Already in the first scene we are initiated into these relations. From insignificant, nay, ridiculous beginnings a serious, violent quarrel is evolved. Only the interposition of the prince, who asserts his authority in the most energetic manner, is sufficient to ward off extremes. And already in the first scene Shakespeare introduces Tybalt, Juliets cousin, the wild, turbulent youth, who embodies most intensely the family hatred. In the ball scene Tybalt is again present, outraged at Romeos
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audacity, restrained only with difficulty by his old uncle, and giving vent to the wrath which he is now prevented from satisfying in vows of vengeance: But this intrusion shall Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall. Shakespeares source introduces Tybalt for the first time in the decisive scene, and in a manner totally different, though reminding one, indeed, of the scene in the first act. A street fight has arisen, Tybalt is among the crowd; Romeo appears upon the scene, tries, like Benvolio in Shakespeares first act, to separate the combatants. Then Tybalt suddenly attacks Romeo himself, forces him to defend himself, and in thus defending his life to kill him. In Shakespeare the development is an entirely different one, much more significant and tragic. Tybalt seeks out Romeo, challenges him to combat. Romeo refuses to fight with Juliets cousin. All that is near to her is dear to him. Astounded and enraged at the gentle words with which his friend addresses the brawling fellow, Mercutio then asks Tybalt to walk away with him. Romeo again comes forward when the fight is at its hottest, throws himself between the two combatants, and thus becomes the innocent cause of Mercutios death. The end of the sturdy humorist is worthy of his life: Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o both your houses! Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm. I thought all for the best, replies Romeo. With Mercutio the cheerful glow of the zest of life vanishes from the drama; the approaching night heralds its advent. The result has turned Romeos good intentions into a calamity. His friend is killed for his sake, through his fault. It is his to avenge his deathnot by accident, in the stress of self-defense, as Brooke has it, but consciously, from a feeling of duty, must he draw his sword against Juliets cousin, and strike him down. He gives expression to his feelings after the deed is accomplished as he exclaims: Oh, I am fortunes fool! With his own hand, because he could do no otherwise, Romeo gives his dream of love its death blow. Again, as in the first scene of the play, the prince appears, then restraining and threatening, now punishing. The innocent ones, the lovers, fall a sacrifice to justice; Romeo is banished. When the prince appears the third time, the tragedy is closed. The sacrifices which love demanded have appeased the old hatred also; the prince stands there a woeful, sympathetic looker-on, a witness of the peace concluded over the open grave.
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1896Frederick S. Boas. Shakespere Italianate: Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice , from Shakespeare and His Predecessors
Frederick S. Boas (18621957) was an English scholar of early modern drama and a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Universities: And Other Studies in Elizabethan Drama (1923) and From Richardson Pinero: Some Innovators and Idealists (1936), as well as the editor of numerous works, including The Tempest (1897) and The Works of Thomas Kyd (1901).
The first group of comedies, amidst their varieties of source and theme, have one feature in common. Whether the plot be laid in Navarre, Ephesus, Athens, Padua or Verona, the atmosphere is unmistakably English. It is true, of course, that in The Errors and in The Taming of the Shrew, typical characters from Latin or Italian comedy are introduced, but they are set amidst surroundings which suggest London or Stratford. In The Two Gentlemen Shakspere even makes the elementary geographical blunder of representing Valentine as journeying from Verona to Milan by sea. It is therefore startling, when we turn to Romeo and Juliet (drawn, like The Two Gentlemen, from the annals of Verona), to find it steeped in distinctively Italian colour, and yet more amazing to see in The Merchant of Venice intimate knowledge of the city of the lagoons and its neighbourhood. The most satisfactory way of accounting for the contrast is, as has already been stated, to conclude that Shakspere had in the interval visited the North of Italy.1 Never again did he so magically reproduce the atmosphere of the South as in these dramas, the fruit, it would thus appear, of his Wanderjahre, as the early histories and comedies were of his Lehrjahre. So, in later years, Macbeth, there is good reason to hold, was written after a recent visit to Scotland. In an age of universal travel, why should Shakspere, of all men, be confined within the narrow seas, and be supposed to have never crossed the Alps or swum in a gondola? The date of Romeo and Juliet cannot be exactly determined. It was first published in quarto in 1597, with the inscription as it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely by the right Honourable the Lord of Hunsdon his Servants. The word often opens up an indefinite vista backwards, and makes it certain that the play had been written and acted in some form for an appreciable period before it was printed. How long was that period? Some inquirers base their answer upon the Nurses words, Tis since the earthquake now eleven years, which in all probability refer to the earthquake of 1580. If the garrulous old ladys chronology is to be trusted, this would give 1591 as the date of the play, and it contains without doubt passages written in rhyme and full of conceits, rhetoric, and verbal quips in the dramatists earliest manner. But, on the other hand,
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Shakspere is not likely to have visited Italy at so early a date, and moreover there are features in this first edition of the tragedy, such as the elaborated portraiture of the chief characters and the beauty of much of the blank verse, that point to a period of comparative maturity. The presumption, therefore, is that Shakspere was occupied with his theme during a number of years, and that it took definite literary shape about 15956, not long after a continental journey.2 The story over which the young dramatist thus lingered so lovingly was one which had for already more than a century touched the hearts of men.3 It had been first told, with Mariotto and Gianozza of Siena as hero and heroine, and with some harshness and extravagance of detail, by the novelist Masuccio of Salerno in 1476. Some sixty years later Luigi da Porto retold the tale in altered and heightened form, introducing for the first time the names of Romeo and Giulietta, and making them children of the rival Veronese houses, Capelletti and Montecchi. In its essential features his romance resembles Shaksperes play, but it differs in one important detail. Romeo, at Juliets tomb, drinks the poison, but before he is cold in death, his bride awakes, and they have a last passionate dialogue, while folded in each others arms. In 1554 another novelist, Bandello, included the story in his collection of Novelle, and added to it fresh features. He brings into prominence the Rosaline episode, he uses the name Paris for Romeos rival, and above all he is the first to mention the Nurse as the lovers gobetween. A French translation of Bandellos romance was issued in 1559 by Pierre Boisteau, who originated the close of the tale afterwards followed by Shakspere, wherein Romeo dies before Juliet awakes from her trance, only to end her life, not through the violence of her grief, as in the earlier versions, but through the self-inflicted stroke of her husbands dagger. Boisteaus tale was soon made familiar to English readers by Arthur Brookes metrical paraphrase Romeus and Juliet, 1562, and William Painters prose translation, in his collection of novels, The Palace of Pleasure, 1567. Brooke declares that he had seen the same argument lately set forth on the stage, and there would thus appear to have been some early dramatic version of the theme which has not come down to us, though it may have been known to Shakspere, and used by him. In any case, Brookes own poem must have furnished the basis for Shaksperes crowning treatment of the story. It was Brooke who first gave prominence to the character of the Nurse, and put into her mouth speeches which the dramatist followed in parts with curious fidelity. It was Brooke also who invented the scene of Romeos despair in the Friars cell after the murder of Tybalt, and it was he who called Friar Lawrences messenger John instead of Anselm. Nor was Romeus and Juliet an unworthy model. It was a well-proportioned narrative, in long flowing couplets, consisting of an Alexandrine followed by a Septenar. This metre, which Surrey had made fashionable, was skilfully handled by Brooke, and in spite of overdone antithesis, and of occasional luxuriance of sensuous description, balanced by a vein of sententious moralizing, the poem was warmed with true pathos, and showed an
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eye for dramatic types and situations. But dominating every other personality is that of Fortune, who sports with her victims as she pleases, lifting them to a height only afterwards to cast them down in her rage. The same conception of Fortune was inspiring at almost the same date The Mirror for Magistrates, and it should certainly be home in mind in the consideration of the play. The story, which had run through so many channels before it reached Shakspere, throbbed in every vein with the life of Italy. There alone amorous passion shot up with lightning swiftness into fever heat; there alone the family vendetta drenched the streets with blood; there alone the stiletto and the poison-phial were weapons of daily use. In Shaksperes version this atmosphere is faithfully perpetuated. The season is midsummer, and the fiery sun beats down from a cloudless heaven upon street and square, setting the mad blood astir in the brawlers veins, and making pedestrianism on romantic errands a weariness of the flesh to ladies of ripe years, in spite of attendant fan-bearers. The nights are only softer days, not made for sleep, but for masque and dance, or for lingering in moonlit gardens, where the fruit-tree tops are tipped with silver, and the nightingale pants forth her song from the deep pomegranate bower. The one hour of coolness is the dawn, when flowers and herbs are still dank with heavy dew, and hermit or lover, who fears the garish eyes of noon, may steal forth into the fields or the sycamore-grove. Under such skies life is lived with an intensity which may compress the passion of years into a few hours. And thus Shakspere, with a masterly innovation upon Brooke and the novelists, shortened the action of the story to little more than four days, from Sunday morning but new struck nine to the dim dawn of Thursday. During that brief tract of time events stride on in such precipitate sequence that we are fain to follow them breathlessly, and it is only when all is over that we pause to ask the meaning of the play as a whole. As soon as we do so, we realize that Romeo and Juliet leaves upon different minds the most opposite impressions. By the majority of readers it is regarded as a unique offering laid by the poet on the shrine of Cupid, at once the most musical of paeans over the triumphant glory of love, and the most musical of elegies over its brittleness and briefness in a cold and cruel world. To others the play is a record, pitiful yet inexorable, of the disasters wrought by ill-regulated passion, whether of love or hate, and one more warning that the meden agan is the true guiding principle of life. Let us endeavour, by an examination of the drama, to trace these conflicting impressions to their source. It has been seen that in several of Shaksperes plays there is an enveloping political plot. The peculiarity of Romeo and Juliet is that the political plot does not merely form the background to the main action, but is one of its integral elements. The rivalry of the Montagues and the Capulets gives a tragic bias to what would otherwise be a story of youthful love, and it is therefore rightly made the subject of the opening scene. The biting of thumbs by the serving-men, pugnacious within the safe limits of the law, prepares the way for the entrance
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of Tybalt, the champion of the Capulet claims, the professional duellist with the lore of the fencing school at his finger-tips, who fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion: rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom. To such a swashbuckler even the mild Benvolios presence is a call to arms, and the result is speedily a general fray swollen by partisans of either house, and by citizens who hate both equally, till the entrance of the Prince stops the tumult on pain of death. Thus the rival families are marshalled face to face at the very outset of the action, and the chief of the state, though he is seen for only the briefest interval, launches the edict which is to have fateful consequences hereafter. From the ranks of the Montague swordsmen there has been one remarkable absentee. The aged head of the house has flourished his blade in defence of the family honour, but Romeo, the son and heir, is nowhere to be seen. His mothers anxious inquiry elicits the news that he has been espied before dawn, stealing alone towards a grove of sycamore, and we further learn that such is his wont, and that at the first streak of light he creeps home to his chamber where he pens himself in artificial night. We are thus warned, before Romeo appears in person, that he is apart from his kinsmen in nature and sympathies. There is a sentimental strain in his character, and at the outset he and Proteus, though they develop so differently, have a certain likeness. His entrance gives the key to his strange humour. He is in love with the lady Rosaline, but his suit is in vain. Hence his passion for solitude, his sighs, and his tears. But neither the love nor the misery, we are persuaded, can be very deep that finds its vent in unmeaning fantastic antithesis, the reductio ad absurdum of the numbers that Petrarch flowed in. A heart that is really breaking does not explode in verbal fireworks about anything of nothing first created. This calf-love of Romeo is adopted by Shakspere from Brooke, and it is probably a mistake to invest it with too great significance. That there enters into Romeos character a vein of weakness, of volatile emotion, cannot be denied, but it is important to notice that whenever Shakspere gives it prominence he is following closely in the wake of Brooke, and that in the scenes due to his own invention the more sterling and genuinely impassioned side of his heros nature is developed. The retention of the Rosaline episode is very possibly due to the fact that it prepares the way for one of those instances of the irony of fortune which stud the drama. Benvolio bids Romeo attend the feast of the Capulets that he may forget his mistress in the light of other eyes, and Romeo, though he assents, does so with protestations of unswerving fidelity to Rosaline. But even while he is on the way to the palace of the rival house, he is haunted by presentiments that his fate is not in his own hands My mind misgives Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
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Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this nights revels. And so it proves: Romeo has but to change eyes with Juliet, and his love in idleness for Rosaline is annihilated, only to give place to a far more absorbing passion. Benvolios well-meant panacea becomes the root of a direr malady than it was devised to cure. Of Juliet and her surroundings we have had glimpses before this fateful meeting, sufficient to show that she too is apart in temper from her kindred, and that love is something as yet outside her experience or even her vision. She has reached the age where under southern skies girlhood is trembling into womanhood, and those around her are eager to hasten the process. Her father indeed, for the present, looks upon her as a child, a stranger in the world; but her budding beauty has attracted the gaze of the handsome and well-born County Paris, who is anxious to make her his bride. He finds ready allies in Juliets two female companions, her mother and her nurse. Lady Capulet is the very type of the starched and conventional woman of quality, who having gone through the duties of matrimony and maternity at the regulation age for ladies of esteem, propounds to her daughter in brief that a similar opportunity is now offered to her. But the thin phrases that trickle from her lips are drowned in the torrent of the Nurses loquacity. The admirable sketch of this personage given by Brooke is developed by Shakspere with the richest humour. Plebeian to the core she has yet caught by long association with people of rank a surface air of importance, and she is given a place in the family council. She is not without genuine affection for her youthful charge, but this is subordinate to a singular interest in Juliets enjoyment of pleasures that are now beyond her own reach. Her tongue rambles here and there, backwards and forwards, but always dropping concrete phrases of the most suggestive kind. But to the promptings alike of convention and of sensuality Juliet turns a deaf ear. Marriage, even with a man of wax is an honour that she dreams not of; the utmost that she will offer is the non-committing promise: Ill look to like, if looking liking move. Thus if Romeos false sense of security before the critical moment of his fate is due to his heart being already occupied, Juliets springs from exactly the contrary reason, that hers is absolutely vacant. They meet, and from that moment they live only in and for each other. It is useless to criticize the plausibility of this instantaneous passion; the reality of love at first sight is an axiom in the Shaksperean drama. That Romeo should at once salute his new mistress with a kiss is in accord with the fashion of the time, as is also the lyrical form and imagery of their opening dialogue, which falls almost into sonnet shape. But the graceful phrases of compliment die down under the horror of the mutual discovery that Romeo is a Montague and Juliet a Capulet. And instead there rise the passionate protests against the cruel irony of fate:
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Romeo: Is she a Capulet? O dear account, my life is my foes debt. Juliet: My only love sprung from my only hate, Too early seen unknown, and known too late. But destiny, that has produced this prodigious birth of love, is determined to further its growth. Romeo, when the ball is over, takes shelter in the garden of the Capulets, beneath Juliets window, and under the screen of darkness hears his mistress confess her love for him in a soliloquy to the night-air. With a nature such as Juliets, passionate in the depths, but proud and steeped in maidenly delicacy on the surface, the first avowal of affection, above all to a hereditary foe, would be hard to make, and could only be the result of long effort. It was thus a stroke of the most delicate insight on Shaksperes partfor the device is his ownto represent Juliet as betrayed by unforeseen chance into the revelation of her new-born feeling. But her confession once taken by surprise, she is too nobly sincere to draw back: she covers her confusion with some charmingly arch sallies, and the protestation that shell prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange. And the playful tone soon deepens into that of passionate, unmeasured self-surrender: My bounty is as boundless as the sea; My love as deep: the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. But again the presage of woe to come overshadows the scene: Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to-night It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be, Ere one can say it lightens. Yet, in spite of forebodings, Juliet knows that there is only one way now by which she and her lover can be united, and this, with quiet resolution, she determines to take. Let him send her word to-morrow where and what time he will marry her, and she will come to him, and be his for evermore. The simplicity and directness of Juliets bearing in this scene have been often contrasted with the more brooding emotion of Romeo. His language is certainly fuller of imagery, recalling sometimes in softened form his earlier utterances, and he abandons himself more unreservedly to the luxury of sentiment while forgetting the practical dangers of his situation. But it is surely going beyond Shaksperes purpose to look upon Romeo as a study in over-luxuriant,
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half-unreal emotion. The more such a point is pressed, the less justification is there for Juliets self-surrender, and the less productive of pity and terror is the collision in the drama between the two passions of love and hate. The primary aim of the poet in this his earliest tragedy is neither to give elaborate studies of character, nor to point morals, but to tell in moving fashion an old-world tale of star-crossed lovers and their misadventured piteous overthrows. It is important to bear this in mind in turning to the scene in Friar Laurences cell. Of the abrupt transitions that mark the play throughout, the most striking is the change from the passionate interview between the two lovers in the moonlit garden, to the solitary figure of the hermit, with the grey dawn breaking over him, as he sets out, osier-cage in hand, to gather weeds and flowers. These products of the earth suggest to him an analogy in human nature: Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence, and medicine power. For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part, Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed Kings encamp them still In man as well as herbsgrace and rude will, And when the worser is predominant Full soon the canker death eats up the plant. Kreyssig and Gervinus find in these words the keynote of the drama, and look upon the Friar as playing the part of the classical chorus, which was the mouthpiece of the poets own sentiments. Shakspere, according to this interpretation, censures the lovers for yielding to rude will or passion instead of being regulated by grace or gentle moderation. But adherents of the Romantic school from Schlegel onwards, have refused to see in the Friars words anything more than a suitable dramatic utterance. The problem is, without doubt, perplexing. Though Shakspere never identifies himself absolutely with any single character, yet certain of his creations make the impression of representing him more fully than others, and it must be allowed that the hermits moralizing phrases are introduced and repeated with what sounds like deliberate emphasis. But this doctrine of moderation in love is nowhere else found in Shaksperes writings. Bassanio, Orlando, and Ferdinand offer whole-hearted, enthusiastic devotion to their mistresses, and no moralist rebukes them for their want of circumspection. Is not the pathetic failure of Ophelias life owing to her obedience to a shallow worldly wisdom rather than the dictates of her own heart? Why then should Romeo and Juliet, the glowing creations of the dramatists youth, alone be condemned out of his own mouth? There is another interpretation which in some degree reconciles the opposing views. All through the drama there runs the note of tragic predestination. It has had utterance
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from the lips of Romeo and Juliet, but merely as a vague presentiment. In the friars mouth it naturally takes a moralizing form and is made the occasion of a sermon on mans unruliness. As the hero and heroine repeat time after time their apprehensions of evil to come, so, after his own fashion, does the Friar. Hence the prominence given to his warnings: they are part of the ever-swelling burden of the drama that the ecstasies of love are brief and brittle: they must not be simply set aside as prosy commonplaces, but they cannot be accepted as the full and final judgement upon love and life by Shakspere, the Shakspere of the Sonnets to Will. And indeed, if Romeo and Juliet, swayed by passion become the victims of an ironical destiny, is this less true of the cautious Laurence with all his saws and maxims? Romeo bursts into the cell, his tongue on fire with the exciting news of his last nights fortunes. He cannot stop to give details, but blurts out breathlessly his main object: When, where, and how, We met, we wooed, and made exchange of vow Ill tell thee as we pass; but this I pray That thou consent to marry us to-day. The churchman blames the young waverers precipitancy, but thinks to bring good out of evil: a match between a Montague and a Capulet may turn the households rancour to pure love. Is not this amiable confidence as bitterly mocked by the sequel as the hopes of the wooers, who that very afternoon are made man and wife? The scene is brief but intensely significant. Romeos joy utters itself, as usual, in highly-wrought phrase, while Juliets is too deep for words. Both alike are thrilled in every vein with the passion that speaks in Romeos adjuration: Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare, It is enough I may but call her mine. And again in sharpest contrast rings out the Friars warning: These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die: like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. And even as the prophecy is uttered events are taking place, not far off, which are to hasten their fulfilment. In the town-square, under the noonday sun, there is gathered a crowd of Montague retainers, with Benvolio and Mercutio at their head. Mercutio has already made his appearance on several occasions, but now he first becomes a real factor in the plot. For his character Shakspere found
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the slightest hints in his originals. Brooke simply speaks of him as courteous of speech and pleasant of devise, with an ice-cold hand. Out of such meagre materials Shakspere created the brilliant figure who forms as admirable a foil to Romeo as, after a different fashion, the Nurse to Juliet. The brooding, emotional temperament of the heir of the Montagues finds its complete antithesis in the sparkling vivacity of his friend, in whom we may detect a touch of likeness to Valentine, while as yet he crowed like a cock and was not metamorphosed with a mistress. But Mercutios flashing wit and nimble tongue are all his own, and every form of affectation, or what he deems to be such, gets a volley from him in turn. Dreams and omens, over which Romeo ponders, are to him the children of an idle brain to be quizzed away as old wives tales of Mab and her antics. And as his estimate of dreams thus resembles that of Theseus, so he takes much the same view of the relation of lovers, poets, and madmen, though he throws it into the form of a jest, and not of serious reflection: Romeo, humours, madman, passion, lover! Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied. But Mercutios very mockery is not without its poetic note, as his brilliant arabesque of fancies about Queen Mab is sufficient to show. A splendid zest in real life, an ingrained scorn of all affectation, a somewhat distant bowing acquaintance with the proprieties, give salt and savour to his wit, though it be a trifle over-pungent for delicate ears. A French slop and a French salutation equally stir his derision, but what absolutely sticks in his throat is the fantastic etiquette of the fencing-school, of which Tybalt is the professional representative. It is the grudge borne by the mettlesome swordsman against the tactician, the villain that fights by the book of arithmetic, that throws Mercutio, who belongs to neither house, upon the Montague side. Thus when Tybalt appears, he attempts to provoke him into open quarrel, but the Capulet champion is seeking Romeo, who enters immediately afterwards fresh from his marriage with Juliet, and determined not to be drawn into combat with any one of the Capulet name. His refusal to take up the challenge which Tybalt throws in his teeth so incenses Mercutio that his rapier is out in a moment and crossed with his foes, and when Romeo seeks to beat the weapons down, Tybalt lunges under his arm and gives Mercutio the wound that, though not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, makes of him a grave man. And so, game to the last, with jests and maledictions mingling on his lips, the gallant spirit aspires the clouds, and the scene darkens as he disappears. Once again, and the episode is Shaksperes own, fate has made mock of Romeo, but her fury is yet far from spent. Tybalt re-enters in triumph, and Romeo, maddened by the thought of Mercutio slain in his quarrel and through his intervention, turns on the murderer and sends his
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soul to keep company with his victims. Then the horror of the situation flashes upon him, and he rushes off with the agonized cry on his lips, O, I am fortunes fool. And, as after the earlier fray, the Prince again enters, with Capulets and Montagues on either hand. Death is too heavy a penalty for so provoked an offence, but the stern alternative is perpetual banishment, and that to Romeo is very death in life. From the hurtle of steel under the open sky we pass to Juliets solitary watchchamber, whence she leans out with eyes fixed on the westward sloping sun, that seems to sink so slowly to his grave. And as she gazes, there floats from the lips of the maiden wife the epithalamium, the marriage hymn which no voice save her own could sing over her strange and stolen bridal. Passionate is her invocation, passionate as the blood bating in her cheeks, but purepure as her own stainless maidenhood. Love with Shakspere rose from the first high above the level of sense where Marlowe had held it down, but it never floats away into a bloodless abstraction. It is the travail of one being to be united to another in body, soul, and spirit, and this complex longing is frankly made articulate in Juliets lyric to Night. A heart, it has been finely said, may be as pure as snow or as pure as flame, and Juliets is of the latter kind. The reverie is abruptly broken by the entrance of the Nurse with confused babble of lamentation, whence at last there surges to the surface the news of Tybalts death and Romeos banishment. In fierce revulsion of feeling Juliet for the moment launches forth reproaches against her husband, but the frigid chain of meaningless antitheses that issues from her lips proves that her anger has as little pith as Romeos early love which found similar expression. The instant that the Nurse begins to follow her lead, she recants, and eagerly catches at the proposal to send to him where he is hid at Laurences cell. There Romeo lies with his own tears made drunk in the very luxury of woe, hugging, as it were, his sentence of banishment deliriously to him, and battening on its stored up misery. He is utterly unmanned; and those who, like Kreyssig, see in the play a scientific diagnosis of emotion, point to Romeo as the example of the ruin wrought in a life which makes the blunder of taking love as the sum total of existence. But in this scene Shakspere follows Brooke with unusual closeness, and the original responsibility for the not very edifying picture of Romeo in his collapse rests with the poet rather than the dramatist. Indeed Shakspere, as compared with Brooke, takes a more sympathetic view of Romeos distracted mood, and the Friars conventional counsels and proffer of philosophy as a balm for the heartache are met with the pregnant rejoinder, Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel. But what philosophy cannot do is effected by the thought of a last meeting with Juliet. Over that meeting itself, which Brooke reports in full, Shakspere with fine reticence draws the veil: at the threshold of the marriage chamber his muse ever stays her foot. All that is made known to us, and all that we need to know is the ineffable sorrow of the parting at dawn. Here
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again Shakspere has chosen a lyric mould, borrowing, perhaps unconsciously, the favourite Provenal dawn-song wherein two lovers debate whether the daylight hour of parting be already come. But though the form be one of Shaksperes many debts to mediaevalism, his alone is the magical melody of lines, which distil at once loves quintessential rapture and its infinite sum of pain. But the bitter-sweet parting is over at last, and Romeo climbs down the rope-ladder. As he touches the ground, again from Juliets lips rises the presaging cry: O God, I have an ill-divining soul: Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. But vague presentiments soon sink in present fear. Lady Capulet enters with the news that Juliet is to be consoled for Tybalts death by being made the joyful bride of Paris on Thursday next. Barely has the girl-wife time to answer in words of double meaning that when she marries It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, Rather than Paris, when her father bursts in to hear how she has received his decree. Capulet has hitherto shown no lack of tenderness to his daughter, and the device of the marriage has been well-intentioned enough, but resistance inflames his autocratic temper into almost frenzied irritability. With volley upon volley of coarse abuse he shouts down the girl, the pallor on whose cheeks earns for her the epithets of green-sickness carrion and tallow-face. In vain Juliet pleads at his feet for mercy; equally in vain she appeals to her mother whose stony silence is as cruel as the lash of Capulets tongue. Only one friend is left to her, the Nurse, and to her she turns in words of simple, imploring earnestness, O God, O Nurse, how shall this be prevented? But the sensuous element in the Nurses affection for her young mistress betrays her at the critical moment; the thought of a second marriage with a lovely gentleman, to whom Romeo is a dishclout, has an irresistible fascination for her; the first husband dead or useless, it is the very height of luck to get another. The Nurse has indeed given Juliet marvellous much comfort: the gross proposal teaches her the secret strength of her own stainless love, and with a solemn Amen she isolates herself from the whole Capulet household for ever. At a single shock the girl is transformed into the heroic woman. Her instinct guides her to the Friar for help: he who has made her Romeos wife can surely teach her how to keep this new wooer at bay. At the cell she
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meets the County himself, who has come to make preparation for the marriage rite, and who with confident familiarity salutes her as my lady and my wife. Steeled to perfect outward self-control she answers with incisive badinage, but the door once shut on Paris, she utters the agonized cry of one past hope, past cure, past help. The breakdown is only for a moment, and the Friars plan for her salvation, desperate though it be, rekindles her dauntless spirit. Eagerly she grasps the phial with the opiate that is to lull her into the very counterfeit of death. Give me, give me! O tell not me of fear. And with the same unfaltering resolve, in the solitude and silence of her own chamber, she drinks the strange draught. For a brief space her courage falters as she conjures up a vision of the charnel-house and its horrors, but there flashes before her gaze the image of Tybalts ghost ranging for revenge on Romeo, and she empties the vial with a confused sense that she is rushing to her husbands aid: Stay, Tybalt, stay. Romeo, I come: this do I drink to thee. So when the Nurse enters to wake Juliet on Wednesday morning for the bridal with Paris she is found lying in seeming death. And from lips lately so cruel or so perversely kind there rises a chorus of hollow lamentation, couched in that interjectional verbiage which Shakspere uses throughout the play to mark unreal emotion of whatever kind. Amid such a mockery of sorrow Juliet is borne forth to her mock funeral in the vault of the Capulets. The Friars plans have been skilfully laid, but it is now his turn, for all his craft, to become fortunes fool. His messenger to Romeo is accidentally delayed, and meanwhile Balthasar hastens to Mantua. Once again, as on the eve of his first meeting with his love, Romeo has had a dream, but nowand it is fortunes most satiric strokeit presages joyful news at hand. In answer to this presage comes Balthasars announcement that Juliet is well, for her body sleeps in Capulets monument, and her immortal part is with the angels. The malice of fortune has dealt its most exquisite blow, and the wretched man whom it has hunted from point to point now at last turns to bay: Is it een so? then I defy you, stars! To-night he will lie with Juliet: a poison phial will invalidate all decrees of banishment. But Fortune does not leave her victims challenge unanswered. At the door of the Capulets monument (and again the episode is Shaksperes addition) Romeo chances upon Paris, who has come to strew flowers by his ladys bier. Gentle appeals to fly are met with violence, and again Romeo is fain to redden his sword with an adversarys life-blood. He has come to offer Death a second victim, but its detestable maw has claimed a third. The young, the fair, the lovingthese are they for whom its jaws gape widest, and as Romeo turns to gaze on the face of his bride, with beautys ensign yet crimson in her lips and in her cheeks, one last gorgeous flash of
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the old fancy leaps up in the thought that Death, not Paris, is his rival for Juliets hand: Shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? Juliet had drained her phial, that she might hasten between her lover and Tybalts angry ghost; so Romeo tosses off the poison to shield his wife from the caresses of the grim power, that reigns in this palace of dim night. The drugs are quick, and with but one kiss Romeo shakes off the yoke of inauspicious stars for ever. Yet his death itself is a counter in Fortunes malignant game, which a few added moments of life would have spoilt. Juliet awakes only to hear from the lips of the Friar the confession that old heads as well as young hearts may be baffled in their purposes: A greater Power than we can contradict Hath thwarted our intents. Her husband indeed lies in her bosom, but his immortal part has gone the way that she had only feigned to go. She has wakened to find the world empty of all that gave it glory: there is nothing left but to sink back into sleep, the selfsought everlasting sleep of death. And when all is over, as the grey dawn begins to glimmer in the sky, again and for the last time, Montagues and Capulets meet face to face, and gaze upon the ruin that the hate of the houses has wrought. In the infinite pity of the spectacle even mourning is hushed: the fiery greybeards bow the head in silence, while the Prince sternly upbraids them with the tragic issue of their strife. The friar too, when he has briefly told his tale, is dumb; moralizing maxims can avail nothing in the sight of those fair young bodies stretched in death. But sentimental elegiacs would be equally out of place. The story unfolded has been one of destiny. No a priori ideas that Shakspere is pre-eminently the poet of free will as opposed to necessity should prevent us recognizing that in Romeo and Juliet, following the steps of Brooke, and treating a characteristically mediaeval theme, he has given to Fate a prominence unique in his writings. The lovers have been star-crossed, and in their misadventured piteous overthrows they merit neither blame nor praise. Still less does Shakspere explicitly strike the transcendental note of the modern poet that Love is all, and Death is nought. Yet he does not leave us bowed in barren sorrow. Over the dead bodies of their children, Montague and Capulet clasp hands, and the family vendetta is stayed for ever. The love of true and faithful Juliet and her Romeo has been the love spoken of in A Midsummer Nights Dream.
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Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up. But lightning, the elemental force, though it carry death and terror with it, purges and purifies the worlds atmosphere. So is it with the equally elemental force of love.
1. See previous note. 2. The further question arises. Does this quarto of 1597 do justice to the play as it stood in that year, or is it an imperfect version? For in 1599 appeared a second quarto edition, newly corrected, augmented, and amended, which forms the basis of our present text of the play. In many passages the two quartos are absolutely identical, in others the later edition gives in expanded form speeches which the earlier had only outlined, and in a few scenes, such as the marriage of Romeo and Juliet at the Friars cell, and the lamentation over Juliets supposed dead body, they essentially differ. At first sight the inference would be that Shakspere, having put into print in 1597 the result of his labours up to that date, had been still attracted by the theme, and had given it further elaboration, which took final form in 1599. But various passages which occur only in the second quarto are not such as Shaksperes more mature hand would have been at all likely to add. Among these is Lady Capulets fantastic description of Paris in rhyming couplets (Act i. Scene 3). On the other hand, several of the very finest scenes, such as the dialogues between Romeo and Juliet after the ball and at their last interview, are substantially the same in both quartos. There is thus great plausibility in Daniels conjecture, in his edition of the parallel texts, that the quarto of 1597 is a pirated version made up partly from copies of portions of the original play, partly from recollection and from notes taken during the performance. The quarto of 1599 gives the true representation of the play, though it had received some sight augmentations, and in some few places (those where there is a broad difference between the two versions) must have been entirely rewritten. 3. An account of the earlier versions of the story is given in Dowdens essay on Romeo and Juliet in his Transcripts and Studies, to which I am indebted.
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Romeo and Juliet in the Twentieth Century

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Shakespearean criticism of the twentieth century is vast and richly varied, ranging from in-depth psychoanalytical studies of character to detailed examinations of the ways in which history, philosophy, politics, and gender relate to the time in which the plays were written. Discussed below are but a few of the centurys best and most interesting examinations of Romeo and Juliet. At the beginning of the century, the poet Walter de la Mare published an insightful poetic analysis of the character of the nurse. In Juliets Nurse, de la Mare portrays the nurse as living a second childhood, and a very tragic one at that, since she has lost her daughter. Her only recourse now is to gossip and to find solace in a flood of memories: Theres not a name but calls a tale to mind. Another poet, the famous American Robert Penn Warren, cites in particular the language of Romeo and Juliet in the midst of his meditation on the purity of poetry. Arguing against those critics who see Romeo and Juliet as a tragedy due to a predominance of accident over character, Harold C. Goddards essay maintains that the theme of the play is about the relationship of love and violence. In support of his thesis that Shakespeare presents no ordinary love story, Goddard frames the central issue in terms of the unconscious mind and maintains that dreams are the vehicle for gaining access to the characters. With respect to the famous Queen Mab passage, Goddard maintains that Shakespeare meant it to be an exposition of Mercutios imagination; Romeo, on the other hand, simply believes in his dreamsloves shadows. [A]ll the dreams and premonitions of both Romeo and Juliet throughout the play, . . . come from a fountain of wisdom somewhere beyond time. Goddard concludes that fear is the true malaise in Romeo and Juliet, be it Romeos anxiety about a code of honor, or the dread of the plague that causes Friar Laurences letter to be miscarried, or, finally, the fear of poverty that leads the apothecary to sell the deadly poison. Harry Levin sees Romeo and Juliet as Shakespeares first successful attempt at tragedy. He underscores the novelty of the play, stating that, in Shakespeares time, romance was always the subject matter of comedies. As Levin points out, Shakespeare was in effect overturning convention, as exemplified in the opposition
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within the play of youth and impatience versus the formality of books and stock Elizabethan phrases for love. Also emphasizing the many references to reading and books, Norman N. Holland asserts that Romeo and Juliet is a highly artificial play and, thus, a weak tragedy. Citing such early instances as Juliets statement to Romeo that he kisses by the book and Mercutios complaint that Tybalt fights by the book of arithmetic, Holland connects the formality of these statements to the plays poetic structureits conscious use of a dialogue imbued with rhyme and lyrics and argues that Romeo and Juliet is preoccupied with wordplay and is, therefore, the product of Shakespeares lyric, rather than dramatic, imagination. Holland concludes that what makes for the tragic turn of events in this play is a mishap related to the written word itself, when Friar John, carrying an important letter to Romeo, is accidentally quarantined. Francis Fergussons essay outlines many of the major themes in Romeo and Juliet. Among those themes is the importance of the setting in bringing together the darkest and most foreboding aspects of Romeo and Juliet. Fergusson maintains that the last scene of Act I allows Shakespeare to introduce the dual theme of a fated love and violence. Fergusson also points out that by compressing the action into five days, Shakespeare is able to initiate the breathless momentum that is carried through to the end: By that means alone he achieves the rhythm of youth, when patience is unknown and every experience of joy or pain is met headlong, for the first time. Susan Snyders essay is a discussion of the way in which Romeo and Juliet is transformed from a comedy into a tragedy, a conversion of genre that Shakespeare would never again attempt after this play. Beginning with the premise that tragedy presents inevitably heroic characters while comedy is anything but predictable, Snyder marks the turning point in the play at Mercutios death, as his demise engenders all other deaths that follow. To be sure, other secondary characters, such as Friar Laurence and the nurse, help to realize the various calamities in which they participate: For Shakespeare, tragedy is usually a matter of both character and circumstance, a fatal interaction of man and moment. But in this play, although the central characters have their weaknesses, their destruction does not really stem from these weaknesses. James H. Seward lauds Shakespeare as a tragic poet whose interests lie in human beauty and the torment associated with its destruction. Focusing on what he describes as the most difficult part of the play, the balcony scene in Act II, Seward agrees with earlier critics who mark a change in Romeos character from an adolescent infatuation with Rosaline to a true and steadfast love for Juliet. However, Seward maintains Shakespeare is making a statement regarding the inherent danger of playing with passion and the consequences of what the lovers might do as a result of these intense emotions: Romeos capacity for love, a capacity which is so movingly illustrated in this scene and
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which still shines through the murkiness of the passion, defines in human terms the meaning of the tragedy which appears to be building before their eyes. The great Canadian critic Northrop Frye begins his discussion of Romeo and Juliet by describing the opening scene of the play, which seems to exhibit the political lesson that, when the aristocracy is embroiled in a struggle among itself, chaos inevitably reigns until someone appears to restore law and order. Frye goes on to explain that the action of the play is far more important than characterization and to discuss the complex nature of love in the early Middle Ages, with reference to Dante and Petrarch, before offering an uplifting image of the tragic nature of a perfect love, which by its terms cannot survive this world without being corrupted: It takes the greatest rhetoric of the greatest poets to bring us a vision of the tragic heroic, and such rhetoric doesnt make us miserable but exhilarated, not crushed but enlarged in spirit. Thomas McAlindon argues that the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is incommensurate with the facts presented to us and maintains that what we have is an image of the world that lacks the potential for high tragedy. According to McAlindon, Shakespeares solution for this incommensurability is to transform Verona into a microcosm of the world, so that personal incidents such as the feuding between the Capulets and the Montagues are magnified and assume a universal significance. McAlindon identifies the tragic elements as time itself and the victims it claims, rather than some inherent flaw within the characters: The limitation of this play as tragedy is that the compulsion to embrace a fatal destiny is too closely identified with mere haste, and too dependent on verbal and imagistic expression. In later tragedies, by contrast, it is deeply embedded in character and linked to a capacity for violence and destruction which is truly frightening. Maynard Mack discusses the genre of Romeo and Juliet by examining the comedic elements within an ultimately tragic story. Summarizing many of the character types one meets in comedy, as opposed to the individualized characters that mark tragic drama, Mack argues that the distinction between these two competing theatrical universes is blurred and difficult to discern. He cites such examples as the moralizing yet effectual friar and the Capulets detached mourning for Juliet, whom the audience knows is still alive. Both of these lend a strong comic aspect to otherwise catastrophic events. Moreover, the incorporation of conventions and stylized expressions typical of romances adds a further confusing element to this complex generic mix. Ultimately, Mack argues that the play works by virtue of the fact that these contrary worlds are placed side by side, none interfering with the other: Mercutio never learns of Romeos mature love for Juliet, and his death is well behind us when we encounter theirs. Perhaps the playwright feared that either view, if brought too close to its opposite, would shatter.
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Harold Blooms comments emphasize the importance and power of Juliet, who, Bloom claims is the plays triumph, since she inaugurates Shakespeares extraordinary procession of vibrant, life-enhancing women. Bloom also makes an interesting reference to Drydens seventeenth-century claim that Shakespeare said he was forced to kill off Mercutio early in the play: Shakespeare is reputed to have said that he had to kill off Mercutio lest Mercutio kill the play. I think it likelier that the full revelation of Juliets greatness made it necessary to dispose of the prurient Mercutio, whose lively blasphemies against the splendors of Juliets love might well have wearied us. A good deal of the Shakespearean criticism in the latter decades of the twentieth century followed new fashions in academia, with such critical approaches as new historicism, feminist criticism, and cultural studies. Issues addressed by new historicists regarding the play included coming-of-age and sexuality in Elizabethan England, as well as themes of punishment by exile and the terrible psychological consequences for those exiled. Some critics also examined historical details, such as whether there is any historical basis to the nurses statement about an earthquake. Feminist critics focused on an appreciation of Juliets character, often claiming that she becomes the more powerful of the two lovers, exhibiting more control and awareness of reality than Romeo. Nevertheless, many of the enduring questions, such as how to define the play and where to mark the transition from comic to tragic, also reappeared up into the twenty-first century.
1902Walter de la Mare. Juliets Nurse, from Characters from Shakespeare

Walter John de la Mare (18731956) was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist. He is the author of such novels as Henry Brocken (1904) and Memoirs of a Midget (1921), as well as poetry collections, including Songs of Childhood (1902) and The Listeners (1912).
In old-world nursery vacant now of children, With posied walls, familiar, fair, demure, And facing southward oer romantic streets, Sits yet and gossips winters dusk away One gloomy, vast, glossy, and wise, and sly: And at her side a cherried country cousin. Her tongue claps ever like a rams sweet bell; Theres not a name but calls a tale to mind Some marrowy patty of farce or melodram; Theres not a soldier but hath babes in view;
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Theres not on earth what minds not of the midwife: O, widowhood that left me still espoused! Beauty she sighs oer, and she sighs oer gold; Gold will buy all things, even a sweet husband, Else only Heaven is left andfarewell youth! Yet, strangely, in that money-haunted head, The sad, gemmed crucifix and incense blue Is childhood come again. Her memory Is like an ant-hill which a twig disturbs, But twig stilled never. And to see her face, Broad with sleek homely beams; her babied hands, Ever like lighting doves, and her small eyes Blue wells a-twinkle, arch and lewd and pious To darken all sudden into Stygian gloom, And paint disaster with uplifted whites, Is lifes epitome. She prates and prates A waterbrook of words oer twelve small pebbles. And when she diessome grey, long, summer evening, When the bird shouts of childhood through the dusk, Neath nights faint tapersthen her body shall Lie stiff with silks of sixty thrifty years.
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1943Robert Penn Warren. Pure and Impure Poetry, from Kenyon Review
Robert Penn Warren (19051989) was a novelist, critic, and, according to Harold Bloom, one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. He is probably best known for his novel All the Kings Men. He was allied with such literary movements as the New Critics and the Fugitive/Agrarian school.
Critics are rarely faithful to their labels and their special strategies. Usually the critic will confess that no one strategythe psychological, the moralistic, the formalistic, the historicalor combination of strategies, will quite work the defeat of the poem. For the poem is like the monstrous Orillo in Boiardos Orlando Innamorato. When the sword lops off any member of the monster, that member is immediately rejoined to the body, and the monster is as formidable
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as ever. But the poem is even more formidable than the monster, for Orillos adversary finally gained a victory by an astonishing feat of dexterity: he slashed off both the monsters arms and quick as a wink seized them and flung them into the river. The critic who vaingloriously trusts his method to account for the poem, to exhaust the poem, is trying to emulate this dexterity: he thinks that he, too, can win by throwing the lopped-off arms into the river. But he is doomed to failure. Neither fire nor water will suffice to prevent the rejoining of the mutilated members to the monstrous torso. There is only one way to conquer the monster: you must eat it, bones, blood, skin, pelt, and gristle. And even then the monster is not dead, for it lives in you, is assimilated into you, and you are different, and somewhat monstrous yourself, for having eaten it. So the monster will always win, and the critic knows this. He does not want to win. He knows that he must always play stooge to the monster. All he wants to do is to give the monsterthe poema chance to exhibit again its miraculous power, which is poetry. With this fable, I shall begin by observing that poetry wants to be pure. And it always succeeds in this ambition. In so far as we have poetry at all, it is always pure poetry; that is, it is not non-poetry. The poetry of Shakespeare, the poetry of Pope, the poetry of Herrick, is pure, in so far as it is poetry at all. We call the poetry higher or lower, we say more powerful or less powerful about it, and we are, no doubt, quite right in doing so. The souls that form the great rose of Paradise are seated in banks and tiers of ascending blessedness, but they are all saved, they are all perfectly happy; they are all pure, for they have all been purged of mortal taint. This is not to say, however, that if we get poetry from only one source, say Shakespeare, such a single source ought to suffice us, in as much as we can always appeal to it; or that, since all poetry is equally pure, we engage in a superfluous labor in trying to explore or create new sources of poetry. No, for we can remember that every soul in the great rose is precious in the eyes of God. No soul is the substitute for another. Poetry wants to be pure, but poems do not. At least, most of them do not want to be too pure. The poems want to give us poetry, which is pure, and the elements of a poem, in so far as it is a good poem, will work together toward that end, but many of the elements, taken in themselves, may actually seem to contradict that end, or be neutral toward the achieving of that end. Are we then to conclude that neutral or recalcitrant elements are simply an index to human frailty, and that in a perfect world there would be no dross in poems, which would, then, be perfectly pure? No, it does not seem to be merely the fault of our world, for the poems include, deliberately, more of the so-called dross than would appear necessary. They are not even as pure as they might be in this imperfect world. They mar themselves with cacophonies, jagged rhythms, ugly words and ugly thoughts, colloquialisms, clichs, sterile technical terms, headwork and
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argument, self-contradictions, clevernesses, irony, realismall things which call us back to the world of prose and imperfection. Sometimes a poet will reflect on this state of affairs, and grieve. He will decide that he, at least, will try to make one poem as pure as possible. So he writes: Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font. The fire-fly wakens; waken thou with me. We know the famous gardenthe garden in Tennysons Princess. We know how all nature conspires here to express the purity of the moment: how the milk-white peacock glimmers like a ghost, and how like a ghost the unnamed she glimmers on to her tryst; how earth lies all Dana to the stars, as the beloveds heart lies open to the lover; and how, in the end, the lily folds up her sweetness, and slips into the bosom of the lake, as the lovers are lost in the sweet dissolution of love. And we know another poet and another garden. Or perhaps it is the same garden, after all, viewed by a different poet, Shelley. I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright. I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Hath led mewho knows how? To thy chamber window, Sweet! We remember how, again, all nature conspires, how the wandering airs faint, how the Champaks odors pine, how the nightingales complaint dies upon her heart, as the lover will die upon the beloveds heart. Nature here strains out of nature, it wants to be called by another name, it wants to spiritualize itself by calling itself another name. How does the lover get to the chamber window? He refuses to say how, in his semi-somnambulistic daze, he got there. He blames, he says, a spirit in my feet, and hastens to disavow any knowledge of how that spirit operates. In any case, he arrives at the chamber window. Subsequent events and the lovers reaction toward them are somewhat hazy. We know only that the lover, who faints and fails at the opening of the last stanza and who asks to be lifted from the grass by a more enterprising beloved, is in a condition of delectable passivity, in which distinctions blur out in the purity of the moment.
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Let us turn to another garden: the place, Verona; the time, a summer night, with full moon. The lover speaks: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east . . . But we know the rest, and know that this garden, in which nature for the moment conspires again with the lover, is the most famous of them all, for the scene is justly admired for its purity of effect, for giving us the very essence of young, untarnished love. Nature conspires beneficently here, but we may remember that beyond the garden wall strolls Mercutio, he can celebrate Queen Mab, but who is always aware that nature has other names as well as the names the pure poets and pure lovers put upon her. And we remember that Mercutio, outside the wall, has just said: . . . twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistress circle Of some strange nature, letting it there stand Till she had laid it and conjured it down. Mercutio has made a joke, a bawdy joke. That is bad enough, but worse, he has made his joke witty and, worst of all, intellectually complicated in its form. Realism, wit, intellectual complicationthese are the enemies of the garden purity. But the poet has not only let us see Mercutio outside the garden wall. Within the garden itself, when the lover invokes nature, when he spiritualizes and innocently trusts her, and says, Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear, the lady herself replies, O! Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb. The lady distrusts pure poems, nature spiritualized into forgetfulness. She has, as it were, a rigorous taste in metaphor, too; she brings a logical criticism to bear on the metaphor which is too easy; the metaphor must prove itself to her, must be willing to subject itself to scrutiny beyond the moments enthusiasm. She injects the impurity of an intellectual style into the lovers pure poem. And we must not forget the voice of the nurse, who calls from within, a voice which, we discover, is the voice of expediency, of half-measures, of the view that circumstances alter casesthe voice of prose and imperfection.
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It is time to ask ourselves if the celebrated poetry of this scene, which as poetry is pure, exists despite the impurities of the total composition, if the effect would be more purely poetic were the nurse and Mercutio absent and the lady a more sympathetic critic of pure poems. I do not think so. The effect might even be more vulnerable poetically if the impurities were purged away. Mercutio, the lady, and the nurse are critics of the lover, who believes in pure poems, but perhaps they are necessary. Perhaps the lover can be accepted only in their context. The poet seems to say: I know the worst that can be said on this subject, and I am giving fair warning. Read at your own risk. So the poetry arises from a recalcitrant and contradictory context; and finally involves that context. Let us return to one of the other gardens, in which there is no Mercutio or nurse, and in which the lady is more sympathetic. Let us mar its purity by installing Mercutio in the shrubbery, from which the poet was so careful to banish him. You can hear his comment when the lover says: And a spirit in my feet Hath led mewho knows how? To thy chamber window, Sweet! And we can guess what the wicked tongue would have to say in response to the last stanza. It may be that the poet should have made early peace with Mercutio, and appealed to his better nature. For Mercutio seems to be glad to cooperate with a poet. But he must be invited; otherwise, he is apt to show a streak of merry vindictiveness about the finished product. Poems are vulnerable enough at best. Bright reason mocks them like sun from a wintry sky. They are easily left naked to laughter when leaves fall in the garden and the cold winds come. Therefore, they need all the friends they can get, and Mercutio, who is an ally of reason and who himself is given to mocking laughter, is a good friend for a poem to have. On what terms does a poet make his peace with Mercutio? There are about as many sets of terms as there are good poets. I know that I have loaded the answer with the word good here, that I have implied a scale of excellence based, in part at least, on degree of complication. I shall return to this question. For the moment, however, let us examine an anonymous sixteenth-century poem whose apparent innocence and simple lyric cry should earn it a place in any anthology of pure poetry. Western wind, when will thou blow, The small rain down can rain? Christ, if my love were in my arms And I in my bed again!
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The lover, grieving for the absent beloved, cries out for relief. Several kinds of relief are involved in the appeal to the wind. First, there is the relief that would be had from the sympathetic manifestation of nature. The lover, in his perturbation of spirit, invokes the perturbations of nature. He invokes the beneficent perturbation, Western wind, when will thou blow, as Lear invokes the destructive, Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! Second, there is the relief that would be had by the fulfillment of griefthe frost of grief, the drought of grief broken, the full anguish expressed, then the violence allayed in the peace of tears. Third, there is the relief that would be had in the excitement and fulfillment of love itself. There seems to be a contrast between the first two types of relief and the third type; speaking loosely, we may say that the first two types are romantic and general, the third type realistic and specific. So much for the first two lines. In the last two lines, the lover cries out for the specific solace of his case: reunion with his beloved. But there is a difference between the two lines. The first is general, and romantic. The phrase in my arms does not seem to mean exactly what it says. True, it has a literal meaning, if we can look close at the words, but it is hard to look close because of the romantic aurathe spiritualized mist about them. But with the last line the perfectly literal meaning suddenly comes into sharp focus. The mist is rifted and we can look straight at the words, which, we discover with a slight shock of surprise, do mean exactly what they say. The last line is realistic and specific. It is not even content to say, And I in bed again! It is, rather, more scrupulously specific, and says, And I in my bed again! All of this does not go to say that the realistic elements here are to be taken as canceling, or negating, the romantic elements. There is no ironical leer. The poem is not a celebration of carnality. It is a faithful lover who speaks. He is faithful to the absent beloved, and he is also faithful to the full experience of love. That is, he does not abstract one aspect of the experience and call it the whole experience. He does not strain nature out of nature; he does not over-spiritualize nature. This nameless poet would never have said, in the happier days of his love,
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that he had been led to his Sweets chamber window by a spirit in my feet; and he certainly would not have added the coy disavowal, who knows how? But because the nameless poet refused to overspiritualize nature, we can accept the spirituality of the poem. Another poem gives us another problem. Ah, what avails the sceptered race! Ah, what the form divine! What every virtue, every grace! Rose Aylmer, all were thine. Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and sighs I consecrate to thee. This is another poem about lost love: a soft subject. Now, to one kind of poet the soft subject presents a sore temptation. Because it is soft in its natural state, he is inclined to feel that to get at its poetic essence he must make it softer still, that he must insist on its softness, that he must render it as pure as possible. At first glance, it may seem that Landor is trying to do just that. What he says seems to be emphatic, unqualified, and open. Not every power, grace, and virtue could avail to preserve his love. That statement insists on the pathetic contrast. And in the next stanza, wakefulness and tearfulness are mentioned quite unashamedly, along with memories and sighs. It is all blurted out, as pure as possible. But only in the paraphrase is it blurted. The actual quality of the first stanza is hard, not soft. It is a chiseled stanza, in which formality is insisted upon. We may observe the balance of the first and second lines; the balance of the first half with the second half of the third line, which recapitulates the structure of the first two lines; the balance of the two parts of the last line, though here the balance is merely a rhythmical and not a sense balance as in the preceding instances; the binders of discreet alliteration, repetition, and assonance. The stanza is built up, as it were, of units which are firmly defined and sharply separated, phrase by phrase, line by line. We have the formal control of the soft subject, ritual and not surrender. But in the second stanza the rigor of this formality is somewhat abated, as the more general, speculative emphasis (why cannot pomp, virtue, and grace avail?) gives way to the personal emphasis, as though the repetition of the beloveds name had, momentarily, released the flood of feeling. The first line of the second stanza spills over into the second; the wakeful eyes as subject find their verb in the next line, weep, and the wake-weep alliteration, along with pause after weep, points up the disintegration of the line, just as it emphasizes
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the situation. Then with the phrase but never see falling away from the long thrust of the rhetorical structure to the pause after weep, the poem seems to go completely soft, the frame is broken. But, even as the poet insists on memories and sighs, in the last two lines he restores the balance. Notice the understatement of A night. It says: I know that life is a fairly complicated affair, and that I am committed to it and to its complications. I intend to stand by my commitment, as a man of integrity, that is, to live despite the grief. Since life is complicated, I cannot, if I am to live, spare too much time for indulging grief. I can give a night, but not all nights. The lover, like the hero of Frosts poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, tears himself from the temptation of staring into the treacherous, delicious blackness, for he, too, has promises to keep. Or he resembles the Homeric heroes who, after the perilous passage is made, after their energy has saved their lives, and after they have beached their craft and eaten their meal, can then set aside an hour before sleep to mourn the comrades lost by the waythe heroes who, as Aldous Huxley says, understand realistically a whole truth as contrasted with a half-truth. Is this a denial of the depth and sincerity of the grief? The soft reader, who wants the poem pure, may be inclined to say so. But let us look at the last line to see what it gives us in answer to this question. The answer seems to lie in the word consecrate. The meter thrusts this word at us; we observe that two of the three metrical accents in the line fall on syllables of this word, forcing it beyond its prose emphasis. The word is important and importance is justified, for the word tells us that the single night is not merely a lapse into weakness, a trivial event to be forgotten when the weakness is overcome. It is, rather, an event of the most extreme and focal importance, an event formally dedicated, set apart for sacred uses, an event by which other events are to be measured. So the word consecrate formalizes, philosophizes, ritualizes the grief; it specifies what in the first stanza has been implied by style. But here is another poem of grief, grief at the death of a child. It is Bells for John Whitesides Daughter, by John Crowe Ransom. There was such speed in her little body, And such lightness in her footfall, It is no wonder her brown study Astonishes us all. Her wars were bruited on our high window. We looked among orchard trees and beyond, Where she took arms against her shadow, Or harried unto the pond
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The lazy geese, like a snow cloud Dripping their snow on the green grass, Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud, Who cried in goose, Alas, For the tireless heart within the little Lady with rod that made them rise From their noon apple-dreams, and scuttle Goose-fashion under the skies! But now go the bells, and we are ready; In one house we are sternly stopped To say we are vexed at her brown study, Lying so primly propped. Another soft subject, softer, if anything, than the subject of Rose Aylmer, and it presents the same problem. But the problem is solved in a different way. The first stanza is based on two time-honored clichs: first, Heavens, wont that child ever be still, she is driving me distracted; and second, She was such an active, healthy-looking child, who wouldve ever thought she would just up and die? In fact, the whole poem develops these clichs, and exploits, in a backhand fashion, the ironies implicit in their interrelation. And in this connection, we may note that the fact of the clichs, rather than more original or profound observations at the root of the poem, is important; there is in the poem the contrast between the staleness of the clichs and the shock of the reality. Further, we may note that the second clich is an answer, savagely ironical in itself, to the first: the child you wished would be still is still, despite all that activity which had interrupted your adult occupations. But such a savage irony is not the game here. It is too desperate, too naked, in a word, too pure. And ultimately, it is, in a sense, a meaningless irony if left in its pure state, because it depends on a mechanical, accidental contrast in nature, void of moral content. The poem is concerned with modifications and modulations of this brute, basic irony, modulations and modifications contingent upon an attitude taken toward it by a responsible human being, the speaker of the poem. The savagery is masked, or ameliorated. In this connection, we may observe, first, the phrase brown study. It is not the frosted flower, the marmoreal immobility, or any one of a thousand such phrases which would aim for the pure effect. It is merely the brown study which astonishesa phrase which denies, as it were, the finality of the situation, underplays the pathos, and merely reminds one of those moments of childish
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pensiveness into which the grownup cannot penetrate. And the phrase itself is a clichthe common now echoed in the uncommon. Next, we may observe that stanzas two, three, and four simply document, with a busy, yet wavering rhythm (one sentence runs through the three stanzas), the tireless naughtiness which was once the cause of rebuke, the naughtiness which disturbed the mature goings-on in the room with the high window. But the naughtiness is now transmuted into a kind of fanciful story-book dream world, in which geese are whiter than nature, and the grass greener, in which geese speak in goose language, saying Alas, and have apple-dreams. It is a drowsy, delicious world, in which the geese are bigger than life, and more important. It is an unreal (now unreal because lost), stylized world. Notice how the phrase the little lady with rod works: the detached primness of little lady; the formal, stiff effect gained by the omission of the article before rod; the slightly unnatural use of the word rod itself, which sets some distance between us and the scene (perhaps with the hint of the fairy story, a magic wand, or a magic rodnot a common, everyday stick). But the stanzas tie back into the premises of the poem in other ways. The little girl, in her excess of energy, warred against her shadow. Is it crowding matters too hard to surmise that the shadow here achieves a sort of covert symbolic significance? The little girl lost her war against her shadow, which was always with her. Certainly the phrase tireless heart has some rich connotations. And the geese which say Alas conspire with the family to deplore the excessive activity of the child. (They do not conspire to express the present grief, only the past vexationan inversion of the method of the pastoral elegy, or of the method of the first two garden poems.) The business of the three stanzas, then, may be said to be twofold. First, they make us believe more fully in the child and therefore in the fact of the grief itself. They prove the grief, and they show the deliciousness of the lost world which will never look the same from the high window. Second, and contrariwise, they transcend the grief, or at least give a hint of a means for transcending immediate anguish: the lost world is, in one sense, redeemed out of time; it enters the pages of the picture book where geese speak, where the untrue is true, where the fleeting is fixed. What was had cannot, after all, be lost. (By way of comparisona comparison which, because extreme, may be helpfulwe may think of the transcendence in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.) The three stanzas, then, to state it in another way, have validated the first stanza and have prepared for the last. The three stanzas have made it possible for us to say, when the bell tolls, we are ready. Some kind of terms, perhaps not the best terms possible but some kind, has been made with the savage underlying irony. But the terms arrived at do not prevent the occasion from being a stern one. The transcendence is not absolute, and in the end is possible only because of an exercise of will and self-control. Because we control ourselves, we can say vexed and not some big
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word. And the word itself picks up the first of the domestic clichs on which the poem is basedthe outburst of impatience at the naughty child who, by dying, has performed her most serious piece of naughtiness. But now the word comes to us charged with the burden of the poem, and further, as re-echoed here by the phrase brown study, charged by the sentence in which it occurs: we are gathered formally, ritualistically, sternly together to say the word vexed. Vexed becomes the ritualistic, the summarizing word. I have used the words pure and impure often in the foregoing pages, and I confess that I have used them rather loosely. But perhaps it has been evident that I have meant something like this: the pure poem tries to be pure by excluding, more or less rigidly, certain elements which might qualify or contradict its original impulse. In other words, the pure poems want to be, and desperately, all of a piece. It has also been evident, no doubt, that the kinds of impurity which are admitted or excluded by the various little anthology pieces which have been presented, are different in the different poems. This is only to be expected, for there is not one doctrine of pure poetrynot one definition of what constitutes impurity in poemsbut many. And not all of the doctrines are recent. When, for example, one cites Poe as the father of the doctrine of pure poetry, one is in error; Poe simply fathered a particular doctrine of pure poetry. One can find other doctrines of purity long antedating Poe. When Sir Philip Sidney, for example, legislated against tragicomedy, he was repeating a current doctrine of purity. When Ben Jonson told William Drummond that Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging, he was defending another kind of purity; and when Dryden spoke to save the ear of the fair sex from metaphysical perplexities in amorous poems, he was defending another kind of purity, just as he was defending another when he defined the nature of the heroic drama. The eighteenth century had a doctrine of pure poetry, which may be summed up under the word sublimity, but which involved two corollary doctrines, one concerning diction and the other concerning imagery. But at the same time that this century, by means of these corollary doctrines, was tidying up and purifying the doctrine derived by Longinus, it was admitting into the drama certain impurities which the theorists of the heroic drama would not have admitted. But when we think of the modern doctrine of pure poetry, we usually think of Poe, as critic and poet, perhaps of Shelley, of the Symbolists, of the Abb Bremond, perhaps of Pater, and certainly of George Moore and the Imagists. We know Poes position: the long poem is a flat contradiction in terms, because intense excitement, which is essential in poetry, cannot be long maintained; the moral sense and the intellect function more satisfactorily in prose than in poetry, and, in fact, Truth and the Passions, which are for Poe associated with the intellect and the moral sense, may actually be inimical to poetry; vagueness, suggestiveness are central virtues, for poetry has for its object an indefinite
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instead of a definite pleasure; poetry is not supposed to undergo close inspection, only a cursory glance, for it, above all things, is a beautiful painting whose tints, to minute inspection, are confusion worse confounded, but start out boldly to the cursory glance of the connoisseur; poetry aspires toward music, since it is concerned with indefinite sensations, to which music is essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception; melancholy is the most poetical effect and enters into all the higher manifestations of beauty. We know, too, the Abb Bremonds mystical interpretation, and the preface to George Moores anthology, and the Imagist manifesto. But these views are not identical. Shelley, for instance, delights in the imprecision praised and practiced by Poe, but he has an enormous appetite for Truth and the Passions, which are, except for purposes of contrast, excluded by Poe. The Imagist manifesto, while excluding ideas, endorses precision rather than vagueness in rendering the image, and admits diction and objects which would have seemed impure to Poe and to many poets of the nineteenth century, and does not take much stock in the importance of verbal music. George Moore emphasizes the objective aspect of his pure poetry, which he describes as something which the poet creates outside his own personality, and this is opposed to the subjective emphasis in Poe and Shelley; but he shares with both an emphasis on verbal music, and with the former a distaste for ideas. But more recently, the notion of poetic purity has emerged in other contexts, contexts which sometimes obscure the connection of the new theories with the older theories. For instance, Max Eastman has a theory. Pure poetry, he says in The Literary Mind, is the pure effort to heighten consciousness. Mr. Eastman, we discover elsewhere in his book, would ban idea from poetry, but his motive is different from, say, the motive of Poe, and the difference is important: Poe would kick out the ideas because the ideas hurt the poetry, and Mr. Eastman would kick out the ideas because the poetry hurts the ideas. Only the scientist, he tells us, is entitled to have ideas on any subject, and the rest of the citizenry must wait to be told what attitude to take toward the ideas which they are not permitted to have except at second-hand. Literary truth, he says, is truth which is uncertain or comparatively unimportant. But he does assign the poet a functionto heighten consciousness. In the light of this context we would have to rewrite his original definition: pure poetry is the pure effort to heighten consciousness, but the consciousness which is heightened must not have any connection with ideas, must involve no attitude toward any ideas. Furthermore, to assist the poet in fulfilling the assigned function, Mr. Eastman gives him a somewhat sketchy doctrine of pure poetic diction. For instance, the word bloated is not admissible into a poem because it is, as he testifies, sacred to the memory of dead fish, and the word tangy is, though he knows not exactly how, intrinsically poetic. The notion of a vocabulary which is intrinsically
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poetic seems, with Mr. Eastman, to mean a vocabulary which indicates agreeable or beautiful objects. So we might rewrite the original definition to read: pure poetry is the pure effort to heighten consciousness, but the consciousness which is heightened must be a consciousness exclusively of agreeable or beautiful objectscertainly not a consciousness of any ideas. In a recent book, The Idiom of Poetry, Frederick Pottle has discussed the question of pure poetry. He distinguishes another type of pure poetry in addition to the types already mentioned. He calls it the Elliptical, and would include in it symbolist and metaphysical poetry (old and new) and some work by poets such as Collins, Blake, and Browning. He observeswithout any perjorative implication, for he is a critical relativist and scarcely permits himself the luxury of evaluative judgmentsthat the contemporary product differs from older examples of the elliptical type in that the modern poet goes much further in employing private experiences or ideas than would formerly have been thought legitimate. To the common reader, he says, the prime characteristic of this kind of poetry is not the nature of its imagery but its obscurity: its urgent suggestion that you add something to the poem without telling you what that something is. This omitted something he interprets as the prose frameto use his wordthe statement of the occasion, the logical or narrative transitions, the generalized application derived from the poem, etc. In other words, this type of pure poetry contends that the effect would be more powerful if we could somehow manage to feel the images fully and accurately without having the effect diluted by any words put in to give us a meaningthat is, if we could expel all the talk about the imaginative realization and have the pure realization itself. For the moment I shall pass the question of the accuracy of Mr. Pottles description of the impulse of Elliptical Poetry and present the question which ultimately concerns him. How pure does poetry need to be in practice? That is the question which Mr. Pottle asks. He answers by saying that a great degree of impurity may be admitted, and cites our famous didactic poems, The Faerie Queene, An Essay on Man, The Vanity of Human Wishes, The Excursion. That is the only answer which the relativist, and nominalist, can give. Then he turns to what he calls the hardest question in the theory of poetry: What kind of prosaism is acceptable and what is not? His answer, which he advances very modestly, is this: . . . the element of prose is innocent and even salutary when it appears astake your choice of three metaphorsa background on which the images are projected, or a frame in which they are shown, or a thread on which they are strung. In short, when it serves a structural purpose. Prose in a poem seems offensive to me when . . . the prosaisms are sharp, obvious, individual, and ranked coordinately with the images.
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At first glance this looks plausible, and the critic has used the sanctified word structural. But at second glance we may begin to wonder what the sanctified word means to the critic. It means something rather mechanicalbackground, frame, thread. The structure is a showcase, say a jewelers showcase, in which the little jewels of poetry are exhibited, the images. The showcase shouldnt be ornamental itself (sharp, obvious, individual, Mr. Pottle says), for it would then distract us from the jewels; it should be chastely designed, and the jewels should repose on black velvet and not on flowered chintz. But Mr. Pottle doesnt ask what the relation among the bright jewels should be. Not only does the showcase bear no relation to the jewels, but the jewels, apparently, bear no relation to each other. Each one is a shining little focus of heightened interest, and all together they make only such a pattern, perhaps, as may make it easier for the eye to travel from one little jewel to the next, when the time comes to move on. Structure becomes here simply a device of salesmanship, a well-arranged showcase. It is all mechanical. And this means that Mr. Pottle, after all, is himself an exponent of pure poetry. He locates the poetry simply in the images, the nodes of pure realization. This means that what he calls the element of prose includes definition of situation, movement of narrative, logical transition, factual description, generalization, ideas. Such things, for him, do not participate in the poetic effect of the poem; in fact, they work against the poetic effect, and so, though necessary as a frame, should be kept from being sharp, obvious, individual. I have referred to The Idiom of Poetry, first, because it is such an admirable and provocative book, sane, lucid, generous-spirited, and second, because, to my mind, it illustrates the insidiousness with which a doctrine of pure poetry can penetrate into the theory of a critic who is suspicious of such a doctrine. Furthermore, I have felt that Mr. Pottles analysis might help me to define the common denominator of the various doctrines of pure poetry. That common denominator seems to be the belief that poetry is an essence that is to be located at some particular place in a poem, or in some particular element. The exponent of pure poetry persuades himself that he has determined the particular something in which the poetry inheres, and then proceeds to decree that poems shall be composed, as nearly as possible, of that element and of nothing else. If we add up the things excluded by various critics and practitioners, we get a list like this: 1. ideas, truths, generalizations, meaning 2. precise, complicated, intellectual images 3. unbeautiful, disagreeable, or neutral materials 4. situation, narrative, logical transition 5. realistic details, exact descriptions, realism in general 6. shifts in tone or mood
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7. irony 8. metrical variation, dramatic adaptations of rhythm, cacophony, etc. 9. meter itself 10. subjective and personal elements No one theory of pure poetry excludes all of these items, and, as a matter of fact, the items listed are not on the same level of importance. Nor do the items always bear the same interpretation. For example, if one item seems to be central to discussions of pure poetry, it is the first: ideas, it is said, are not involved in the poetic effect, and may even be inimical to it. But this view can be interpreted in a variety of ways. If it is interpreted as simply meaning that the paraphrase of a poem is not equivalent to the poem, that the poetic gist is not to be defined as the statement embodied in the poem with the sugar-coating as bait, then the view can be held by opponents as well as exponents of any theory of pure poetry. We might scale down from this interpretation to the other extreme interpretation that the poem should merely give the sharp image in isolation. But there are many complicated and confused variations possible between the two extremes. There is, for example, the interpretation that ideas, though they are not involved in the poetic effect, must appear in poems to provide, as Mr. Pottles prosaisms do, a kind of frame, or thread, for the poetrya spine to support the poetic flesh, or a Christmas tree on which the baubles of poetry are hung. T. S. Eliot has said something of this sort: The chief use of the meaning of a poem, in the ordinary sense, may be (for here again I am speaking of some kinds of poetry and not all) to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a bit of nice meat for the house-dog. Here, it would seem, Mr. Eliot has simply inverted the old sugar-coated-pill theory: the idea becomes the sugar-coating and the poetry becomes the medicine. This seems to say that the idea in a poem does not participate in the poetic effect, and seems to commit Mr. Eliot to a theory of pure poetry. But to do justice to the quotation, we should first observe that the parenthesis indicates that the writer is referring to some sort of provisional and superficial distinction and not to a fundamental one, and second observe that the passage is out of its context. In the context, Mr. Eliot goes on to say that some poets become impatient of this meaning [explicit statement of ideas in logical order] which seems superfluous, and perceive possibilities of intensity through its elimination. This may mean either of two things. It may mean that ideas do not participate in the poetic effect, or it may mean that, though they do participate in the poetic effect, they need not appear in the poem in an explicit and argued form. And this
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second reading would scarcely be a doctrine of pure poetry at all, for it would involve poetic casuistry and not poetic principle. We might, however, illustrate the second interpretation by glancing at Marvells Horatian Ode on Cromwell. Marvell does not give us narrative; he does not give us an account of the issues behind the Civil War; he does not state the two competing ideas which are dramatized in the poem, the idea of sanction and the idea of efficiency. But the effect of the poem does involve those two factors; and the reserved irony, scarcely resolved, which emerges from the historical situation, is an irony derived from unstated materials and ideas. It is, to use Mr. Pottles term again, a pure poem in so far as it is elliptical in method, but it is anything but a pure poem if by purity we mean the exclusion of idea from participation in the poetic effect. And Mr. Eliots own practice implies that he believes that ideas do participate in the poetic effect. Otherwise, why did he put the clues to his ideas in the notes at the end of The Waste Land after so carefully excluding any explicit statement of them from the body of the poem? If he is regarding those ideas as mere baitthe bit of nice meat for the house-doghe has put the ideas in a peculiar place, in the back of the booklike giving the dog the meat on the way out of the house with the swag, or giving the mouse the cheese after he is in the trap. All this leads to the speculation that Marvell and Mr. Eliot have purged away statement of ideas from their poems, not because they wanted the ideas to participate less in the poetry, but because they wanted them to participate more fully, intensely, and immediately. This impulse, then, would account for the characteristic types of image, types in which precision, complication, and complicated intellectual relation to the theme are exploited; in other words, they are tryingwhatever may be their final successto carry the movement of mind to the center of the process. On these grounds they are the exact opposite of poets who, presumably on grounds of purity, exclude the movement of mind from the center of poetic processfrom the internal structure of the poembut pay their respects to it as a kind of footnote, or gloss, or application coming at the end. Marvell and Eliot, by their cutting away of frame, are trying to emphasize the participation of ideas in the poetic process. Then Elliptical Poetry is not, as Mr. Pottle says it is, a pure poetry at all; the elliptical poet is elliptical for purposes of inclusion, not exclusion. But waiving the question of Elliptical Poetry, no one of the other theories doesor couldexclude all the items on the list above. And that fact may instruct us. If all of these items were excluded, we might not have any poem at all. For instance, we know how some critics have pointed out that even in the strictest Imagist poetry idea creeps inwhen the image leaves its natural habitat and enters a poem, it begins to mean something. The attempt to read ideas out of the poetic party violates the unity of our being and the unity of our experience. For this reason, as Santayana puts it, philosophy, when a poet is not mindless,
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enters inevitably into his poetry, since it has entered into his life; or rather, the detail of things and the detail of ideas pass equally into his verse, when both alike lie in the path that has led him to his ideal. To object to theory in poetry would be like objecting to words there; for words, too, are symbols without the sensuous character of the things they stand for; and yet it is only by the net of new connections which words throw over things, in recalling them, that poetry arises at all. Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arms length. Does this not, then, lead us to the conclusion that poetry does not inhere in any particular element but depends upon the set of relationships, the structure, which we call the poem? Then the question arises: what elements cannot be used in such a structure? I should answer that nothing that is available in human experience is to be legislated out of poetry. This does not mean that anything can be used in any poem, or that some materials or elements may not prove more recalcitrant than others, or that it might not be easy to have too much of some things. But it does mean that, granted certain contexts, any sort of material, a chemical formula for instance, might appear functionally in a poem. It also may mean that, other things being equal, the greatness of a poet depends upon the extent of the area of experience which he can master poetically. Can we make any generalizations about the nature of the poetic structure? First, it involves resistances, at various levels. There is the tension between the rhythm of the poem and the rhythm of speech (a tension which is very low at the extreme of free verse and at the extreme of verse such as that of Ulalume, which verges toward a walloping doggerel); between the formality of the rhythm and the informality of the language; between the particular and the general, the concrete and the abstract; between the elements of even the simplest metaphor; between the beautiful and the ugly; between ideas (as in Marvells poem); between the elements involved in irony (as in Bells for John Whitesides Daughter or Rose Aylmer); between prosaism and poeticisms (as in Western Wind). This list is not intended to be exhaustive; it is intended to be merely suggestive. But it may be taken to imply that the poet is like the jujitsu expert; he wins by utilizing the resistance of his opponentthe materials of the poem. In other words, a poem, to be good, must earn itself. It is a motion toward a point of rest, but if it is not a resisted motion, it is motion of no consequence. For example, a poem which depends upon stock materials and stock responses is simply a toboggan slide, or a fall through space. And the good poem must, in some way, involve the resistances; it must carry something of the context of its own creation: it must come to terms with Mercutio. This is another way of saying that a good poem involves the participation of the reader; it must, as Coleridge puts it, make the reader into an active creative being. Perhaps we can see this most readily in the case of tragedy: the
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determination of good or evil is not a given in tragedy, it is something to be earned in the process, and even the tragic villain must be loved. We must kill him, as Brutus killed Caesar, not as butchers but as sacrificers. And all of this adds up to the fact that the structure is a dramatic structure, a movement through action toward rest, through complication toward simplicity of effect. In the foregoing discussion, I have deliberately omitted reference to another type of pure poetry, a type which tends to become dominant in an age of political crisis and social disorientation. Perhaps the most sensible description of this type can be found in an essay by Herbert Muller: If it is not the primary business of the poet to be eloquent about these matters [faith and ideals], it still does not follow that he has more dignity or wisdom than those who are, or that he should have more sophistication. At any rate the fact is that almost all poets of the past did freely make large, simple statements, and not in their prosy or lax moments. Mr. Muller then goes on to illustrate by quoting three famous large, simple statements: En la sua volontade nostra pace and We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. and The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Mr. Muller is here attacking the critical emphasis on ironic tension in poetry. His attack really involves two lines of argument. First, the poet is not wiser than the statesman, philosopher, or saint, people who are eloquent about faith and ideals and who say what they mean, without benefit of irony. This Platonic line of argument is, I think, off the point in the present context. Second, the poets of the past have made large, simple affirmations, have said what they meant. This line of argument is very much on the point. Poets have tried very hard, for thousands of years, to say what they mean. Not only have they tried to say what they mean, they have tried to prove what
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they mean. The saint proves his vision by stepping cheerfully into the fires. The poet, somewhat less spectacularly, proves his vision by submitting it to the fires of ironyto the drama of his structurein the hope that the fires will refine it. In other words, the poet wishes to indicate that his vision has been earned, that it can survive reference to the complexities and contradictions of experience. And irony is one such device of reference. In this connection let us look at the first of Mr. Mullers exhibits. The famous line occurs in Canto III of the Paradiso. It is spoken by Piccarda Donati, in answer to Dantes question as to why she does not desire to rise higher than her present sphere, the sphere of the moon. But it expresses, in unequivocal terms, a central theme of the Commedia, as of Christian experience. On the one hand, it may be a pious truism, fit for sampler work, and, on the other hand, it may be a burning conviction, tested and earned. Dante, in his poem, sets out to show how it has been earned and tested. One set of ironic contrasts which centers on this theme concerns, for instance, the opposition between the notion of human justice and the notion of divine justice. The story of Paolo and Francesca is so warm, appealing, and pathetic in its human terms, and their punishment so savage and unrelenting, so incommensurable, it seems, with the fault, that Dante, torn by the conflict, falls down as a dead body falls. Or Farinata, the enemy of Dantes house, is presented by the poet in terms of his human grandeur, which now, in Hell, is transmuted into a superhuman grandeur, com avesse linferno in gran dispitto. Ulysses remains a hero, a hero who should draw special applause from Dante, who defined the temporal end of man as the conquest of knowledge. But Ulysses is damned, as the great Brutus is damned, who hangs from the jaws of the fiend in the lowest pit of traitors. So divine justice is set over against human pathos, human dignity, human grandeur, human intellect, human justice. And we recall how Virgil, more than once, reminds Dante that he must not apply human standards to the sights he sees. It is this long conflict, which appears in many forms, this ironic tension, which finally gives body to the simple eloquence of the line in question; the statement is meaningful, not for what it says, but for what has gone before. It is earned. It has been earned by the entire poem. I do not want to misrepresent Mr. Muller. He does follow his quotations by the sentence: if they are properly qualified in the work as a whole, they may still be taken straight, they are [he italicizes the word] taken so in recollection as in their immediate impact. But how can we take a line straight, in either recollection or immediate impact, unless we ignore what properly qualified the line in the work as a whole? And if we do take it so, are we not violating,
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very definitely, the poets meaning, for the poet means the poem, he doesnt mean the line. It would be interesting to try to develop the contexts of the other passages which Mr. Muller quotes. But in any case, he is simply trying, in his essay, to guard against what he considers to be, rightly or wrongly, a too narrow description of poetry; he is not trying to legislate all poetry into the type of simple eloquence, the unqualified statement of faith and ideals. But we have also witnessed certain, probably preliminary, attempts to legislate literature into becoming a simple, unqualified, pure statement of faith and ideals. We have seen the writers of the 1920s called the irresponsibles. We have seen writers such as Proust, Eliot, Dreiser, and Faulkner called writers of the death drive. Why are these writers condemned? Because they have tried, within the limits of their gifts, to remain faithful to the complexities of the problems with which they are dealing, because they have refused to take the easy statement as solution, because they have tried to define the context in which, and the terms by which, faith and ideals may be earned. This method, however, will scarcely satisfy the mind which is hot for certainties; to that mind it will seem merely an index to lukewarmness, indecision, disunity, treason. The new theory of purity would purge out all complexities and all ironies and all self-criticism. And this theory will forget that the hand-medown faith, the hand-me-down ideals, no matter what the professed content, is in the end not only meaningless but vicious. It is vicious because, as parody, it is the enemy of all faith.
QQQ
1951Harold C. Goddard. Romeo and Juliet , from The Meaning of Shakespeare

Harold C. Goddard (18781950) was head of the English Department at Swarthmore College. One of the most important twentieth-century books on Shakespeare is his The Meaning of Shakespeare, published after his death.
One word has dominated the criticism of Romeo and Juliet: star-crossd. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
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says the Prologue-Chorus, A pair of star-crossd lovers take their life. Star-crossd backed by fatal has pretty much surrendered this drama to the astrologers. In this play, says one such interpreter, simply the Fates have taken this young pair and played a cruel game against them with loaded dice, unaided by any evil in men. That is merely an extreme expression of the widely held view that makes Romeo and Juliet, in contrast with all Shakespeares later tragedies, a tragedy of accident rather than of character and on that account a less profound and less universal work. That this play betrays signs of immaturity and lacks some of the marks of mastery that are common to the other tragedies may readily be granted. But that its inferiority is due to the predominance of accident over character ought not to be conceded without convincing demonstration. The burden of proof is certainly on those who assert it, for nowhere else does Shakespeare show any tendency to believe in fate in this sense. The integrity of his mind makes it highly unlikely that in just one instance he would have let the plot of the story he was dramatizing warp his convictions about freedom. The theme of Romeo and Juliet is love and violence and their interactions. In it these two mightiest of mighty opposites meet each other squarelyand one wins. And yet the other wins. This theme in itself makes Romeo and Juliet an astrological play in the sense that it is concerned throughout with Venus and Mars, with love and war, and with little else. Nothing ever written perhaps presents more simply what results from the conjunction of these two planets. But that does not make it a fatalistic drama. It all depends on what you mean by stars. If by stars you mean the material heavenly bodies exercising from birth a predestined and inescapable occult influence on man, Romeo and Juliet were no more star-crossed than any lovers, even though their story was more unusual and dramatic. But if by stars you meanas the deepest wisdom of the ages, ancient and modern, doesa psychological projection on the planets and constellations of the unconsciousness of man, which in turn is the accumulated experience of the race, then Romeo and Juliet and all the other characters of the play are starcrossed as every human being is who is passionately alive. In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot, We are betrayed by what is false within. The villain need not be a conspicuous incarnation of evil like Richard III or Iago; the hero himself may be the villain by being a conspicuous incarnation of weakness as was another Richard or a Troilus. Or the villain may consist in
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a certain chemical interplay of the passions of two or more characters. To seek a special tragic flaw in either Romeo or Juliet is foolish and futile. From pride down, we all have flaws enough to make of every life and of life itself a perpetual and universal tragedy. Altering his source to make the point unmistakable, Shakespeare is at pains to show that, however much the feud between Capulets and Montagues had to do with it incidentally, the tragedy of this play flowed immediately from another cause entirely. But of that in its place. Enough now if we have raised a suspicion that the star-crossd of the Prologue should be taken in something other than a literal sense, or, better, attributed to the Chorus; not to the poet. The two are far from being the same.1 In retrospect, Shakespeares plays, which in one sense culminate in King Lear and in another, in The Tempest, are seen to deal over and over with the same underlying subject that dominates the Greek drama: the relation of the generations. Romeo and Juliet, as the first play of its author in which this subject is central, assumes a profound seminal as well as intrinsic interest on that account. It points immediately in this respect to Henry IV and Hamlet, and ultimately to King Lear and The Tempest. This theme of the fathers is merely another way of expressing the theme of the stars. For the fathers are the stars and the stars are the fathers in the sense that the fathers stand for the accumulated experience of the past, for tradition, for authority and hence for the two most potent forces that mold and so impart destiny to the childs life. Those forces, of course, are heredity and training, which between them create that impalpable mental environment, inner and outer, that is even more potent than either of them alone. The hatred of the hostile houses in Romeo and Juliet is an inheritance that every member of these families is born into as truly as he is born with the name Capulet or Montague. Their younger generations have no more choice in the matter than they have choice of the language they will grow up to speak. They suck in the venom with their milk. So is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father, as Portia puts it in The Merchant of Venice. The daughter may be a son and the father may be living, but the principle is the same. Thus the fathers cast the horoscopes of the children in advanceand are in that sense their stars. If astrology is itself, as it is, a kind of primitive and unconscious psychology, then the identity of the stars and the fathers becomes even more pronounced. Now there is just one agency powerful enough in youth to defy and cut across this domination of the generations, and that is love. Love is a star but in another and more celestial sense. Romeo, of the Montagues, after a sentimental and unrequited languishing after one Rosaline, falls in love at first sight with Juliet, of the Capulets, and instantly the instilled enmity of generations is dissipated like mist by morning sunshine, and the love that embraces Juliet embraces everything that Juliet touches or that touches her.
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My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. The wordsmusic, imagery, and thought uniting to make them as wonderful as any ever uttered about loveare Juliets, but Romeos love is as deepalmost. It is loves merit, not his, that his enemies suddenly become glorified with the radiance of the medium through which he now sees everything. Hostility simply has nothing to breathe in such a transcendental atmosphere. It is through this effect of their love on both lovers, and the poetry in which they spontaneously embody it, that Shakespeare convinces us it is no mere infatuation, but love indeed in its divine sense. Passion it is, of course, but that contaminated term has in our day become helpless to express it. Purity would be the perfect word for it if the world had not forgotten that purity is simply Greek for fire. Shakespeare sees to it that we shall not mistake this white flame of Romeos love, or Juliets, for anything lower by opposing to the lovers two of the impurest characters he ever created, Mercutio and the Nurse. And yet, in spite of them, it has often been so mistaken. Mercutio and the Nurse are masterpieces of characterization so irresistible that many are tempted to let them arrogate to themselves as virtue what is really the creative merit of their maker. They are a highly vital pair, brimming with life and firebut fire in a less heavenly sense than the one just mentioned. Juliet, at the most critical moment of her life, sums up the Nurse to all eternity in one word. When, in her darkest hour, this woman who has acted as mother to her from birth goes back on her completely, in a flash of revelation the girl sees what she is, and, reversing in one second the feeling of a lifetime, calls her a fiend (most wicked fiend). She could not have chosen a more accurate term, for the Nurse is playing at the moment precisely the part of the devil in a morality play. And Juliets ancient damnation is an equally succinct description of her sin. What more ancient damnation is there than sensualityand all the other sins it brings in its train? Those who dismiss the Nurse as just a coarse old woman whose loquacity makes us laugh fail hopelessly to plumb the depth of her depravity. It was the Nurses desertion of her that drove Juliet to Friar Laurence and the desperate expedient of the sleeping potion. Her cowardice was a link in the chain that led to Juliets death. The Nurse has sometimes been compared with Falstaffperhaps the poets first comic character who clearly surpassed her. Any resemblance between them is superficial, for they are far apart as the poles. Falstaff was at home in low places but the sun of his imagination always accompanied him as a sort of disinfectant. The Nurse had no imagination in any proper sense. No sensualistcertainly no old sensualistever has. Falstaff loved Hal. What the Nurses love for Juliet
II
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amounted to is revealed when she advises her to make the best of a bad situation and take Paris (bigamy and all). The man she formerly likened to a toad suddenly becomes superior to an eagle. Go, counsellor, cries Juliet, repudiating her Satan without an instants hesitation, Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. It is the rejection of the Nurse. But unlike Falstaff, when he is rejected, she carries not one spark of our sympathy or pity with her, and a pathetic account of her death, as of his, would be unthinkable. We scorn her utterly as Juliet does. The contrast between Friar Laurence and the Nurse even the most casual reader or spectator could scarcely miss. The difference between the spiritual adviser of Romeo and the worldly confidant of Juliet speaks for itself. The resemblance of Mercutio to the Nurse is more easily overlooked, together with the analogy between the part he plays in Romeos life and the part she plays in Juliets. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that the entire play is built around that resemblance and that analogy. The indications abound that Shakespeare created these two to go together. To begin with, they hate each other on instinct, as two rival talkers generally do, showing how akin they are under the skin. A gentleman, nurse, says Romeo of Mercutio, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. The cap which Romeo thus quite innocently hands the Nurse fits her so perfectly that she immediately puts it on in two speeches about Mercutio which are typical examples of her love of hearing herself talk and of saying things she is powerless to stand by: An a speak any thing against me, Ill take him down, an a were lustier than he is, and twenty such Jacks; and if I cannot, Ill find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates. (Turning to Peter, her man) And thou must stand by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure! . . . Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave! That last, and the tone of the whole, show that there was a genuinely vicious element in the Nurse under her superficial good nature, as there invariably is in an old sensualist; and I do not believe it is exceeding the warrant of the text to say that the rest of the speech in which she warns Romeo against gross behavior
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toward her young gentlewomanquite in the manner of Polonius and Laertes warning Ophelia against Hamletproves that in her heart she would have been delighted to have him corrupt her provided she could have shared the secret and been the go-between. A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! is Mercutios succinct description of her. But, as usual, when a man curses someone else, he characterizes himself. In what sense Mercutio is a bawd appears only too soon. In the meantime what a pity it is that he is killed off so early in the action as to allow no full and final encounter between these two fountains of loquacity! Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly. Mercutio himself says it in another connection, but it applies perfectly to this incomparable pair. Their roles are crowded with parallelisms even down to what seem like the most trivial details. Well to dinner thither, says Mercutio, for example, parting from Romeo in Act II, scene 4. Go, Ill to dinner, says the Nurse on leaving Juliet at the end of scene 5. A tiny touch. But they are just the two who would be certain never to miss a meal. In Shakespeare even such trifles have significance. The fact is that Mercutio and the Nurse are simply youth and old age of the same type. He is aimed at the same goal she has nearly attained. He would have become the same sort of old man that she is old woman, just as she was undoubtedly the same sort of young girl that he is young man. They both think of nothing but sexexcept when they are so busy eating or quarreling that they can think of nothing. (I havent forgotten Queen Mab; Ill come to her presently.) Mercutio cannot so much as look at the clock without a bawdy thought. So permeated is his language with indecency that most of it passes unnoticed not only by the innocent reader but by all not schooled in Elizabethan smut. Even on our own unsqueamish stage an unabridged form of his role in its twentiethcentury equivalent would not be tolerated. Why does Shakespeare place the extreme example of this mans soiled fantasies precisely before the balcony scene? Why but to stress the complete freedom from sensuality of Romeos passion? Place Mercutios dirtiest words, as Shakespeare does, right beside Romeos apostrophe to his bright angel and all the rest of that scene where the lyricism of young love reaches one of its loftiest pinnacles in all poetryand what remains to be said for Mercutio? Nothingexcept that he is Mercutio. His youth, the hot weather, the southern temperament, the fashion among Italian gentlemen of the day, are unavailing pleas; not only Romeo, but, Benvolio, had those things to contend with also. And they escaped. Mercury is close to the sun. But it was the material sun, Sol, not the god, Helios, that Mercutio was close to. Beyond dispute, this man had vitality, wit, and personal magnetism. But personal magnetism combined with sexuality and pugnacity is one of the most dangerous mixtures that can exist. The unqualified laudation that Mercutio has frequently received, and the suggestion that Shakespeare had to kill him off lest he quite set the plays titular hero in the shade, are the best proof of the truth of that
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statement. Those who are themselves seduced by Mercutio are not likely to be good judges of him. It may be retorted that Mercutio is nearly always a success on the stage, while Romeo is likely to be insipid. The answer to that is that while Mercutios are relatively common, Romeos are excessively rare. If Romeo proves insipid, he has been wrongly cast or badly acted. But how about Queen Mab? it will be asked. The famous description of her has been widely held to be quite out of character and has been set down as an outburst of poetry from the author put arbitrarily in Mercutios mouth. But the judgment out of character should always be a last resort. Undoubtedly the lines, if properly his, do reveal an unsuspected side of Mercutio. The prankish delicacy of some of them stands out in pleasing contrast with his grosser aspects. The psychology of this is sound. The finer side of a sensualist is suppressed and is bound to come out, if at all, incidentally, in just such a digression as this seems to be. Shakespeare can be trusted not to leave such things out. Few passages in his plays, however, have been more praised for the wrong reasons. The account of Queen Mab is supposed to prove Mercutios imagination: under his pugnacity there was a poet. It would be nearer the truth, I think, to guess that Shakespeare put it in as an example of what poetry is popularly held to be and is not. The lines on Queen Mab are indeed delightful. But imagination in any proper sense they are not. They are sheer fancy. Moreover, Mercutios anatomy and philosophy of dreams prove that he knows nothing of their genuine import. He dubs them the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy. Perhaps his arethe Queen Mab lines would seem to indicate as much. Romeo, on the other hand, holds that dreamers dream things true, and gives a definition of them that for combined brevity and beauty would be hard to better. They are loves shadows. And not only from what we can infer about his untold dream on this occasion, but from all the dreams and premonitions of both Romeo and Juliet throughout the play, they come from a fountain of wisdom somewhere beyond time. Primitives distinguish between big and little dreams. (Aeschylus makes the same distinction in Prometheus Bound.) Mercutio, with his aldermen and gnats and coach-makers and sweetmeats and parsons and drums and ambuscadoes, may tell us a little about the littlest of little dreams. He thinks that dreamers are still in their day world at night. Both Romeo and Juliet know that there are dreams that come from as far below the surface of that world as was that prophetic tomb at the bottom of which she saw him as one dead at their last parting. Finally, how characteristic of Mercutio that he should make Queen Mab a midwife and blemish his description of her by turning her into a hag whose function is to bring an end to maidenhood. Is this another link between Mercutio and the Nurse? Is
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Shakespeare here preparing the way for his intimation that she would be quite capable of assisting in Juliets corruption? It might well be. When Shakespeare writes a speech that seems to be out of character, it generally, as in this case, deserves the closest scrutiny. And there is another justification of the Queen Mab passage. Romeo and Juliet not only utter poetry; they are poetry. The loveliest comment on Juliet I ever heard expressed this to perfection. It was made by a girl only a little older than Juliet herself. When Friar Laurence recommends philosophy to Romeo as comfort in banishment, Romeo replies: Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet . . . It helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more. Philosophy cant, the girl observed, but poetry canand it did! Over against the poetry of Juliet, Shakespeare was bound, by the demands of contrast on which all art rests, to offer in the course of his play examples of poetry in various verbal, counterfeit, or adulterate estates. This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him, only lacks a cover. That is Lady Capulet on the prospective bridegroom, Paris. It would have taken the plays booby prize for poetry if Capulet himself had not outdone it in his address to the weeping Juliet: How now! a conduit, girl? What, still in tears? Evermore showering? In one little body Thou counterfeitst a bark, a sea, a wind; For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is, Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs; Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them, Without a sudden calm, will overset Thy tempest-tossed body. It is almost as if Shakespeare were saying in so many words: That is how poetry is not written. Yet, a little later, when the sight of his daughter, dead as all suppose, shakes even this egotist into a second of sincerity, he can say: Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
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There is poetry, deep down, even in Capulet. But the instant passes and he is again talking about death as his son-in-lawand all the rest. The Nurses vain repetitions in this scene are further proof that she is a heathen. Her Olamentable-days only stress the lack of one syllable of genuine grief or love such as Juliets father shows. These examples all go to show what Shakespeare is up to in the Queen Mab speech. It shines, and even seems profound, beside the utterances of the Capulets and the Nurse. But it fades and grows superficial, beside Juliets and Romeos. It is one more shade of what passes for poetry but is not. The crisis of Romeo and Juliet, so far as Romeo is concerned, is the scene (just after the secret marriage of the two lovers) in which Mercutio and Tybalt are slain and Romeo banished. It is only two hundred lines long. Of these two hundred lines, some forty are introduction and sixty epilogue to the main action. As for the other hundred that come between, it may be doubted whether Shakespeare to the end of his career ever wrote another hundred that surpassed them in the rapidity, inevitability, and psychologic truth of the succession of events that they comprise. There are few things in dramatic literature to match them. And yet I think they are generally misunderstood. The scene is usually taken as the extreme precipitation in the play of the CapuletMontague feud; whereas Shakespeare goes out of his way to prove that at most the feud is merely the occasion of the quarrel. Its cause he places squarely in the temperament and character of Mercutio, and Mercutio, it is only too easy to forget, is neither a Capulet nor a Montague, but a kinsman of the Prince who rules Verona, and, as such, is under special obligation to preserve a neutral attitude between the two houses. This will sound to some like mitigating the guilt of Tybalt. But Tybalt has enough to answer for without making him responsible for Mercutios sins. The nephew of Lady Capulet is as dour a son of pugnacity as Mercutio is a dashing one: What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell. These wordsalmost the first he speaks in the playgive Tybalts measure. More than prince of cats, Mercutio calls him, which is elevated to king of cats in the scene in which he mounts the throne of violence. (It is a comment on the Nurses insight into human nature that she speaks of this fashionable desperado as O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman!) Mercutios contempt for Tybalt is increased by the latters affectation of the latest form in fencing: He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion. . . . The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents!
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Yet but a moment later, in an exchange of quips with Romeo, we find Mercutio doing with his wit just what he has scorned Tybalt for doing with his sword. For all their differences, as far as fighting goes Mercutio and Tybalt are two of a kind and by the formers rule are predestined to extinction: an there were two such, we should rule none shortly, for one would kill the other. When one kills the other, there is not one left, but none. That is the arithmetic of it. The encounter is not long postponed. Tybalt is outraged when he discovers that a Montague has invaded the Capulet mansion on the occasion of the ball when Romeo first sees Juliet. But for his uncle he would assail the intruder on the spot: Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting Makes my flesh tremble2 in their different greeting. I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall. He is speaking of the clash between patience and provocation in himself, But he might be prophesying his meeting with Romeo. As the third act opens, he is hunting his man. Tybalt is not the only one who is seeking trouble. The first forty lines of the crisis scene are specifically devised to show that Mercutio was out to have a fight under any and all circumstances and at any price. As well ask a small boy and a firecracker to keep apart as Mercutio and a quarrel. Sensuality and pugnacity are the poles of his nature. In the latter respect he is a sort of Mediterranean Hotspur, his frank southern animality taking the place of the idealistic honour of his northern counterpart. He is as fiery in a literal as Romeo is in a poetic sense. The scene is a public place. Enter Mercutio and Benvolio. Benvolio knows his friend: I pray thee, good Mercutio, lets retire. The day is hot, the Capulets abroad, And, if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl, For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring. Mercutio retorts with a description of the cool-tempered Benvolio that makes him out an inveterate hothead: Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more, or a hair less, in his beard, than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is
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as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter? with another, for tying his new shoes with old riband? This, the cautious and temperate Benvolio! As Mercutio knows, it is nothing of the sort. It is an ironic description of himself. It is he, not his friend, who will make a quarrel out of anythingout of nothing, rather, and give it a local habitation and a name, as a poet does with the creatures of his imagination. Mercutio is pugnacity in its pure creative state. At the risk of the Princes anger, he makes his friend Romeos cause his own and roams the streets in the hope of encountering some Capulet with whom to pick a quarrel. The feud is only a pretext. If it hadnt been that, it would have been something else. The Chorus may talk about stars, but in this case Mars does not revolve in the skies on the other side of the Earth from Venus, but resides on earth right under the jerkin of this particular impulsive youth, Mercutio. Or if this fate be a god rather than a planet, then Mercutio has opened his heart and his home to him with unrestrained hospitality. So Romeo, is indeed star-crossd in having Mercutio for a friend. Mercutio has no sooner finished his topsy-turvy portrait of Benvolio than Tybalt and his gang come in to reveal which of the two the description fits. Tybalt is searching for Romeo, to whom he has just sent a challenge, and recognizing Romeos friends begs a word with one of you. He wishes, presumably, to ask where Romeo is. But Mercutio, bent on provocation, retorts, make it a word and a blow. Benvolio tries in vain to intervene. Just as things are getting critical, Romeo enters, and Tybalt turns from Mercutio to the man he is really seeking: Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford No better term than this,thou art a villain. Here is the most direct and galling of insults. Here are Mercutio, Benvolio, and the rest waiting to see how Romeo will take it. The temperature is blistering in all senses. And what does Romeo say? Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee Doth much excuse the appertaining rage To such a greeting; villain am I none; Therefore farewell; I see thou knowst me not.
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We who are in the secret know that the reason is Juliet and that his love for her is capable of wrapping all Capulets in its miraculous mantle, even the king of cats. But Tybalt is intent on a fight and will not be put off by kindness however sincere or deep. Boy, he comes back insolently, this shall not excuse the injuries That thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw. Romeo, however, is in the power of something that makes him impervious to insults: I do protest I never injurd thee, But love thee better than thou canst devise Till thou shalt know the reason of my love; And so, good Capulet,which name I tender As dearly as my own,be satisfied. The world has long since decided what to think of a man who lets himself be called a villain without retaliating. Romeo, to put it in one word, proves himself, according to the worlds code, a mollycoddle. And indeed a mollycoddle might act exactly as Romeo appears to. But if Romeo is a mollycoddle, then Jesus was a fool to talk about loving ones enemies, for Romeo, if anyone ever did, is doing just that at this moment. And Juliet was demented to talk about love being boundless and infinite, for here Romeo is about to prove that faith precisely true. Those who think that Jesus, and Juliet, and Romeo were fools will have plenty of backing. The fathers will be on their side. They will have the authority of the ages and the crowd. Only a philosopher or two, a few lovers, saints, and poets will be against them. The others will echo the O calm, dishonourable, vile submission! with which Mercutio draws his rapier and begins hurling insults at Tybalt that make Tybalts own seem tame: Mercutio: Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk? Tybalt: What wouldst thou have with me? Mercutio: Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives. And Mercutio threatens to stick him before he can draw if he does not do so instantly. What can Tybalt do but draw? I am for you, he cries, as he does so.
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Such, however, is the power of Romeos love that even now he attempts to prevent the duel: Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up. But Mercutio pays no attention and the two go to it. If ever a quarrel scene defined the central offender and laid the responsibility at one mans door, this is the scene and Mercutio is the man. It takes two to make a quarrel. Romeo, the Montague, will not fight. Tybalt, the Capulet, cannot fight if Romeo will not. With Mercutio Tybalt has no quarrel. The poet takes pains to make that explicit in a startling way. Peace be with you, sir, are the words Tybalt addresses to Mercutio when Romeo first enters. That from the man who once cried, As I hate hell. peace! I hate the word,
Now we see why Shakespeare had him say it. It was in preparation for this scene. Thus he lets one word exonerate Tybalt of the responsibility for what ensues between him and Mercutio. And now, condensed into the fractional part of a second, comes the crisis in Romeos life. Not later, when he decides to kill Tybalt, but now. Now is the moment when two totally different universes wait as it were on the turning of a hand. There is nothing of its kind to surpass it in all Shakespeare, not even in Hamlet or King Lear, not, one is tempted to think, in all the drama of the world. Here, if anywhere, Shakespeare shows that the fate we attribute to the stars lies in our own souls. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope. Romeo had free scope. For, if we are free to choose between two compulsions, we are in so far free. Romeo was free to act under the compulsion of force or under the compulsion of loveunder the compulsion of the stars, that is, in either of two opposite senses. Granted that the temptation to surrender to the former was at the moment immeasurably great, the power of the latter, if Juliet spoke true, was greater yet: My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.
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Everything that has just preceded shows that the real Romeo wanted to have utter faith in Juliets faith. Genius trusts its faintest intimation, says Emerson, against the testimony of all history. But Romeo, whose intimations were not faint but strong, falls back on the testimony of all history that only force can overcome force. He descends from the level of love to the level of violence and attempts to part the fighters with his sword. Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons. Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage! Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath Forbidden bandying in Verona streets. Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio! Here, if anywhere, the distinction between drama and poetry becomes clear. Drama is a portrayal of human passions eventuating in acts. Poetry is a picture of life in its essence. On the level of drama, we are with Romeo absolutely. His purpose is noble, his act endearingly impulsive. We echo that purpose and identify ourselves with that act. In theater we do, I mean, and under the aspect of time. But how different under the aspect of eternity! There the scene is a symbolic picture of life itself, of faith surrendering to force, of love trying to gain its end by violenceonly to discover, as it soon does, and as we do too, that what it has attained instead is death. A noble motive never yet saved a man from the consequences of an unwise act, and Romeos own words to Mercutio as he draws his sword are an unconscious confession in advance of his mistake. Having put aside his faith in Juliets faith, his appeal is in the name of law rather than of love: The prince expressly hath forbidden. That, and his good Mercutio, reveal a divided soul. And it is that divided soul, in a last instant of hesitation, that causes an awkward or uncoordinated motion as he interferes and gives the cowardly Tybalt his chance to make a deadly thrust at Mercutio under Romeos arm. If Romeo had only let those two firebrands fight it out, both might have lost blood with a cooling effect on their heated tempers, or, if it had gone to a finish, both might have been killed, as they ultimately were anyway, or, more likely, Mercutio would have killed Tybalt. (An there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other.) In any of these events, the feud between the two houses would not have been involved. As it is, the moment of freedom passes, and the rest is fate. The fallen Mercutio reveals his most appealing side in his good humor, at death. But why his reiterated A plague o both your houses? He is one more character in Shakespeare who doth protest too much. Four times he repeats it, or three and a half to be exact. How ironical of Mercutio to attribute his death to the CapuletMontague feud, when the Capulet who killed him had plainly been
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reluctant to fight with him, and the chief Montague present had begged and begged him to desist. That plague o both your houses is Mercutios unwitting confession that his own intolerable pugnacity, not the feud at all, is responsible. And if that be true, how much that has been written about this tragedy must be retracted. What follows puts a final confirmation on Romeos error in trying to part the duelists by force. With Mercutio dead as a direct result of his interference, what can Romeo say? We heard him fall from love to an appeal to law and order while the fight was on. Now it is over, he descends even lower as he bemoans his, reputation staind with Tybalts slander. Reputation! Iagos word. O sweet Juliet, Thy beauty hath made me effeminate And in my temper softend valours steel! Were ever words more tragically inverted? That fire should soften metal must have seemed a miracle to the man who first witnessed it. How much greater the miracle whereby beauty melts violence into love! That is the miracle that was on the verge of occurring in Romeo and Juliet. Instead, Benvolio enters to announce Mercutios death. Whereat Romeo, throwing the responsibility of his own mistake on destiny, exclaims: This days black fate on more days doth depend; This but begins the woe others must end. Could words convey more clearly the fact that the crisis has passed? Freedom has had its instant. The consequences are now in control. Tybalt re-enters. Does Romeo now remember that his love for Juliet makes every Capulet sacred? Does he recall his last words to her as he left the orchard at dawn? Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! Does he now use his sword merely to prevent bloodshed? Away to heaven, respective lenity, he cries, implying without realizing it the infernal character of his decision, And fire-eyd fury be my conduct now!
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Fury! Shakespeares invariable word for animal passion in man gone mad. And in that fury Romeos willingness to forgive is devoured like a flower in a furnace: Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again That late thou gavst me; for Mercutios soul Is but a little way above our heads, Staying for thine to keep him company. Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him. The spirit of Mercutio does indeed enter Romeos body, and though it is Tybalt who is to go with the slain man literally, it is Romeo who goes with him in the sense that he accepts his code and obeys his ghost. Drawing his rapier, he sends Tybalt to instant deathto the immense gratification of practically everyone in the audience, so prone are we in the theater to surrender to the ancestral emotions. How many a mother, suspecting the evil influence of some companion on her small son, has put her arms about him in a desperate gesture of protection. Yet that same mother will attend a performance of Romeo and Juliet, and, seduced by the crowd, will applaud Romeos capitulation to the spirit of Mercutio to the echo. So frail is the tenderness of the mothers in the face of the fathers. In this respect the scene is like the court scene in The Merchant of Venice when we gloat over Shylocks discomfiture. Here, as there, not only our cooler judgment when we are alone but all the higher implications of the tragedy call for a reversal of our reaction when with the crowd. In this calmer retrospect, we perceive that between his heros entrance and exit in this scene Shakespeare has given us three Romeos, or, if you will, one Romeo in three universes. First we see him possessed by love and a spirit of universal forgiveness. From this he falls, first to reason and an appeal to law, then to violencebut violence in a negative or preventive sense. Finally, following Mercutios death, he passes under the control of passion and fury, abetted by honour, and thence to vengeance and offensive violence. In astrological terms, he moves from Venus, through the Earth, to Mars. It is as if Dantes Divine Comedy were compressed into eighty lines and presented in reverseRomeo in an inverted pilgrimage passing from Paradise, through Purgatory, to the Inferno. This way of taking the scene acquits Romeo of doing wrong, unless we may be said to do wrong whenever we fail to live up to our highest selves. Love is a realm beyond good and evil. Under the aspect of time, of common sense, possibly even of reason and morality, certainly of honour, Romeos conduct in the swift succession of events that ended in Tybalts death was unexceptionable. What else could he have done? But under the aspect of eternity, which is poetrys aspect, it was less than that. We cannot blame a man because he does
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not perform a miracle. But when he offers proof of his power and the very next moment has the opportunity to perform one, and does not, the failure is tragic. Such was the failure of Romeo. And he himself admits it in so many words. Death, like love, lifts us for a moment above time. Just before he drinks the poison, catching sight of the body of Tybalt in the Capulet vault, Romeo cries, Forgive me, cousin. Why should he ask forgiveness for what he did in honor, if honor be the guide to what is right? Romeo as an honorable man avenges his friend. But in proving himself a man in this sense, he proves himself less than the perfect lover. Give all to love, says Emerson: Give all to love . . . Tis a brave master; Let it have scope: Follow it utterly, Hope beyond hope . . . Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive. Juliets love had bestowed on Romeo power to bring down a god, to pass even beyond the biblical seventy times seven to what Emily Bront calls the first of the seventy-first. But he did not. The play is usually explained as a tragedy of the excess of love. On the contrary it is the tragedy of a deficiency of it. Romeo did not follow it utterly, did not give quite all to love. Romeos mental condition following the death of Tybalt is proof of the treason he has committed against his own soul. Up to this point in the scene, as we saw, Shakespeare has given us three Romeos. Now he gives us a fourth: the man rooted to the spot at the sight of what he has done. The citizens have heard the tumult and are coming. Stand not amazd, cries Benvolioand it is a case where one poets words seem to have been written to illuminate anothers. Wordsworths lines are like a mental stage direction for the dazed Romeo: Action is transitorya step, a blow, The motion of a musclethis way or that Tis done; and in the after-vacancy We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed: Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And has the nature of infinity.
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O! I am Fortunes fool, cries Romeo. Loves not Times fool, says Shakespeare, as if commenting on this very scene, in that confession of his own faith, the 116th sonnet: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worths unknown, although his height be taken. There is an astrology at the opposite pole from that of the Chorus to this play. Romeos love looked on a tempestand it was shaken. He apparently has just strength enough left to escape and seek refuge in Friar Laurences cell, where, at the word of his banishment, we find him on the floor, Taking the measure of an unmade grave, in a fit of that suicidal despair that so often treads on the heels of fury. It is not remorse for having killed Tybalt that accounts for his condition, nor even vexation with himself for having spoiled his own marriage, but same for having betrayed Juliets faith in the boundlessness of love. Meanwhile, at the scene of the duels, citizens have gathered, followed by the Prince with Capulets and Montagues. Lady Capulet, probably the weakest character in the play, is the first to demand more blood as a solution of the problem: Prince, as thou art true, For blood of ours, shed blood of Montague. But the Prince asks first for a report of what happened. Benvolio, who began this bloody fray? Benvolio mars what is otherwise a remarkably accurate account of the affair by failing utterly to mention Mercutios part in instigating the first duel, placing the entire blame on Tybalt. He is a kinsman to the Montague, cries Lady Capulet, Affection makes him false; he speaks not true. Some twenty of them fought in this black strife, And all those twenty could but kill one life.
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Her sense of reality and character are on a level with her courage. In Capulets orchard, the Nurse brings to Juliet the rope ladder by which her husband is to reach her chamberand with it the news of Tybalts death and Romeos banishment. O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? cries Juliet, O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell, When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Even in the exaggeration of her anguish, Juliet diagnoses what has happened precisely as Shakespeare does: a fiendthe spirit of Mercutiohas taken possession of her lover-husbands body. Contrast her insight at such a moment with the Nurses drivellings: Theres no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjurd, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. Ah, wheres my man? A fair sample of how well her inane generalizations survive the test of concrete need. Back in Friar Laurences cell, the stunned Romeo is like a drunken man vaguely coming to himself after a debauch. When he draws his sword to make away with himself, the Friar restrains him not by his hand,3 as Romeo had once sought to restrain Mercutio at a similarly critical moment, but by the force of his words: Art thou a man? Hold thy desperate hand!
And he seeks to sting him back to manhood by comparing his tears to those of a woman and his fury to that of a beast. Thou hast amazd me . . . . Why railst thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth? Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose.
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No nonsense about star-crossd lovers for Friar Laurence. Shakespeare, like Dante before him and Milton after him, knew where the stars are new, knew that heaven and hell, and even earth, are located within the human soul. Romeo is the skilless soldier who sets afire the powder in his own flask. Juliet too in her despair can think of death. But with what relative calmness and in what a different key! The contrast between the two lovers at this stage is a measure of the respectively innocent and guilty states of their souls. Their meeting at night is left to our imagination, but their parting at dawn is Shakespeares imagination functioning at its highest lyrical intensity, with interwoven symbols of nightingale and lark, darkness and light, death and love. Then follow in swift succession the mothers announcement of her daughters impending marriage with Paris, Juliets ringing repudiation of the idea, the rejection of her, in order, by her father, her mother, and the Nursethe first brutal, the second supine, the third Satanic. And then, with an instantaneousness that can only be called divine, Juliets rejection of the Nurse. In a matter of seconds the child has become a woman. This is the second crisis of the drama, Juliets, which, with Romeos, gives the play its shape as certainly as its two foci determine the shape of an ellipse. If ever two crises were symmetrical, and opposite, these are. Romeo, in a public place, lured insensibly through the influence of Mercutio to the use of force, falls, and as a direct result of his fall, kills Tybalt. Juliet, in her chamber, deserted by her father and mother and enticed to faithlessness by the Nurse, child as she is, never wavers for an instant, puts her tempter behind her, and consents as the price of her fidelity to be buried alive. Can anyone imagine that Shakespeare did not intend this contrast, did not build up his detailed parallelism between Mercutio and the Nurse to effect it? Romeo, as we said, does not give quite all for love. But Juliet does. She performs her miracle and receives supernatural strength as her reward. He fails to perform his and is afflicted with weakness. But eventually her spirit triumphs in him. Had it done so at first, the tragedy would have been averted. Here again the heroine transcends the hero. And yet Romeo had Friar Laurence as adviser while Juliet was brought up by the Nurse! The profounder the truth, the more quietly Shakespeare has a habit of uttering it. It is as if he were saying here that innocence comes from below the sources of pollution and can run the fountain clear. To describe as supernatural the strength that enables Juliet without fear or doubt to undergo the ordeal of the sleeping potion and the burial vault does not seem excessive: Give me, give me! O! tell me not of fear!
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Long beforein the text, not in timewhen she had wondered how Romeo had scaled the orchard wall below her balcony, he had said: With loves light wings did I oerperch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt. Juliet is now about to prove the truth of his words, in a sense Romeo never dreamed of, in that dim monument where Tybalt lies. The hour comes, and after facing the terrors her imagination conjures up, Juliet goes through her dismal scene alone, is found dead, and following a scene that anticipates but reverses Hamlet in that a wedding is turned into a funeral, is placed in the Capulet vault in accordance with Friar Laurences desperate plan. But after force has had its instant way, fate in the guise of fear usually has its protracted way, and to oppose it is like trying to stay an avalanche with your hand. The pestilence prevents the Friars messenger from reaching Romeo. Instead, word is brought to him that Juliet is dead, and, armed with a drug of an apothecary who defies the law against selling poison, he ends his banishment to Mantua and starts back to Verona to seek beside Juliet the eternal banishment of death. The fury with which he threatens his companion Balthasar, on dismissing him when they reach the churchyard, if he should return to pry, reveals Romeos mood: By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs. The time and my intents are savage-wild, More fierce and more inexorable far Than empty tigers or the roaring sea. And when he encounters and slays Paris, the contrast between his death and that of Mercutio, or even Tybalt, shows that we are dealing here not so much with the act of a free agent choosing his course in the present as with the now fatal consequences of an act in the past, of an agent then free but now no longer so. Paris is little more than the branch of a tree that Romeo pushes asideand his death affects us almost as little. It is all like a dream, or madness. Finding the sleepingas he supposes the deadJuliet, Romeo pours out his soul in words which, though incomparable as poetry, err in placing on the innocent heavens the responsibility for his own venial but fatal choice: O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest,
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And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. And then, by one of those strokes that, it sometimes seems, only Shakespeare could achieve, the poet makes Romeo revert to and round out, in parting from Juliet forever, the same metaphor he had used when she first gazed down on him from her balcony and he had tried to give expression to the scope and range of his love. How magically, placed side, by side, the two passages fit together, how tragically they sum up the story: I am no pilot; yet, went thou as far As that vast shore washd with the farthest sea, I would adventure for such merchandise. Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Heres to my love! (Drinks.) O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. (Dies.) Enter Friar Laurencea moment too late. That fear is with him Shakespeare shows by another echo. Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast, the Friar had warned Romeo on dismissing him after his first confession of his love for Juliet, and now he says: How oft to-night Have my old feet stumbled at graves! . . . . . . Fear comes upon me. He discovers the dead Romeo. Just then Juliet awakes. But at the same moment he hears a noise. The watch is coming! He cannot be found here. Come, go, good Juliet, I dare no longer stay, and when she refuses to follow, he deserts her. With a glance into the empty cup in Romeos hand and a kiss on the lips that she hopes keep poison for her ownanticipating touches at the deaths of both Hamlet and Cleopatrashe snatches Romeos dagger and kills herself. Why did Shakespeare, after building up so noble a character as Friar Laurence, permit him to abandon Juliet at so fatal a moment? Why add his name to the so different ones of Capulet, Lady Capulet, and the Nurse, no matter how much better the excuse for his desertion of her? For two reasons, I think: first, to
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show how far the infection of fear extends that Romeos use of force had created. Here is a friar, that trembles, sighs, and weeps, says the Third Watchman, and Laurence himself confesses, when he tells his story, But then a noise did scare me from the tomb. And then, to show that Juliet, abandoned even by religion, must fall back for courage finally on love alone. The pestilence plays a crucial part toward the end of the action. It is a symbol. Whatever literal epidemic there may have been in the region, it is plain that fear is the real pestilence that pervades the play. It is fear of the code of honor, not fate, that drives Romeo to seek vengeance on Tybalt. It is fear of the plague, not accident, that leads to the miscarriage of Friar Laurences message to Romeo. It is fear of poverty, not the chance of his being at hand at the moment, that lets the apothecary sell the poison. It is fear of the part he is playing, not age, that makes Friar Laurences old feet stumble and brings him to the tomb just a few seconds too late to prevent Romeos death. It is fear of being found at such a spot at such a time, not coincidence, that lets him desert Juliet at last just when he does. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. Fear is the evil star that crosses the lovers. And fear resides not in the skies but in the human heart. The tragedy ends in the reconciliation of the two houses, compensation, it is generally held, for the deaths of the two lovers. Doubtless the feud was not renewed in its former form. But much superfluous sentiment has been spent on this ending. Is it not folly to suppose that Capulet or Lady Capulet was spiritually transformed by Juliets death? And as for Montague, the statue of her in pure gold that he promised to erect in Verona is proof in itself how incapable he was of understanding her spirit and how that spirit alone, and not monuments or gold, can bring an end to feuds. (Lady Montague, who died of a broken heart, was far and away the finest of the four parents.) Shakespeares happy endings are, almost without exception, suspect. Or rather they are to be found, if at all, elsewhere than in the last scene and final speeches, and are happy in a quite untheatrical sense. Cynics are fond of saying that if Romeo and Juliet had lived their love would not have lasted. Of course it wouldntin the cynics sense. You can no more ask such love to last than you can ask April to last, or an apple blossom. Yet April and apple blossoms do last and have results that bear no resemblance to what they come fromresults such as apples and Octoberand so does such love. Romeo, in his last words, referred to the phenomenon known as a lightning before death. Here is that lightning, and here, if it have one, is the happy ending of Romeo and Juliet:
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Romeo: If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand. My bosoms lord sits lightly in his throne, And all this day an unaccustomd spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. I dreamt my lady came and found me dead Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think! And breathd such life with kisses in my lips, That I revivd and was an emperor. Ah me! how sweet is love itself possessd, When but loves shadows are so rich in joy! Enter Balthasarwith news of Juliets death. Dreams go by contraries, they say, and this seems to be an example. But is it?
1. See the discussion of the Choruses of Henry V on this point. 2. Nurse (II, iv, 172): Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me quivers. Another revealing analogy. 3. The actor may easily make a mistake here and spoil Shakespeares point.
Notes
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1960Harry Levin. Form and Formality in Romeo and Juliet , from Shakespeare Quarterly
Harry Levin (19121994) was a professor of English at Harvard University. He is the author of Toward Balzac (1948), Perspective of Criticism (1950), Refractions: Essays in Comparative Literature (1966), and Shakespeare and the Revolution of the Times: Perspectives and Commentaries (1976).
Fain would I dwell on form, says Juliet from her window to Romeo in the moonlit orchard below, Fain would I dwell on formfain, fain deny What I have spoke; but farewell compliment! (II.ii.8889)1 Romeo has just violated convention, dramatic and otherwise, by overhearing what Juliet intended to be a soliloquy. Her cousin, Tybalt, had already committed a similar breach of social and theatrical decorum in the scene at the Capulets feast, where he had also recognized Romeos voice to be
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that of a Montague. There, when the lovers first met, the dialogue of their meeting had been formalized into a sonnet, acting out the conceit of his lips as pilgrims, her hand as a shrine, and his kiss as a culminating piece of stagebusiness, with an encore after an additional quatrain: You kiss by th book (I.v.112). Neither had known the identity of the other; and each, upon finding it out, responded with an ominous exclamation coupling love and death (120, 140). The formality of their encounter was framed by the ceremonious character of the scene, with its dancers, its masquers, andexcept for Tybalts stifled outburstits air of old-fashioned hospitality. Well measure them a measure, Benvolio had proposed; but Romeo, unwilling to join the dance, had resolved to be an onlooker and carry a torch (I.iv.10). That torch may have burned symbolically, but not for Juliet; indeed, as we are inclined to forget with Romeo, he attended the feast in order to see the dazzling but soon eclipsed Rosaline. Rosalines prior effect upon him is all that we ever learn about her; yet it has been enough to make Romeo, when he was presented to us, a virtual stereotype of the romantic lover. As such, he has protested a good deal too much in his preliminary speeches, utilizing the conventional phrases and standardized images of Elizabethan eroticism, bandying generalizations, paradoxes, and sestets with Benvolio, and taking a quasi-religious vow which his introduction to Juliet would ironically break (I.ii.9297). Afterward this role has been reduced to absurdity by the humorous man, Mercutio, in a mock-conjuration evoking Venus and Cupid and the inevitable jingle of love and dove (II.i.10). The scene that follows is actually a continuation, marked in neither the Folios nor the Quartos, and linked with what has gone before by a somewhat eroded rhyme. Tis in vain To seek him here that means not to be found, Benvolio concludes in the absence of Romeo (41, 42). Whereupon the latter, on the other side of the wall, chimes in: He jests at scars that never felt a wound. (II.ii.1) Thus we stay behind, with Romeo, when the masquers depart. Juliet, appearing at the window, does not hear his descriptive invocation. Her first utterance is the very sigh that Mercutio burlesqued in the foregoing scene: Ay, me! (II.ii.25). Then, believing herself to be alone and masked by the darkness, she speaks her mind in sincerity and simplicity. She calls into question not merely Romeos name butby implicationall names, forms, conventions, sophistications, and arbitrary dictates of society, as opposed to the appeal of instinct directly conveyed in the odor of a rose. When Romeo takes her at her
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word and answers, she is startled and even alarmed for his sake; but she does not revert to courtly language. I would not for the world they saw thee here, she tells him, and her monosyllabic directness inspires the matching cadence of his response: And but thou love me, let them find me here. (77, 79) She pays incidental tribute to the proprieties with her passing suggestion that, had he not overheard her, she would have dwelt on form, pretended to be more distant, and played the not impossible part of the captious beloved. But farewell compliment! Romeos love for Juliet will have an immediacy which cuts straight through the verbal embellishment that has obscured his infatuation with Rosaline. That shadowy creature, having served her Dulcinea-like purpose, may well be forgotten. On the other hand, Romeo has his more tangible foil in the person of the County Paris, who is cast in that ungrateful part which the Italians call terzo incmodo, the inconvenient third party, the unwelcome member of an amorous triangle. As the official suitor of Juliet, his speeches are always formal, and often sound stilted or priggish by contrast with Romeos. Long after Romeo has abandoned his sonneteering, Paris will pronounce a sestet at Juliets tomb (V.iii.1116). During their only colloquy, which occurs in Friar Laurences cell, Juliet takes on the sophisticated tone of Paris, denying his claims and disclaiming his compliments in brisk stichomythy. As soon as he leaves, she turns to the Friar, and againas so often in intimate momentsher lines fall into monosyllables: O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so, Come weep with mepast hope, past cure, past help! (IV.i.4445) Since the suit of Paris is the main subject of her conversations with her parents, she can hardly be sincere with them. Even before she met Romeo, her consent was hedged in prim phraseology: Ill look to like, if looking liking move. (I.iii.97) And after her involvement she becomes adept in the strategems of mental reservation, giving her mother equivocal rejoinders and rousing her fathers anger by chopping logic (III.v.69205). Despite the intervention of the Nurse on her behalf, her one straightforward plea is disregarded. Significantly Lady Capulet, broaching the theme of Paris in stiffly appropriate couplets, has compared his face to a volume:2
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This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him only lacks a cover. The fish lives in the sea, and tis much pride The fair without the fair within to hide. (I.iii.8990) That bookish comparison, by emphasizing the letter at the expense of the spirit, helps to lend Paris an aspect of unreality; to the Nurse, more ingenuously, he is a man of wax (76). Later Juliet will echo Lady Capulets metaphor, transferring it from Paris to Romeo: Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? (III.ii.8384) Here, on having learned that Romeo has just slain Tybalt, she is undergoing a crisis of doubt, a typically Shakespearian recognition of the difference between appearance and reality. The fair without may not cover a fair within, after all. Her unjustified accusations, leading up to her rhetorical question, form a sequence of oxymoronic epithets: Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, . . . honorable villain! (7579) W. H. Auden, in a recent comment on these lines,3 cannot believe they would come from a heroine who had been exclaiming shortly before: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds . . . ! Yet Shakespeare has been perfectly consistent in suiting changes of style to changes of mood. When Juliet feels at one with Romeo, her intonations are genuine; when she feels at odds with him, they should be unconvincing. The attraction of love is played off against the revulsion from books, and coupled with the closely related themes of youth and haste, in one of Romeos long-drawn-out leavetakings: Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books; But love from love, towards school with heavy looks. (II.ii.157158)3 The school for these young lovers will be tragic experience. When Romeo, assuming that Juliet is dead and contemplating his own death, recognizes the corpse of Paris, he will extend the image to cover them both: O give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortunes book! (V.iii.82) It was this recoil from bookishness, together with the farewell to compliment, that animated Loves Labours Lost, where literary artifice was so ingeniously deployed against itself, and Berowne was taughtby an actual heroine named Rosalinethat the best books were womens eyes. Some of Shakespeares other early comedies came even closer to adumbrating certain
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features of Romeo and Juliet: notably, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, with its locale, its window scene, its friar and rope, its betrothal and banishment, its emphasis upon the vagaries of love. Shakespeares sonnets and erotic poems had won for him the reputation of an English Ovid. Romeo and Juliet, the most elaborate product of his so-called lyrical period, was his first successful experiment in tragedy.4 Because of that very success, it is hard for us to realize the full extent of its novelty, though scholarship has lately been reminding us of how it must have struck contemporaries.5 They would have been surprised, and possibly shocked, at seeing lovers taken so seriously. Legend, it had been heretofore taken for granted, was the proper matter for serious drama; romance was the stuff of the comic stage. Romantic tragedyan excellent conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet, to cite the title-page of the First Quartowas one of those contradictions in terms which Shakespeare seems to have delighted in resolving. His innovation might be described as transcending the usages of romantic comedy, which are therefore very much in evidence, particularly at the beginning. Subsequently, the leading characters acquire together a deeper dimension of feeling by expressly repudiating the artificial language they have talked and the superficial code they have lived by. Their formula might be that of the anti-Petrarchan sonnet: Foole said My muse to mee, looke in thy heart and write.6 An index of this development is the incidence of rhyme, heavily concentrated in the First Act, and its gradual replacement by a blank verse which is realistic or didactic with other speakers and unprecedentedly limpid and passionate with the lovers. Love has no need of euphony, the eminent Russian translator of the play, Boris Pasternak, has commented. Truth, not sound, dwells in its heart.7 Comedy set the pattern of courtship, as formally embodied in a dance. The other genre of Shakespeares earlier stagecraft, history, set the pattern of conflict, as formally embodied in a duel. Romeo and Juliet might also be characterized as an anti-revenge play, in which hostile emotions are finally pacified by the interplay of kindlier ones. Romeo sums it up in his prophetic oxymorons: Heres much to do with hate, but more with love. Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! (I.i.162164) And Paris, true to type, waxes grandiose in lamenting Juliet: O love! O life! not life, but love in death! (IV.v.58)
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Here, if we catch the echo from Hieronimos lament in The Spanish Tragedy, O life! no life, but lively form of death, we may well note that the use of antithesis, which is purely decorative with Kyd, is functional with Shakespeare. The contrarieties of his plot are reinforced on the plane of imagery by omnipresent reminders of light and darkness,8 youth and age, and many other antitheses subsumed by the all-embracing one of Eros and Thanatos, the leitmotif of the Liebestod, the myth of the tryst in the tomb. This attraction of ultimate oppositeswhich is succinctly implicit in the Elizabethan ambiguity of the verb to dieis generalized when the Friar rhymes womb with tomb, and particularized when Romeo hails the latter place as thou womb of death (I.iii.9, 10; V.iii.45). Hence the extremities of the situation, as the Prologue to the Second Act announces, are tempered with extreme sweet (14). Those extremes begin to meet as soon as the initial prologue, in a sonnet disarmingly smooth, has set forth the feud between the two households, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean (4). Elegant verse yields to vulgar prose, and to an immediate riot, as the servants precipitate a renewalfor the third timeof their masters quarrel. The brawl of Act I is renewed again in the contretemps of Act III and completed by the swordplay of Act V. Between the street-scenes, with their clashing welter of citizens and officers, we shuttle through a series of interiors, in a flurry of domestic arrangements and family relationships. The house of the Capulets is the logical center of action, and Juliets chamber its central sanctum. Consequently, the sphere of privacy encloses Acts II and IV, in contradistinction to the public issues raised by the alternating episodes. The temporal alternation of the play, in its accelerating continuity, is aptly recapitulated by the impatient rhythm of Capulets speech: Day, night, late, early, At home, abroad, alone, in company, Waking or sleeping . . . (III.v.177179) The alignment of the dramatis personae is as symmetrical as the antagonism they personify. It is not without relevance that the names of the feuding families, like the Christian names of the hero and heroine, are metrically interchangeable (though Juliet is more frequently a trochee than an amphimacer). Tybalt the Capulet is pitted against Benvolio the Montague in the first street-fight, which brings outwith parallel stage-directionsthe heads of both houses restrained by respective wives. Both the hero and heroine are paired with others, Rosaline and Paris, and admonished by elderly confidants, the Friar and the Nurse. Escalus, as Prince of Verona, occupies a superior and neutral position; yet, in the
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interchange of blood for blood, he loses a brace of kinsman, Paris and Mercutio (V.iii.295). Three times he must quell and sentence the rioters before he can pronounce the final sestet, restoring order to the city-state through the lovers sacrifice. He effects the resolution by summoning the patriarchal enemies, from their opposite sides, to be reconciled. Capulet, Montague, he sternly arraigns them, and the polysyllables are brought home by monosyllabics: See what a scourge is laid upon your hate That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love. (291293) The two-sided counterpoise of the dramatic structure is well matched by the dynamic symmetry of the antithetical style. One of its peculiarities, which surprisingly seems to have escaped the attention of commentators, is a habit of stressing a word by repeating it within a line, a figure which may be classified in rhetoric as a kind of ploce. I have cited a few examples incidentally; let me now underline the device by pointing out a few more. Thus Montague and Capulet are accused of forcing their parties To wield old partisans in hands as old, Cankred with peace, to part your cankred hate. (I.i.100, 102) This double instance, along with the wordplay on cankred, suggests the embattled atmosphere of partisanship through the halberds; and it is further emphasized in Benvolios account of the fray: Came more and more, and fought on part and part. (122) The key-words are not only doubled but affectionately intertwined, when Romeo confides to the Friar: As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine. (II.iii.59) Again, he conveys the idea of reciprocity by declaring that Juliet returns grace for grace and love for love (86). The Friars warning hints at poetic justice: These violent delights have violent ends. (II.vi.9) Similarly Mercutio, challenged by Tybalt, turns point to point, and the Nurse finds Julietin antimetaboleBlubbring and weeping, weeping and blubbering (III.ii.165; iii.87). Statistics would prove illusory, because some repetitions are simply idiomatic, grammatical, orin the case of old Capulet or the Nursecolloquial. But it is significant that the play contains well over a
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hundred such lines, the largest number being in the First Act and scarcely any left over for the Fifth. The significance of this tendency toward reduplication, both stylistic and structural, can perhaps be best understood in the light of Bergsons well-known theory of the comic: the imposition of geometrical form upon the living data of formless consciousness. The stylization of love, the constant pairing and counterbalancing, the quid pro quo of Capulet and Montague, seem mechanical and unnatural. Nature has other proponents besides the lovers, especially Mercutio their fellow victim, who bequeathes his curse to both their houses. His is likewise an ironic end, since he has been as much a satirist of the new form and Tybalts punctilio in duelling by the book of arithmetic as of the numbers that Petrarch flowed in and Romeos affectations of gallantry (II.iv.34, 38; III.i.104). Mercutios interpretation of dreams, running counter to Romeos premonitions, is naturalistic, not to say Freudian; Queen Mab operates through fantasies of wishfulfilment, bringing love to lovers, fees to lawyers, and tithe-pigs to parsons; the moral is that desires can be mischievous. In his repartee with Romeo, Mercutio looks forward to their fencing with Tybalt; furthermore he charges the air with bawdy suggestions thatin spite of the limitations of Shakespeares theatre, its lack of actresses and absence of close-upslove may have something to do with sex, if not with lust, with the physical complementarity of male and female.9 He is abetted, in that respect, by the malapropistic garrulity of the Nurse, Angelica, who is naturally bound to Juliet through having been her wet-nurse, and who has lost the infant daughter that might have been Juliets age. None the less, her crotchety hesitations are contrasted with Juliets youthful ardors when the Nurse acts as go-between for Romeo. His counsellor, Friar Laurence, makes a measured entrance with his sententious couplets on the uses and abuses of natural properties, the medicinal and poisonous effects of plants: For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. (II.iii.25, 26) His watchword is Wisely and slow, yet he contributes to the grief at the sepulcher by ignoring his own advice, They stumble that run fast (94).10 When Romeo upbraids him monosyllabically, Thou canst not speak of that thou doest not feel, it is the age-old dilemma that separates the generations: Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait (III.iii.64). Banished to Mantua, Romeo has illicit recourse to the Apothecary, whose shopenvisaged with Flemish precisionunhappily replaces the Friars cell, and whose poison is the sinister counterpart of Laurences potion.
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Against this insistence upon polarity, at every level, the mutuality of the lovers stands out, the one organic relation amid an overplus of stylized expressions and attitudes. The naturalness of their diction is artfully gained, as we have noticed, through a running critique of artificiality. In drawing a curtain over the consummation of their love, Shakespeare heralds it with a prothalamium and follows it with an epithalamium. Juliets Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, reversing the Ovidian lente currite, noctis equi, is spoken alone but in breathless anticipation of a companion (III.ii.1). After having besought the day to end, the sequel to her solo is the duet in which she begs the night to continue. In the ensuing dbat of the nightingale and the lark, a refinement upon the antiphonal song of the owl and the cuckoo in Loves Labours Lost, Romeo more realistically discerns the herald of the morn (III.v.6). When Juliet reluctantly agrees, More light and light it grows, he completes the paradox with a doubly reduplicating line: More light and lightmore dark and dark our woes! (35,36) The precariousness of their union, formulated arithmetically by the Friar as two in one (II.vi.37), is brought out by the terrible loneliness of Juliets monologue upon taking the potion: My dismal scene I needs must act alone. (IV.iii.19) Her utter singleness, as an only child, is stressed by her father and mourned by her mother: But one, poor one, one poor and loving child. (v.46) Tragedy tends to isolate where comedy brings together, to reveal the uniqueness of individuals rather than what they have in common with others. Asking for Romeos profession of love, Juliet anticipates: I know thou wilt say Ay (II. ii.90). That monoysllable of glad assent was the first she ever spoke, as we know from the Nurses childish anecdote (I.iii.48). Later, asking the Nurse whether Romeo has been killed, Juliet pauses self-consciously over the pun between Ay and I or eye: Say thou but I, And that bare vowel I shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I, if there be such an I; Or those eyes shut that make thee answer I. If he be slain, say I; or if not, no. Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe. (III.ii.4551)
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Her identification with him is negated by death, conceived as a shut or poisoning eye, which throws the pair back upon their single selves. Each of them dies aloneor, at all events, in the belief that the other lies dead, and without the benefit of a recognition-scene. Juliet, of course, is still alive; but she has already voiced her death-speech in the potion scene. With the dagger, her last words, though richly symbolic, are brief and monosyllabic: This is thy sheath; there rest, and let me die. (V.iii.170) The sense of vicissitude is re-enacted through various gestures of staging; Romeo and Juliet experience their exaltation aloft on the upper stage; his descent via the rope is, as she fears, toward the tomb (III.v.56).11 The antonymous adverbs up and down figure, with increasing prominence, among the brief sounds that determine Juliets woe (e.g., V.ii.209210). The overriding pattern through which she and Romeo have been trying to breakcall it Fortune, the stars, or what you willends by closing in and breaking them; their private world disappears, and we are left in the social ambiance again. Capulets house has been bustling with preparations for a wedding, the happy ending of comedy. The news of Juliets death is not yet tragic because it is premature; but it introduces a peripety which will become the starting point for Hamlet. All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral the old man cries, and his litany of contraries is not less poignant because he has been so fond of playing the genial host: Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast; Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change; Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse; And all things change them to the contrary. (IV.v.8490) His lamentation, in which he is joined by his wife, the Nurse, and Paris, reasserts the formalities by means of what is virtually an operatic quartet. Thereupon the music becomes explicit, when they leave the stage to the Musicians, who have walked on with the County Paris. Normally these three might play during the entracte, but Shakespeare has woven them into the dialogue terminating the Fourth Act.12 Though their art has the power of soothing the passions and thereby redressing grief, as the comic servant Peter reminds them with a quotation from Richard Edwards lyric In Commendacion of Musicke, he persists in his query: Why silver sound? (131) Their answers are those of mere hirelings,
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who can indifferently change their tune from a merry dump to a doleful one, so long as they are paid with coin of the realm. Yet Peters riddle touches a deeper chord of correspondence, the interconnection between discord and harmony, between impulse and discipline. Consort, which can denote a concert or a companionship, can become the fighting word that motivates the unharmonious pricksong of the duellists (III.i.48). The sweet division of the lark sounds harsh and out of tune to Juliet, since it proclaims that the lovers must be divided (v. 29). Why silver sound? Because Romeo, in the orchard, has sworn by the moon That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops. (II.i.108) Because Shakespeare, transposing sights and sounds into words, has made us imagine How silver-sweet sound lovers tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears! (167168)
1. Line-references are to the separate edition of G. L. Kittredges text (Boston, 1940). 2. On the long and rich history of this trope, see the sixteenth chapter of E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. W. R. Trask (New York, 1953). 3. In the paper-bound Laurel Shakespeare, ed. Francis Fergusson (New York, 1958), p. 26. 4. H. B. Charlton, in his British Academy lecture for 1939, Romeo and Juliet as an Experimental Tragedy, has considered the experiment in the light of Renaissance critical theory. 5. Especially F. M. Dickey, Not Wisely But Too Well: Shakespeares Love Tragedies (San Marino, 1957), pp. 6388. 6. Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge, 1922), p. 243. 7. Boris Pasternak, Translating Shakespeare, tr. Manya Harari, The Twentieth Century, CLXIV, 979 (September, 1958), p. 217. 8. Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeares Imagery and What It Tells Us (New York, 1936), pp. 310316. 9. Coleridges persistent defense of Shakespeare against the charge of gross language does more credit to that critics high-mindedness than to his discernment. The concentrated ribaldry of the gallants in the street (II.iv) is deliberately contrasted with the previous exchange between the lovers in the orchard. 10. This is the leading theme of the play, in the interpretation of Brents Stirling, Unity in Shakespearian Tragedy: The Interplay of Themes and Characters (New York, 1956), pp. 1025. 11. One of the more recent and pertinent discussions of staging is that of Richard Hosley, The Use of the Upper Stage in Romeo and Juliet , Shakespeare Quarterly, V, 4 (Autumn, 1954), 371379.
Notes
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12. Professor F. T. Bowers reminds me that inter-act music was probably not a regular feature of public performance when Romeo and Juliet was first performed. Some early evidence for it has been gathered by T. S. Graves in The Act-Time in Elizabethan Theatres, Studies in Philology, XII, 3 (July, 1915), 120124notably contemporary sound cues, written into a copy of the Second Quarto and cited by Malone. But ifas seems likelysuch practices were exceptional, then Shakespeare was innovating all the farther.
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1964Norman N. Holland. Romeo and Juliet, from The Shakespearean Imagination

Norman N. Holland (1927 ) has been a professor in the English Department at the State University of New York at Buffalo and is currently the Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida. His books include Meeting Movies (2006), The Dynamics of Literary Response (1968), and Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare (1966).
People usually say about Romeo and Juliet that it is a tragedy of young love, and soin a wayit is. We should keep in mind, though, that there are many kinds of love in Romeo and Juliet. There is the love of parent for child, in this case, a somewhat misguided love as old Capulet tries to make Juliet marry the County Paris. There is religious love, the love of the Friar for his flock. There is political love, the Princes care for the citizens of Verona. And we have unrequited love, Paris love for Juliet, for example, and, even more important, the love of Romeo for that character whom even critics tend to forget, Rosaline. People apparently prefer not to remember that Romeo doesnt simply fall in love with Juliet. When we first see him at the opening of the play, he is pining away, not for Juliet, but for Rosaline, who has sworn that she will still live chaste. It isnt until the fifth scene of the play that Romeo meets Juliet and falls in love with her. The tragedy has many different kinds of love. It also has hate and conflict, naturally enough, in a way, for the god of love is an archer and he shoots fatal arrows. We speak of the victims of love, of women surrendering, or of love conquering all. At this point, I suppose, we stretch out our Freudian antennae, but the Elizabethans needed no psychoanalyst come from the couch to tell them how close love is to fighting. Shakespeare makes it very clear, very ribaldly clear, in the opening fight among the servants. Sampson: I will push Montagues men from the wall and thrust his maids to the Wall. . . . When I have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the maidsI will cut off their heads.
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Gregory: The heads of the maids? Sampson: Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads. Take it in what sense thou wilt. (I. i. 1525) When this tragedy puts love and fighting side by side, it touches the oldest and deepest part of our minds, and we should call Romeo and Juliet not a tragedy of young love, but a tragedy of young love and old hate, a tragedy of the fatal loins. What people usually say about Romeo and Juliet is that it is a tragedy of fortune, or as the Prologue at the opening of the play has it, the tragedy of a pair of star-crossed lovers. Now, most Elizabethans firmly believed in astrology, in the influence of the stars on human affairs. The stars were the agents of fortune; as Romeo says after he has slain Tybalt, Oh, I am fortunes fool! (III. i. 134), meaning he is fortunes plaything. As we saw, when we were dealing with Macbeth, most Elizabethans believed in fortune, fate, and the stars, but they were also Christian, and they believed in free will. Thus, though a mans fate is predetermined, he determines it by choosing as he goes along. God knows everything that is going to happen, but we make it happen. Perhaps the best way of thinking of the stars in Romeo and Juliet is more or less the way we think of luck. The stars, however, have an advantage over luck in that one can use them to read ones fate, as by casting a horoscope. In fact, this is more or less what Romeo does when, just before he first meets Juliet, he has a foreboding of what is to come: My mind misgives Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this nights revels . . . But he that bath the steerage of my course Direct my sail! (I. iv. 106113) In effect, like a modern scientist, Romeo thinks of the stars as embodying and revealing the laws behind physical events; they tell us what is going to happen. Man chooses, as Romeo himself chooses to go to the Capulets ball, but man chooses to fulfill the course that has been plotted for him by God. In effect, Romeo describes the stars as a way to read his future. There is a lot in this play about reading and books and the rules they can teach you. For example, in Act I, scene ii, an illiterate servant comes to Romeo to ask him to read the guest list that he is supposed to deliver for a party. The second time that Romeo kisses her, Juliet says, You kiss by the book, meaning he kisses politely, formally. (What a horrible thing to say to a young man shes just kissed!)
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Mercutio, after he has been stabbed by Tybalt, complains that he was stabbed by a villain that fights by the book of arithmetic (the two references to doing things by the book establish another parallel between loving and fighting). The idea of doing things by the book runs all the way through the play; its all part of Romeo and Juliets rather rigid and artificial style. Romeo and Juliet is a play with a great deal of formality in it, formality in its broadest sense as well as its narrowest. In a narrow sense, the style of Romeo and Juliet is formal. We find a great deal of rhyme in this play, as in most of Shakespeares other early plays. And the rhyme is not wholly successful, as, for example, in the closing couplet of the play, For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. Not only do we have rhyme in this play, there are even whole little lyrics embedded in the dialogue. Juliet recites an epithalamium, or marriage song, as she waits for Romeo to climb her balcony the night after Friar Laurence has married them. After that wedding night, as the lovers watch the dawn break that will separate them, they recite another traditional kind of poem, an aubade, or a day-song as it is called, a poem in which trysting lovers lament the coming of day. The very moment they meet and declare their love, Romeo and Juliet speak an impromptu sonnet: Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this; My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers kiss. Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do! They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers sake. Romeo: Then move not while my prayers effect I take, (I. v. 93106) and he kisses her, after dutifully filling out the rhyme-scheme abab cbcb dede ff. Romeo and Juliet was apparently written in the period when Shakespeare was more interested in writing poetry than plays. There is some evidence that he wrote Romeo and Juliet in 1591, at the very start of his career, and then revised it
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in 1596. In any case, Shakespeare wrote this play sometime in the first quarter of his career, the period when he wrote Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece and apparently began writing his sonnets, the greatest collection of sonnets in English. Shakespeares imagination in Romeo and Juliet is lyric, rather than dramatic. Instead of the rich, complex metaphors of Shakespeares middle style, Romeo and Juliet relies instead on mere word play, puns. Juliet, tormented by her nurses delays, cries out, Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but I, And that bare vowel I shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I, if there be such an I . . . (III. ii. 4548) and so on. Could Lady Macbeth have talked that way, expressing her emotions by a hail of puns? The puns get particularly thick in the battles of wits between the young men of the play, Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio. Romeo, for example, jokes about his pump, that is, his shoe, to Mercutio, and that worthy replies: Follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy pump, that, when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain, after the wearing, solely singular. O single-soled jest, Romeo comes back, solely singular for the singleness! And a modern audience sits on its hands. Along with this interest in puns and poems and books, there is, naturally enough, a preoccupation with names, as in the famous, A rose by any other name (which should probably be word). The passage begins with Juliet asking, Oh Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo (wherefore, of course, means why, not where, are you Romeo). Romeo goes on to answer and deny his name: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, Because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written I would tear the word. (II. ii. 5557) And later, Romeo says to Friar Laurence: O, tell me, Friar, tell me, In what vile part of this anatomy Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack The hateful mansion. (III. iii. 105108) This interest in words and names extends even to the letters of the alphabet. At one point the Nurse has to deliver a message to Romeo, and she tells him of a poem Juliet has written based on the fact that Rosemary and Romeo both begin with the letter R. (Like many other things the Nurse says, this turns out to be
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rather a ribald remark if you know some Elizabethan slang.) Juliet herself plays on the letter I when she asks, Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but I, And that bare vowel I shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I, if there be such an I Or those eyes shot that makes thee answer I. (III. ii. 4549) These two letters, R and I, are the initials of the two principal characters in the play, for the Elizabethans, like the Romans, used I for J when they felt like it as on the title page of the First Quarto text of this play. This careful playing around with the initials of the two lovers is just one such element in the very stylized and formal texture of this tragedy. The tragedy also uses a number of the Elizabethan conventions about love. There is, for example, a great deal in Romeo and Juliet about eyes. Mercutio says of Romeo that he is stabbed with a white wenchs black eye, with a blondes dark eye. Again, love and fighting, but this idea of stabbing with an eye also refers to an Elizabethan notion of optics. We say that when we see an object, light waves or photons or some mysterious thing from the object enters our eyes. The Elizabethan was much more humanistic, and he thought that when we saw something our eyes shot beams toward the object. Our theory is all very nice for physics; their theory explains how people fall in love. The girl looks at the boy, wiggles her eyelashes, and thus shoots darts into the pupils of his eyes which descend and stab him to the heart. Thus, when Juliet warns Romeo that her kinsmen will murder him he says, Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords, one more case of that age-old link between love and fighting. And that link suggests that now we are beginning to see the essence of the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The tragedy seems to be working itself out in a series of oppositions. Weve already noticed Romeo versus Juliet, or, if you wish to generalize it, male versus female, in the delightful battle of love. Juliet says before her wedding night: Learn me how to lose a winning match, Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods, (III. ii. 1213) as though love were a game between two opponents. Then there is the obvious opposition between the houses of Montague and Capulet, which is expressed in still another contrast: the Montagues are often called dogs; the Capulets are associated with cats, Tybalt, for example, being called prince of cats and Good king of cats. A very important contrast in this tragedy plays off romantic love against physical love: romantic love as represented, say, by Romeo and Juliet themselves or by Romeos idealizing of Rosaline; physical
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love as represented by Mercutios ribald comments or those of Juliets longwinded Nurse. Romeo and Juliet, for all that it is supposedly a tragedy of young love, is one of Shakespeares most obscene plays. For example, the Nurse in the process of taking thirty-odd lines to explain to us that Juliet is slightly less than fourteen years old recalls a time when she tripped and fell and her husband took up the child. Yea, quoth he, dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit; Wilt thou not, Jule? (I. iii. 4143) Falling on ones face as against falling on ones back is only one in the plays long series of contrasts or oppositions. We have water as against fire when Romeo, in one of the poems embedded in the dialogue of this play, speaks of turning tears to fires. At one point one of his friends asks him, What sadness lengthens Romeos hours? and Romeo replies Not having that which having makes them short. Having and not having; long and short. At another point Juliet says to the Nurse: Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily; If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news By playing it to me with so sour a face. (II. v. 2224) The contrast is between good news and bad, sweet and sour. Again, Juliet cries out when she learns who Romeo is: My only love, sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! (I. v. 138139) Love and hate; unknown and known; early, latethis is the way Shakespeares imagination is working in Romeo and Juliet: opposites juxtaposed. Macbeth has such contrasts, for example, Fair is foul and foul is fair, and we said that Shakespeares imagination was finding for itself a particular figure of speech in Macbeth, antithesis. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, there is also a characteristic figure of speech; it is oxymoron (a word particularly handy for crossword puzzles and cocktail parties). Like antithesis, oxymoron involves the joining of opposites, but joining them in a closer and more extreme way, often by coupling an adjective with a noun to which it cannot apply. We see this adjective-noun combination in such a statement as Juliets cry of anguish when she learns that Romeo has killed her cousin Tybalt: Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
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Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seemst A damnd saint, an honorable villain! (III. ii. 7579) We hear the same kind of stuff when Romeo comes upon the scene of the fight with which the play begins. He translates the fight into an oxymoron for his own unrequited love for Rosaline: Heres much to do with hate, but more with love. Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! (I. i. 178184) Oxymoron, of course, is a verbal figure of speech, but Romeo and Juliet has another kind of oxymoron, a visual oxymoron based on light. Light permeates this play, pervades almost every scene with all the ardor and warmth of young loveor old hate. The action of the play takes place in four days so that three times we see the dawn rise. As Romeo says, More light and lightmore dark and dark our woes (III. v. 36). Light seems linked to love. On the first night of the action we go to Capulets feast with its gay, sparkling torches. After the feast there is the balcony scene under the night sky studded with stars. The next day Romeo and Juliet are married and that night again there is a bright scene of love against the dark sky and then the dawn. The final scenes of the play take place in the darkness of the Capulets tomb, lit by the troubled flickering of a lantern, and again the dawn, this time a reluctant gray dawn, breaks. Sometimes the light in Romeo and Juliet is like a brief flash against the darkness; we hear of lightning and the sudden flash of gunpowder. Friar Laurence moralizes, These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. (II. vi. 911) More often, the light is a bright spot against a black ground, a torch or a lantern or a star, as in the phrase, a pair of star-crossed lovers. Thus, Romeo, after he has met Juliet at the Capulets ball, climbs over her garden wall and looks up at her balcony where suddenly she appears. But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
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Who is already sick and pale with grief That thou her maid art far more fair than she. * * * Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. (II. ii. 222) Juliet, too, sees Romeo in terms of a bright spot against a dark ground, day in night, snow on a ravens back, or stars against the night: Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night; For thou wilt he upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow upon a ravens back. Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night; Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, 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. (III. ii. 1725) This image of light against dark is, of course, not confined to stars; it can become the rather strange simile with which Romeo comments on his first sight of Juliet: It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night As a rich jewel in an Ethiops ear * * * So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady oer her fellows shows. (I. v. 4549) That was his first sight of Juliet; we find the same image of light against darkness in his last sight. He has just killed his rival Paris and says to him: Ill bury thee in a triumphant grave. A grave? O, no, a lanthorn, slaughtred youth, For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. (V. iii. 8386)
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The very grave becomes a feasting presence full of light, a place of gaiety, even of love. Romeo speaks of it as the bed of death and then again as the womb of death. When he buys the poison with which he commits suicide he says, Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night (V.i.34), thinking of dying together as an ecstasy of love. Just as the opening scenes of the play bring together the act of love and the act of hate, sex and fighting, the closing scenes of the play bring together the place of birth and the place of death. These equations, love and hate, sex and dying, marriage and funeral, womb and tomb, such thoughts, modern psychologists are quick to tell us, occupy some of the oldest and deepest levels of the human mind. So, too, the strict and extreme contrasts of ideas are characteristic of our most primitive thinking, a childs feeling that things are either to be taken in the mouth or spat out. In fact, Friar Laurence puts this rigid, black-and-white pattern in images of food when he says: The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately: long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. (II. vi. 1115) It is Friar Laurence who, in one sense, is the spokesman for the play, who, if this were a modern play, we would call the raisonneur, the man who speaks for the author. At the intellectual center of the play stands Friar Laurences speech about flowers. Throughout the play it is the love of Romeo and Juliet that has been called a flower. For example, Juliet in the balcony scene says, This bud of love, by summers ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. (II. ii. 121122) But the flower is struck by the chillness of death. Juliet dies and Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field (IV. v. 2829) Life turning into death, the flowered Juliet into the poisoned Juliet, light into darkness, love into conflict, womb into tomb, bright spots fading against a dark groundall these images and ideas come together in Friar Laurences great tribute to nature and the dawn and the harmony of good and evil in the larger purposes of the universe: The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, Checkring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light;
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And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels From forth days path and Titans fiery wheels. Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye The day to cheer and the nights dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juicd flowers. The earth thats natures mother is her tomb. What is her burying grave, that is her womb; And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find, Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some, and yet all different. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities; For naught so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give; Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Virtue herself turns vice, being misapplied. And vice sometime s by action dignified. Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence, and medicine power; For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposd kings encamp them still In man as well as herbsgrace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. (II. iii. 130) Two opposd kings encamped in manthis is the vision Romeo and Juliet gives us of ourselves. In a later speech Friar Laurence, speaking over the supposedly dead Juliet, defines these two parts of man as the heavenly and the earthly. Heaven and yourself Had part in this fair maidnow heaven hath all, And all the better is it for the maid. (IV. v. 6668) As so often in drama and particularly in Shakespearean drama, these two partsthe heavenly and the earthly parts of the principal charactersare projected outward onto the characters around them. There are, for example, two sets of parents in the play, the lovers real parents and their spiritual parents. We see the real parents briefly, old Montague a little more conciliatory than his fiery opposite Capulet. We see the Capulets impetuously forcing Juliet to marry
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Paris. We hear at the end of the play that Lady Montague has died of grief. Behind these real parents are what we might call the spiritual parents of the lovers, a set of parents who project the most fundamental aspects of the lovers characters. They are Friar Laurence, Mercutio, Rosaline, and the Nurse. These four spiritual parents are in turn divided into heavenly and earthly parts. That is, Friar Laurence on the masculine side becomes a heavenly father. Mercutio, on the other hand, who seems almost an older brother to Romeo, is masculine but far more earthy. He seems to look only on the physical or sexual side of love, and when his imagination turns to spiritual things, it finds expression in paganism: the grand speech about Queen Mab and the fairies, or his conjuration of the hidden Romeo: The ape is dead, and I must conjure him. I conjure thee by Rosalines bright eyes, By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us! (II. i. 1621) Rosaline, too, is pagan, but She hath Dians wit, that is, the temperament of the goddess of chastity. Rosaline herself projects another kind of spirituality: that hankering after the ideal, the absolute, which is so much a part of the young love of Romeo and Juliet. She hath sworn that she will still live chaste. She hath forsworn to love. Finally, at the opposite end of the scale from the holy father, Friar Laurence, is the profane mother, the Nurse. Ancient damnation, Juliet calls her, O, most wicked fiend. When she advises Juliet that, since Romeo has gone away, she might just as well marry Paris, Juliet rejects her evil parent and turns to the good one, saying, Ill to the Friar to know his remedy. Figure C shows all these character relations in a kind of diagrammalefemale; Christianpagan; chasteunchaste. There is another, rather curious justification for pairing the Friar and the Nurse this way: the Nurse has a helper, Peter; the Friar is associated with St. Peters Church. This must seem very cold-blooded and schematic, but you should remember this is a very rigid and schematic sort of play. Romeo and Juliet is not just a tragedy of young love, but a tragedy of young love and old hate and that phrasing keeps us in mind of two of the dualities in the tragedy: lovehate, youngold. The whole tragedy, in a sense, depends on the contrast between the impulsive, hasty qualities of youth and the delays of old age. That is, Romeo and Juliet rush to get married; Mercutio and Tybalt rush into a deadly sword fight. On the other hand, old Montague, old Capulet, and the Prince delayand have delayed for yearsin trying to straighten out their quarrel.
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We could put all these fragments of the play together by saying that the essence of Romeo and Juliet, the principle that informs and characterizes the plays distinctive world, is opposition: Romeo and Juliet is the tragedy of the way opposites are so close in this world. How often two and two-ness appear in the play, beginning with that crucial phrase of the prologue, a pair of star-crossed lovers, and ending with the Princes mournful comment at the tomb that he has lost a brace of kinsmen. All through the imagery, we find opposites paired: virtue and vice; water and fire; long and short; quick and slow; sweet and sour; light and dark; bright spot and dark background; cat and dog; womb and tomb; birth and death; sex and fighting; but most of all, love and hate.
Not only are there sharp contrasts in the ideas and images, but also in the characters and action. Mercutio, Rosaline, the Nurse, and the Friar make up a pair of pairs, projections of the basic oppositions in the tragedy: chastity and unchastity; Christian and pagan; male and female. Throughout, the tragedy sets off the earthly aspects of people from the heavenly, just as the Friar separates medicine from poison in his flowers. The Friar himself, gathering medicines, bound to poverty, stands as a contrast to that poor apothecary from whom Romeo buys his poison. He contrasts, too, with Prince Escalus: the Prince wants to make peace between the two families by enforcing a political decree from outside the feud; the Friar wants to make peace by encouraging a spiritual decree (the marriage) that has grown up inside the feud. The humorous word battles begun by Mercutio contrast with the serious sword battles begun by Tybalt. Romeo and Juliet achieve a romantic, idealized love that contrasts with and transcends both the earthy, physical love so ribaldly described by Mercutio
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and the Nurse, and the chastity associated with Rosaline and the Friar. In the action as a whole, Juliets wedding turns into a funeral; the lovers, in a hard irony, die of love. In its essence, Romeo and Juliet is a formal tragedy. In the narrow sense of the word, it is a play much concerned with books, rules, conventions, poems, puns, words and names, and even letters of the alphabet. The play is formal, though, in a far broader sense, formal in this very quality of being composed of a series of sharp oppositions. Romeo and Juliet is the tragedy of two people who want to compromise, to marry, in a world where everything is black or white. These opposites, this formality, typify Shakespeares early style. What early tongue, says Friar Laurence, so sweet saluteth me? Romeo and Juliet is indeed Shakespeares early tongue and it is indeed sweet, maybe even a little too sweet. In the last analysisand this may seem a horrible heresy to someRomeo and Juliet, I think, is simply not a very good play. It is, of course, a great favorite with audiences, but that doesnt tell us whether it should be a great favorite with audiences. Its a great favorite with actresses, particularly aging actresses, who seem to have an irresistible urge to play the fourteen-year-old Juliet opposite a handsome young lover. Because its such a great favorite, we ordinarily do include it among Shakespeares major plays. If it is a major play, though, it is certainly the least of Shakespeares major plays. But this, too, has its uses. Romeo and Juliet reminds us that even Shakespeares hand can slip a little sometimes, and it gives us a chance to look at what we might call the lesser Shakespeare without going through the trials and tribulations of Titus Andronicus or the Henry VI plays. Perhaps most important, by seeing what Romeo and Juliet is not, we can see in high relief, as it were, what qualities we prize in the really great plays of Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet gives us a chance to ask what we mean by greatness or goodness in a literary sense. Of course, this is a problem that has bothered all the philosophers of all the ages, and I do not mean to offer in the next few pages any real answer. Nevertheless, Romeo and Juliet does suggest some defects, some things that keep us from saying this is great, which we can look out for in other Shakespearean plays or, for that matter, in any work of art. For example, these rigid, sharp contrasts and oppositionssomehow they all seem a bit too easy, rather like the villain of the nineteenth-century melodramas who wore a black frock coat and a black stovepipe hat and would stalk around and twirl his moustache, foreclose the mortgage, and tie little Nell to the railroad track. We laugh at the villain of the nineteenth-century melodrama, and the reason we laugh, I think, is that we expect from a work of art some kind of complexity. We dont get it in the nineteenth-century melodrama, and we dont get it in Romeo and Juliet. These sharp, rigid oppositions and contrasts are a little too easy: lovehate, lightdark, sweetsour, catdogits like a word-association test. In this tragedy, the lovers are good guys, and the parents are all bad guys.
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Now, while there is a germ of truth in that, nevertheless, some of my best friends are parents and occasionally parents are rightbut you would hardly know it from Romeo and Juliet. The same thing holds true for the poetry. The figures of speech Shakespeare uses in Romeo and Juliet are not complex as they were in Macbeth, but simple, the ordinary stock-in-trade of any Elizabethan poet. Romeo, for example, says, Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers eyes; Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers tears. (I. i. 188190) These are trite, hackneyed figures of speech; you could find them in dozens of Elizabethan lyrics. At the end of the play, Juliet, wanting to commit suicide, grasps Romeos dagger and cries: This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die. Old Capulet comes upon his stabbed daughter and says, This dagger hath mistakn, for, lo, his house is empty on the back of Montague, that is, the scabbard is empty, And it missheathd in my daughters bosom. The figure of speech is that the dagger has been sheathed in Juliets body instead of in its proper scabbard. Now this is surely a very small leap of the poetic imagination. Contrast the great passage in Macbeth, where Macbeth, who has murdered Duncan, describes the two grooms sleeping beside him whom he is accusing of the murder; he speaks of The murderers, Steeped in the colors of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breeched with gore, (II. iii. 110112) of the daggers as wearing blood like breeches. It is a rather drastic figure of speech, but an effective one, unlike the much cruder idea in Romeo and Juliet that the dagger is sheathed in the body of its victim. The idea in the earlier play is too easy; it demands no complexity from us in our response. The figure of speech in Macbeth, on the other hand, does demand a complex response. When critics speak of a too simple metaphor, they speak of it as relying on our stock response. That is, crude works of art tend to use the way we would react anyway; you can see this trick any Sunday in the poetry columns of the Sunday supplements. We read a poem about a little boy who has died and gone to heaven and become an angel and we feel sad. Naturally enough. But it was not the poem that made us sad, but the thought of a little boy dying. In other words, the poem used our stock response to gain its emotional effect. It cheated. The poem generated no emotion itself; it only tapped a preexisting emotion. The good poem or the good play, on the other hand, uses our stock response only a little bit, only somewhat, only as the start for something bigger and better. If it
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did not use our stock response at all, we would feel that it was foreign, strange to us, too complicated. We would complain, as many people do about some modern poetry and fiction, that it is too obscure, which, I take it, means simply that it is too far removed from the way we ordinarily think or feel, too far removed from our stock responses. If, then, the great work of art uses our stock responses but is not subservient to them, we would expect to find a kind of peak or optimum point in the complexity which makes for great art, a point where there is neither too much complexity nor too little. Yet there seems to be no one level of complexity which automatically guarantees great art. That is, some great art is very complex, while other great art relies pretty heavily on our stock responses. For example, James Joyces Ulysses, probably the greatest novel of our century, uses our stock responses relatively little. On the other hand, Spensers Faerie Queene or the novels of Dickens or, in our century, the great Western movies such as High Noon, these build very heavily on our preexisting ideas of what constitutes good and bad. In other words, merely using or not using our stock responses is not itself a determining factor in literary value; we must also consider how our stock responses are used, either simply or complexly. Thus, in the case of Romeo and Juliet, not only does the play rely heavily on our stock responses about parents and children; it also uses those stock responses in a stock way. Contrast Macbeth. Surely our stock response to the man who assassinates his guest, kinsman, and king is that he is a bad man, but in the case of Macbeth this is complicated and enriched by the whole question of fate, the role of the witches, the role of Lady Macbeth, and the rest. There is still another factor in the way a good work of art uses our stock or ready-built responses: it uses them always more or less at about the same level. For example, Juliet hears that Romeo is banished and she says, Romeo is banishdto speak that word Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, All slain, all dead. Romeo is banishd There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that words death; no words can that woe sound. (III. ii. 122126) This is a sort of stock response, a young reaction. There is no end, no limit, no measure, no bound, in Juliets response to the banishment. Romeo, on the other hand, when he speaks of his banishment to Friar Laurence, says, Hadst thou no poison mixed, no sharp-ground knife, No sudden mean of death, though neer so mean, But banishd to kill mebanishd? O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
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Howling attends it! How hast thou the heart, Being a divine, a ghostly confessor, A sin-absolver, and my friend professed, To mangle me with that word banishd? (III. iii. 4451) Romeo is also saying that the word carries in it a kind of infinite death, but our response to his words is more complicated, more ironical. Romeo expresses his despair in religious terms, and those very religious terms suggest that he overstates his despair. After all, if we want to be cold-blooded and middleagedand religiousabout it, the fact that Romeo has been banished from Verona is not the same as going to hell. Now one could make a play out of Juliets response, somewhat crude and childish though it is; and one could make a play out of Romeos response. But if a writer mixes these two attitudes in a single play, we get the feeling of an unevenness. It can be really disastrous if you mix these two different levels of response in a given speech. For example, at the beginning of Romeos speech about being banished he cries, Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here, Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog And little mouse, every unworthy thing, Live here in heaven and may look on her; But Romeo may not. More validity, More honorable state, more courtship lives In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliets hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips. (III. iii. 2937) Suddenly the speech shifts from cats and dogs and little mice, soft, furry things, to a carrion fly and, at that, a carrion fly which is stealing immortal blessing from Juliets lip. Its grotesque! Now it is possible, I expect, to write love poetry about a fly on ones beloveds lipsJohn Donne wrote a famous love poem about a flea biting first him, then his mistressbut it seems to me that it is probably not possible to write a love poem which starts out with little furry kittens and puppies and mice and then suddenly shifts to a carrion fly. The shift in tone is too sharp, too radical, and we simply dont go along with it. It doesnt succeed. In a good work of art, then, we ask for a certain consistency, a certain unity or evenness in the tone; not so even that it becomes monotonous, but not so disjointed that it becomes disturbing. Another thing we ask for in a good work of art is a certain intensity or, if I can use a scientific word, density. In one of the great plays of Shakespeares middle period, like Macbeth, in line after line and word after word, something new is happening, not just in the plot, in the action of the play, but in the language. It
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is constantly moving and involving itself. Contrast this speech from Romeo and Juliet: the Nurse is bewailing Juliets supposed death: O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day! Most lamentable day, most woeful day That ever ever I did yet behold! O day, O day, O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this. O woeful day! O woeful day! (IV, v. 4954) Now surely, if Shakespeares hand ever slipped, it slipped there. We dont like that kind of poetry because nothing seems to happen in it. In six lines we learn only it is a black and woeful day. The lines lack intensity or density. Finally, there is a fourth thing that we ask of a good work of art, namely, that everything in it contribute to the total effect. In Macbeth, for example, the Porters speech, the one bit of comedy in that tragedy, contributes its own strange little bit to the effect of the whole. The Porter brings out in a different form the same themes and images that run through the larger aspects of the tragedy. He gives us a different perspective, a different attitude toward the play as a whole. He adds something. In Romeo and Juliet the scenes where Mercutio and Romeo match wits and engage in perfect volleys of puns, these work into the play as a whole. They dont add much, but they do add something to the general atmosphere of the play, the general tone of leisure or, if you prefer, delinquency. They suggest another attitude toward love besides Romeos rather idealistic view, and often they develop particular words and themes from the main action. In the comic scene in Act IV, scene v, however, where Peter, the Capulets servant, comes to the musicians who were supposed to play for Juliets wedding and tells them now they must play for the funeral, these fifty lines contribute virtually nothing to the rest of the play. There is a good deal of talk about musicians being paid in silver because music has a silver sound, and this feeble witticism faintly echoes Romeos remark in the balcony scene, How silver-sweet sound lovers tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears! (II. ii. 166167) It hardly adds much to the play, though, and in that sense, there are parts of Romeo and Juliet which do not contribute to the unity of the total artistic experience. It may seem as though I am trying to shred Romeo and Juliet, but this calculated brutality has a purpose. We should not set Shakespeare up as a little
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tin god without fault or flaw. Shakespeare is no more perfect than other men, and Romeo and Juliet is one of the less perfect of his plays. In fact, by looking at some of the blemishes in Romeo and Juliet we can see better the virtues in the greater plays. We can see the importance of four things to the value we give a literary work: 1. The balancing of stock response and complexity. 2. Unity of tone. 3. Density. 4. Unity in general.
Note that these four criteria in no sense make up an invoice against which to check the work; we cannot simply pronounce a literary work good because it seems to deliver these four things. Such criteria as these really suggest only a certain way of reading, namely, looking for these four things we value: complexity, density, unity of tone, unity in general. We would read Romeo and Juliet differently had we set up other criteria, for example, realism in an absolute sense, instead of asking simply that a writer maintain a consistent degree of realism (part of the idea of unity of tone). In that sense, canons or criteria like these serve as a guide to our perception of a work rather than as a checklist of rules to be obeyed by writers. In fact, by considering the flaws and virtues of Romeo and Juliet in terms of these four things, we can see that one thing in this tragedy which critics often call a flaw is not really a flaw at all. Aristotle, the wisest of literary critics, said that the best tragic effect is produced when the events come on us by surprise; the effect is heightened further when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect. The tragic wonder, he said, will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident. Now Romeo and Juliet falls woefully short of this standard. From the very prologue of the play, from the point where we first realize that these two young lovers are falling in love despite a family feud, I suppose we feel that things are not going to turn out well. Yet, while the family feud causes much of the trouble that leads to the lovers deaths, there is a crucial link in the chain of cause and effect that is very weak indeed. It comes after Juliet has taken Friar Laurences potion and apparently died. The Friar tries to send to Romeo to tell him that Juliet is not really dead, but the message is never delivered and therefore Romeo, when he comes back to Verona, thinks Juliet dead and commits suicide. Juliet, in turn, seeing him dead, herself commits suicide. Why, wasnt the message delivered? John: Holy Franciscan friar, brother, ho! Enter [Friar] Laurence.
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Laurence: This same should be the voice of Friar John. Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo? Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter. John: Going to find a barefoot brother out, One of our order, to associate me Here in this city visiting the sick, And finding him, the searchers of the town, Suspecting that we both were in a house Where the infectious pestilence did reign, Sealed up the doors, and would not let us forth, So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed. Laurence: Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo? John: I could not send ithere it is again Nor get a messenger to bring it thee, So fearful were they of infection. (V. ii. 116) In short, Friar John could not deliver the message because he got stuck in quarantine. The catastrophe of Romeo and Juliet, then, is purely and simply accidental. In fact, Friar Laurence, when in the end he has to explain to friends what he has done, says, He which bore my letter, Friar John, was staid by accident. Yet if we look back at the reason the message failed to reach Romeo, there is a certain fitness to it. For one thing, Friar John got quarantined because he was looking for another friar with whom to associate himself. In other words, he was trying to make one friar into two. And as we have seen, the very essence of this tragedy is that it is involved with two warring houses, two cities, two star-crossed lovers. The very essence of the tragedy is that it deals with pairs of things, and it therefore makes a certain sense for the catastrophe to come about because friar number one went looking for friar number two. Then, too, that infectious pestilence. It also makes a certain devious poetic sense. It serves as a symbol for the moral disorder that surrounds the love and harmony of the two lovers themselves. An infectious plague of hatred surrounds the lovers just as a black background so often in this tragedy surrounds and engulfs a bright spot of light. Here the single message which will save Romeo and Juliet is engulfed and surrounded by the blackness and darkness of the plague. In the same way, the weakness of the tragedy as a whole, its schematic and artificial style, its rigid use of opposites: womb, tomb; love, hate; light, dark; in short, its formality, makes up a background which engulfs the one great virtue of Romeo and Juliet, its kernel of psychological truth.
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1970Francis Fergusson. Romeo and Juliet , from Shakespeare: The Pattern in His Carpet
Francis Fergusson (19041986) was a theater scholar, critic, and professor at Rutgers University and Princeton University. His books include Trope and Allegory: Themes Common to Dane and Shakespeare (1977) and Shakespeare: The Pattern in His Carpet (1970) .
Shakespeare wrote his play about youthful love and death in 1594 or 1595, when he himself was only about thirty years old. At about the same time he was writing some of his sonnets, the melodious fairy tale, A Midsummer Nights Dream, and Richard II, the most lyrical of his histories. He was learning to lift whole plays to the level of poetry while increasing their theatrical power. Romeo and Juliet tells a swift story, and it is full of rich characterization and sharp, bawdy humor. At the same time the sequence of its contrasting scenes, and the sound and imagery of its verse, affect us like music. The story of the doomed young lovers is very old. Shakespeares immediate source was a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke, The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet (1562). Brooke had it from the French of Boaistuau, who had it from the Italian of Bandello, who had it from Luigi Da Porto. Beyond that it may be traced back to such classical myths as that of Hero and Leander. The medieval narrative of Tristan and Isolde, familiar to us in Wagners opera, is on a related theme. Shakespeare used Brooke for his plot and for sketches of some of the characters. But, as usual, he transformed his sources. Brookes galloping narrative is still readable, and the Italian versions are good of their kind. But Shakespeare seems to have seen the full meaning and pathos of the story for the first time. He saw it as a tale of the passions of youth. His lovers are very young and innocent when love overwhelms them. So are the bored young men, loafing about town, in whom the passions of the feuding Capulets and Montagues explode so fatally. The old Capulets and Montagues and the worried Prince of Verona feel partly responsible for the feud, and try to control it. The Friar, when Romeo and Juliet confide in him, does his best to guide their love to life and safety. But the moving force which Shakespeare saw in the old story is that glamorous and dangerous passion that everyone feels in youth, and no one fully understands at any age. He presents this many-sided theme with humor and clarity in Act I, scene 1. A silly squabble between serving-men of the feuding houses starts, out of sheer boredom and animal spirits, when they meet in the street. It builds suddenly from bawdy insults to blows, and from blows to a full-scale brawl which the Prince himself is obliged to quell. The moment the stage is cleared, Benvolio reports to the elder Montagues about their son Romeo, who sighs in the orchard
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early in the morning: loves helpless victim already, though at the moment be longs for Rosaline, not Juliet. The music of Benvolios tale of Romeo contrasts with the clatter of the fight, but we already sense that the pugnacious and erotic feelings stirring the young come from the same moody source. And when Romeo wanders on and sees the signs of the brawl, he tells us so: Heres much to do with hate, but more with love. When then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O any thing of nothing first create! We are already in the world of the play, sharing the moods of the troubled young people; we are ready for the story, which begins at the Capulet party, the last scene of Act I. All the dangerous elements of the plot are brought together against the background of music, masks, and summer night. Romeo and Juliet bashfully recognize the love which is their fate, while Juliets savage cousin Tybalt recognizes Romeo as a Montague and vows to kill him. Act I, which prepares everything, is marked off by the Chorus who speaks at the beginning and the end of the act. The Chorus, speaking in sonnet form, is the impersonal, musing voice of the storyteller: From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life. That famous melody removes us to a distance from the scene, and reminds us that we are watching not only the immediate crisis in Verona but the return of a very old story. The change in point of view may be very effective in the theater. It produces a sense of fate behind what the characters do and say, increases the suspense, and prepares for the poetic scope of the poetry to come. With the first scene of Act II we are back in the rush of events, which never stops until all is over. In Brooke the story takes months, while Shakespeare concentrates it into about five days. By that means alone he achieves the rhythm of youth, when patience is unknown and every experience of joy or pain is met headlong, for the first time. By means of his setting, Verona in the dog-days, he sharpens all the feelings. Scenes in the still, sunny streets, where the feud breeds in the hot blood of Tybalt and Mercutio, alternate with scenes of starry night or earliest dawn when the lovers steal their moments of extreme sweet. During Acts II and III the passion of the lovers and the passions of the feud seem to be racing. Meanwhile we learn that Count Paris is pressing for Juliets hand, and that the Friar is trying to devise a way to save the situation. In Act II the lovers seem to be winning. The Friar marries them secretly, and Romeo, with that arranged, has his one moment of carefree kidding with his
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friends Mercutio and Benvolio. But in Act III, scene 1, the feud overtakes them. Tybalt kills Mercutio in the street, and then Romeo kills Tybalt. At almost the same time Paris gets old Capulets consent to marry Juliet on Thursday next. Against the background of these misfortunesaccidental, yet all too probable in that risky situationthe lovers have their one night together. We see their parting when the birds wake them at dawn; Romeo flees to Mantua, and Juliet is told that she must marry Paris the next dayWednesdayfor the impatient Capulet has advanced the date. This is the climax and turning point: the lovers night coincides with the fatality that dooms them. In Act IV fate, or chance, catches up with the Friar also. He is obliged to arrange Paris marriage to Juliet, but desperately tries to prevent it by giving Juliet the sleeping-potion. Juliet, when she drinks it alone, must face the thought of death. Next morning Paris and the Capulets must see their wedding celebration turn into a funeral. The complicated effect of wedding-as-funeral and funeral-aswedding dominates Act IV. It must have pleased Shakespeare, for he used it for a similar purpose in Much Ado. It expresses, in theatrical terms, both the pathos and the irony of the situation. Romeo does not appear in Act IV, but in Act V, scene 1, we see him in Mantua. He has had a dream with some of the ambiguity of Juliets weddingfuneral: I dreamt my lady came and found me dead Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think And breathed such life with kisses in my lips, That I revived and was an emperor. He has not received the Friars messages; instead he gets the false news of Juliets death. He is resolved at once: Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars. This moment corresponds to Juliets when she drinks the potion; both lovers find the courage to do what love seems to demand. Romeo turns from the Friar, who he thinks has failed him, to the Apothecary, whose poison is sure. In some early versions of the story the Friar himself is suspected of black magic but Shakespeare reserves that sinister art for the Apothecary. His Friar, whom we first see at dawn, rejoicing in the beauty of nature, has white magic. He knows the natural properties of plants, minerals, and human love. The Apothecary is his dark opposite; he knows how to use minerals and plants against nature, to produce death. Armed with his poison, young Romeo races to Juliets tomb. He outruns the Friar who, with his reverence for life, arrives too late to save the lovers.
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The final scene (Act V, scene 3) brings the end which we have felt was on the cards all along. The rhythm of the playthat of the heedless, accidentprone youngis speeded up for the final crash. Romeos fight with Paris; the lovers farewells; the Friars belated arrival and confused retreat, follow swiftly. With Romeo and Juliet lying dead in the tomb, the churchyard (downstage, no doubt) fills with officers, citizens, Capulets, Montagues, and the Prince. We are reminded of the street brawl that opened the play; of the fight where Tybalt and Mercutio were killed, and of poor Paris wedding morning with Juliet lying in the semblance of death: the older generation is again mistaken and too late. In the final sequence the Friar and Romeos and Paris servingmen explain everything to the Prince. This part of the scene often seems too long to the modern producer, and it is usually cut in performance. But after the confusion of fights, cries, torches, and running people, Shakespeare felt the need of a quieter moment. He wants the audience to reflect on the form and meaning of the swift events they have just seen. By means of the Friars sad testimony, Shakespeare modulates once more into the detached point of view of the storyteller. For I will raise her statue in pure gold, says Romeos father; and old Capulet chimes in: As rich shall Romeos by his ladys lie, Poor sacrifices of our enmity. The final words of the Prince echo the music of the Chorus which we heard at the beginning of the play: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. The plot, or rather the form, that Shakespeare gave the old story holds one completely. The swift yet dreamy alternation of dawn, noon, and starlight seems right, and in reading, or watching a good performance, we do not stop to inquire what day of the week it is. But if, on thinking it over, we do inquire, we find certain inconsistencies in the calendar of the play. The main events seem to occur as follows: Sunday: Monday: Tuesday: The street fight, the Capulets party (Act I) and the balcony scene (Act II). Romeo and Juliet are married (Act II); Tybalt is killed, Romeo is banished; Paris wedding day is set, and the lovers have their one night together (Act III). The lovers part at dawn, Romeo flees to Mantua, and Juliet learns she must marry Paris the next day (Act III).
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The wedding preparations are begun, and Juliet drinks the potion (Act IV). Wednesday: The wedding party discovers Juliet apparently dead (Act IV). Thursday: The race for the tomb. The final scene lasts through Thursday night to Friday morning. The inconsistencies appear in certain references to the time which has elapsed. For instance, in Act II, scene 4, the Nurse tells Romeo, I anger her sometimes and tell her Paris is the properer man. She seems to imply that weeks, rather than hours, have elapsed since Juliet met Romeo. There is also some trouble about the time when Juliet comes out of her coma, for the Friar has said she would sleep longer than she does according to the calendar. Such inconsistencies probably show that Shakespeare was careless. They also show that he was, as usual, using time only for poetic and dramatic effect, knowing that his audience would never demand scientific accuracy. In studying the time-scheme of the play one must, as always, remember the theater for which Shakespeare wrote. On the permanent setting, in daylight, the scenes follow one another with no intermissions and no pauses for change of setting. The place, the time of day, and the atmosphere of each scene are conveyed imaginatively by what the actors do and say. If one imagines the play performed in that way one can see that Shakespeare used time with great theatrical mastery to speed up, or to slow the action; to give us, not clock-chronology, but the rhythm of the life he was portraying. Much of the touching quality of the play is due to the setting Shakespeare gave it in the town of Verona. Ostensibly Verona, with its ancient feud, is Italian. But it must have seemed familiar to his English audience, and it seems oddly familiar to us, in spite of its daggers and ruffs and poisons. The Capulets are such parents as we all know: doting, apprehensive, always doing the wrong thing with the best intentions. They are not great nobles, but provincial gentry from Shakespeares hometown of Stratford. Old Capulet bothers the cook; his lady (like our ambitious mamas) is impressed with Paris money and social position. The Nurse is practically a member of the family, and can indulge in her impudent garrulity while Lady Capulet merely groans and bites her lip. The Capulets parties are the kind that our wistful parents give for their marriageable daughters. Romeo and his friends are more elegant than our young men, not in the least embarrassed to wear gorgeous clothes, or to play with poetic and bawdy conceits when they make jokes to kill time. They carry weapons, and their fights (like those Shakespeare must have seen in London streets) are more dangerous than our student riots. But it is not hard to recognize them as youths in the bored, restless period before marriage and settling down. The Friar is perhaps less familiar. He is related to countless intriguing priests in French, Spanish, and Italian plays, but he also expresses much of the wisdom of the play: its delight in the order of nature, and in human love in the natural world.
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Romeo and Juliet fit naturally into the life of their town when we first see them. Their adolescence is quieter and moodier than Mercutios or Benvolios, but they are not strikingly unusual until love transforms them. Even then Shakespeare keeps us reminded of their extreme youth, and he shows us how their infatuation looks to their friends. When Romeo learns (Act III, scene 3) that he is banished, he has a tantrum in which he sounds more like a child than a hero of tragedy. The Friar scolds him properly: Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote The unreasonable fury of a beast. The Nurse is on hand to bring out the comic effect. She has just been through Juliets hysterics: Even so lies she, Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. Producers are sometimes embarrassed by these tears. They fear that the audience will not be robust enough to see the lovers in this unflattering light and still be moved by their love-death. But the strength of the play is partly in its homey realism, and the love of Romeo and Juliet is the more touching and frightening for the familiar, domestic scene in which it appears. The modern producer does, however, have real difficulty with the lovers tantrums because of the style in which they are written. When the Nurse (Act III, scene 2) cruelly hints at Tybalts death and Romeos banishment, Juliet, thinking that Romeo is dead, has a long aria of despair: Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ay, And that bare vowel I shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I, if there be such an I and the rest. There is a curious interest, and some psychological subtlety in the puns and conceits, all stemming from I. But a modern audience cannot accept such dexterity at a moment of high feeling. Shakespeare himself soon learned to rely less on rhetoric and more on his flexible blank verse and his actors emotion, at moments of this kind. It is in these scenes that we notice Shakespeares immaturity: he was still experimenting with verse-technique when he wrote this play. The producer is obliged to cut the difficult speeches, but in doing so he must be careful to leave the strong underlying dramatic build intact. While we see the lovers in the little daylight world of Verona, we are given the scenes that initiate us into the secret, nocturnal world of their love: the
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Capulets party, the balcony scene, Juliets monologue as she waits for night and Romeo; the parting at dawn, and the final scene in the tomb. In these scenes the overpowering sweetness of love is the point, rather than the characters of Romeo and Juliet. When Juliet says (Act II, scene 2) My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep, we ought to feel the love that dwarfs the little girl who speaks, almost forgetting the girl herself. That is why these scenes, miraculous as they are, are not easy to act. The actors should be young enough to charm us in these roles, and at the same time understanding enough to lose their egos in the simplicity of feeling and imagery that Shakespeare provides. To mark the course of love as Romeo and Juliet follow where it leads, Shakespeare drew on the long tradition of European love-poetry. When they first confess the love that unites them (at the party, Act I, scene 5) they have a delicate duet in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet in which religious imagery is half-playfully used to express their human delight: If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this, My lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. While Juliet impatiently waits for Romeo after their secret marriage (Act III, scene 2) she echoes the movement and imagery of the classical epithalamion, or wedding song: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus lodging; such a wagoner As Phaeton would whip you to the west, And bring in cloudy night immediately. The epithalamion was a joyful song with which the wedding guests were supposed to accompany the ceremonious progress of bride and groom to their nuptial chamber. But Juliet must sing hers alone, in her childs voice; and as we listen we know that her Romeo is banished already. The scene of the lovers dawn parting is more frightening still (Act III, scene 5). It is based on the daysong, a form which the twelfth-century troubadors used in the cult of courtly love. No one knows where Shakespeare learned about the daysong, for it was not cultivated in England, but the fact that this scene is based on it was noticed more than a hundred years ago. As in the daysong, the lovers have
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enjoyed a single night, in secret; day comes too soon, with the voices of the birds; their faithful watcher (the Nurse, in this scene) calls to warn them that they must part. In all of these scenes what the lovers say naturally expresses the way love looks at that moment in the story; and as we read we may not be aware of the old lyric forms that Shakespeare used. But the forms are part of the magic: they suggest, behind Juliet and her Romeo, the mysterious and ancient force of love itself. There is something sinister about courtly love and its daysongs. In that tradition love is always amoral, all-powerful, and so wonderful that it can be fulfilled only in or through death. The common, daylight world is always loves enemy, the secret night its only friend. It is appropriate that the daysong should be the form of the scene which marks the turning point in the story. In the early parts of the play Romeo and Juliet do not know that their love cannot survive in daytime Verona. But Shakespeare prepares their love-death from the beginning, with his symbolism of day and night. The lovers see each other, again and again, as light which is paradoxically visible only in the dark of night. They see each other that way before they realize what it means. So Romeo sees Juliet when he first spies her at the party: O she doth teach the torches to burn bright. It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night As a rich jewel in an Ethiops ear. Shakespeare saw something terrifying, if not in their love itself, at least in their absolute (and too literal and impatient) obedience to it. That is why the end of their story in the dark tomb, surrounded though it is by so many merely chance misfortunes, is the only psychologically and poetically right conclusion. Shakespeare gives us the full poignancy of Romeos and Juliets story, but also the real world of Verona in which it runs its course. He establishes the wider setting before the lovers appear; he makes us aware of it throughout, and he returns to it after their tale is told. He never loses touch with common experience and its sober wisdom, and so he suggests that Romeo and Juliet know love in only one of its forms.
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1970Susan Snyder. Romeo and Juliet : Comedy into Tragedy, from Essays in Criticism
Susan Snyder (19342001) was a professor of English at Swarthmore College. She is the author of The Comic Matrix of Shakespeares Tragedies
Romeo and Juliet in the Twentieth Century (1979), Pastoral Process: Spenser, Marvel, Milton (1998), and Shakespeare: A Wayward Journey (2002).
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Romeo and Juliet is different from Shakespeares other tragedies in that it becomes, rather than is, tragic. Other tragedies have reversals, but in Romeo and Juliet the reversal is so radical as to constitute a change of genre: the action and the characters begin in familiar comic patterns, and are then transformedor discardedto compose the pattern of tragedy. Comedy and tragedy, being opposed ways of apprehending the real world, project their own opposing worlds. The tragic world is governed by inevitability, and its highest value is personal integrity. In the comic world evitability is assumed; instead of heroic or obstinate adherence to a single course, comedy endorses opportunistic shifts and realistic accommodations as means to an end of new social health. The differing laws of comedy and tragedy point to opposed concepts of law itself. Law in the comic world is extrinsic, imposed on society en masse. Its source there is usually human, so that law may either be stretched ingeniously to suit the characters ends, or flouted, or even annulled by benevolent rulers. Portia plays tricks with the letter and spirit of Venetian law to save Antonio. The Dukes in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer Nights Dream, when the objects are family reunions and happily paired lovers, simply brush aside legal obstacles. Even deep-rooted social laws, like the obedience owed to parents by their children, are constantly overturned. But in the tragic world law is inherent: imposed by the individuals own nature, it may direct him to a conflict with the larger patterns of law inherent in his universe. The large pattern may be divine, as it generally is in Greek tragedy, or it may be natural and social, as in Macbeth and King Lear. Tragic law cannot be altered; it does no good to tell destruction to stop breeding destruction, or to tell gods or human individuals to stop being themselves. In these opposed worlds our sense of time and its value also differs. The action of comedy may be quickly paced, but we know that it is moving towards a conclusion of all the time in the world. The events of tragedy, on the other hand, acquire urgency in their uniqueness and their irrevocability: they will never happen again, and one by one they move the hero closer to the end of his own time in death. In comedy short-term urgencies are played against a dominant expansiveness, while in tragedy a sense that time is limited and precious grows with our perception of an inevitable outcome. In its inexorable movement and the gulf it fixes between the central figure and the others, tragedy has been compared to ritual sacrifice. The protagonist is both hero and victim, separated from the ordinary, all-important in his own being, but destined for destruction. That is the point of the ritual. Comedy is organized like a game. The ascendancy goes to the clever ones who can take advantage of sudden openings, plot strategies, and adapt flexibly to an unexpected move. But
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luck and instinct win games as well as skill, and comedy takes account of the erratic laws of chance that bring a Dogberry out on top of a Don John and, more basically, of the instinctive attunement to underlying pattern that crowns lovers, however unaware and inflexible, with final success. Romeo and Juliet, young and in love and defiant of obstacles, are attuned to the basic movement of the comic game toward social regeneration. But they are not successful: the game turns into a sacrifice, and the favored lovers become its marked victims. This shift is illuminated by a study of the plays two worlds and some secondary characters who help to define them. If we divide the play at Mercutios death, the death that generates all those that follow, it becomes apparent that the plays movement up to this point is essentially comic. With the usual intrigues and go-betweens, the lovers overcome obstacles in a move toward marriage. This personal action is set in a broader social context, so that the marriage promises not only private satisfaction but renewed social unity: For this alliance may so happy prove To turn your households rancour to pure love. (2.3.9192)1 The state that requires this cure is set out in the first scene. The Verona of the MontagueCapulet feud is like the typical starting point of the kind of comedy described by Northrop Frye: a society controlled by habit, ritual bondage, arbitrary law and the older characters.2 Even the scenes formal balletic structure, a series of matched representatives of the warring families entering on cue, conveys the inflexibility of this society, the arbitrary division that limits freedom of action. The feud itself seems more a matter of mechanical reflex than of deeply felt hatred. As H. B. Charlton has noted, its presentation here has a comic aspect.3 The parents rage that sounds so ominous in the Prologue becomes in representation an irascible humor: two old men claw at one another only to be dragged back by their wives and scolded by their Prince. Charlton found the play flawed by this failure to plant the seeds of tragedy, but the treatment of the feud makes good sense if Shakespeare is playing on comic expectations. Other aspects of this initial world of Romeo and Juliet suggest comedy. Its characters are the minor aristocracy and servants familiar in comedies, concerned not with wars and the fate of kingdoms but with arranging marriages and managing the kitchen. More important, it is a world of possibilities, with Capulets feast represented to the young men as a field of choice. Hear all, all see, says Capulet to Paris, And like her most whose merit most shall be (1.2.3031). Go thither, Benvolio tells Romeo, and with unattainted eye / Compare her face with some that I shall show . . . (1.2.8990) and Rosaline will be forgotten for some more approachable beauty. Romeo rejects the words,
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of course, but in action he soon displays a classic comic adaptability, switching from the impossible love to the possible just as Proteus, Demetrius, Phoebe, and Olivia do in their respective comedies. Violence and disaster are not absent, of course, but they are unrealized threats. The feast yields a kind of comic emblem when Tybalts potential violence is rendered harmless by Capulets festive accommodation. Therefore be patient, take no note of him. It is my will; the which if thou respect, Show a fair presence and put off these frowns, An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast. (1.5.7376) This overruling of Tybalt is significant, for Tybalt is a recognizably tragic character, the only one in this part of the play. He alone takes the feud seriously: It is his inner law, the propeller of his fiery nature. He speaks habitually in the tragic rhetoric of honor and death: What, dares the slave Come hither, coverd with an antic face, To fleer and scorn at our solemnity? Now by the stock and honour of my kin, To strike him dead I hold it not a sin. (1.5.5761) Tybalts single set of absolutes cuts him off from a whole rhetorical range available to the other young men of the play: lyric love, witty fooling, friendly conversation. Ironically, his imperatives come to dominate the plays world only when he himself departs from it. While he is alive, Tybalt is an alien. In a similar manner, the passing fears of calamity voiced by Romeo, Juliet, and Friar Laurence are not allowed to dominate this atmosphere. If the love of Romeo and Juliet is already imaged as a flash of light swallowed by darkness (an image invoking inexorable natural law), it is also expressed as a sea venture, which suggests luck and skill set against natural hazards, chance seized joyously as an opportunity for action. Direct my sail, Romeo tells his captain Fortune (1.4.113); but soon he feels himself in command: I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far As that vast shore washd with the farthest sea, I would adventure for such merchandise. (2.2.8284) The spirit is Bassanios as he adventures for Portia, a Jason voyaging in quest of the Golden Fleece.4 Romeo is ready for difficulties with a traditional lovers stratagem, one that Shakespeare had used before in Two Gentlemen of Verona: a
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rope ladder which to the high topgallant of my joy / Must be my convoy in the secret night (2.4.201202). But before the ladder can be used, Mercutios death intervenes to transform this world of exhilarating venture. Mercutio has been almost the incarnation of comic atmosphere. He is the best of game-players, endlessly inventive, full of quick moves and counter-moves. Speech for him is a constant play on multiple possibilities: puns abound because two or three meanings are more fun than one, and Queen Mab brings dreams not only to lovers like Romeo but to courtiers, lawyers, parsons, soldiers, maids. These have nothing to do with the case at handRomeos premonitionbut Mercutio is not bound by events. They are merely points of departure for his expansive wit. In Mercutios sudden, violent end, Shakespeare makes the birth of a tragedy coincide exactly with the symbolic death of comedy. The element of freedom and play dies with him, and where many courses were open before, now there seems only one. Romeo sees at once that an irreversible process has begun: This days black fate on moe days doth depend [hang over], This but begins the woe others must end. (3.1.12425) It is the first sign in the plays dialogue pointing unambiguously to tragic causation. Romeos future action is now determined: he must kill Tybalt, he must run away, he is fortunes fool. This helplessness is the most striking quality of the second, tragic world of Romeo and Juliet. That is, the temper of the new world is largely a function of onrushing events. Under pressure of events, the feud turns from farce to fate, from tit for tat to blood for blood. Lawless as it is in the Princes eyes, the feud is dramatically the law in Romeo and Juliet. Previously external and avoidable, it has now moved inside Romeo to become his personal law. Fittingly, he takes over Tybalts rhetoric of honor and death: Alive in triumph, and Mercutio slain? Away to heaven respective lenity, And fire-eyd fury be my conduct now! Now, Tybalt, take thy villain back again That late thou gavest me. (3.1.12731) Even outside the main chain of vengeance, the world is suddenly full of imperatives: against his will Friar John is detained at the monastery, and against his will the Apothecary sells poison to Romeo. Urgency becomes the norm as nights run into mornings in continuous action and the characters seem never to sleep. The new world finds its emblem not in the aborted attack but in the aborted feast. As Tybalts violence was out of tune with the Capulet feast in Act
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2, so in acts 3 and 4 the projected wedding is made grotesque when Shakespeare insistently links it with death.5 Preparations for the feast parallel those of the first part, so as to underline the contrast when All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast. (4.5.8487) I have been treating these two worlds as consistent wholes in order to bring out their opposition, but I do not wish to deny dramatic unity to Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare was writing one play, not two, and in spite of the prominence of the turning point we are aware that premonitions of disaster precede the death of Mercutio and that hopes for avoiding it continue until near the plays conclusion. The world-shift that converts Romeo and Juliet from instinctive winners into sacrificial victims is thus a gradual one. In this connection the careers of two secondary characters, Friar Laurence and the Nurse, are instructive. In being and action these two belong to the comic vision. Friar Laurence is one of a whole series of Shakespearean manipulators and stage-managers, those wise and benevolent figures who direct the action of others, arrange edifying tableaux, and resolve intricate public and private problems. Notable in the list are Oberon, Friar Francis in Much Ado, Helena in the latter part of Alls Well, Duke Vincentio, and Prospero. Friar Laurence shares the religious dress of three of this quintet and participates to some extent, by his knowledge of herbs and drugs, in the magical powers of Oberon and Prospero. Such figures are frequent in comedy but not in tragedy, where the future is not manipulable. The Friars aims are those implicit in the plays comic movement, an inviolable union for Romeo and Juliet and an end to the families feud. The Nurses goal is less lofty, but equally appropriate to comedy. She wants Juliet marriedto anyone. Her preoccupation with marriage and breeding is as indiscriminate as the life force itself. But she conveys no sense of urgency in all this. Rather, her garrulity assumes that limitless time that frames the comic world but not the tragic. In this sense her circumlocutions and digressions are analogous to Mercutios witty flights and to Friar Laurences counsels of patience. The leisurely time assumptions of the Friar and the Nurse contrast with the lovers impatience, creating at first the normal counterpoint of comedy6 and later a radical split that points us, with the lovers, directly to tragedy. For what place can these two have in the new world brought into being by Mercutios death, the world of limited time, no effective choice, no escape? In a sense, though, they define and sharpen the tragedy by their very failure to find a place in the dramatic progress, by their growing estrangement from the true springs of the action. Be patient, Friar Laurence tells the banished Romeo, for
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the world is broad and wide (3.3.16). But the roominess he assumes in both time and space simply does not exist for Romeo. His time has been constricted into a chain of days working out a black fate, and he sees no world outside the walls of Verona (3.3.17). Comic adaptability again confronts tragic integrity when Juliet is faced with a similarly intolerable situationshe is ordered to marry Parisand turns to her Nurse for counsel as Romeo does to the Friar. The Nurse replies with the traditional worldly wisdom of comedy. Romeo has been banished and Paris is very presentable. Adjust yourself to the new situation. Then, since the case so stands as now it doth, I think it best you married with the County. O, hes a lovely gentleman! (3.5.21820) She still speaks for the life force. Even if Paris is an inferior husband, he is better than no husband at all. Your first is deador twere as good he were As living here and you no use of him. (22627) But such advice has become irrelevant, even shocking, in this context. There was no sense of jar when Benvolio, a spokesman for accommodation like the Nurse and the Friar, earlier advised Romeo to substitute a possible for an impossible love. True, the Nurse is urging violation of the marriage vows; but Romeo was also sworn to Rosaline, and for Juliet the marriage vow is a seal on the integrity of her love for Romeo, not a separate issue. The parallel points up the progress of tragedy, for while Benvolios advice sounded sensible and was in fact unintentionally carried out by Romeo, the course of action outlined by the Nurse is unthinkable to the audience as well as Juliet. The memory of the lovers dawn parting that began this scene is too strong. Juliet and the Nurse no longer speak the same language, and estrangement is inevitable. Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain, Juliet vows privately (3.5.242).7 Like the death of Mercutio, Juliets rejection of her old confidante has symbolic overtones. The possibilities of comedy have again been presented only to be discarded. Both Romeo and Juliet have now cast off their comic companions and the alternate modes of being that they represented. But there is one last hope for comedy. If the lovers will not adjust to the situation, perhaps the situation can be adjusted to the lovers. This is a usual comic solution, and we have at hand the usual manipulator to engineer it. The Friars failure to bring off that solution is the final definition of the tragic world of the play. Time is the villain. Time in comedy generally works
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for regeneration and reconciliation, but in tragedy it propels the protagonists to destruction; there is not enough of it, or it goes wrong somehow. The Friar does his best: he makes more than one plan to avert catastrophe. The first, typically, is patience and a broader field of action. Romeo must go to Mantua and wait till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back . . . . (3.3.15052) It is a good enough plan, for life if not for drama, but it depends on finding a time. As it turns out, events move too quickly for the Friar, and the hasty preparations for Juliets marriage to Paris leave no time for cooling tempers and reconciliations. His second plan is an attempt to gain time, to create the necessary freedom through a faked death. This is, of course, another comic formula; Shakespeares later uses of it are all in comedies. It is interesting that the contrived deaths of Hero in Much Ado, Helena in Alls Well, Claudio in Measure for Measure, and Hermione in The Winters Tale, unlike Juliets, are designed to produce a change of heart in other characters.8 Time may be important, as it is in The Winters Tale, but only as it promotes repentance. Friar Laurence, less ambitious and more desperate than his fellow manipulators, does not hope that Juliets death will dissolve the families hatreds but only that it will give Romeo a chance to come and carry her off. Time in the comic world of The Winters Tale cooperates benevolently with Paulinas schemes for Leontes regeneration; but for Friar Laurence it is both prize and adversary. Romeos man is quicker with the news of Juliets death than poor Friar John with the news of the deception. Romeo himself beats Friar Laurence to the Capulets tomb. The onrushing tragic action quite literally outstrips the slower steps of accommodation before our eyes. The Friar arrives too late to prevent one half of the tragic conclusion, and his essential estrangement is only emphasized when he seeks to avert the other half by sending Juliet to a nunnery. It is the last alternative to be suggested. Juliet quietly rejects the possibility of adjustment and continuing life: Go, get thee hence, for I will not away (5.3.160). The Nurse and the Friar illustrate a basic principle of the operation of comedy in tragedy, which might be called the principle of irrelevance. In tragedy we are tuned to the extraordinary. Romeo and Juliet gives us this extraordinary center not so much in the two individuals as in the love itself, its intensity and integrity. Our apprehension of this intensity and integrity comes gradually, through the cumulative effect of the lovers lyric encounters and the increasing urgency of events, but also through the growing irrelevance of the comic characters. De Quincey perceived in the knocking at the gate in Macbeth the resumption of normality after nightmare: the re-establishment of the going-on of the
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world in which we live, which first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them.9 I would say rather that the normal atmosphere of Macbeth has been and goes on being nightmarish, and that it is the knocking at the gate that turns out to be the contrasting parenthesis, but the notion of a sharpened sensitivity is valid. As the presence of alternate paths makes us more conscious of the road we are in fact traveling, so the Nurse and the Friar make us more profoundly sensible of Romeos and Juliets love and its true direction. After Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare never returned to the comedy-into-tragedy formula, although the canon has several examples of potential tragedy converted into comedy. There is a kind of short comic movement in Othello, encompassing the successful love of Othello and Desdemona and their safe arrival in Cyprus, but comedy is not in control even in the first act. Iagos malevolence has begun the play, and our sense of obstacles overcome (Desdemonas father, the perils of the sea) is shadowed by his insistent presence. The act ends with the birth of his next plot. It is not only the shift from comedy to tragedy that sets Romeo and Juliet apart from the other Shakespeare tragedies. Critics have often noted, sometimes disapprovingly, that external fate rather than character is the principal determiner of the tragic outcome. For Shakespeare, tragedy is usually a matter of both character and circumstance, a fatal interaction of man and moment. But in this play, although the central characters have their weaknesses, their destruction does not really stem from these weaknesses. One may agree with Friar Laurence that Romeo is rash, but it is not his rashness that propels him into the tragic chain of events but an opposite quality. In the crucial duel between Mercutio and Tybalt, Romeo tries to make peace. Ironically, this very intervention contributes to Mercutios death. Mercutio: Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm. Romeo: I thought all for the best. (3.1.1089) If Shakespeare wanted to implicate Romeos rashness in his fate, this scene is handled with unbelievable ineptness. Judging from the resultant effect, what he wanted to convey was an ironic dissociation between character and the direction of events. Perhaps this same purpose dictated the elaborate introduction of comic elements before the characters are pushed into the opposed conditions of tragedy. Stress on milieu tends to downgrade the importance of individual temperament and motivation. For this once in Shakespearian tragedy, it is not what you are that counts, but the world you live in.
Romeo and Juliet in the Twentieth Century Notes
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1. All Shakespeare references in this essay are to The Complete Works, ed. G. L. Kittredge (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1936). 2. Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 169. Although the younger generation participates in the feud, they have not created it; it is a legacy from the past. 3. Shakespearian Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), 5657. 4. Merchant of Venice, 1.1.16674. 5. 3.4.2328; 3.5.20203; 4.1.68; 4.1.7786; 4.1.1078; 4.5.3539; 5.3.12. 6. Clowns and cynics are usually available to comment on romantic lovers in Shakespeares comedies, providing qualification and a widened perspective without real disharmony. A single character, like Rosalind in As You Like It, may incorporate much of the counterpoint in her own comprehensive view. 7. Later, in the potion scene, Juliets resolve weakens temporarily, but she at once rejects the idea of companionship. The effect is to call attention to her aloneness: Ill call them back again to comfort me. Nurse!What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone. (4.3.1719) 8. The same effect, if not the plan, is apparent in Imogens reported death in Cymbeline. 9. On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823), in Shakespeare Criticism: A Selection, ed. D. Nichol Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1916), 378.
QQQ
1973James H. Seward. The Height, from Tragic Vision in Romeo and Juliet
James H. Seward (1928 ) is a poet and scholar. His collection of poems is entitled Atlantis and Other Poems.
One cannot talk about poetry, and least of all Shakespeares poetry, as if it were merely a collection of ideas, and nothing could be wider of the mark than to imagine that as the play develops Romeo and Juliet will emerge as little more than premises in some sort of moral syllogism. As a poet, and more particularly as a poet who writes tragedies, Shakespeares concern is with human beauty and with the agony of its destruction. No doubt the fact that he can account for this destruction in intellectual terms, in this case in terms of a moral system, is important, but it is not the important fact. The focus is always upon
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the destruction itself, a destruction which can only be understood in terms of our response to the aesthetic fact. As a relatively inexperienced playwright, Shakespeare may not have always been successful in this attempt, but as we shall shortly see the new breath of life which he breathes into his characters at the end of the First Act marks a shift in emphasis from a statement which is largely one dimensional in character to one which reflects something of the full complexity of human nature. Before we consider this question, however, we must first face the enigma of the Second Chorus. No one, to my knowledge, has ever successfully refuted Dr. Johnsons snorting comment that this chorus conduces nothing to the progress of the play, but relates what is already known, or what the next scene will show; and relates it without adding the improvement of any moral sentiment.1 It is of course possible to quibble with this judgment. When one understands the Elizabethan conception of passionate love, there appear to be moral overtones in the observation that young affection gapes to be the heire of old desire. Similarly, the line, Alike bewitched by the charme of lookes, would have had a special significance for Elizabethans. But even if one admits the presence of something which Dr. Johnson might accept as a moral sentiment, it is difficult to think of a need for such a statement. Shakespeare has already made his position quite clear, and will continue to do so, through the action of the play. The same objection applies to the expository content of the chorus. Why describe an action which the audience has just witnessed or which the next scene will show? But whatever mysteries may be connected with the chorus, the action of the play itself contains no such ambiguities, and it is to this that we must now turn. Since the key to the first part of the Second Act is contained in the balcony scene, we shall, with apologies, reverse our usual procedure and begin our examination with an analysis of this scene, a scene which from the standpoint of audience comprehension is probably the most difficult in the play. This is why, as we shall see, Shakespeare has been preparing for it ever since Romeos first appearance, and why the scenes which immediately precede and follow are designed to comment upon it. But however difficult for Shakespeares audience to understand, it is infinitely more so for us because the point of view which emerges, and which is largely implicit, is one with which, as post-Renaissance readers, we are likely to be unfamiliar. We shall therefore try to simplify matters further by dealing first with Romeo and then with Juliet. Admittedly, such an analytical procedure is unnatural in that it disrupts the total effect for which Shakespeare is striving, but considering the difficulties involved no other course seems feasible. Critics generally agree that the Romeo who warbles his love in the balcony scene is not the same as the Romeo who cried out his passion for Rosaline in the streets. Bradley, for example, agrees with Coleridge in finding an intentional contrast between this feeling [that is, Romeos infatuation for Rosaline] and the
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passion that displaces it;2 and the nature of this contrast is clearly suggested by Donald Stauffer who believes that Romeos moonstruck calf-love soon gives way to a true love which echoes through the play.3 Unfortunately, the evidence makes it difficult to accept this rather sentimental reading of the text. At the first meeting of the two lovers, Shakespeare has made it unmistakably clear, at least to an Elizabethan audience, that Romeos feelings have not been transformed, merely transferred to another person. And when Romeo himself reappears in the Second Act, nothing he says or does dispels this impression. The two lines he speaks in the first scene serve to put us on the scent: Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turne backe dull earth and find thy Center out. Romeo, the passionate lover, circles in love and misery around his mistress. The reason for his unhappiness may not be the sameJuliet has responded to his advancesbut the fact that she seems unreachable because of her name is all the excuse Shakespeare needs to suggest the basic similarity of the two passions. To fulfill this promise, Romeo, when he steps center stage, continues to exhibit in all of their excessive silliness the various symptoms of passionate love. In the process of unfolding his feelings for Juliet, he hymns a paean of fleshly praise: Her eyes might twinckle in the heavens, the brightnesse of her cheek would outshine the stars, and even the radiant moon is envious: Arise faire Sun and kill the envious Moone, Who is alreadie sicke and pale with greefe, That thou her maide art far more faire then she. Playing still further upon the color of the moon, he reveals in unmistakable terms the complexion of his own desires: Be not her maide since she is envious, Her vestal livery is but sicke and greene, And none but fooles do weare it, cast it off. Moreover, he persists in addressing her in language saturated with religious imagery. She is a winged messenger of heaven, a bright Angel, a deare saint. And this, as we have seen, is probative evidence of a man who has inverted the natural order of things and made his mistress, not God, the center of his being. Even the visual imageRomeo below and Juliet above in the balcony reinforces the suggestion of worship and deity. But perhaps most revealing of all, when Juliet pleads her innocence in a tremulous and moving speech, Romeo can only reply:
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Lady, by yonder blessed Moone I vow, That tips with silver all these frute tree tops the moon, thinconstant moon, arch-symbol of the passionate lover because such a lover, being at the mercy of his eyes, is, as Romeo has already demonstrated, somewhat changeable in his affections! Little wonder that Juliet protests, O swear not by the moone thinconstant moone, That monethly changes in her circld orde. No one would deny that Romeos display of passion in this scene is considerably different from his earlier outpourings. The Romeo who could strike such poses as, When the devout religion of mine eye Maintaines such falshood, then turn teares to fiers: And these who, often drownde, could never die, Transparent Hereticques, be burnt for liers. One fairer then my love? the all seeing Sun, Nere saw her match, since first the world begun, is surely not the same who cries, her eyes in heaven, Would through the ayrie region streame so bright, That birds would sing, and thinke it were not night. In the first instance, lines verging on doggerel; in the second, poetry that manages to catch in its trembling net something of the sublimity of love. But the point is that we cannot account for this difference on the basis of the traditional distinction between infatuation and true love, for the same attitudes which are put down as silly in his calf-love for Rosaline are equally characteristic of his feelings for Juliet. The difference, as Dickey remarks, is not altogether one of kind.4 The problem disappears, however, when we realize that this difference is due, not to a change in the nature of Romeos love, but to a change in Shakespeares emphasis. Romeos feelings in the balcony scene do not represent true love; they are simply a restatement in terms of the full complexity of human nature of the same sort of feelings he felt for Rosaline. Such a shift in emphasis, a shift which enables Shakespeare to present Romeo as a person whose feelings are capable of moving us deeply even while he continues to display the absurd and potentially dangerous attributes of passion, is quite consistent with the
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Elizabethan conception of lust, for they knew perfectly well that the behavior of a passionate lover is likely to represent something more than the sum total of his folly. All human action, because it is human, involves the totality of mans being. That is to say, the mind is not one part flesh, and another part spirit: but the whole minde is flesh, and the whole minde is spirit, and the same is to be said of the will and affection, for even as the ayre in the dawning of the day, is not wholly light, or whollie darke . . . but the whole aire is partly light, and partly darke thorowout . . . so is the flesh and the spirit mingled together in the soule of man.5 If this is so, and if we remember that the will was considered as a source of emotion as well as choice, it would seem to follow that one consequence of dwelling upon the typical excesses of infatuation, as Shakespeare did with Romeos earlier passion, is that it inevitably leads to a caricature of young love, a caricature which belies the emotional complexity of the experience. Perhaps this involvement of mans higher faculties in even the lowest of his actions would make little difference in the case of someone hardened to lust, for the emotions which arise from his depraved will would hardly be distinguishable from the movements of his sensitive appetite, but the case would be otherwise for a person not deeply committed to passion. If we remember that passionate love, like any form of sin, results from the misapplication of faculties which are themselves good, and that the corruptive process is a gradual one, there is no reason why the emotions which arise from the wills early involvement in passion should not be quite similar to those feelings of the virtuous whose love springs from a proper moral choice. This would be especially true of the young, for, as we have observed, their confusion of sex with love does not arise so much from a viciousness of will as from inexperience and the fact that the force of appetite rages most strongly at this time of life. In the young, mans capacity to love, though attaching itself to an unworthy object, is still essentially sound; it is merely suffering from a temporary giddiness. If we now bring these attitudes to bear upon Romeos behavior in the balcony scene, we see that there is no necessary contradiction between the belief of most critics that there is something deeply moving in Romeos lyric exaltation and our own contention that he displays the various attributes of passion. When Romeo speaks such lines as O speake againe bright Angel, for thou art As glorious to this night being ore my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white upturned wondring eyes, Of mortalls that fall backe to gaze on him, When he bestrides the lazie passing Cloudes, And sayles upon the bosome of the ayre,
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or, The brightnesse of her cheek wold shame those stars, As day-light doth a lampe, her eyes in heaven, Would through the ayrie region streame so bright, That birds would sing, and thinke it were not night, the reactions of an Elizabethan audience, or at least of its more sensitive members, would almost certainly have been mixed. They would have seen that Romeos vision has been colored by passion; but they would also have recognized something appealing in this excitement of a person who suddenly finds himself in the presence of beauty, and, what is equally important, something admirable as well. Romeo may lust after Juliets body (though of course not admitting as much to himself ), but because he is young and because he is encountered early in his passion, his commitment to the bestial part of his nature has not as yet seriously impaired his capacity to feel that kind of love which, in the Renaissance view, links man with the angels. The critics, then, have not been altogether mistaken in their interpretation of this scene. Romeos love for Juliet is in many ways a joyous thing, but they have erred in their failure to bring this reaction into proper focus. Shakespeares point, if this is not putting it too crudely, is that Romeos flirtation with passion is a dangerous thing. The purpose of this scene, therefore, is not only to show this danger to the audience, but also to remind them of that which is threatened, the beauty of Romeos nature as a properly fulfilled human being. In other words, Romeos capacity for love, a capacity which is so movingly illustrated in this scene and which still shines through the murkiness of his passion, defines in human terms the meaning of the tragedy which appears to be building before their eyes. None of this, of course, means that Shakespeare is merely stating moral doctrine. Even though his conception of Romeos character fits into the moral perspective which an Elizabethan audience would bring to the play, the central fact which underlies Shakespeares vision of life is his realization that mans nature when uncorrupted by passionate love or other blighting emotions is a thing of extraordinary beauty. It is, for example, the beauty of a person in love which is for Shakespeare the palpable, living reality and not the philosophical or moral system which might explain this love. The ultimate goodness of love, therefore, lies in the human fact, in that equal, if different, excitement which is aroused in us by the sight of a man who is himself stirred by love, and in the last analysis this excitement can only be conveyed by the quality of the verse itself. Be this as it may, such an interpretation of Romeos behavior obviously poses a problem. If his love for Juliet is no different from his earlier unheroic
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dejection,6 why does Shakespeare dwell at such lengths on the Rosaline episode? Part of the answer lies in the nature of Shakespeares theme. Infatuation is a necessary stage through which all men must pass, and as such it is essentially wholesome. It is part of Romeos tragedy that he is presented to us in the early parts of the play as a young man undergoing this apprenticeship, for the warmth which underlies our amusement, like the excitement which characterizes our reaction in the balcony scene, is a measure of the tragedy to come. But there is still another reason for this emphasis, a reason which arises from the nature of the medium in which Shakespeare is working. When we consider that Romeos language makes it unmistakably clear that his wills response to love, though entangled in passion, is still largely uncorrupted, a moments reflection will serve to show that an audience totally unprepared for such a display might be in serious trouble. As they watch this rapidly unfolding action, they could not help observing that Romeos behavior displays many of the symptoms of passion; but they would also be aware of that which is manifestly beautiful in his character. Now surely, it would be asking a great deal of an audience, even one supposedly familiar with the values involved, to sort out their conflicting feelings before the moment itself would be gone and with it the intended effect. Either they would be more or less tolerant than Shakespeare wished them to be, or else, assuming that in the end they were not confused by this mixture of folly and beauty, there is still the danger that so much of their energy would be devoted to the task of trying to figure out the proper relationship between these two responses that the sense of impending danger and waste implicit in Romeos surrender to passion would be largely dissipated. The way out of this difficulty, or at least the way Shakespeare chose, was to condition his audience to think of Romeo as a passionate lover before they came to this scene. Once this largely one-dimensional impression has been implanted in their minds, and the danger of passion hinted at, Shakespeare is then free to re-state his conception of young love in terms of the full richness and complexity of human nature without running the serious risk of confusing his audience. Shakespeares sensitivity to the capacity of his audience also accounts for both the substance and the placement of the first scene in Act II. This action, which we recall takes place immediately before the balcony scene, is given over almost entirely to bawdy humor. Again and then again, Mercutio alludes to what he takes to be the sensual basis of Romeos love for Rosaline: I conjure thee by Rosalines bright eyes, By her high forehead, and her Scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demeanes, that there adjacent lie twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistresse circle
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Of some strange nature, letting it there stand Till she had laid it, and conjurde it downe O Romeo that she were, o that she were An open ars and thou a Poprin Peare. Now because this action immediately precedes the balcony scene, the scene in which the love between Romeo and Juliet will be unfolded as something pure (and some say holy), the tendency of the critics is to make the most of Mercutios mistake. The key to this scene, they argue, lies in the fact that he is joking about Romeos infatuation for Rosaline, not his friends new-found passion for Juliet. From this it is only a step to the conclusion that this action serves as a kind of foil against which the passion of the young lovers will blaze forth in all its purity. The discord thus struck, so Granville-Barker tells us, is perfect preparation for the harmony to come; and Mercutios ribaldry has hardly died from our ears before Juliet is at her window.7 Vyvyan is even more impressed. Not even Shakespeare could have contrived antitheses more arresting than the medlar-tree and Juliets balcony, the poperin pear and loves pilgrim, who has come to the shrine of his own hearts sainta place so beautiful that we know it must be holy.8 Although in this instance the critics would seem to recognize the importance of dramatic structure, it must be pointed out that in doing so they have put the cart before the horse. They start with the balcony scene and what they consider to be its tender expression of true love, and when they observe that the exchange between Benvolio and Mercutio is ribald in the extreme, they naturally attempt to explain its bawdry in a way that will not interfere with the love which is to follow. It seems to me much more sensible to start with Mercutios bawdry, and then, and only then, to consider what effect its impact would have upon an audience as they watch the next action. But isnt this merely a quibble? All critics accept the fact that the Mercutio episode affects the audiences response to the balcony scene. What difference does it make how we arrive at our knowledge of this influence? Perhaps none, but then if we do approach the play from the point of view of an unfolding sequence, which is the way it would be received by an audience, it is interesting to note that Shakespeare sends his audience into the balcony scene only after he has forcefully and repeatedly reminded them of the sensual basis of Romeos passion for Rosaline. From an Elizabethan point of view, the reason for such an emphasis is clear. Although Shakespeares principal concern at the moment is with the attractiveness of the lovers, he cannot afford to let his audience forget that if a man surrenders too often to the desires of the appetite, the will, as it increasingly finds pleasure in interdicted things, eventually becomes so enmeshed in the flesh that one cannot distinguish between it and the sensitive appetite. In moral terms,
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such a man acts like an animal; in aesthetic terms, he destroys the beauty of his nature. But the fact that Shakespeare felt it necessary to remind his audience that Romeos golden dreams ultimately spring from the same source as Mercutios dirty jokes does not mean that he intended them to see Romeo as some sort of gross sensualist. His purpose is simply to qualify the delight of his audience with the sobering thought that if Romeos sense-rooted passion grows out of control it may well destroy him. And once we grasp the purpose of Mercutios bawdry, it should be obvious why the information it contains is presented to us immediately before, and not during, the balcony scene. If we assume that Shakespeare recognized the significance of this information, we should also assume that he would have been able to recognize that the manner of relating it to Romeo posed a problem for him. He could call attention to the folly of Romeos behavior, and hence have him speak of a winged messenger and swear by the moon, without much danger, but how could he introduce the idea of lust without spoiling the vision of that which is still lovely in Romeos love? The answer, as we might suspect, lies in Mercutios bawdry. Instead of trying to intertwine love and lust in the balcony scene itself, Shakespeare, well aware of the effect of juxtaposed scenes on the Elizabethan stage, immediately precedes the meeting between the two lovers with a reminder to his audience that passionate love is rooted in lust. The memory of this statement will then linger on through the next scene, and in so doing will qualify the beauty of the vision without interfering with its creation. When we come at last to Juliet and her place in the scene, it is clear that our reaction to her must be colored by our knowledge of Romeos passionwhat we have learned of him is or could be equally true of her. But there is an important difference in the way the two characters are presented, a difference which has been anticipated in their previous appearance. When the play opens it is evident that Romeo has been doting on Rosaline for some time, evident that he is deeply, albeit not hopelessly, committed to the pleasure he is pursuing. But Juliets capacity for love, at least for adult love, is just beginning to unfold. At fourteen, she is, emotionally speaking, a tabularasa. And when the bud opens, as it does in this scene, a flower of amazing beauty is displayed. When we turn to Juliet, therefore, the tragedy which we have seen taking shape in Romeos soul threatens to assume even more aching proportions. This is especially true since whatever difference there may be in the degree of their innocence, there is little, if any, in their situation. As a young person on the brink of that age most fraught with perils, Juliet is as much subject to the raging storms of passion as Romeo. And, unfortunately, there are indications that the clouds may be gathering. She speaks of Romeo as the god of my Idolatrie, and she seems vaguely aware that there may be something amiss in her love: Well do not sweare: although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to night,
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It is too rash, too unadvisd, too sudden, Too like the lightning which doth cease to bee, Ere one can say it lightens. Perhaps this is nothing more than foreshadowing, a mere trick to heighten the tension, but one wonders. Certainly it was a widely held belief in Shakespeares day that conscience immediately reacts when we do something wrong. Even if it does not succeed in dissuading us from error, it at least darkens our pleasure. This is the remorce of conscience, which in the very act of sinning, keeping the watch of our soules, adviseth us by barking, that enimies are present.9 It would be a mistake, however, to overemphasize the folly, not to mention the sinfulness, of Juliets behavior. Shakespeare has no intention of portraying her as a fallen woman; he simply wishes to stress the danger she is in. Indeed, to put this danger in its tragic perspective, he must emphasize her essential innocence, the essential purity of her feelings for Romeo. And this he seeks to accomplish to two ways. To begin with, since Elizabethans always associated honest love, including its emotional aspect, with virtue, it is, I think, suggestive of Juliets state of mind that while Romeos head is filled with visions of her loveliness she has not one word to say about his appearance. Romeo, though blind to the fact, is deeply involved in the flesh; Juliet is not. Again, she is concerned lest he think her behavior light, and it is she, not Romeo, who remembers that the end of love is (or ought to be) marriage. And when she says that she will throw all her fortunes at his feet and follow thee my Lord throughout the world, she is perhaps being rash, but even so, her attitude reveals her awareness of a womans proper role in marriage. But surely, from a moralists point of view, the clearest indication that she has not been contaminated lies in her definition of love: And yet I wish but for the thing I have, My bountie is as boundlesse as the sea, My love as deepe: the more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite. This sort of circular love that grows as it is given, that is a round circle still from good to good,10 is amazingly similar to that sort of love which was thought to flow from heaven to man and back again. But if Juliet is not a sinner, neither is she a saint, for while this emphasis upon the virtuous aspects of her behavior qualifies our judgment, it is not the only means Shakespeare uses to establish a favorable response to her character. Pulsing within the moral framework and forever beyond the reach of the analytical mind, is a warmly-conceived and almost living human being. Before she is anything else, Juliet is a young girl in love and as such a vision of loveliness. Her wish that
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This bud of love by Sommers ripening breath, May prove a bewtious floure when next we meete comes very close to celebrating an accomplished fact, not a promised fulfillment. The urgency in her voice when, in response to Romeos departure, she calls out Hist Romeo hist, o for a falkners voyce, To lure this Tassel gentle back againe, Bondage is hoarse, and may not speake aloude, Else would I teare the Cave where Eccho lies, And make her ayrie tongue more hoarse then mine With repetition of my Romeos name reflects something of the power of love which has suddenly illuminated and surged through her being, and perhaps, barely suggested, something of astonishment as well. And when in tender agony, she says I would have thee gone, And yet no farther then a wantons bird, That lets it hop a litle from his hand, Like a poore prisoner in his twisted gives, And with a silken threed, plucke it backe againe, So loving Jealous of his libertie, the peculiar mixture of love, selfishness, and self-awareness, not to mention the faint suggestion that womans love is never far removed from her maternal instinct, sets in motion responses which reverberate deep in our own experience. But nowhere is Shakespeares sensitivity to human nature more evident than in his handling of the parting of the two lovers. Although during this action Juliet speaks her boundlesse as the sea speech, and although it is here that Shakespeare prepares us for the impending wedding, his primary concern is with the bittersweet quality of young love, that sensation of delicious pain in those who have become so much a part of one another that to separate is to have ones self pulled away. But it is quite impossible to find a conceptual equivalent for this experience. Indeed, strictly speaking, Shakespeare is not at this moment dramatizing an idea. He is simply presenting his audience with the beauty of a human being in love, a beauty which explains in the most profound sense what his tragedy is about. Still, one must not forget the moral overtones, must not forget, as Ben Jonson reminds us, that it is a dangerous thing when mens minds come to sojourn with their affections.11 Juliet may be a thing of beauty, and her beauty may defy analysis, but the fact remains that she is in grave peril, and unknowingly so. For
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an Elizabethan audience, therefore, this scene would be charged with a suspense, a sense of impending doom, which we rarely recognize. As far as both of the lovers are concerned, but especially Juliet, they would see not simply beauty, but beauty in mortal danger. It would be much as if they were asked to watch a fawn nibbling its way toward a bush behind which they knew a panther lay hidden. After Juliet withdraws from the balcony and Romeo exits below, the pace of the drama changes from the charged and poignant dialogue of the lovers to the rather long-winded moralizing of the Friar. One of the reasons for this speech, and especially for its length, is Shakespeares obvious need to provide Romeo with the time to travel from Juliets garden to the Friars cell. But once this function is admitted, critics are usually content to explain the Friars garrulity on the grounds of character. Granville-Barker, for example, believes that the Friar, who is full of maxims and pedagogic kindness is just such a picture of an old man as a young man draws, all unavailing wisdom.12 The Friar may be a kindly old man from whom we would expect such homiletic wisdom, but to account for the substance of his speech on these grounds alone is to completely miss its point. We do not have to read the Friars maxims very carefully to discover that they bear a considerable relevance to the action which the audience has just witnessed. There is some question whether the first four lines belong to the Friar or Romeo,13 but whether it takes him six or two lines to establish the time of day, the main portion of his speech is concerned with something else. As he picks the balefull weedes, and precious juyced flowers with which he is filling his basket, he begins to moralize. He notes that the earth which is Natures tomb is also her womb, and from this he moves easily to the observation that O mickle is the powerfull grace that lies In Plants, hearbes, stones, and their true quallities: For nought so vile, that on the earth doth live, But to the earth some speciall good doth give. And in the theologically sound conviction that all things are good, if properly used, the Friar discovers, as we might expect, a special moral for men: Nor ought so good but straind from that faire use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Vertue it selfe turnes vice being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified. Within the infant rinde of this weake flower Poyson hath residence, and medicine power: For this being smelt, with that part cheares each part, Being tasted, slaies all sences with the hart. Two such opposed Kings encamp them still,
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In man as well as hearbes, grace and rude will: And where the worser is predominant, Full soone the Canker death eates up that Plant. The relevance of this statement to the love of Romeo and Juliet should be obvious. Love as love is natural and therefore essentially good. If it remains under the control of mans higher nature, under the control of grace, then it thrives; but if it succumbs to sensitive desire, it if comes under the dominion of mans rude will, then vertue it selfe turnes vice, and nothing but disaster can be expected, for, as the Friar says, full soone the Canker death eates up that Plant. And surely it is no accident that Romeo enters, and hence stands on the stage for all to see, midway through this speech. The rest of this brief scene, of course, makes it even plainer that the Friars miniature sermon is meant to apply to Romeo. When he finally learns of Romeos new love, his comment cuts like a knife through Romeos pretensions: Is Rosaline that thou didst love so deare, So soone forsaken? young mens love then lies Not truly in their hearts, but in their eies. And when Romeo rather peevishly replies, Thou chidst me oft for loving Rosaline, the Friar bluntly retorts, For doting, not for loving, pupill mine. If it is wondered why Shakespeare should now undertake to state more or less explicitly those moral values which he has thus far been content to convey implicitly through the action, the answer is probably to be found in the fact that for every intelligent person in his audience there were at least three of the common sort and possibly more. It seems quite likely, therefore, that the explicit pointing in this scene was intended for their benefit, for however much Shakespeare might deplore the common fondness for dumb shows he could not afford to ignore it. In any event, pointing there is, which brings us back to our earlier statement that the meeting between Romeo and Juliet is conceived of in three parts. Immediately before the balcony scene the audience is reminded through Mercutios ribaldry of the fleshly basis of passionate love. Immediately after the meeting between the two lovers, and under the thin disguise of the Friars character, the audience is given a straightforward statement in moral terms of the dangers involved in passionate love. Short of breaking through the
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illusion of real action altogether, it is difficult to see what more Shakespeare, the playwright, could do to assure himself that his audience would be able to follow the development of the tragedy. At first glance, scene iv appears to be something of an irrelevancy. Little is done with Romeos character, and although a certain amount of essential information is presentedTybalts vendetta is recalled to the audience, Mercutio is developed as his opponent, and Romeo arranges his rendezvous with Julietthe importance of this information hardly seems commensurate with the length of the scene. Even some of the intensity seems to have gone out of the drama. Indeed, the flashing exchange of wit between the three young men, the broad jokes, and the portly behavior of the Nurse are enough to make us rub our eyes and wonder if we are watching the same play. But surely this slowing down of the action, and the consequent emphasis upon laughter is easily accounted for. The attention of the audience has been screwed to the stage from the beginning of the play. Even Romeos half-comic display of passion in the Friars cell, though producing a natural drop in tension from the balcony scene, takes place against the Friars thought-provoking moralizing. Under these circumstances, it would make excellent dramatic sense for Shakespeare to give his audience a chance to relax before he plunges them once again into the vortex of the tragedy. This emphasis upon laughter, however, does not mean that character is abandoned altogether; nor does it mean that the laughter itself is irrelevant to Shakespeares tragic purpose. The audiences awareness of the foolishness of irrational behavior is not opposed to, but complements, their awareness of the danger which hangs over the lovers heads. Since the laughter of Democritus and the tears of Heraclitus, as Renaissance writers constantly remind us, are thus but two different approaches to the same realitythat is, since passionate behavior justifies both of these responsesShakespeare may stress either without destroying the focus of his tragedy.14 At this particular point in the play, and for the reason stated, it serves his purpose to concentrate upon the comic aspects of self-love. Romeos good spirits are about what we might expect from a man who believes that the world is turning at his command. And Mercutio, the gentleman who loves to heare himselfe talke, and who will speake more in a minute, then hee will stand too in a moneth, fulfills the expectation of his earlier appearance. However, of all the characters in this scene, the Nurse is clearly the best and most amusingly drawn. The unequal struggle between her assumed gentilityfrom head to toe she is a lady or would be thought soand her native vulgarity verges on the hilarious. Her entrance signals what is to follow. Peter, she cries, my fan. And thus standing on her dignity, as well as much that doesnt belong to her, it is not a great climb to reach the position of Juliets protector, and in stern, if not altogether coherent terms, to lecture Romeo on the right and proper. But
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first let me tell ye, if ye should leade her in a fooles paradise, as they say, it were a very grosse kind of behavior as they say. And therefore, she continues, if you should deale double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offred to any Gentlewoman, and very weake dealing. Truly, the lady is more conscious of the dignity of her office than of the terms on which it rests. But the grossness of her nature will not be denied, and it is not long before these starched and unfamiliar attitudes are utterly forgotten. Well sir, she beams as soon as Romeo has crossed her palm with gold, I anger her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the properer man, but ile warrant you, when I say so, she lookes as pale as any clout in the versall world. Granville-Barker shrugs this off as a slip of the pen, but while Shakespeare was capable of such slips, it seems doubtful that this is one.15 After all, at this moment, when the Nurse is expanding under the warmth of Romeos golden generosity, what does a little exaggeration matter? Unfortunately, she is soon out of her depths and at the letter R her clumsy attempt at flattery falters badly: Nurse: . . . doth not Rosemarie and Romeo begin both with a letter? Romeo: I, Nurse, what of that? Both with an R. Nurse: A, mocker, thats the dogs name, R is for theno, I know it begins with some other letter. But then this doesnt matter either. The spirit, not the letter, counts, and it all started as a compliment. With Juliets soliloquy at the beginning of scene v, we are once again back in the main stream of the tragedy. The skill with which Shakespeare portrays her impatience has been justly celebrated, though not, I think, fully understood. When we see Juliet dancing on her toes before the Nurses deliberate age, our tendency is to cry, how true, and then, as always when in the presence of beauty, to walk silently and reverently around it, for so clearly does her behavior embody human nature in one of its rarer moments that the terms of our understanding must be as much emotional as intellectual. The charming way she fights the bit, turning the excitement of her pulse into the exaggerated beat of But old folks, many fain as they wer dead, Unwieldie, slowe, heavie, and pale as lead, captures perfectly that amusing blend of exasperation and impatience which characterizes her at this moment. Or again, when the Nurse says, Your love sayes like an honest gentleman, And a Courteous, and a kinde, and a handsome, And I warrant a vertuouswhere is your mother?
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Juliets incredulous reply, Where is my mother? why she is within, Wher shuld she be? reminds us forcefully of the continent of time that separates her from the Nurse. Perhaps even more amusing is her almost desperate attempt to squeeze compassion and cajolery into two breathless lines as she is driven nearly out of her mind by the Nurses preoccupation with her grumbling bones: I faith I am sorrie that thou art not well. Sweete, sweete, sweete Nurse, tell me what sayes my love? And yet, while warmth amounting almost to awe is clearly the main response intended from the audience, it would not, for an Elizabethan audience, have been the only response. Enraptured though they may have been by Juliets behavior, they would also have seen cause for alarm. We gaze in unclouded enjoyment only because nothing in our set of values instructs us to condemn. But the Renaissance, as we have seen, tended to view even mild forms of passion with suspicion. An Elizabethan audience would have been keenly aware that the love with which Juliet sports so innocently, her passion for Romeo, though still only shallow enough to cause her to ripple with impatience, is nevertheless capable of engulfing her. And the more they are moved by her beauty, the more they would be disturbed, especially so, since now they can detect no echo of virtue in her speech. Hence, the sight of something which they recognize as potentially evil interacting with their emotional response to Juliets beauty would create for them a new emotion, one tinged with uneasiness. And it is by means of this roiled drop, this composite of feelings, that Shakespeare attempts to realize the tragic potential of her character. The attitude of the Nurse, though principally designed to serve as a foil to Juliets impatience, would have further heightened their uneasiness. The basis of her admiration for Romeo is plain enough: yet his leg excels all mens, and for a hand and a foote and a body, though they be not to be talkt on, yet they are past compare. The sense of values implicit in this description is more or less explicitly driven home near the end of the scene: I am the drudge, and toyle in your delight: But you shall beare the burthen soone at night.
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Like Mercutios bawdry immediately before the balcony scene, the Nurses sensuality allows Shakespeare to suggest the presence of something dangerous without at the same time interfering with the creation of another impression equally important, that of Juliets beauty. In any event, the fact that the Nurse, who is Juliets closest companion (and presumably, her advisor), is herself drowned in sensuality would have done nothing to relieve the audiences sense of alarm.16 The action now flows into the marriage, and the strokes though few are telling. The haste of the marriage continues to disturb the Friar: So smile the heavens upon this holy act, That after houres, with sorrow chide us not. But Romeo, who now rides the very crest of his passion, sweeps on unheeding, or at least unbelieving: Amen, amen, but come what sorrow can, It cannot countervaile the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. The Friar can only shake his head and repeat his warning, choosing this time the sterner form of a rebuke: These violent delights have violent endes, And in their triumph die like fier and powder, Which as they kisse consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his owne deliciousnesse, And in the taste confoundes the appetite. Therefore love moderately, long love doth so, Too swift arrives, as tardie as too slowe. And the Friar is entitled to his concern. Time and again, Shakespeare has emphasized the rapidity with which the action is unfolding. I stand on sudden hast, Romeo cries, and now to prove it the marriage is taking place in the afternoon of the day which follows his first meeting with Juliet. It is true, we can turn to human nature, even as we understand it, to find verification for the impatience of young love, but it is also true that to an Elizabethan audience this haste would suggest a mind governed by passion, not reason. In spite of the Friars warning, however, Romeo refuses to be bridled, and his greeting to Juliet (who enters, if we may believe the First Quarto, somewhat fast) shows how little inclined he is to climb down from the pinnacle of his happiness:
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Ah Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heapt like mine, and that thy skill be more To blason it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour ayre, and let rich musicks tongue Unfold the imagind happines that both Receive in either, by this deare encounter. Juliets reply is no less passionate: Conceit more rich in matter then in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament, They are but beggers that can count their worth, But my true love is growne to such excesse, I cannot sum up sum of halfe my wealth. Of course, the fact that the lovers are reckless, impatient, and completely caught up in the happiness of the moment does not mean that we can simply condemn their love. Their present intoxication may result from the realization of a false dream, but their happiness is nevertheless intense and for this reason not without its attraction. It is not so much a question of condemning the lovers, therefore, as it is of being heartsick at the thought of what they may do to themselves. And surely it is this conjunction of feelings which lies behind the Friars outcry: Here comes the Lady, Oh so light a foote Will nere weare out the everlasting flint, A lover may bestride the gossamours, That ydeles in the wanton sommer ayre, And yet not fall, so light is vanitie. Churchman though he may be, his moral astonishment softens in the presence of that loveliness which still shines through her passion. But is not this precisely the point? Without the beauty of the vision, what is the meaning of the ache at the thought of its loss?
1. Variorum, I, 85. 2. Bradley, Oxford Lectures, p. 326n. 3. Donald A. Stauffer, The School of Love: Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare: The Tragedies, pp. 29, 32. 4. Dickey, p. 78. 5. Dent, sig. B8. 6. Joseph, p. 126.
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7. Granville-Barker, p. 11. 8. Vyvyan, p. 158. 9. Wright, sig. V2. 10. Burton, p. 623. 11. Jonson, p. 72. 12. Granville-Barker, p. 41. 13. Williams, Shakespeare/The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie . . . , pp. 119121. 14. One should . . . both weep for those who deserve mockery and mock those who deserve tears. The Enchiridion of Erasmus, trans. & ed. Raymond Himelick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963), pp. 143144. 15. Granville-Barker, p. 4. 16. Dickey sees the Nurse as an antidote to the romantic conception of love, concluding that her presence reminds us continually that even the most exalted passion of the lovers contains a tincture of sexuality, and that sexuality may be a laughable human frailty. p. 75. I agree with this as far as it goes, but Shakespeares emphasis upon her bawdry in this scene is more than comic, it is also ominous.
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1986Northrop Frye. Romeo and Juliet , from Northrop Frye on Shakespeare

The Canadian scholar Northrop Frye (19121991) was one of the most influential literary critics of the twentieth century. Harold Bloom has called him the largest and most crucial literary critic in the English languagesince Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. One of Fryes most famous books is The Anatomy of Criticism.
Shakespeare, we remember, got started as a dramatist by writing a series of plays, four in all, about the period 142285, from the death of Henry V to the accession of Henry VII. During this period England gradually lost all the land it had conquered in France (except Calais, which it lost a century later), then suffered a disastrous civil war between Lancastrians and Yorkists, and finally acquired the Tudors after leaving the last Yorkist king Richard III dead on a battlefield. The political moral of all those plays seemed clear: once feuding nobles get out of hand, theres nothing but misery and chaos until a ruler appears who will do what the Tudors didcentralize authority, turning the nobles into courtiers dependent on the sovereign. Romeo and Juliet is a miniature version of what happens when feuding nobles get out of hand. The opening stage direction tells us that servants are on the street armed with swords and bucklers (small shields). Even if you came in late and
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missed the prologue, youd know from seeing those servants that all was not well in Verona. Because that means theres going to be a fight: if you let servants swank around like that, fully armed, theyre bound to get into fights. So in view of Tudor policy and Queen Elizabeths personal dislike of duels and brawling, this play would have no trouble with the censor, because it shows the tragic results of the kind of thing that the authorities thoroughly disapproved of anyway. The first scene shows Shakespeare in his usual easy command of the situation, starting off with a gabble of dialogue that doesnt contribute much to the plot, but gets over the latecomer problem and quiets the audience very quickly because the jokes are bawdy jokes, the kind the audience most wants to hear. The servants have broadswords: they dont have rapiers and they cant fence; such things are for the gentry. They go in for what used to be called haymakers: remember thy swashing blow, as one of them says. The macho jokes, draw thy tool and the like, are the right way to introduce the theme that dominates this play: the theme of love bound up with, and part of, violent death. Weapons and fighting suggest sex as well as death, and are still doing so later in the play, when the imagery shifts to gunpowder. Then various characters enter, not at haphazard but in an order that dramatizes the social set-up of the play. The servants are on stage first, then Benvolio and Tybalt, then old Montague and old Capulet, and finally the Prince, who comes in to form the keystone of the arch. This sequence points to a symmetrical arrangement of characters corresponding to the two feuding houses. Later on we meet Mercutio, who consorts, as Tybalt says, with the Montagues, and Paris, who wants to become a Capulet by marrying Juliet. Both are relatives of the Prince. Then come the two leads, first Romeo and then Juliet, and then the two go-betweens, the Nurse and Friar Laurence. The scene turns farcical when old Montague and old Capulet dash for their swords and rush out into the street to prove to themselves that theyre just as good men as they ever were, while their wives, who know better, keep pulling at them and trying to keep them out of trouble. But something much more serious is also happening. By entering the brawl, theyve sanctioned it, because theyre the heads of the two houses, and so theyre directly responsible for everything that follows. The younger people seem to care very little about the feud: the only one keen on it is Tybalt, and Tybalt, we may notice, is not a Capulet by blood at all; hes expressly said to be a cousin of Lady Capulet. In the next scene, even old Capulet seems quite relieved to be bound over to keep the peace. But once the alarm is given and the reflexes respond, the brawl is on and the tragedy set in motion. After that, even Capulets very sensible behaviour in restraining Tybalt from attacking Romeo in his own house comes too late. Of course we are never told what the original feud was about.
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The Prince begins: Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, Profaners of this neighbor-staind steel Will they not hear? (I.i.7981) The timing is accurate to the last syllable: two and a half lines before theyll stop whacking each other and listen. If it took more, the Prince would seem impotent, stuck with a situation thats beyond his power to control; if it took less, we wouldnt have the feeling of what it would be like to live in a town where that sort of thing could happen at any time. We notice that the crowd is saying what Mercutio is to say so tragically later on: A plague a both your houses! Theyve had it with feuds, and are on the Princes side, even though they can express their loyalty only by increasing the brawling. After the Prince leaves, the Montagues pick up the pieces, and the conversation seems to get a bit aimless. But we cant skip anything in Shakespeare. Lady Montague says: Oh, where is Romeo? Saw you him today? Right glad I am he was not at this fray. (I.i.11415) It would overload the play to build up the Montagues as much as the Capulets are built up, and these are almost the only lines she gets to speakcertainly the only ones with any punch. But slight as they are they tell us that the sun rises and sets on her Romeo, and so when at the end of the play were told that she died, offstage, at the news of Romeos exile, that detail seems less arbitrary and dragged-in than it would otherwise. The next episode is Pariss suit to the Capulets for Juliets hand. In the third scene Lady Capulet proposes a family conference to discuss the prospective marriage, and dismisses the Nurse. But, being a conscientious as well as a slightly prissy young woman, she remembers that noble families dont do that to old and trusted servantsor perhaps she realizes that the Nurse is closer to Juliet than she isso she calls her back again. She soon regrets her concession, because the Nurse goes into action at once with a long reminiscing speech. This is the kind of speech that looks at first sight like a digression, introduced for comic relief and to give us an insight into the Nurses character and idiom. But Shakespeare doesnt do things for second-rate reasons: he almost never drags in a scene, and I say almost because I can think of only one clear example, the scene about the teaching of Latin to the boy William in his one potboiler, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Again, hes not like Dickens or anyone else for whom characterization might be an end in itself. His conventions are different: the action of the play is what is always primary with him, and anything that seems
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to be a detour in the action is probably advancing that action on another level. Of course the speech does give us an insight into the Nurses character, as well as into that of a man who has died years before the play begins, the Nurses husband. We know him only from this: Yea, quoth he, dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit; Wilt thou not, Jule? (I.iii. 4143) and that is all we ever want to know about him. As usual with raconteurs of the Nurses type, we get the punch line four times. The real reason for the speech, I think, is to sketch in a background for Juliet, whom we see but have barely heard speak yet. We suddenly get a vision of what Juliets childhood must have been like, wandering around a big house where her father is Sir and her mother is Madam, where to leave she must get special permission, not ordinarily granted except for visits to a priest for confession, and where she is waiting for the day when Capulet will say to his wife, in effect: Im sure weve got a daughter around this place somewhere: isnt it time we got rid of her? Then she would marry and settle into the same mould as her mother, who was married at the same age, about fourteen. Meanwhile, there is hardly anybody for the child to talk to except the Nurse and the Nurses husband with his inexhaustible joke. Of course there would be a great deal more to be said about her childhood. But there was also, one gathers, a good many deaths (The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she, Capulet says to Paris, and the Nurse has lost a daughter as well as a husband), and there would be enough loneliness to throw Juliet on her own resources and develop a good deal of self-reliance. So when, at her crisis in the play, she turns from a frightened child into a woman with more genuine courage and resolution than Lady Macbeth ever had, the change seems less prodigious if we were listening closely to all the overtones in the Nurses harangue. After the Nurse finally stops, theres a speech from Lady Capulet which settles into coupletsoccasionally a sign in Shakespeare that something is a bit out of key. To the Nurse, marriage means precisely one thing, and she is never tired of telling us what it is. Lady Capulet would like to be a real mother, and say things more appropriate to a well-born girl awaiting courtship and marriage. But she really has nothing to say, communicates nothing except that she approves of the match, and finally breaks down into, Speak briefly, can you like of Pariss love? Juliet can only mumble something to the general effect that It must be all right if you say so: youre looking after these things. If she hadnt seen Romeo, Juliet would probably have been talking in the same way to her daughter fifteen years or so later.
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So Capulet gets a chance to throw a party, which he loves doing, and does his best to keep things properly stirred up: Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies that have their toes Unplagued with corns will walk a bout with you. Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty, She Ill swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now? (I.v. 1620) Well, that gives us the quality of Capulets humour: its corny. Meanwhile, a group of Montagues have crashed the party, disguising themselves in masks, as was customary: Romeo sees Juliet, makes his way to her after narrowly escaping death from Tybalt, and the two of them enter into a dialogue thats an exquisitely turned extended (eighteen-line) sonnet. Thats not realistic, of course: in whatever real life may be, lovers dont start cooing in sonnet form. What has happened belongs to reality, not to realism; or rather, the God of Love, as Ill explain in a moment, has swooped down on two perhaps rather commonplace adolescents and blasted them into another dimension of reality altogether. So Capulets speech and the Romeo-Juliet sonnet, two verbal experiences as different as though they were on different planets, are actually going on in the same room and being acted on the same stage. This is the kind of thing we can get only from Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet is a love story, but in Shakespeares day love included many complex rituals. Early in the Middle Ages a cult had developed called Courtly Love, which focussed on a curious etiquette that became a kind of parody of Christian experience. Someone might be going about his business, congratulating himself on not being caught in the trap of a love affair, when suddenly the God of Love, Eros or Cupid, angry at being left out of things, forces him to fall in love with a woman. The falling in love is involuntary and instantaneous, no more romantic, in the usual sense, than getting shot with a bullet. Its never gradual: Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? says Marlowe, in a line that Shakespeare quotes in As You Like It. From that time on, the lover is a slave of the God of Love, whose will is embodied in his mistress, and he is bound to do whatever she wants. This cult of love was not originally linked to marriage. Marriage was a relationship in which the man had all the effective authority, even if his wife was (as she usually was) his social equal. The conventional role of the Courtly Love mistress was to be proud, disdainful and cruel, repelling all advances from her lover. The frustration this caused drove the lover into poetry, and the theme of the poetry was the cruelty of the mistress and the despair and supplications of the lover. Its good psychology that a creative impulse to write poetry can arise from
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sexual frustration, and Elizabethan poets almost invariably were or pretended to be submerged in unhappy love, and writing for that reason. Back in the thirteenth century, we have Dante, whose life was totally changed by seeing Beatrice at her fathers home when he was nine years old. He devoted the rest of his life to her, even though he survived her by many years. But he had no further relations with her, certainly no sexual relations, and his devotion to her had nothing to do with his marrying someone else and fathering four children. His successor in poetry was Petrarch, whose mistress, also out of reach, was Laura, and it was Petrarch who popularized the convention in sixteenth-century England. In the 1590s, when the vogue was at its height, enormous piles of sonnets more or less imitating Petrarch were being written. By Shakespeares time the convention had become more middle-class, was much more frequently linked to eventual marriage, and the more overtly sexual aspects of such relationships were more fully explored. So love in Romeo and Juliet covers three different forms of a convention. First, the orthodox Petrarchan convention in Romeos professed love for Rosaline at the beginning of the play. Second, the less sublimated love for which the only honourable resolution was marriage, represented by the main theme of the play. Third, the more cynical and ribald perspective that we get in Mercutios comments, and perhaps those of the Nurse as well. On the principle that life imitates art, Romeo has thrown himself, before the play begins, into a love affair with someone called Rosaline, whom we never see (except that she was at Capulets party, where she must have wondered painfully what had happened to Romeo), and who tried to live up to the proud and disdainful role that the convention required. So Romeo made the conventional responses: he went around with his clothes untidy, hardly heard what was said to him, wrote poetry, talked endlessly about the cruelty of his mistress, wept and kept adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs. In short, he was afflicted with love melancholy, and we remember that melancholy in Shakespeares time was a physical as well as an emotional disturbance. More simply, he was something of a mooning bore, his love affair a kind of pedantry, like Tybalts fighting by the book of arithmetic. Juliet, to her disgust, is compelled to adopt some of the same coy and aloof attitude in her edgy dialogue with Paris in Friar Laurences cell. Its obvious that there was no sexual relationship between Romeo and Rosaline, a fact that would have disappointed Mercutio, who takes it for granted that Romeo has spent the night of what we now call the balcony scene in Rosalines arms. Romeo enters the play practically unconscious that he has walked in on the aftermath of a dangerous brawl, and then starts explaining to Benvolio how firm and unyielding his attachment to Rosaline is, even though Rosaline, playing along as best she could, has told him that she has sworn to live chaste. The dialogue between Romeo and Benvolio seems to us a curiously long
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one, for the amount said in it, but its essential to round out the situation Romeo has put himself in. I said that the Courtly Love convention used an elaborate and detailed parody, or counterpart, of the language of religion. The mistress was a saint; the god supplicated with so many prayers and tears was Eros or Cupid, the God of Love; atheists were people who didnt believe in the convention; and heretics were those who didnt keep to the rules. Benvolio suggests that Romeo might get Rosaline into better perspective if hed compare her with a few other young women, and Romeo answers: When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires; And these, who, often drowned, could never die, Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars! (I.ii. 9093) This is close to another requirement of the convention, that the lover had to compare his mistress to the greatest heroines of history and literature (heroines from the point of view of love, that is), always to their disadvantage. These included Helen of Troy, Dido in the Aeneid, Cleopatra, heroines of Classical stories like Hero and Thisbe, and, of course, Laura. Mercutio, who knows all about the convention even though he assumes that Romeo has taken a different approach to it, says: Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in. Laura, to his lady, was a kitchen wench . . . Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy, Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. (II.iv. 3843) However, Romeo takes Benvolios advice, goes in the Capulet party, sees Juliet, and the real thing hits him. Of course, the real thing is as much a convention, at least within the framework of the play, as its predecessor, but its effects on both Romeo and Juliet are very different. Before we examine those effects, though, we have to notice another aspect of the convention thats woven into the play. In the love literature of the time there were very passionate and mutually consuming friendships between men: they also were usually sublimated, and distinguished from homosexual attachments in the narrow sense. In fact, the convention often tended to put male friendship even higher than love between men and women, simply because of this disinterested or nonsexual quality in it. Shakespeare himself, in his sonnets, represents himself as loving a beautiful young man even to the point of allowing the latter to steal his mistress, which in this context indicates that neither man has a sexual interest except in women. In this age wed think of sexual much
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more broadly, but the elementary distinctions are the ones that apply here. The predominance of male friendship over love gets a bit grotesque at the end of a very early comedy, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, a puzzling enough play if we try to take it seriously. In this play the two gentlemen are named Valentine and Proteus, which means that one is a true lover and the other a fickle one. Valentine loves Silvia, but is blocked by the usual parental opposition; Proteus loves Julia, but discards her as soon as he sees Silvia. He then deliberately betrays Valentine in order to knock him out as a rival for Silvia; Julia disguises herself as a male page and sets out in pursuit of Proteus. At the end of the play Proteus finds Silvia alone in a wood, tries to rape her, and is baffled when Valentine bursts out of the bushes and says: Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch . . . ! All very correct melodrama, and we wait for Proteus to get the proper reward of his treachery to Valentine. What happens next is so incredible that I can only resort to paraphrase. Proteus says in effect: I know it was a dirty trick to try to rape your mistress; it just seemed too good a chance to miss. And Valentine responds, in effect: Oh, thats all right, old man, and of course if you really want Silvia so much shes yours. Fortunately, the disguised Julia, whos been following closely behind, puts an end to this nonsense by fainting. They pick her up and see who she is; Proteus now finds her more attractive than he did before, and everything ends happily. So far as all this has a point, the point seems to be that love for women is to be subordinated in a crisis to male friendship. Getting back to our present Verona gentlemen, Tybalt tries to force Romeo into a duel, which Romeo tries to avoid because hes now more of a Capulet than Tybalt is. Mercutio is disgusted with Romeos submissiveness and takes Tybalt on for himself. In the duel Romeo makes a bungling effort at interference, and Mercutio gets a fatal wound. When he is dying, he asks Romeo why he interfered, and Romeo can give only the miserably helpless answer, I thought all for the best. Mercutio says only: Help me into some house, Benvolio, Or I shall faint. (III.i. 103104) The name Benvolio, at the climax of this terrible scene, means that he has turned his back contemptuously on Romeo. At that point Juliet drops out of Romeos mind, for the first time since he saw her, and all he can think of now is vengeance on Tybalt for his friends death. Once again, male friendship overrides love of women, but this is tragedy: by killing Tybalt and avenging Mercutio, Romeo becomes irrevocably a tragic figure. Someone once raised the question of whether Shakespeares audience would have assumed that Romeo was damned for committing suicide, suicide being regarded by the church as one of the most heinous of sins. The simplest answer
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is that the question is tedious, and Shakespeare avoids tedium. But it could be said also that the audience would understand that Romeo, as a lover-hero, really belongs to another religion, the religion of love, which doesnt collide with Christianity or prevent him from confessing to Friar Laurence, but nonetheless has different standards of whats good and bad. It also has its own saints and martyrs, those who lived and died for love, and Romeo and Juliet certainly belong in that calendar. Chaucer, two hundred years earlier, had written The Legend of Good Women, in which the women chosen, including Helen and Cleopatra and Dido (also Thisbe, whom Mercutio mentions and whom well meet again), are good women from Eross point of view: the great erotic saints. When Romeo suddenly feels uneasy just before going into the Capulet party, he says: But he that hath the steerage of my course Direct my sail! (I.iv. 11213) We are not sure whether he is referring to the God of Love or the Christian God here, and neither, perhaps, is he. But later in the play, when he gets the false feeling of euphoria that so often precedes a tragic catastrophe, and says, My bosoms lord sits lightly in his throne, he clearly means Eros. Coming back to the effects of love on the two main characters, the most dramatic change is in their command of language. Before she sees Romeo we hear Juliet making proper-young-lady noises like, It is an honour that I dream not of (it being her marriage to Paris). After she sees Romeo, shes talking like this: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus lodging! Such a wagoner As Phaton would whip you to the west And bring in cloudy night immediately. (III.ii. 14) It appears that Juliet, for all her tender years and sheltered life, has had a considerably better education than simply a technical training to be a wife and mother. The point is that it would never have occurred to her to make use of her education in her speech in the way she does here without the stimulus of her love. As for Romeo, when we first meet him hes at the stage where he hardly knows what hes saying until he hears himself saying it. We dont hear any of the poetry he wrote about Rosaline (unless the religion of mine eye lyric I quoted from a moment ago belongs to it), and something tells us that we could do without most of it. But after he meets Juliet he turns out, to Mercutios astonishment and delight, to be full of wit and repartee. Now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature, Mercutio says, and even Mercutio knows
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nothing of the miraculous duets with Juliet in the great balcony scene and its successor. When he visits Friar Laurence, the Friar sees him approaching and feels rather apprehensive, thinking, Oh no, not Rosaline again, and is considerably startled to hear Romeo saying, in effect, Whos Rosaline? More important, especially after Juliet also visits him, he realizes that two young people he has previously thought of as rather nice children have suddenly turned into adults, and are speaking with adult authority. He is bound to respect this, and besides, he sees an excellent chance of ending the feud by marrying them and presenting their furious parents with a fait accompli. After disaster strikes with the death of Tybalt and the Princes edict of banishment, we get very long speeches from both the lovers and from Friar Laurence. The rationale of the Friars speech is simple enough: Romeo thinks of suicide, and the Friar immediately delivers an involved summary of his situation, trying to show that he could be a lot worse off. The speech is organized on lines of formal rhetoric, and is built up in a series of triads. The point of the length of the speech is its irony: the Friar is steadily adding to Romeos despair while he is giving reasons why he should cool it. With Romeo and Juliet, the reason for the loosening of rhetorical control is subtler. Take Juliet: Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but I, And that bare vowel I shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I, if there be such an I Or those eyes shot that makes the answer I. (III.ii. 4549) It all turns on puns, of course, on I, Ay (meaning yes, and often spelled I at the time), and eye. But shes not playing with words: shes shredding them to bits in an agony of frustration and despair. The powerful explosion of words has nowhere to go, and simply disintegrates. Some critics will tell you that this is Shakespeare being immature and uncertain of his verbal powers, because, after looking up the probable dates, they find its an early play. Dont believe them. It is true that the earlier plays depend on formal rhetorical figures much more than the later ones: it doesnt follow that the use of such figures is immature. There are other examples of playing on words that indicate terrible distress of mind: John of Gaunts death speeches in Richard II, for example. It is through the language, and the imagery the language uses, that we understand how the Liebestod of Romeo and Juliet, their great love and their tragic death, are bound up together as two aspects of the same thing. I spoke of the servants jokes in the opening scene associating sexuality with weapons, love and death in the context of parody. Soon after Romeo comes in, we hear him talking like this:
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Heres much to do with hate, but more with love. Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! (I.i. 17375) The figure he is using is the oxymoron or paradoxical union of opposites: obviously the right kind of figure for this play, though Romeo is still in his Rosaline trance and is not being very cogent. From there we go on to Friar Laurences wonderfully concentrated image of fire and powder Which, as they kiss, consume, (II.vi. 1011) with its half-concealed pun on consummation, and to Juliets Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens. (II.ii. 11920) suggesting that their first glimpse of one another determined their deaths as well as their love. The love-death identity of contrasts expands into the imagery of day and night. The great love scenes begin with Juliet hanging upon the cheek of night and end with the macabre horrors of the Capulet tomb, where we reluctantly cant believe Romeo when he says: For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. (V.iii. 8586) The character who makes the most impressive entrances in the play is a character we never see, the sun. The sun is greeted by Friar Laurence as the sober light that does away with the drunken darkness, but the Friar is speaking out of his own temperament, and there are many other aspects of the light and dark contrast. In the dialogue of Romeo and Juliet, the bird of darkness, the nightingale, symbolizes the desire of the lovers to remain with each other, and the bird of dawn, the lark, the need to preserve their safety. When the sun rises, The day is hot, the Capulets abroad, and the energy of youth and love wears itself out in scrambling over the blockades of reality. The light and dark imagery comes into powerful focus with Mercutios speech on Queen Mab. Queen Mab, Mercutio tells us, is the instigator of dreams, and Mercutio takes what we would call a very Freudian approach to dreams: they are primarily wish-fulfilment fantasies.
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And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers brains, and then they dream of love. (I.iv. 7071) But such dreams are an inseparable mixture of illusion and a reality profounder than the ordinary realities of the day. When we wake we carry into the daylight world, without realizing it, the feelings engendered by the dream, the irrational and absurd conviction that the world as we want it to be has its own reality, and perhaps is what could be there instead. Both the lovers carry on an inner debate in which one voice tells them that they are embarking on a dangerous illusion, and another says that they must embark on it anyway whatever the dangers, because by doing so they are martyrs, or witnesses, to an order of things that matters more than the sunlit reality. Romeo says: O blessd, blessd night! I am afeard, Being in night, all this is but a dream, Too flattering-sweet to be substantial. (II.ii. 13941) Perhaps so, but so much the worse for the substantial, as far as Romeos actions are concerned. Who or what is responsible for a tragedy that kills half a dozen people, at least four of them young and very attractive people? The feud, of course, but in this play there doesnt seem to be the clearly marked villain that we find in so many tragedies. We can point to Iago in Othello and say that if it hadnt been for that awful man thered have been no tragedy at all. But the harried and conscientious Prince, the kindly and pious Friar Laurence, the quite likable old buffer Capulet: these are a long way from being villainous. Tybalt comes closest, but Tybalt is a villain only by virtue of his position in the plot. According to his own codeadmittedly a code open to criticismhe is a man of honour, and there is no reason to suppose him capable of the kind of malice or treachery that we find in Iago or in Edmund in King Lear. He may not even be inherently more quarrelsome or spoiling for a fight than Mercutio. Juliet seems to like him, if not as devoted to his memory as her parents think. Setting Tybalt aside, there is still some mystery about the fact that so bloody a mess comes out of the actions of what seem to be, taken one by one, a fairly decent lot of human beings. The Nurse, it is true, is called a most wicked fiend by Juliet, because she proposes that Juliet conceal her marriage to Romeo and live in bigamy with Paris. But Juliet is overwrought. The Nurse is not a wicked fiend, and wants to be genuinely helpful. But she has a very limited imagination, and she doesnt belong to a social class that can afford to live by codes of honour. The upper class made their names for the lower classesvillain, knave, varlet, boorinto terms of contempt because the people they described had to wriggle through life as best they could: their first and almost their only rule was survival. The deadliest insult
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one gentleman could give another then was to call him a liar, not because the one being insulted had a passion for truth, but because it was being suggested that he couldnt afford to tell the truth. Besides, Shakespeare has been unobtrusively building up the Nurses attitude. On her first embassy to Romeo she is quite roughly teased by Mercutio, and while she is a figure of fun and the audience goes along with the fun, still she is genuinely offended. She is not a bawd or a whore, and she doesnt see why she should be called one. Romeo, courteous as ever, tries to explain that Mercutio is a compulsive talker, and that what he says is not to be taken seriously; but it was said to her, seriously or not, and when she returns to Juliet and takes so long to come to the point in delivering her message, the delay has something in it of teasing Juliet to get even. Not very logical, but who said the Nurse was logical? Similarly when she laments the death of Tybalt and Juliet assumes that shes talking about Romeo, where the teasing seems more malicious and less unconscious. The Nurse has discovered in her go-between role that she really doesnt much like these Montague boys or their friends: as long as things are going well shell support Romeo, but in a crisis shell remember shes a Capulet and fight on that side. The question of the source of the tragic action is bound up with another question: why is the story of the tragic love and death of Romeo and Juliet one of the worlds best-loved stories? Mainly, we think, because of Shakespeares word magic. But, while it was always a popular play, what the stage presented as Romeo and Juliet, down to about 1850, was mostly a series of travesties of what Shakespeare wrote. Theres something about the story itself that can take any amount of mistreatment from stupid producing and bad casting. Ive seen a performance with a middle-aged and corseted Juliet who could have thrown Romeo over her shoulder and walked to Mantua with him, and yet the audience was in tears at the end. The original writer is not the writer who thinks up a new storythere arent any new stories, reallybut the writer who tells one of the worlds great stories in a new way. To understand why Romeo and Juliet is one of those stories we have to distinguish the specific story of the feuding MontagueCapulet families from an archetypal story of youth, love and death that is probably older than written literature itself. The specific story of the Verona feud has been traced back to a misunderstood allusion in Dantes Purgatorio, and it went through a series of retellings until we come to Shakespeares main source, a narrative poem, Romeus and Juliet, by one Arthur Brooke, which supplied him not only with the main theme, but with a Mercutio, a counterpart of Friar Laurence, and a garrulous nurse of Juliet. Brooke begins with a preface in which he tells us that his story has two morals: first, not to get married without parental consent, and second, not to be Catholic and confess to priests. That takes care of the sort of reader who reads only to see his own prejudices confirmed on a printed page. Then he settles down to tell
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his story, in which he shows a good deal of sympathy for both the Friar and the lovers. He is very far from being a major poet, but he had enough respect for his story to attract and hold the attention of Shakespeare, who seems, so far as we can tell, to have used almost no other source. Brooke also says he saw a play on the same subject, but no trace of such a play remains, unless those scholars in the guesswork squad are right who see signs of an earlier play being revised in the first Quarto. But the great story of the destruction of two young lovers by a combination of fate and family hostility is older and wider than that. In Shakespeares time, Chikamatsu, the Japanese writer of Bunraku (puppet plays), was telling similar stories on the other side of the world, and thousands of years earlier the same story was echoing and re-echoing through ancient myths. Elizabethan poets used, as a kind of literary Bible, Ovids long (fifteen books) poem called Metamorphoses, which told dozens of the most famous stories of Classical myth and legend: the stories of Philomela turned into a nightingale, of Narcissus, of Philemon and Baucis turned into trees, of Daphne and Syrinx. Ovid lived around the time of Christ, but of course the stories he tells are far older. He has many stories of tragic death, but none was more loved or more frequently retold in Shakespeares day than the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, the two lovers separated by the walls of hostile families, meeting in a wood, and dying by accident and suicide. In this play we often hear about a kind of fatality at work in the action, usually linked with the stars. As early as the Prologue we hear about star-crossed lovers, and Romeo speaks, not of the feud, but of some consequence still hanging in the stars when he feels a portent of disaster. Astrology, as Ive said, was taken quite seriously then, but here it seems only part of a network of unlucky timing thats working against the lovers. Romeo gets to see Juliet because of the sheer chance that the Capulet servant sent out to deliver the invitations to the party cant read, and comes to him for help. Theres the letter from Friar Laurence in Verona to Friar John in Mantua, which by accident doesnt get to him, and another hitch in timing destroys Friar Laurences elaborate plan that starts with Juliets sleeping potion. If we feel that Friar Laurence is being meddlesome in interfering in the action as he does, thats partly because hes in a tragedy and his schemes are bound to fail. In Much Ado about Nothing theres also a friar with a very similar scheme for the heroine of that play, but his scheme is successful because the play hes in is a comedy. But when we have a quite reasonable explanation for the tragedy, the feud between the families, why do we need to bring in the stars and such? The Prologue, even before the play starts, suggests that the feud demands lives to feed on, and sooner or later will get them: And the continuance of their parents rage, Which, but their childrens end, nought could remove.
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The answer, or part of the answer, begins with the fact that we shouldnt assume that tragedy is something needing an explanation. Tragedy represents something bigger in the total scheme of things than all possible explanations combined. All we can sayand its a good dealis that thered have been no tragedy without the feud. This, I think, is the clue to one of those puzzling episodes in Shakespeare that we may not understand at first hearing or reading. At the very end of the play, Montague proposes to erect a gold statue of Juliet at his own expense, and Capulet promises to do the same for Romeo. Big deal: nothing like a couple of gold statues to bring two dead lovers back to life. But by that time Montague and Capulet are two miserable, defeated old men who have lost everything that meant anything in their lives, and they simply cannot look their own responsibility for what they have done straight in the face. Theres a parallel with Othellos last speech, which ends with his suicide, when he recalls occasions in the past when he has served the Venetian state well. T.S. Eliot says that Othello in this speech is cheering himself up, turning a moral issue into an aesthetic one. Id put it differently: Id say it was a reflex of blinking and turning away from the intolerably blazing light of judgment. And so with Montague and Capulet, when they propose to set up these statues as a way of persuading themselves that theyre still alive, and still capable of taking some kind of positive action. The gesture is futile and pitiful, but very, very human. So far as theres any cheering up in the picture, it affects the audience rather than the characters. Tragedy always has an ironic side, and that means that the audience usually knows more about whats happening or going to happen than the characters do. But tragedy also has a heroic side, and again the audience usually sees that more clearly than the characters. Juliets parents dont really know who Juliet is: were the ones who have a rather better idea. Notice Capulets phrase, Poor sacrifices of our enmity! Romeo and Juliet are sacrificial victims, and the ancient rule about sacrifice was that the victim had to be perfect and without blemish. The core of reality in this was the sense that nothing perfect or without blemish can stay that way in this world, and should be offered up to another world before it deteriorates. That principle belongs to a still larger one: nothing that breaks through the barriers of ordinary experience can remain in the world of ordinary experience. One of the first things Romeo says of Juliet is: Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! But more than beauty is involved: their kind of passion would soon burn up the world of heavy fathers and snarling Tybalts and gabby Nurses if it stayed there. Our perception of this helps us to accept the play as a whole, instead of feeling only that a great love went wrong. It didnt go wrong: it went only where it could, out. It always was, as we say, out of this world. Thats why the tragedy is not exhausted by pointing to its obvious cause in the feud. We need suggestions of greater mysteries in things: we need the
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yoke of inauspicious stars and the vision of Queen Mab and her midget team riding across the earth like the apocalyptic horsemen. These things dont explain anything, but they help to light up the heroic vision in tragedy, which we see so briefly before it goes. It takes the greatest rhetoric of the greatest poets to bring us a vision of the tragic heroic, and such rhetoric doesnt make us miserable but exhilarated, not crushed but enlarged in spirit. Romeo and Juliet has more wit and sparkle than any other tragedy I know: so much that we may instinctively think of it as a kind of perverted comedy. But, of course, tragedy is not perverse: it has its own rightness. It might be described, though, as a kind of comedy turned inside out. A typical comic theme goes like this: boy meets girl; boys father doesnt think the girl good enough; girls father prefers someone with more money; various complications ensue; eventually boy gets girl. Theres a good deal in the Romeo and Juliet story to remind us of such comedy themes. Look at the way the Chorus begins Act II: Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie And young affection gapes to be his heir. If we tried to turn the play we have inside out, back into comedy, what would it be like? Wed have a world dominated by dream fairies, including a queen, and by the moon instead of the sun; a world where the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe has turned into farce; a world where feuding and brawling noblemen run around in the dark, unable to see each other. In short, wed have a play very like A Midsummer Nights Dream, the one were going to discuss next.
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1986Harold Bloom. Introduction, from Romeo and Juliet (Blooms Modern Critical Interpretations)
Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, where he teaches Shakespeare and poetry. He has edited many anthologies of literature and literary criticism and is the author of more than 30 books, including The Anxiety of Influence, The Western Canon, and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.
Except for Hamlet and Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet seems the most popular of Shakespeares tragedies, though it is necessarily dwarfed by the heroic sequence
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of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. Some critics prefer Coriolanus to the High Romanticism of Romeo and Juliet, and I myself would rather reread Julius Caesar than turn again to Romeo and Juliet. Yet the massive, permanent popularity of Romeo and Juliet is well-deserved. Its appeal is universal and world-wide, and its effect upon world literature is matched among the tragedies only by Hamlet. Stendhal, who with Victor Hugo is the great partisan of Shakespeare in equivocal France, wrote his own sublime tribute to Romeo and Juliet in his last completed novel, The Charterhouse of Parma. I desire here to make some brief reflections upon the relative aesthetic eminence of the play in the full context of Shakespeares achievement. So prodigal was Shakespeares inventiveness, particularly in the creation of personalities, that I myself, in earlier years, tended to undervalue Romeo and Juliet in the full panoply of Shakespeare. There are perhaps twenty plays by him that I rated higher, even if some of them lacked the enormous popularity of Romeo and Juliet. I do not know whether I merely have aged, or have matured, but Juliet herself moves me now in many of the same ways that I find Desdemona and Cordelia to be almost unbearably poignant. What Robert Penn Warren called her pure poetry remains astonishingly vital and powerful, as when she wishes her lovers vow to Romeo could be inaugurated again: But to be frank and give it thee again; And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep: The more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite. That is a transcendently persuasive utterance of loves reality, as rich as literature affords, so distant from vainglory or self-deception that Romeo is transfigured by receiving it. Shakespeare is reputed to have said that he had to kill off Mercutio lest Mercutio kill the play. I think it likelier that the full revelation of Juliets greatness made it necessary to dispose of the prurient Mercutio, whose lively blasphemies against the splendors of Juliets love might well have wearied us. Juliets is a difficult role to play, for the curse of our theaters are highconcept directors, and some of them do not seem to know clearly the difference between Juliet and the Cressida of Troilus and Cressida! Properly performed, or adequately interpreted by a sensitive reader, Juliet is an essential part of Shakespeares unmatched invention of the human.
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1991Thomas McAlindon. Romeo and Juliet , from Shakespeares Tragic Cosmos

Thomas McAlindon (1932 ), senior lecturer in English at the University of Hull in England, is the author of Shakespeare Minus Theory (2004), Shakespeares Tudor History: A Study of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 (2001), and Doctor Faustus: Divine in Show (1994).
Titus Andronicus (1593?), Richard III (1593?), and Romeo and Juliet (15956), Shakespeares first attempts in the tragic medium, are strikingly different both from each other and from the tragedies of Shakespeares maturity in many obvious respects. As I have already indicated, however, it is possible to detect in Titus certain shaping concepts which will prove to be essential in the mature tragedies; and these same concepts can be detected in the other two early tragedies as well. The three plays rest on a common substructure of ideas about the nature of the tragic experience and its relation to reality as a whole. Titus, we have seen, is the tragedy of a civilised warrior in whom the stable partnership of martial valour and loving-kindness is shattered, so that the violence which had brought honour on the field to kind Rome, to his family, and to himself is turned against all three. This tragedy of lost oneness and identity is reflected in the condition of Rome, a city renowned for its combination of civility and martial virtue; its present degenerate state is summed up in the submissive marriage of its emperor to a ruthless barbarian queen. The tragedy of both Rome and its representative hero are in turn traced to the double nature of kind. Unlike Titus, Richard III is not a creature of double impulse. He is spiritually as well as physically deformd, unfinishd, sent by dissembling Nature into the world scarce half made up (I.i.1921). His performances as an amiable friend and kinsman and as a jolly thriving wooer (IV.iii. 43) are fiendish dissembling: his doubleness is perfect duplicity. Wholly without tenderness of heart, / And gentle, kind, effeminate remorse (III.vii.21011), he is kind in hatred only (IV. iv. 172). The embodiment of domineering egoism (I am myself alone), and an agent of strife and division, he identifies himself in his opening soliloquy with Mars (grim visagd war), promising to wreck the peace and pastimes which his war-weary nation is preparing to enjoy under King Edward (I.i.9). Not for Richard the pursuits of Venus: lute, dance, my ladys chamber, loves majesty (lines 1216). The tragedy is his only in the sense that he plots it (line 32); in the other sense, it is Englands tragedy, that of a nation at war with itself, torn between the rival claims of the House of Lancaster and the House of York. In these plays, then, tragic experience is identified with strife, hate, disunity, and violent change and confusion, and traced to the contrarious order of nature. This underlying similarity is reinforced by the plays conclusions. The natural
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longing for love, peace, and unity which Richard contemptuously acknowledges at the outset, and exploits in his treacherous hypocrisies, is answered at the end by Richmond, his conqueror. Lightly sketched though it is, Richmonds character is that of a man full made up. He is a good warrior and a good friend, a conquering peacemaker. Through his marriage to Elizabeth he combines in himself the rival claims of the two houses; he is a reconciler who will unite the white rose and the red in fair conjunction (V.v.1920). So too at the end of Titus Andronicus, the dead heros brother addresses the people of Rome thus: You sad-facd men, people and sons of Rome, By uproars severd, as a flight of fowl Scatterd by winds and high tempestuous gusts, O let me teach you how to knit again This scatterd corn into one mutual sheaf, These broken limbs into one body. (V.iii.6772) Like all Shakespeares tragedies, both plays postulate a contrarious natural order which is cyclical as well as dialectical. The impulse towards unity is expected to assert itself as inevitably as its opposite, and may even be dependent on it. However terrible the violence which has been unleashed, and however muted and qualified the hint of reintegration and renewal, these plays intimate that pure tragedy, like pure comedy, is an image of the world only half made up. As we shall see, that suggestion is more conspicuous in Romeo and Juliet than in any other of Shakespeares tragedies. Yet to link so exquisitely beautiful a play with Titus and Richard III might well seem a forced and fruitless exercise. Unlike theirs, its narrative lacks all potential for high tragedy. The story of two very young lovers who lead private lives, and who are driven to suicide by the pointless feuding of their families and the practice of arranged marriages, is potentially very moving; but it is not calculated to present a spectacle of evil and suffering that will stir us profoundly with questions about the human condition. Shakespeare, however, was obviously very conscious of the inherent limitation of the story as material for tragic drama, and addressed himself to the problem with quite remarkable thoroughness and subtlety. In consequence, to treat the play as uncertain, simple, or lacking in generality of implication, or as a tragedy of fate and passive suffering, is quite wrong. Increasing critical emphasis of late on its rare poise and complexity is fully justified. Essentially, Shakespeares solution to his problem was to generalise and complicate the tragedy by making the city in which it is set a microcosmic reflection of the great world. There is no world without Veronas walls (III.iii.17), says Romeo, and he is at least right in assuming that Verona is a world in itself. And what matters to Shakespeare in the correspondent relationship between the little and the great world is not their hierarchical but their contrarious structure.
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Verona is made up of servants, citizens, gentry or nobility, and a princely ruler; but the social fact of prime importance in this hierarchical society is that it is split between two rival families whose mutual hatred erupts periodically into black strife (III.i.175). This hatred has no causal or temporal beginning; it seems to have been always there, like a fact of nature. Its only justification lies in the honour code, with its demand that every slight to ones own or ones familys good name must be violently repudiated. But the honour code, as exemplified in the duelling Tybalt, is shown to be thoroughly irrational; it is male aggressiveness given a veneer of legitimacy, the militarism of chivalry broken loose from the claims of love and peace: . . . talk of peace! I hate the word / As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee (I.i.689). A sixteenth-century Italian lawyer spoke of the duel as entirely natural, a manifestation of the hate which permeates the whole physical world;1 and on the evidence of this play he was right. Shakespeare not only implies that the mutual hostility of the two families was always there (and therefore natural), he also locates it very firmly in the dynamics of a world whose functioning turns off the interaction of Love and Strife (Hate). The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, who reject hatred and division at the cost of their lives, and whose doomed marriage brings about the jointure (V.iii.296) of their warring families, is fully implicated in the drama of the natural order. This connection is established by means of the plays rich pattern of elemental imagery,2 and, more overtly, by the Friars famous set speech on the properties of plants:3 The gray-eyd morn smiles on the frowning night, Checkring the eastern clouds with streaks of light; And fleckeld darkness like a drunkard reels From forth days path and Titans fiery wheels. Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, The day to cheer and nights dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth thats natures mother is her tomb; What is her burying grave, that is her womb. And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find; Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some, and yet all different. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities; For nought so vile that off the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give; Nor aught so good but, straind from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
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Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; And vice sometimes by action dignified. Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence, and medicine power; For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed kings encamp them still In man as well as herbsgrace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. (II.iii.130) The Friar here envisages a spatio-temporal order of great dialectical complexity (that it is a temporal as well as a spatial order is an important point habitually missed in critical commentary). Thanks to the regular cycle of day and night, and of generation and decay, the elements of moisture, warmth, air and earth combine in a fruitful partnership from which human art can profit. Human art, however, requires a patient, discriminating awareness of natures moving, changing, oppositional character. The fruitful earth yields both poisonous weeds and medicinal flowers. But the flowers may contain both poison and medicine; furthermore, poison can prove beneficial and medicine fatal. And in human nature the same laws apply. Each member in every opposition breaks down into a further opposition: contrarious structure and dynamics are inescapable. Here is a view of nature as at once comforting and treacherous, stable and ambiguous. It posits a world where opposites can change places all too soon, where confusion and grave error are perennial hazards, and where to mean well (I.iv.48) is seldom enough. Of course the Friar makes no mention of the lovestrife or lovehate antinomy; but Romeo, his only love sprung from his only hate, enters just as (or just before) the speech ends, and the Friar is soon discussing the possibility of turning rancour to pure love (line 92; I.v.136). It is clear both here and throughout that the plays rich (and much noted) cluster of polarities has natures most basic opposition at its heart. While it is necessary to observe the underlying affinities between Romeo and Juliet and the earlier (and later) tragedies, its unique character must be fully acknowledged. This can be ascribed mainly to its comic and its lyric dimensions. Yet to examine these is to perceive even more clearly the basic elements in Shakespeares conception of the tragic: violent change and confounding contrariety reflecting a collapse in the tenuous balance and measured pace of natures oppositional order. The total effect of the plays richly comic dimension is to counteract the heavily explicit indications of tragic inevitability by suggesting that the story
II
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could have ended quite differently.4 The silliness of the servants and the two paterfamilias in the opening scene, the ludicrous affectations of Romeo in his role as Rosalines unrequited lover, the ebullient mockeries of Mercutio, the sentimental babblings of old Capulet, and the enchanting garrulity of the Nurse: all these combine to make us feel throughout the first two acts (and in defiance of the Prologue) that the lovers problem will resolve itself in the time-honoured fashion of comedyconstancy and skilful intrigue will overcome all obstacles, hard-nosed parents will be reconciled to a marriage of true love. Not until the entirely unexpected killing of the great jester in Act III does the atmosphere become genuinely tragic. But even then there is more comedy to come: not just the absurd, nocturnal bustling of Father Capulet as he prepares for the wedding feast, but, more importantly, the entrance of the clown at the end of the funeral lamentations over the presumed-dead Juliet. At this point the comedy clearly becomes part of a general, self-reflexive strategy. When Peter asks the dejected musicians to play him some merry dump (i.e. some merry sad song), and they retort, tis no time to play now (IV.v.1057), the original audience was to ask itself, How shall we find the concord of this discord? What artistic justification can there be for disregarding so flagrantly the classical and neoclassical insistence on excluding all traces of comedy from tragic drama? The answer has in fact been prepared for in the proleptic ironies that occur in so many of the comic and satiric passages. To take but one example. Romeos He [i.e. Mercutio] jests at scars that never felt a wound (II.ii.1) anticipates the dying Mercutios jest on his fatal wound (No, tis not so deep as a well, not so wide as a church door. But tis enough, twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man) (III.i.935); and the link tells us that comedy and tragedy cannot be separated without adopting a static and monocular view of a world which is inescapably kinetic and duplex: each genre or mode is the tomb and womb of the other. Old Capulets lament, however, prepares much more decisively than these early anticipations of generic exchange for the clowns untimely intrusion, and fully involves it in the imaginative design of the whole play: All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral: Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast, Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change; Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse; And all things change them to the contrary. (IV.v.8591) Shakespeare implicitly acknowledges that popular demand for clowning in the midst of tragedy results in a Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms (I.ii.177). But he also presents himself as a successful Friar Lawrence, one whose art is
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effective in producing confusions cure (IV.v.65): that is, a complex, meaningful unity; a controlled discordia concors which holds the mirror up to nature in all its unpredictability. As I have already remarked, Shakespeares metadramatic justification for the new mixed mode of tradegy was borrowed from Kyds The Spanish Tradegy, echoes of which are strongly felt throughout this play.5 However, the audacity and invention with which Shakespeare incorporates the comic element are entirely his own. His use of lyric conventions in such a way as to reinforce the special emphases in this new kind of tragedy was also suggested by Kyd; but again what he accomplishes on the basis of Kydian precedent represents a huge leap in imaginative expressiveness.6 There are three aspects of lyric convention which call for special attention here. The first and most obvious is the Petrarchan rhetoric of pun, antithesis, paradox, and oxymoron. This is a source of comedy in the posturings of Romeo in Act I; but thereafter it serves to articulate a pervasive sense of tragic duality, conflict, confusion, and swift contrarious change. The sonnet-prologue somewhat ostentatiously foretells this raid on Petrarchan idiom, and moulds it perfectly to the tragic conception. In the two-hours traffic of our stage, the audience will see a tragedy set in one place and concerning Two households, both alike in dignity. Ancient grudge break[s] to new mutiny. Civil blood [civil war] makes civil [peaceful] hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two / Foes, a pair of star-crossd lovers take their life [are born/kill themselves]. Their death-markd love (and that alone) serves to bury their parents strife. As Leonard Forster has remarked, the whole play is devoted to bringing the Petrarchan clich of the dear enemy to life.7 By setting that clich in so firmly dualistic a framework, by insinuating a conception of human nature as both gentle and violent, by postulating a repetitive cycle of peace and violence, by showing the paradoxical interdependence of fundamental opposites, and by repetition of the words love and strife, the sonnet-prologue indicates just why the old clich proves so attractive to the tragic dramatist. But it is not just in rhetorical figures such as paradox, oxymoron, pun, and antithesis that the principle of contrariety affects the expressive mode of the tragedy. It is manifest everywhere: in character contrasts and in opposed attitudes to love, in imagistic and symbolic patterning, and in scenic juxtaposition.8 The second inheritance from lyric tradition of special relevance here is the symbolic representation of love as a religion. The imagery of religion serves in the play to characterise love as the supreme value and the one source of redeeming grace; but it also points to the governing principles of contrarious unity and tragic doubleness. It comes into prominence when Romeo sets eyes on Juliet for the first time. A scene of exceptional lyric charm and wit, this is also a highly complex and illuminating microcosm of the given play-world; and religious symbolism is central to it. Romeo has spoken in a previous scene of the devout religion of mine eye (I.iii.88), but this is where the trite Petrarchan phrase
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becomes meaningful. Indifferent to the dance, a silent watcher holding a candle, Romeo suddenly catches sight of Juliet. From that moment he is transformed, filled with a kind of reverent joy; and in words which evoke the birth of chivalry itself, he asks: What ladys that which doth enrich the hand / Of yonder knight? (I.v.3940). He feels that if his hand touches hers, a redeeming grace will pass into it: Ill watch her place of stand, and touching hers, make blessed my rude hand (where rude means uncivilised and unregenerate, as in the Friars phrase, rude will). Of course the pair join words as well as hands, and most artfully. The first fourteen lines of their dialogue constitute a perfect sonnet in which Romeo has the first quatrain and Juliet the second; the sestet is broken up between them, and the concluding couplet is shared. It is obvious that the sonnet form and its complex rhyming scheme is designed to work in conjunction with the music and the dance to establish the idea of opposites harmonised: the concordant discord of a Montague and a Capulet.9 What is rather less obvious (or at least has not attracted critical attention) is that nine of the lines in this sonnet refer to the hand: to the profaning of hands, to the joining of hands, to praying hands, and to hands which impart a blessing. There is also a linking pun on palmer (meaning pilgrim) and palm which neatly reinforces the significance of the key image and connects it with the fact that Romeo, whose name is an Italian word for pilgrim (pellegrino che va a Roma), has come to the masque in the disguise of a palmer (hence the candle). But what completes the significance of the hand image is the visible fact that Romeo, while praying and receiving grace in a perfect communion, is being watched by a very rude young man whose hand (I assume) flies instinctively to his hip in anger and frustration. Fetch me my rapier, boy, exclaims Tybalt to his servant (line 53), eager to fulfil the Prologues prediction: civil blood makes civil hands unclean. Temporarily restrained by Capulet, who cites Romeos reputation as a virtuous and well governd youth (line 66), Tybalt represents himself in soliloquy as the emergent alternative to the meeting of contraries we have just witnessed: Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall, Now seeming sweet, convert to bitterest gall. (lines 8790) Throughout the play attention is drawn repeatedly to the hand, so that we observe it at work revealing the twin possibilities of human nature. There is the gentle hand that prays, pleads, blesses, appeases, parts antagonists, unites lovers, forgives and makes friends: the hand of palmer, saint, helpless mortal, holy friar, peacemaker, reconciled enemy. And there is the violent hand that strikes, divides, and destroyscut[s] . . . youth in twain (V.iii 99): the cursed hand (III.iii.104)
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not only of the indignant gentleman who would avenge a wrong or an insult (He draws), but also of the furious patriarch who feels like strangling his daughter when she pleads against his rude will: My fingers itch (III.v.164).10 The symbolism of the hand exactly pinpoints the tragedy of Romeo. When he comes married from the Friars cell (God joind my heart and Romeos, thou our hands (IV.i.55)), he is insulted and challenged by the furious Tybalt (III.i.118); but he responds in conciliatory and even loving terms. However, the blessed hand of love (first extended, it would seem, from a kneeling posture) is scorned by the hand of Mars, and twice over: Romeo . . . spoke him fair, and bid him bethink How nice the quarrel was, and urgd withal Your high displeasure. All this, uttered With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bowd, Could not take truce with the unruly spleen Of Tybalt, deaf to peace, but that he tilts With piercing steel at bold Mercutios breast; Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point, And, with martial scorn, with one hand beats Cold death aside, and with the other Sends it back to Tybalt, whose dexterity Retorts it. Romeo he cries aloud Hold, friends! friends, part! and, swifter than his tongue, His agile arm beats down their fatal points, And twixt them rushes; underneath whose arms An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life Of stout Mercutio . . . (lines 15066) Tybalts dexterity is (by way of an etymological pun) his right hand (Latin dexter); but the passage seems to suggest that the symbolic distinction between one hand (arm) and the other is quite lost here; and that confusion becomes Romeos. With Mercutios death, he abruptly subscribes to the code of honour; momentarily convinced that Juliets love has softned valours steel and made him effeminate, he calls on fire-eyd fury to be his conduct now (lines 108 21). And so Tybalt is slainhe whom Romeos hand did slay (line 149; cf. III.ii.71; III.iii.104, 108). It is perhaps true that we want him to show himself a man against the detestable Tybalt;11 but we must also perceive that the decision which proves fatal to both Juliet and himself represents a regression from full humanity as imaginatively defined by the play. It is only at the end, when he kills Paris in self-defence (after having tried conciliation), and then effects a moving atonement (at-one-ment) with his dead rival, that Romeo achieves heroic integrity:
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O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortunes book! Ill bury thee in a triumphant grave. . . . O, what more favour can I do to thee Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin. (V.iii.813, 98101) A third and much more important inheritance from lyric tradition which has been adapted and developed to fit the plays tragic design is the theme of time and its associated imagery. In lyric and sonnet, and especially in Shakespeares own sonnets, Time is the great enemy of both the poet-lover and the beloved. Capriciously, Time retards his pace when the lovers are separated and accelerates it when they are together. With his scythe and his frosts, he destroys the flower of youth and withers the rose of beauty. The poets lines are in themselves an attempt to counteract his evil work: they distil the perfume of the rose before it withers, win fame and lasting memory for rare beauty and virtue. In the aubade or dawn song, too, Time figures as the lovers enemy: the rising sun curtails their secret happiness and contradicts their sense of ecstatic transcendence. The extreme youth and immaturity of the doomed lovers in Romeo and Juliet is the chief indication of times cruel speed. According to Capulet, his child is yet a stranger in the world and has not seen the change of fourteen years (I.ii.89) (she is sixteen in Shakespeares principal source, and eighteen in other versions of the story). And when she is found as dead in her bridal clothes, Capulet speaks of death as lying upon her like an untimely frost / Upon the sweetest flower of all the field; as a flower . . . deflowerd by Death (IV.v.289, 37). Here, and in Capulets earlier reference to Juliet as the hopeful lady of my earth (I.ii.14), Shakespeare implicitly invokes the most poignant of all the myths of untimely death: that of Proserpina, daughter of Ceres (goddess of earths plenty), who was seized while gathering flowers by Pluto, god of death and of funerals, and taken by him to live as his wife in his infernal kingdom. Among the most powerful images in the play are those of Death as Juliets surrogate husband;12 they are all echoes of this myth which embodies the idea of times intrusion on a timeless, unchanging, paradisal world.13 Shakespeare will deploy this myth more overtly and extensively in relation to the love of Perdita and Florizel in The Winters Tale (IV.iv.11133). The allusion is pertinent here, since Romeo, like Florizel, is also identified with the flower of youth. There is even a significant play on his name which works in the same way as Florizels: when the Nurse notes that rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter, and implies that he is the flower of courtesy (II.iv.200, v.43), Shakespeare must be recalling that the Spanish word romero (= Ital. romeo) means
III
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both pilgrim and rosemary. But the flower image works comprehensively in the play, and in the final scene is superbly literalised to provide a vivid stage image of times hostility to almost all Veronas youth. At the end, Benvolio is the only surviving representative of the younger generation: Mercutio and Tybalt are yet but green in earth (IV.iii.42), the bodies of Romeo, Juliet, and Paris (described earlier as a very flower (I.iii.7880)) are before us, and lying about the stage are the flowers brought by Paris to the tomb and scattered everywhere in the violence of his fight with Romeo. No less important in relation to the time theme than the floral imagery is the imagery of light (often fiery) and of darkness, amplified in numerous references to day and night, sun, moon, and stars. The function of this complex of images as expressing the transience as well as the splendour of the lovers passion is strengthened by their own conviction that the garish sun (III.iii.25) is hostile to their secret love, whereas night is friendly, allowing it to shine in all its brilliance. The aubade theme of unwelcome daylight and reluctant parting is introduced after their only night together, and acquires an altogether new force in the circumstances of this particular relationship: if Romeo does not leave before sunrise, he will be killed. As in Julius Caesar and Othello, two other tragedies in which time is of unusual significance, a narrative which originally extended over a much longer period is compressed into a very short time frame (here, four days) so as to give the impression of events unfolding with dangerous speed in a highly charged atmosphere.14 Moreover, the familiar question as to whether or not this is a tragedy of mischance rather than of character arises mainly from the fact that so many of the actions which advance the tragedy are in some way mistimed: asynchrony is almost the determining principle of the action. If the wedding of Juliet to Paris had not been brought forward from Thursday to Wednesday; if Friar Lawrences message had reached Romeo in time; if Romeo had reached the vault a minute later, or Juliet awakened a minute earlier; or if the Friar had not stumbled as he ran to the vault: if any one of these conditions had been met, then the tragedy would not have occurred. It does indeed seem as if a malignant outside force is responsible for destroying the lovers happiness. Fortune and the stars are blamed from the start, but their malign influence is incorporate in the more palpable hostility of time: O lamentable day! O woeful time! (IV.v.30); Ah, what an unkind hour / Is guilty of this lamentable chance! (V.iii.1456). However, anyone coming to the play from a Renaissance epithalamium or marriage masque, or from Spensers unconventional sonnet sequence, Amoretti (published with his Epithalamion, in 1595), would quickly find evidence to suggest that the typical sonneteers notion of time as the enemy of human happiness is only half-endorsed by Shakespeares text. Such an intertextual approach is not at all necessary in order to perceive the wider implications of the time theme, but it certainly seems to have been presupposed by Shakespeare, and
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it does make one more fully responsive to the plays complex pattern of meaning. The Amoretti sequence is the record not of unrequited love but of a courtship which leads to the marriage day of Epithalamion. The sonnet lover frequently complains against Times cruel protractions and contractions (Sonnets XXV, XXXVI, LXXXVI), but his complaints are woven into the cycle of the seasons, to whose constraining order he painfully submits his passionate impatience. The same tension and reconciliation between time and desire is enacted in the extraordinary mimetic structure of Epithalamion, the poem which triumphantly celebrates the culmination of the twelve-months courtship. The poem consists of twenty-four stanza units; the wedding takes place on midsummer day, and the bride arrives at the church (stanza 12) when the sun, whose progress from dawn to dusk is duly marked, is at its height. It ends with the prayer that a large posterity will be the timely fruit of this same night (lines 404, 417), and with the description of the poem itself as an endless monument erected by the poet to his bride (line 433): permanence is achieved through accommodation to times cyclical order, and through a poetic art structured on the numbers of time.15 The poem is born of the assumption that harmony with the rhythm of time is the major pre-condition for enduring happiness in love and for fruitfulness in all undertakings. In his continuation of Marlowes unfinished tragic narrative, Hero and Leander, George Chapman, who assuredly had read this poem as well as Romeo and Juliet, rendered Spensers governing idea quite explicit when he wrote: Times golden thigh Upholds the flowery body of the earth In sacred harmony, and every birth Of men and actions makes legitimate, Being usd aright; the use of time is fate. (III.604) Epithalamic tradition reinforces the comic dimension of Romeo and Juliet in that it points to the alternative ending, enhances the sense of waste and loss, and enables us to view the story from the widest possible perspective. The tradition is overtly invoked in Juliets great soliloquy in III.ii (Gallop apace)often referred to as her epithalamium. The epithalamic norm of timeliness and ripeness is expressed on several occasions in the play, twice with specific relation to marriage. As befits a father, Capulet restrains the impatient suitor Paris, tying respect for time to a regard for interpersonal harmony and the ideal of multilateral consent in marriage that was advocated by English moralists from about 1570 onwards:16 Let two more summers wither in their pride Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
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But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart; My will to her consent is but a part, And, she agreed, within her scope of choice Lies my consent and fair according voice. (I.ii.1011, 1619) Juliet echoes her fathers words when she restrains Romeo and expresses the hope that This bud of love, by summers ripening breath, / May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet (II.ii.1213). And if the sun is scorned by the lovers it is referred to by others as the worshippd sun (I.i.115) and the all-cheering sun (line 133). Partnered by the moon, its presence is felt throughout, manifesting a dualistic temporal order which is not intrinsically capricious or malign; Juliet speaks of the variable and inconstant moon, / That monthly changes in her circled orb (I.ii.10911), but her phrasing unintentionally acknowledges that the moons changes are ordered. And the last image of the sun is as a kindly father grieving over the untimely death (V.iii.233, 258) of the young: The sun for sorrow will not show his head (line 305). Of course references in Romeo and Juliet to the timely order which promises fruitfulness and permanence serve but to highlight the prevailing violencea key term which denotes both haste and destruction.17 As its first word indicates, Juliets Gallop apace soliloquy is not so much an epithalamium as an epithalamium subverted.18 Central to the meaning of the speech is Juliets self-identification with Phaeton, the runaway (III.ii.3, 6) son of Phoebus who sought to manage his fathers fiery chariot, failed, and brought in cloudy night immediately (line 4);19 the speech is a superb manifestation of intense, erotic passion verging on willed self-extinction. Juliet herself had anticipated this perception when she warned the much more impulsive Romeo that their contract was Too like the lightning which doth cease to be / Ere one can say It lightens (II.ii.11920). It is in the scene which follows this ominous remark that the lyric image of the flower loses its simple significance (or innocence) by being projected into the contrarious order of all nature: Within the infant rind of this weak flower / Poison hath residence, and medicine power. However, it is important to avoid undue emphasis on the rashness of the lovers, for a fiery, passionate impatience animates and agitates the whole society into which they have been born. Capulet enjoins patience and concord on both Tybalt and Paris, but subsequently delights in the speed with which he sets up an enforced marriage; and he reacts with a frightening display of rude will and itching hands to the kneeling Juliets plea for time. Mercutio make[s] haste to take up the challenge rejected by Romeo: his bitter, I am sped, is a fitting epitaph (III.i.78, 88). And the effect of his death is that Tybalt and Romeo tot . . . go like lightning (line 169). Paris proves to be as provocative and furious in quarrel (V.iii.63, 70) as he was impatient in love. Even the Prince contributes to the prevailing ethos. Distressed by the death of his kinsman Mercutio, he is deaf
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to pleading and excuses and sentences Romeo to exile in haste (III.i.18992): patient consideration might have resulted in a more equitable judgement, and averted tragedy. And of course the Friar becomes deeply involved in the haste he deplored: his exclamation, Saint Francis be my speed! How oft tonight / Have my old feet stumbled at graves! (V.iii.1212), ironically echoes his advice: Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast (II.iii.94). Shakespeare has thus created a hectic environment where fatal accidents brought about by unfortunate mistimings are in the end inevitable.20 More important, it is presented as an environment in which haste is a poison that spreads to infect almost everyone: all references to poison, plague, infection, and pestilence combine to form a central symbol for Veronas passionate impatience and fatal speed. The Friar speaks of poison in the flower just before Romeo enters demanding to be married to his new love today (II.iii.64). Mercutios I am sped is preceded and followed by the famous A plague a both your houses (III.i.88, 97). Friar Lawrences messenger is delayed because he is suspected of having been in a house where the infectious pestilence did reign (V.iii.910) (the symbolic intent is evident from the fact that in Brookes Romeus and Juliet the infected house is in Mantua, not Verona; and from the synonymity of infection and rank poison at I.ii.4950). And Romeo, swiftly opting for suicide obtains from the apothecary A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear / As will disperse itself through all the veins . . . / As violently as hasty powder fird / Doth hurry from the fatal cannons womb (V.i.605). We may conclude that although the rashness of the lovers contributes to their tragedy, it is a pestilence caught from others. And we have to remember that there is a huge difference between the impetuosities of love and those of anger and hatealthough they can work tragically towards the same end. It is apparent, then, that in Romeo and Juliet time is not a blind, external force hostile to youth and love but rather a complex ruling order which can be creative or destructive according as men and women are able to function within its inescapable limits. And in that sense the philosophy of the sonnets is heavily qualified. However, it seems to be in the nature of Shakespeares tragic environment that time is already out of joint, so that the protagonists are compelled, as it were, to journey across a heavily mined battle-field. Furthermore, the greatness of the tragic hero and heroine, and especially of heroic lovers, lies precisely in their need to transcend limits; they can only be fully themselves if they soar above a common bound (I.iv.18) and so court destruction. Around Capulets house, the orchard walls are high and hard to climb; / And the place death if Romeo is discovered; but he declares that he will oerperch these walls since stony limits cannot hold love out (II.ii.647). Juliets rejection of limit derives from her eloquently expressed awareness
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that loves bounty is boundless as the sea, infinite (lines 1315; see also II.vi.324). No less important in the complex vision of this tragedy is the fact that although their own violence and that of their families makes the lovers the victims of time, they are, in the deepest sense, triumphant over times destructive action.21 It is this triumph which makes possible the reconciliation of their families; and although we may consider that to be a poor reward for the sacrifice of two such individuals, their resolute refusal to accept change and division when everything conspires to enforce it upon them is itself a thing of supreme value, something that endures like the statue of pure gold which their parents erect in their memoryor like the legend of their loves. This triumph over change is all the more distinct in that it was not a foregone conclusion; somewhat awkwardly, but obviously enough, Shakespeare delineates in their characters and relationship a process of maturing, of fall and recovery, of constancy undermined and restored; and this in turn hints at the paradox that times destructive action can be seen as part of a creative cycle. In the orchard scene, Juliet expresses fears about Romeos constancy, but her own constancy is clearly threatened after Tybalts death. Her notorious oxymoronic outburst against Romeo (O serpent heart, hid with a flowring face! . . . Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical etc.) is intended to disclose a fierce struggle between hatred for the man who killed her cousin and love for her banished husband (III.iii.7384). It is, however, an artificial crisis; not simply because of the overdone rhetoric, but also and mainly because Juliets love for Tybalt is not an imagined nor even an imaginable realitywe have never once seen her with that thoroughly unlovable thug. Very different is the test to which she is put when she has to be buried alive in the family vault in order to remain an unstaind wife to my sweet love (IV.i.88). The horrors of death and putrefaction engulf her imagination, and the way in which she defeats them comes across very forcefully as a heroic act of loves constancy. It would be reasonable to say that the young girl clearly becomes a woman here. However, the text compliments her in a manner which few women today would deem agreeable, but which must be read in its historical context. The idea is that she transcends her sex, or rather the weakness traditionally ascribed to her sex; she is warned by Friar Lawrence that the whole plan to salvage her marriage will fail if any inconstant toy or womanish fear abates her valour (IV.i.11920). (We will encounter the same idea in the last act of Antony and Cleopatra.) Characteristically, however, Shakespeare deconstructs the opposition of male constancy and female inconstancy in his delineation of the early Romeo. Romeo makes his debut with a carefully framed act of inconstancy, as ludicrous as anything to be found in the comedies; in the space of seconds, he transfers to Juliet his much publicised devotion to the frosty Rosaline: What a change
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is here!, exclaims the Friar (II.iii.65). This change indicates a kind of maturing, a progress from fanciful to authentic passion. But its main purpose may be to highlight the issue of constancy and to hint at Romeos potential unworthiness. His eagerness in the orchard scene to swear everlasting fidelity is what provokes Juliets fear that he will prove variable and inconstant, like the moon; and events show that she has good cause to be uneasy. As I have already noted, it is his lapse from love to male honour that brings the world crashing about their heads. And it is finely ironical that he should decide there that her beauty has softend valours steel and made him effeminate; because when he is told of his banishment, he falls weeping and screaming to the floor, and even attempts to commit suicidethinking only of his loss and not of what Juliet will have to endure. The gravity of this moral fallemblematised, as in a comparable scene in Othello, by his prostrate positionis spelt out by the Friar: he is not a man; his tears are womanish; his wild acts denote the unreasonable fury of a beast (III.iii.10813). In his recovery, Romeos growth as a man and as a lover are coincident, interdependent. When the next piece of terrible news (that Juliet is dead) is brought to him, he has been buoyant with the expectation of good news; but now there is no wild ranting. Instantly he decides to die with Juliet, keeps the decision to himself, and gives an astonishing display of quiet stoicism in dealing with the servant who brought the news and must be made to serve his dark purpose. Moreover his dialogue with the wretched apothecary reveals in him a whole lifetimes understanding of human misery. And it is in the role of valiant and gentle manhood that he deals with Pariss insulting provocations: Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man; Wilt provoke me? Then have at thee, boy! (V.iii.59, 70). The union of the houses of Capulet and Montague follows logically from the constant onenessthe union of oppositeswhich the lovers achieve both individually and as a married pair. To consider the jointure of the families in dissociation from that complex oneness is inevitably to devalue it, and, of course, to simplify the plays conclusion. Perhaps the most discussed and problematic of the plays oppositions is that of character and fate. Some critics have taken extreme positions on this issue, either holding that everything in the action is determined by the initial stress on starcrossd lovers, or insisting that the lovers are free agents whose uncontrolled passion brings upon them a morally just punishment. Others have speculated whether the two concepts coexist in a state of pure contradiction or whether they are reconciled.22 The double perspective originates in Brookes Romeus and Juliet, where the lovers are berated for their irresponsibility in the preface and sympathetically presented in the body of the poem as the victims of a malign fate (the restles starres, the fatall sisters three, and Fortune full of chaunge).
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Shakespeare has fully integrated this double view into the play, partly, perhaps, because the dualistic conception which governs the whole could so easily accommodate it. There will always be disagreement on whether the issue of free will and pre-determination is a resolvable paradox or a pure contradiction we simply have to live with. This disagreement must inevitably be reflected in interpretations of a play which manipulates the question so conspicuously. But two points are worth making here. First, given the whole design of Romeo and Juliet, many in Shakespeares audience would probably have reflected on the issue in the manner of Sir Kenelm Digby, who, in considering the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, argued that liberty and a constrained necessity are mutually compatible and entirely consistent with the creation of a world whose order rests on the concord of contrarious and disagreeing qualities; they might reasonably have felt that in the end the play achieves a discordia concors of fatality and responsibility. Second, and as already implied here, insofar as the paradox is resolved within the play, the resolution is accomplished in terms of time, haste, and impatience. When the prince begins the inquiry intended to clear these ambiguities (V.iii.216), his chief witness is the Friar, who tells a tale of untimely and mistimed actions. Lawrence does not practice astrology, but like Prospero (who does), he is a wise man who uses art (V.iii.242) to control nature; and like Prospero he has the astrologers awareness that timingknowing the propitious and the unpropitious moment, and acting accordinglyis of the utmost importance in negotiating the changeful complexities of life (ruling the stars). His tale is one of sustained efforts to control a sequence of events whose problematical nature was temporal throughout. From the beginning of the play, we should recall, the hostility of external circumstance to the lovers is expressed in terms both of the stars and of time. Romeo fears that he and his friends will arrive at the Capulets too early, for his mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars that will lead to untimely death (I.iv.10611); and Juliet exclaims: My only love sprung from my only hate! / Too early seen, and known too late! (I.v.1356). Being what they are, however, they rush, and are driven by others, to actualise the fate which they see as prepared for them. For his part, the Friar accepts that he cannot stop Romeos headlong commitment and accepts it as inevitable; but he also perceives the possibility of turning it to the good. However, when he agrees to the marriage, and yet again when he devises plans to cope with unexpected problems (Romeos banishment and the ParisJuliet marriage), he stresses that a happy outcome will depend entirely on exact timing (II.iii.904; III.iii.14971; IV.i.69117). Increasingly desperate (line 69), his art, as we have seen, is defeated less by accident than by the passionate impatience with which the characters involved in the plot he is trying to control react to changing circumstance. In the end, he declares
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himself responsible for the tragedy and yet innocent: myself condemned and myself excusd (V.iii.226). Much the same, perhaps, can be said both of the stars (if literally understood) and of the lovers. In subsequent tragedies, and especially in Othello, we will have the same sense of an inescapable doom working itself out through the choices, passions, and errors of men and women; the same sense, too, that the use of time is fate. The limitation of this play as tragedy is that the compulsion to embrace a fatal destiny is too closely identified with mere haste, and too dependent on verbal and imagistic expression. In the later tragedies, by contrast, it is deeply embedded in character and linked to a capacity for violence and destruction which is truly frightening.
1. Giulio Ferretti, Equitis et comitis lateranensis Palatii consilia et tractatus (1562), cited in Frederick R. Bryson, The Sixteenth Century Italian Duel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), p. xxiii. Cf. M.H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London: Routledge; 1965), pp. 89. 2. Marion Bodwell Smith, Dualities in Shakespeare (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1966); pp. 79109. 3. Robert Grudin, Mighty Opposites: Shakespeare and Renaissance Contrariety (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 3640. 4. For discussion of the comic element, see Nicholas Brooke, Shakespeares Early Tragedies (London: Methuen, 1968), pp. 8794; 98, 104; Rosalie L. Colie, Shakespeares Living Art (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 5670; Susan Snyder, The Comic Matrix of Shakespeares Tragedies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1919); pp. 5670. 5. Philip Edwards, Shakespeare and the Confines of Art (London: Methuen, 1968), p. 80. 6. The plays relation to lyric and Petrarchan tradition has been much discussed. See especially Colic, Shakespeares Living Art, pp. 5670; A.J. Earl; Romeo and Juliet and the Elizabethan Sonnets; English, 27 (1978), 99119; Jill L. Levenson, The Definition of Love: Shakespeares Phrasing in Romeo and Juliet , ShakS, 15 (1979), 2136; Brian Gibbons, ed. Romeo and Juliet (London: Methuen, 1980), pp. 4252. 7. The Icy Fire: Six Studies in European Petrarchism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1969), p. 8. For examples of this paradox, see Spensers Amoretti; Sonnets XIV, XLIX, LXIX. 8. Cf. Harry Levin, Form and Formality in Romeo and Juliet , SQ, 10 (1960), 69. 9. The whole conception of this scene derives from Kyds Spanish Tragedy, II.ii, II.iv. See my English Renaissance Tragedy (London: Macmillan; Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986), pp. 745, and below, p. 147. 10. The gentle and the violent hands are important images also in Julius Caesar (p. 84), Macbeth (p. 203.), and Titus Andronicus. 11. T. J. B. Spencer, ed. Romeo and Juliet (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 30. 12. I.v.1323; III.ii.138; V.iii.926, 1028.
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13. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, V.386571. The agreement whereby Proserpina (Persephone) was allowed to return to her mother Ceres from the underworld for six months of each year constitutes a mythical explanation of seasonal change. 14. The nineteenth-century critic, Bernhard Ten Brink, gives an excellent account of this aspect of the plays technique. See his Five Lectures on Shakespeare, trs. Julia Franklin (London: Bell; 1895), pp. 1308. 15. For an elucidation of the poems complex numerological design, see, A.K. Hieatts pioneer study, Short Times Endless Monument: the Symbolism of Numbers in Spensers Epithalamion (New York; Columbia University Press, 1960). 16. Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England 15701640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 1368. 17. Violence in the sense of haste, speed, is not recorded in OED ; for examples, see Chapman, Hero and Leander, III.5964; Hamlet, V.ii.28990; Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling, ed. N.W. Bawcutt (London: Methuen 1961), I.i.191. For discussion of Romeo and Juliet as a tragedy of the guarded haste of youth, see Brents Stirling, Unity in Shakespearian Tragedy: the Interplay of Theme and Character (New York: Gordian Press, 1966), pp. 1025. As suggested below, however, the haste/patience polarity is not identical with that of youth and age. 18. See Gary M. McCown, Runnawayes Eyes and Juliets Epithalamium, SQ, 27 (1976), 16570. McCown details several inversions of epithalamic convention in the soliloquy, but does not touch on the whole notion of timeliness. Brooke, Shakespeares Early Tragedies, p. 101, points out that there is a notable absence in Juliets epithalamium of all reference to fertility and growth. 19. McCown, pp. 1509, argues against identifying Juliets runaway as Phaeton, pointing out that runaway or fugitive was an epithet conventionally applied to Cupid. I would contend, however, that in its poetic and dramatic context runaway functions as a pun linking blind Cupid with reckless Phaeton. 20. See M.C. Bradbrook, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Poetry (London: Chatto & Windus, 1951), p. 109. 21. On this aspect of the plays meaning, see especially M.M. Mahood, Shakespeares Wordplay (London: Methuen, 1957), pp. 669, 72. 22. The problem of fate and character, innocence and guilt, is closely related to the curious wavering between. moralistic and romantic interpretations of love suicides found in much of the fiction and drama of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. See Rowland Wymer, Suicide and Despair in the Jacobean Drama (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986), pp. 11318.
QQQ
1993Maynard Mack. The Ambiguities of Romeo and Juliet , from Everybodys Shakespeare: Ref lections Chief ly on the Tragedies
Maynard Mack (19082001) was Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University. He is the author of Everybodys Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies (1993) and Alexander Pope: A Life
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Romeo and Juliet (1986). He was also the general editor of The Norton Antholog y of World Masterpieces (1997).
Shakespeares re-visioning of love in Romeo and Juliet owes much of its continuing popularity to variety. In mood and plot a tragic work, presenting with a rare sympathy the ecstatic passion of two very young lovers doomed by a combination of impetuousness, bad luck, and the total incomprehension of their families and friends, the play offers at the same time many of the attractions of high comedy. The characters are individualized, it is true, well beyond the usual comic types; but they show nonetheless some recognizable blood-ties with the kinds of people we expect to meet with in stage and film comedy: the Beautiful Ingenue, the Convention-Ridden Parents including the Irascible Father, the Parent-Approved Suitor, the Dashing Romantic Suitor, the Male Confidant and Female Confidante, the Bumbling Well-Meaning Counselor, and the rest. In the great majority of its scenes, moreover, the play keeps firmly before us a detached comic perspective on events whose tragic intensities we are simultaneously being asked to share. This is the case for nearly all the lovers scenes, where our sympathy for their rapture or peril is likely to be qualified by a certain amusement at their total self-absorption. It is also true of the two scenes, frequently misunderstood by critics though rarely by audiences, in which the lovers respond, successively, with embarrassingly exaggerated rhetoric, to the new circumstance of Tybalts death and Romeos banishment (3.23). No rhetoric that Shakespeare meant us to take seriously would have been accompanied, we may be sure, by (in Juliets case) the hilarious obbligato of the Nurse as she tries to escalate to the upper registers of romantic griefAh, weraday! hes dead, hes dead, hes dead! (3.2.37) and (in Romeos case) by the irrelevant relevancies of the Friar. The Friars fussy moralism as he flutters about the prone body of his hysterical charge, trying with wise saws and edifying examples to poultice a wound inaccessible to any verbal comforts, let alone these, is as laughable in its way as the adolescent antics that call it forth. Audiences sense this instinctively. Though their hearts may go out to the lovers in their helplessness, they laugh at everyone concernedand they should. No one knew better than the author of A Midsummer Nights Dream (written either just before or just after Romeo and Juliet) that young love, even in anguish, can be extremely funny as well as, on occasion, breathtakingly beautiful. Even more complicated feelings arise during the Capulets mourning for Juliet (4.5). On the one hand, our knowledge that they are not bereaved in fact makes for a detachment in our attitudes that is only increased by the comic fluency, not to mention the imaginative barrenness, of their grief: But one, poor one, one poor and loving child (4.5.46)O day, O day, O day! O hateful day!
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(4.5.52)O love! O life! Not life, but love in death! (4.5.58). On the other hand, we can hardly help compassionating in some degree a sense of loss that we know is real for them, and this compassion is inevitably deepened by what we sense or know they have in store. Comic now, this grief ironically looks forward to the tragic grief to come. Such episodes create a tragicomic texture for the play in which fooling is almost as much at home as feeling, and in which each way of looking at the world casts light upon the other. Yet more important than these comic elements in the plays total effect is its incorporation of romancemeaning by romance the conventions and value systems of popular romantic fiction. The very fact that the tragedy depicted is a tragedy of lovers must have emphasized for its first audiences that its deepest roots lay in romance, not tragedy; for true tragedy, Elizabethan pundits never tired of declaring, should deal with graver matters than lovewith the fall of princes or the errors and sufferings of actual historical men and women in high place. Shakespeares venture in conceiving Romeo and Juliet as a tragedy was therefore in some degree an innovation, possibly an experiment. Instead of personages on whom the fate of nations depended, it took for its hero and heroine a boy and girl in love; and instead of events accredited by history, its incidents were culled from the familiar props of the romantic tall tale: deadly feuds, masked balls, love-at-first-sight, meetings and partings by moonlight and dawn, surreptitious weddings, rope-ladders, sleeping potions, poison, reunions in the gravean intoxicating mix! Furthermore, having decided to make young love his theme, Shakespeare went all the way. His only sourcea long narrative poem by Arthur Brooke called The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet58had used its romantic yarn to carry a sober moral. To this ende (good Reader), Brooke tells us in his preface, is this tragicall matter written: to describe unto thee a coople of unfortunate lovers, thralling themselves to unhonest desire, neglecting the authoritie and advise of parents and frendes, conferring [i.e. keeping] their principall counsels with dronken gossyppes [like the Nurse], and superstitious friers (the naturally fitte instrumentes of unchastitie) [Brooke shows marked hostility throughout his poem to the institutions of Roman Catholicism], attemptyng all adventures of peryll, for th attaynyng of their wicked lust, usyng auricular [i.e. aural] confession (the key of whoredome, and treason) for furtherance of theyr purpose, abusyng the honorable name of lawefull mariage to cloke the shame of stolyn contracts, [and] finallye, by all means of unhonest lyfe, hastyng to most unhappye death. In the poem itself, Brooke shows more sympathy with his young lovers than this prefatory warning would lead us to expect; but, for all that, their
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affair remains in his telling largely what it had been in several earlier tellings in Italian prose: a pathetic but commonplace attachment, memorable mainly for the sensational incidents and bizarre ironies of mischance with which it is entwined. Only in Shakespeares hands did the love-story itself become the lyrical celebration of youthful passion that we all associate with the names of Romeo and Juliet today. Certainly, nowhere in literature has such passion been more winninglyand more flatteringlyportrayed. Juliet is given by her creator, besides beauty, a loving womans selfless devotion together with a childs directness, and both qualities remain undimmed to the end: My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep. (2.2.133) O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop To help me after? (5.3.163) Romeo, though much more self-conscious than she, is provided with an energy of imagination that, once he has met Juliet, a genuine high passion kindles into bursts of adoration that no one who has been in love easily forgets: O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night As a rich jewel in an Ethiops ear (1.5.44) Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare. (2.6.6) O my love! my wife! Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered. Beautys ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And deaths pale flag is not advancd there. (5.3.91) The transforming effects of love are further evidenced in the fact that it brings both lovers whatever personal maturity their short lives allow them to attain. Under its strong direction, Juliet advances swiftly from the little-girl naivet of her first responses to the idea of marriage (It is an honor that I dream not of 1.3.66), then through deceptions and stratagems and thence to her cry of
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physical longing as she waits for the horses of the sun to bring night and night to bring Romeo: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds (3.2.1). From there it is yet another giant step to the choice that her resolution to remain an unstained wife to my sweet love (4.1.88) requires of her, yet she makes it without an instants hesitation or regret: If all else fail, myself have power to die (3.5.244). Romeo, who has further to go than she, begins more derivatively. His lovemelancholy at the plays opening is obviously in some part a pose. It evidently gives him pleasure to see himself in the role of Disappointed Suitor, Victim of a Cruel Cruel Maid, and he accordingly acts out for his friend Benvolio most of the attitudes that in his time were supposed to accompany that rolesleeplessness, avoidance of company, lassitude, despairnot forgetting the voguish language of antitheses, paradoxes, and strained metaphors that he voices in his first explosion about the feud and his frustrated love for Rosaline: Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! (1.1.174) What Shakespeare shows us in such speeches is a young man more interested in parading his symptoms than in the cure of his disease. Thanks, however, to the feelings set aglow in him by Juliet, all this changes. From preoccupation with his symptoms, he rises to raptures that are real even if excessively self-conscious in the so-called first balcony scene (How silversweet sound lovers tongues by night 2.2.166), and later to the tenderly insistent realism of his replies to Juliet during the second balcony scene: Nights candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops. (3.5.9) Now it is she, not he, who longs to linger in the flattering dream: Yond light is not daylight; I know it, I. Then follows his lonely encounter with the apothecary: I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none (5.1.83). This, more than any other episode, seems to mark symbolically Romeos coming of age. Its function in the play is much like that of similar encounters in folktale and romance where the hero shows his worthiness by attaching value to some unprepossessing gift or secret obtained from a sinister old man or woman. Certainly Romeos emphatic rejection here of goldnot only, as he puts it, poison to mens souls, but an appropriate emblem of all the materialists in the play who would make love serve their ends
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constitutes his ultimate accreditation as a romantic hero. This is only confirmed by his recognition that poison is for him cordial and not poison since by its means he will lie . . . tonight with Juliet in senses earlier unimagined. Though Shakespeare allows to neither of his protagonists in this play the full tragic realization of what has happened to them that he will allow such later figures as Hamlet and Othello, much less any anguished questionings about their own contribution to it, both do eventually reach a maturity of feeling, if not of understanding, that was not theirs at the plays beginning. Of climactic significance in this exaltation of romantic love is the fact that the lovers are permitted to maintain, in the face of all the influences that might corrupt or compromise it, an absolute integrity of devotion to each other, and to express it with a lyricism untouched by the playful cynicism or teasing sexual badinage so often indulged by Shakespeares lovers elsewhere. That the play has been unfailingly popular through so many centuries onstage (as well as, nowadays, in several film versions) may be traced in some part to this fact. Audiences respond to this love-story as to an exemplum, a model, an ideal. And though the vision it delineates has about as much resemblance to our ordinary human gropings in these areas as the Aphrodite of Praxiteles to the efforts of a pottery class, the effect is all the more ingratiating on that account Herewe can tell ourselves, knowing full well that we doubt as we tell itis young love realized in its full delicacy, the slim bright edge of the new moon: here is what the experience of first love ought to be, can be, at rare moments perhaps has beenfor others if not for us: vivat Eros! Around this idealized love-affair Shakespeare sets swirling a host of competing ideas, giving each its own idiom. Sampson and Gregory, for instance, with their crude talk of maidenheads, weapons, pretty pieces of flesh and the like, announce a cluster of attitudes in which love appears mainly as a form of male aggressiveness: I will push Montagues men from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall (1.1.15). Soon after this, when the noise of the street-brawl (verbal aggression having exploded into physical aggression) subsides, we hear Romeo and Benvolio discussing the inaccessibility of Rosaline. Here we have the other side of the coinnot male aggression but female coquetry carried to the point of tyranny and in its pride rejecting not simply Romeos advances but all advances: She hath forsworn to love (1.1.221). The idiom now is Petrarchandrawn, that is to say, from a tradition of images and poetic conventions that goes back ultimately to poems addressed by the Italian poet Petrarch to a woman named Laura, whom (for what reasons is not clear) he was content to worship from afar. Over the centuries, it had become a standard literary love-language, used most often, as in Petrarchs
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case, to explore and express the emotions involved in a lovers longing for an unattainable belovedwhether unattainable because indifferent (like Rosaline in the play), or simply sequestered from the company of young men (as well-bred Elizabethan girls normally were till married), or already bespoke in marriage (as Juliet would have been had Romeo met her for the first time a week later). Longing being its chief subject-matter, much of the vocabulary of this tradition features love as a perpetual, forever unavailing amorous warfare, with Venus as patron of the battle, Cupid as archer, and the beloved as unconquerable stronghold or invulnerable foe. This is the imagery that Romeo and Benvolio resort to in describing Rosaline as one who goes in strong proof of chastity well armed and will not stay the siege of loving terms (1.1.208). It is also the imagery that Mercutio parodies whenever he and Romeo meet. In this conversation, as noticed earlier, we are introduced to Romeos own affectations, and then, as if to complete a sequence from brutal (Sampson and Gregory) to coquettish (Rosaline) to faddish (Romeo) to conventional, we turn to Paris and old Capulet. The young wooer, as Elizabethan protocol dictated, approaches the young ladys father with a proposition. The father predictably replies (with an apparent unconcern that soon fades): Why hurry? Still, its all right with me if you can obtain her consent (1.2.17). Predictably also, the mother visits the daughter and dwells upon the attractions of the suitor, especially on how fitting it will be for a Capulet to be the binding that locks in so much wealth: That book in manys eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps locks in the golden story. (1.3.91) No nonsense about loves embraces here: only gold clasps. Meantime, to these materialist attitudes, the Nurse plays shrill echo. One of Shakespeares most brilliant early character sketches, she is a shrewd but garrulous, warmhearted but naively vulgar soul, who finds it impossible to answer a simple question without dredging up with it all the seaweed that clings about it in her memory. The question is only about Juliets age, but by the time the Nurse has settled it she has included her dead daughter Susan, an earthquake, Juliets weaning, an absence of the elder Capulets in Mantua, and a vulgar witticism of her dead husbands about Juliets falling and bumping her head. The unfading pleasure she takes in this little sexual joke (not to mention the kind of comparison that springs instantly to her mind when she describes the size of Juliets bump) tells us most of what we need to know about her understanding of romantic love. After hearing her on the subject of falling backward, we are not likely to be much surprised by her response to the proposal for Juliets marriage: Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days (1.3.105). Or by her later utilitarian
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response to Juliets agony, when, being already married to Romeo, she faces a second forced marriage to Paris: Beshrew my very heart, I think you are happy in this second match, For it excels your first; or if it did not, Your first is deador twere as good he were As living here and you no use of him. (3.5.223) This contrast between the Nurse and Juliet is reinforced by Mercutios contrast with Romeo. Mercutio knows all about the supposed pangs that love occasions and can speak that language as well as Romeo: You are a lover. Borrow Cupids wings And soar with them above a common bound. (1.4.17) But he speaks it only to mock it. Knowing well that such feeling is often selfdeceiveda disguise, in fact, for simple appetitehe appears to cherish the conviction that such it must always be: all that is real is sex. To every protest that Romeo makes about the preoccupations of his heart, Mercutio replies with a bawdy quip. He knows all about Queen Mab, too, and can describe her equipage with childlike wonder, enchantinglyuntil again he mocks her: he has no serious interest in what she represents. Our psychic inner-world of fancy, longing, mystery, and dream (on which Juliet will later confer a cosmic rhythm and splendor by associating it with the chariot of the sun god Apollo: 3.2.1), Mercutio here dismisses and shrinks to insignificance by associating it with the minuscule chariot of Mab, in whose Skinnerian world we are all reduced to programmed stimulus and response: And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers brains, and then they dream of love; Oer courtiers knees, that dream on curtsies straight; Oer lawyers fingers, that straight dream on fees; Oer ladies lips, who straight on kisses dream . . . (1.4.70) On the same rational grounds, Mercutio refuses credence to Romeos dream and his consequent misgiving about going to the Capulet feast. The play is to prove him wrong on several of these points, and the first instance occurs at once. For the conjuration of Rosaline that Shakespeare puts into his mouth as he and Benvolio look for their vanished companion after the ball (2.1.6) places this washroom chatter in immediate juxtaposition with the luminous beauty of Juliet and the exalted feelings she has stirred in Romeo
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both of which we have just witnessed. Useful as an antidote to the maudlin worship of the Beautiful Cruel Lady (La Belle Dame sans Merci) whose caprices have enslaved Romeo, Mercutios witty pruriencies are now seen to have come up against something to which they are irrelevant. Irrelevant, most obviously because directed at the wrong girl. But more deeply irrelevant, too, because so determinedly excluding the capability that men and women have of valuing each other as persons rather than sexual objects and of placing that value above all other imaginable valuesexactly what we have just seen taking place a few moments earlier as Romeo and Juliet stand isolated from the rest of the world in the fourteen lines of a love-sonnet. The rapt unanimity of feeling that they share within that sonnet unfolds, as the play proceeds, into the radiant experience that the coarser attitudes we have just been examining help to define and set apart. To earn our belief in that experience, or at the very least a suspension of our disbelief, Shakespeare undertakes to validate it for us by showing us that he is aware of crasser possibilities, even if his lovers are not. That he knows what he shows us in them is not within the reach of allnot, for instance, the County Parises of the world, however admirable they may be for other virtues. That he knows, even where it exists, such love as this is always under threat, not only from those whose values are determined by convention, like the Capulets, and no doubt equally the Montagues; but from those, like Mercutio, whose appraisal of human capabilities it considerably transcends, and from those, like the Nurse, with whose jovial but crude sensibility it is quite out of tune. And, moreovera sufficiently tragic concession in itselfthat he knows it must in the long run face defeatif not by the world, then by our mortal nature, which allows nothing to remain in perpetuity, or even for very long, the thing it was. Everything that grows, he laments repeatedly in his Sonnets, Holds in perfection but a little moment (15.2). In some part, Romeo and Juliet seems a poignant elaboration of that thought, in dramatic terms. Just here, the play may intend to raise questions as well as paeans around the romantic experience it so much exalts. What, for instance, do the repeated hints that this love is as dangerous as it is beautifulperhaps beautiful because dangeroussignify? Like the blaze of gunpowder, says Friar Laurence: These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. (2.6.9) To be sure, the friar is an old man, skeptical of youths ways; yet can we help reflecting on this diagnosis when we recall at the plays end that five young
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people have died: Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, Juliet? Does it suffice to hold the feud alone accountable? Then there is the repeated situation of enclosure. With the exception of their marriage scene at the exact center of the play, we see Romeo and Juliet together only in the interval between evening and dawn, and always in a kind of enclave or special space which is threatened from without. At the ball, they are framed by a sonnet and by a sudden quiet that is made the more striking and precarious by Tybalts attempted intrusion. In the first balcony scene, their enclosure is the Capulets walled garden, and the interview is twice on the point of interruption by the Nurse. In the second such scene, where the setting is Juliets chamber, their leave-taking is interrupted, first by the Nurses warning and then by Lady Capulets appearance. Even in the tomb the social order intervenes, in the person of the Friar, between Romeos suicide and Juliets. What goes on here, apart from the requirements of the plot, is a playwrights rendering of the feeling of intense but vulnerable privacy that all lovers know. So much the play clearly tells us. Does it also tell us that the unreconcilability of this love with the ordinary daylight world is a tragic consequence of its nature, a trait not separable from it without destroying the thing it isand so more tragic on that account? Similar ambiguities hover about the relationship established between the passion of Romeo and Juliet and the death that seems to be implicit in it. Significantly, the last scene takes place in a tomb. This is a remarkable dnouement, and we have been prepared for it by a succession of references, prophetic of the outcome even when dropped casually or in ignorance, in which love and death are identified or closely linked. First, by Juliet herself: Come, cords; come, nurse. Ill to my wedding bed; And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead! (3.2.136) Soon after, by her mother, angered at Juliets disinclination to marry Paris: I would the fool were married to her grave (3.5.141). Next, by her father, supposing that his daughters apparent death on the eve of her wedding is real: Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir (4.5.38) Later, by Paris, acting on the same supposition at the tomb: Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew (5.3.12). And finally by Romeo: Shall I believe That unsubstantial Death is amorous, And that the lean abhorrd monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that I still will stay with thee. . . . (5.3.102)
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The playwrights insistence throughout on pairing the bride-bed with the grave reaches a climax in the tomb-scene, where death and sexual consummation become indistinguishable as Romeo dies (a word often used in Renaissance literature to refer to the culmination of the sexual act) upon a kiss, and Juliet, plunging the dagger home, sighs: there rust, and let me die (5.3.120,170). We must recall, too, that from the moment they acknowledge their love these lovers have been made to sense that it spells or may spell doom: Is she a Capulet? O dear account! my life is my foes debt. (1.5.117) If he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed. (1.5.134) Their apprehension can be attributed in part to the feud, but only in part. Juliets lines above are spoken while she is yet in ignorance of Romeos identity, and Romeos premonitions of Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars (1.4.107) precede even his visit to the ball. We in the audience, moreover, have been assured from the very beginning that this love is death-marked (Prologue, 9). What are we to make of such evidence? Does the play urge us to conclude that every high romantic passion, by its very finality and absoluteness, its inwardness and narcissism, is necessarily allied with death, even perhaps (however unconsciously) seeks death? being oblivious of all competing values to a degree that ordinary human lives cannot afford and determined to hold fast to a perfection that such lives cannot long sustain? and therefore tending irresistibly to a love-death because unable or unwilling to absorb the losses imposed by a love-life? Or is the implied connection at once simpler and more universal: that death is always the other pole required to generate loves meaningthe little negotiable domestic loves that most of us aspire to as much as the austerest romantic pang? that our loves, too, are death-marked and (in the senses that matter most) star-crossed, because both marked and crossed by the general human fate, which is to die? and therefore that those audiences are right after all who, despite the plays concern with a particular pair of lovers in a particular situation, sense in it a universal parable that speaks eloquently to their own condition? There are no certain answers to these questions, or even to the question whether the playwright intends them to be asked. What is certain is that when we see Romeo and Juliet in performance, or perform it alertly for ourselves in the theater of the mind, such problems tend to vanish in an experience that is altogether dramatic: an experience that owes more to gestures, groupings, movements
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onstage, stunning intensities and reversals of human feeling, breathtaking effects of color, light, and sound, than to theoretical considerations of the sort we have just been examining. Consider, for instance, the first scene. Two swaggering boneheads in Capulet liverythe livery very probably a little frowsy like their manners and speech, their swagger only making more conspicuous the fear it is meant to hidemeet two similar figures wearing the contrasting colors of the Montagues. A scuffle follows. The stage resounds with cries, grunts, heavy-footed lunges, clumsy whacks and thwacks of short swords on small shieldsthe habitual armor of the lower classes. Though violent, the scene has at first a comic coloring, thanks to the ineptitude of the contestants, who show a marked disinclination to get hurt. Then, in almost instantaneous counterpoint, comes the encounter of the two young gentlemen. In dress, speech, and physical grace, they are civilized to a degree that the household servants are not; but once engaged they are far more deadly, for they fight with rapiers and are animated by a code of honor that stakes life itself on skills of hand and eye. Thus comic violence draws in tragic violencea foretaste of much to come while around the two contending groups a general fracas grows. Some elderly citizens rush in carrying weapons as ancient as themselves and labor, farcically, to quell the fighting. On their heels come old Capulet and Montague, comic figures likewise, since neither their manifest years and frailty nor the supposed wisdom of old age has been able to abate their mindless commitment to the feud. Finally, his entry no doubt announced by a trumpet fanfare, the Prince arrives with his retinue. The authority of the state, expressed now in the regular declamatory rhythms of the Princes sentence (1.1.79), prevails for the time being over individual passions, and the crowd drifts rapidly away. What we have been shown is the susceptibility of a whole society to be cleft from top to bottom by an inherited vendetta (in our world it could as easily be some inflexibly racial frame of mind) in which, we soon discover, no one but Tybalt has more than a face-saving interest. Yet thanks to the atmosphere the feud has given rise to, even the peace-making Benvoliothe man of good will, as his name impliescan be drawn into a street riot against his better judgment, and the security of the entire community can be put in jeopardy on the whim of a determined foola Malvolio, or man of ill will, as Tybalt might equally have been called. The entrance of Romeo is timed for this moment, following the outbreak rather than before it, to make the encumbrance of the feud, his bloodinheritance, crystal clear. Over the conversation that Benvolio holds with the elder Montagues, which prepares us for Romeos appearance (alone, distracted, his clothing very possibly disheveled as the clothing of those subject to lovemelancholy was popularly supposed to be), and also over the conversation that Benvolio holds with him, the shadow of the violence we have just seen hangs
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heavily. The condition of death-marked love, to which the Prologue has called attention (line 9), is thus acted out in a half-comic form that will quickly become tragic. Like Hamlet, who in some ways resembles him, Romeo has inherited a time which is out of joint and which nothing short of his own and several other misadventured piteous overthrows (Prologue, 7) can redeem. Still comparatively detached from the feud as we encounter him now (though already in love with a Capulet), he will be drawn moment by moment further into quicksands, each apparent escapee.g. the marriage with Juliet, which should unite the two familiesbecoming an additional step in the progress of events that sweeps both lovers to their doom. Here, then, is one way in which Romeo and Juliet comes powerfully home to us in performance: as a fast-moving succession of situations, each gripping in itself but also making part of a headlong race to ruin, even though that race does not lack for the little ironical postponements and detours that allow an audience teasing hopes of a happier issue. But the play registers in other emphatic ways as well. As an experience of vivid contrasts, for instance, in a world that is tense with polarities of every sort. Extreme youthJuliet is only fourteen, Romeo (we may guess) in late adolescencetugs at extreme age, for despite Lady Capulets odd comment (1.3.71) all four parents give the impression of being somewhat along in years, as are obviously the Friar and Nurse. Passionate love grapples with passionate hate, and eventually, at great cost enjoys an ambiguous triumph. The brightness of the lovers, in their images of each other, dazzles against the darkness of their situation, while at the same time, paradoxically, the night world becomes more and more their sole resource and the daylight world more and more the possession of forces inimical to them. Then there are the sharply conflicting attitudes toward love and sex, already touched on; the extremes of haste and deliberation; the great joys giving way to overwhelming griefs; the noise, bustle, and uproar of public affairs juxtaposed against the hushed inward-turning ecstasies of lovers longing and lovers meeting. All these opposites and many more make part of our experience in this play, but again not as theoretical contrariesonly as vivid impressions of eye and ear. To take one more example, worldliness and innocencean innocence not yet broken by the worldare among the polarities on which Romeo and Juliet is founded, but they take shape onstage only in the particularized form of Juliet, sitting (in 1.3) a little apart from her elders, perhaps wearing some white garment in keeping with the impression she seems intended by her words to make on us; while her nurse and mother, each with characteristic motives and preoccupations, preside over what we recognize as a coming of age, a tribal rite of passage, a debut, in short, into what both older women take to be her appropriate next phase in the human life-cycle of birth, copulation, and death. Eventually, her innocence outwits their wisdom, but the price exacted is appalling.
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In conclusion, something must be said about what for many of todays readers and spectators is the most striking single feature of Romeo and Juliet: its formalism. The pronounced general symmetries that have gone into its configuration are obvious enough. Three confrontations of the warring houses, each followed by a pronouncement from the Prince, mirror each other successively at 1.1, 3.1, and 5.3except that the consequences crescendo in seriousness: no one dies during the first, two are dead after the second, and three, including the protagonists, after the third. Equally visible at a glance are the variations played on balancing personalities: a bawdy Nurse flanks Juliet in 1.3 and a bawdy Mercutio flanks Romeo in 1.4; or, again, a sober Benvolio, trying to cool a hot Tybalt in 1.1, parallels a sober Benvolio trying to cool a hot Mercutio in 3.1. Yet curiously enough this stress on forms only evokes more keenly, when the play is seen and heard, our sense of its immense reserves of dramatic and linguistic power. As a highbred horse shows his truest fire when curbed, so the artifices of the plays style and structure create a condition of containment from which its energies break out with double force. Energies that explode on the slightest provocation into horse-play, sword-play, wordplay, love-play. Energies that smolder in Tybalts and Lady Capulets hatred of the Montagues and bubble over in Mercutios witty scorn of everything that looks like posturing or fakery, whether Romeos premonitions and dreams (1.4), Tybalts dancing-masterish fencing style (2.4.20), or the Nurses affectation of being a grande dame, all got up in her best fineries with a man-servant to go before (2.4.95). Energies, furthermore, that flow like a high-voltage current through the love scenes, idealizing everything they touch, and in the potion and tomb scenes so overpower all other considerations that Juliet can drink off the Friars potion despite her terror, and Romeo can unhesitatingly storm the Capulet tomb in order to be reunited with his wife on their mutual death-and-marriage-bed. Behind all these energies, of course, releasing but at the same time shaping them, stands the energy of Shakespeares own imagination, in sheer exuberance of creation melting down old forms to make them new. The ancient conceit comparing the beloved ladys beauty to various kinds of dazzling light becomes in his hands Juliet hanging upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiops ear (1.5.46), Juliet showing at her window like a sunrise in the East (2.2.2), Juliet making even the grave a feasting presence full of light (5.3.86). Similarly the time-worn conception of the lover as a ship tossed by storms of passion or misfortune in the attempt to reach safe harbor in his ladys favor takes on in Shakespeares reinterpretation of it a passionate urgency: I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, I should adventure for such merchandise. (2.2.82)
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Later, when Romeo swallows the apothecarys drug, this time-worn metaphor is strikingly reinterpreted: Come, bitter conduct; come, unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark! Heres to my love! [Drinks.] O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. (5.3.116) So too with the lovers blazon. Properly speaking, the blazon in Renaissance love-poetry is a descriptive inventory of the beloveds charms, moving lingeringly and luxuriously, item by item, from her golden hair to her shapely foot. In Romeo and Juliet, the convention reappears, but is significantly displaced from the true beloved ( Juliet) to the imagined beloved (Rosaline), is subordinated to a formula of conjuration derived from demonology (possibly a further insult), and is spoken not by the lover in praise of the beloved but by the scoffer, who throws doubt on the whole spectrum of high romantic feeling by indicating very clearly what he believes to be its crass sources: I conjure thee by Rosalines bright eyes, By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us! (2.1.17) But these verbal transformations are only the surface outcroppings of Shakespeares originality in Romeo and Juliet. What many in his audiences must have responded to at a deeper level, unanalyzed but felt, is the presence of certain psychological experiences familiar to all who have ever loved, for which he has managed to find in his story of two hapless lovers unobtrusive but unforgettable dramatic forms. One such experience is the mysterious mix in every sexual passion of attraction and repulsion, love and hate. Odi et amo: I hate and I love, wrote the Roman poet Catullus, and Shakespeare has captured the phenomenon memorably in his play, not simply in dramatizing a quite literal mixture of attraction and repulsion in Juliet when her husband kills her kinsman, but in keeping at all times clear the psychological interface between the love story itself and its environment of hate. The very phrases in which contemporary and earlier poets had summed up the latent antagonism of the sexes as well as the power of a particular beloved woman to hurt her lover by disdainwoman seen as dearest enemy, an unconquerable fortress, a warrior with killing eyesbecome charged with new meaning in Romeo and Juliet through their radical implication in the plot itself:
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My only love sprung from my only hate! . . . Prodigious birth of love it is to me That I must love a loathd enemy. (1.5.138) Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords! (2.2.71) Thou are not conqueredBeautys ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And deaths pale flag is not advancd there. (5.3.94) Similarly with the masculine sense of woman as a mysterious being withhelda being to be wooed, not conquered, and only to be fully known when given by her own free choice. This sensea constant theme of Elizabethan love-poetrypervades the play, and again the favorite images and phrases of the literary tradition take on a new and glowing life through being reinterpreted in action. In his chatter about Rosaline, Romeo had invoked idly the Petrarchan image of woman as unyielding fortress, but when this image returns at the plays end, in the last passage quoted above, the unyielding fortress is plain to be seen on the stage in Juliets yet living form, and it is only to the paramour death, not Romeo, that she lies unyielding. When Romeo reclaims her for his own by freely choosing to be her husband in death as well as life, she gives herself in turn to be again his wife by her free choice in falling upon his dagger. What is also to be observed is that this same sequence of events has already been acted out in the happier setting of the Capulet garden. To that gardenwhich is itself partly a dramatic realization of the parallel that from Biblical times had been drawn between a virgin and a hortus conclusus or closed gardenRomeo is attracted by desire. The girl he meets there, however, though virgin, is so far from being an Unconquerable Fortress or a Belle Dame sans Merci, that she can show her love for him more freely and less self-consciously than he can show his for her: My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite. (2.2.133) It is no more than appropriate, therefore, that when he ascends to her chamber for their wedding night, it is by means of a rope-ladder that he has supplied and she has lowered to him. The Petrarchan image of woman as fortress, unyielding and therefore to be taken only by assault (as in the macho language of the servants in the first scene), yields, like his own experience of Rosaline, to a truer definition in which love is a gift to be freely given and received.
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The most remarkable among the ancient phrases that Shakespeare regenerates by causing them to be acted out in front of us is every lovers conviction that love must conquer death: Amor vincit omnia. Around this phrase and the corresponding psychological urgencies, the plays last scene is plainly built. Romeo, as has already been pointed out, asserts his claim to Juliet against deaths claim; in the person of the Lover he breaks open the Tomb, which by the power of his passion and her beauty is transformed to a presence-chamber filled with light; and though he dies beside her, he manages to carve out through his idealizing imagination an enigmatic spacelast of the many enclaves in which we see themin which death and sexual consummation coincideThus with a kiss I die (5.3.120). There rust, and let me die (5.3.170). An awesome close to a lavish pageant of romantic feeling. Yet we must not suppose that Shakespeare intends us to let it go entirely unchallenged. Against its idealized shape, complete with operatic deaths and high-flown lyric utterances, he has already set for our contemplation a far messier, prosier, less predictable death-sceneone much more like those we meet with in our own world: Mercutios. Mercutios death is anything but a consummation and far from being lyrical in either content or form. Like his parody of the lovers blazon earlier, his last words seem calculated to puncture and shrivel up yet another body of posturing and pretense: that a mans death is to be reckoned some sort of special or heroic occasionthat it comes about, as in romantic literature generally, only after great deeds, great wounds, or meeting with a great adversary (in fact, even a scratch will do it)and that it must not be accompanied by expressed resentments or ironies, but only by such noble expressions of magnanimity and acceptance of ones fate as accord with the idea of making a good end. Romeo: Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much. Mercutio: No, tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but tis enough, twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague a both your houses! Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm. (3.1.93) No pithy last words here: only scorn and anger at the sheer contingency and arbitrariness of what was quite unnecessary but has nevertheless taken place. This death and these speechesindeed all of Mercutios speechessuggest a possible other scale in which the lovers devotion to each other and their victory
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at the close may be weighed. Looked at through his perspective, the lovers ideal experience of each other, the exalted images they feed on, the absolute fidelity to which they sacrifice their lives may be reckoned among the fictions by which men and women deceive themselves about their true natures and the nature of their world. On the other hand, looked at through their perspective, his reading of reality must appear near-sighted and reductive, for the fictions men and women live by are often their best throw at truth, whether about themselves or about the world. In Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare has juxtaposed these two divergent value systemsthe last and climactic pair of contraries in that scheme of contrasts at which we earlier glancedwithout allowing them to touch. Mercutio never learns of Romeos mature love for Juliet, and his death is well behind us when we encounter theirs. Perhaps the playwright feared that either view, if brought too close to its opposite, would shatter. Later, he will be more venturesome. His tragic heroes from Hamlet on are required to know the world in both perspectives simultaneously and the experience tears them apart, as it still does some today.
58. Published in 1592.
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1996Harold Bloom. Introduction, from Romeo and Juliet (Blooms Guides)

Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, where he teaches Shakespeare and poetry. He has edited many anthologies of literature and literary criticism and is the author of more than 30 books, including The Anxiety of Influence, The Western Canon, and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.
Harold C. Goddard, in his The Meaning of Shakespeare (1951), remarked upon how much of Shakespeare turns upon the vexed relationships between generations of the same family, which was also one of the burdens of Athenian tragedy. Except for the early Titus Andronicus, which I judge to have been a charnel-house parody of Christopher Marlowe, Romeo and Juliet was Shakespeares first venture at composing a tragedy, and also his first deep investigation of generational perplexities. The MontagueCapulet hatred might seem overwrought enough to have its parodistic aspects, but it destroys two immensely valuable, very young
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lovers, Juliet of the Capulets and Romeo of the Montagues, and Mercutio as well, a far more interesting character than Romeo. Yet Romeo, exalted by the authentic love between the even more vital Juliet and himself, is one of the first instances of the Shakespearean representation of crucial change in a character through self-overhearing and self-reflection. Juliet, an even larger instance, is the plays triumph, since she inaugurates Shakespeares extraordinary procession of vibrant, life-enhancing women, never matched before or since in all of Western literature, including in Chaucer, who was Shakespeares truest precursor as the creator of personalities. Juliet, Mercutio, the nurse, and to a lesser extent Romeo are among the first Shakespearean characters who manifest their authors uncanny genius at inventing persons. Richard III, like Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus, is a brilliant Marlovian cartoon or grotesque, but lacks all inwardness, which is true also of the figures in the earliest comedies. Faulconbridge the Bastard in King John and Richard II were Shakespeares initial breakthroughs in the forging of personalities, before the composition of Romeo and Juliet. After Juliet, Mercutio, and the nurse came Bottom, Shylock, Portia, and most overwhelmingly Falstaff, with whom at last Shakespeare was fully himself. Harold Goddard shrewdly points out that the nurse, who lacks wit, imagination, and above all love, even for Juliet, is no Falstaff, who abounds in cognitive power, creative humor, and (alas) love for the undeserving Hal. The nurse is ferociously lively and funny, but she proves to be exactly what the supremely accurate Juliet eventually calls her: most wicked fiend, whose care for Juliet has no inward reality. In some sense, the agent of Juliets tragedy is the nurse, whose failure in loving the child she has raised leads Juliet to the desperate expedient that destroys both Romeo and herself. Mercutio, a superb and delightful role, nevertheless is inwardly quite as cold as the nurse. Though he is Shakespeares first sketch of a charismatic individual (Berowne in Loves Labors Lost has brilliant language, but no charisma), Mercutio is a dangerous companion for Romeo, and becomes redundant as soon as Romeo passes from sexual infatuation to sincere love, from Rosaline to Juliet. Age-old directorial wisdom is that Shakespeare killed off Mercutio so quickly, because Romeo is a mere stick in contrast to his exuberant friend. But Mercutio becomes irrelevant once Juliet and Romeo fall profoundly in love with one another. What place has Mercutio in the play once it becomes dominated by Juliets magnificent avowal of her loves infinitude: And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.
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Contrast that with Mercutio at his usual bawdry: If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree, And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone. O, Romeo, that she were, O that she were An open-arse, thou a purin pear! Since Juliet develops from strength to strength, Romeo (who is only partly a convert to love) is inevitably dwarfed by her. Partly this is the consequence of what will be Shakespeares long career of comparing women to men to mens accurate disadvantage, a career that can be said to commence with precisely this play. But partly the tragic flaw is in Romeo himself, who yields too readily to many fierce emotions: anger, fear, grief, and despair. This yielding leads to the death of Tybalt, to Romeos own suicide, and to Juliets own farewell to life. Shakespeare is careful to make Romeo just as culpable, in his way, as Mercutio or Tybalt. Juliet, in total contrast, remains radically free of flaw: she is a saint of love, courageous and trusting, refusing the nurses evil counsel and attempting to hold on to loves truth, which she incarnates. Though it is The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the lovers are tragic in wholly different ways. Juliet, in a curious prophecy of Hamlets charismatic elevation, transcends her self-destruction and dies exalted. Romeo, not of her eminence, dies more pathetically. We are moved by both deaths, but Shakespeare sees to it that our larger loss is the loss of Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet in the Twenty-first Century

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The two essays included below, only a brief representation of the Romeo and Juliet scholarship produced within the last few years, address different issues, but are nonetheless linked by an identification of various tensions and unresolved issues that have endured through the centuries. The issues attended to here include the interpretation of mixed genres and the correct approach to explaining the transition from comedy to tragedy; the proper identification of the underlying themes to be found in Shakespeares earliest work; and the relationship between the play and previous works and writers. In his essay Romeo and Juliet: An Innovative Tragedy, John Russell Brown discusses the preliminary Shakespearean works that serve as the background for the play, namely the early comedies, which depict a whimsical and childlike view of the world where problems and misunderstandings are short-lived and lovers always marry, as well as a series of sonnets concerning the passions and complexities of love. Russell maintains that even in these early works there is an undercurrent of death, thwarted desire, and unreliable intelligence, all of which are the subject matter of Romeo and Juliet. After pointing out the prefatory aspects of Shakespeares early writings, Russell discusses the nature of the plays dialogue, which is both complex and simple; the status of fate and free will; and, finally, the social context of the play. As to fate and free will, Russell maintains that Shakespeare here had broken from the need to recount the history of monarchs and, thus, was able to apply these larger issues to a domestic drama: An audience senses that these persons think and do as they wish, whatever happens to them. In their last moments they act decisively and in unshakeable independence. Taking a philosophical approach, Daryl W. Palmer argues persuasively that Romeo and Juliet stages an ancient debate on the nature of motion, a debate that he traces back to Platos Theaetetus, in which the philosopher declares [e]verything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. Palmer establishes the applicability of this premise to Shakespeare and Elizabethan theater audiences in general, given that Plato was known through a wide range of sources at that time. He also points out that intense interest in the study of motion is a predominant theme of Renaissance fencing manuals. Given the
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importance of fencing in Romeo and Juliet, Palmer analyzes Mercutios character as that of a philosopher based on his ability to reflect on the concept of motion: Unafraid of motion, he can, nonetheless, step back and observe. In ways no other character in the play does, Mercutio recollects knowledge; he understands numbers and technical terms. As the Queen Mab speech brilliantly shows, he has the capacity to reflect on the nature of motion and Shakespeare indulges him with impressive set speeches. ... Finally, Palmer situates Mercutios balanced understanding of motion by contrasting him with Romeo and with the friar, who applies his distilling liquor in a failed attempt to slow motion down.
2001John Russell Brown. Romeo and Juliet : An Innovative Tragedy, from Shakespeare: The Tragedies
John Russell Brown has been a professor of theater at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of many scholarly works, including Shakespeare: The Tragedies (2001), William Shakespeare: Writing for Performance (1996), and New Sites for Shakespeare: Theatre, the Audience, and Asia (1999), as well as the editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre (1997).
While writing the earliest tragedies and a series of history plays about the long and jarring wars of the two noble houses of York and Lancaster, Shakespeare was imaginatively involved with two very different projects, each demanding special knowledge and techniques and as full of innovation as his other work. One resulted in the comedies that reached the public stages throughout the 1590s. Francis Meres Palladis Tamia, or Wits Treasury of 1598 noted that As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best [writers] for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loves Labours Lost, his Loves Labours Won, his Midsummers Night Dream, and his Merchant of Venice . . . . In contrast with the tragedies, the earliest comedies seem written as if in sport. For all their profusion of ingenious wit and complicated wordplay, mythological references and elaborate rhetorical speeches, they offer a world of fantasy that is almost innocent and childlike. Whatever happens in these plays does so lightly, with a freedom of invention which seems to spring effortlessly as if in release from the actualities of life and mortality. Anger, pain, and misunderstandings seldom last for long and almost all journeys end in lovers meetings. The clashes between generationsor between town and country,
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masters and servants, royalty and subjects, learning and ignorance, riches and povertyprovide occasions for both argument and laughter as the narratives of romantic and adventurous courtship twist and turn towards their neat conclusions. Increasingly, Shakespeare introduced elements that are destructive or irreconcilable and some individuals who stand apart from others to remind an audience that Youths a stuff will not endure or that all the men and women are merely players (Twelfth Night, II.iii.51; As You Like It, II.vii.140), but nothing of this disturbs for long the surface of the earliest comedies written at the same time as the violent and harshly unsentimental tragedies. Only when we look closer can we see that, within the apparently fickle wordplay, a deeper current of thought is at work and, on second viewing, discern beneath the surface a carefully considered and developing view of love, involving service, idealism, unappeasable desire, and the unstable meeting of intelligence with sensual and sexual necessities. Death, too, is a lurking presence, in various and, often, insidious forms, familiar, unexpected, and irresistible, infecting even carefree thoughts and feelings. After more searching scrutiny, Shakespeares comedies are seen to come from the same creative mind as the early tragedies and it was, perhaps, inevitable that these two lines of work should come together, sooner rather than later, as they did in Romeo and Juliet, first published in 1597 and probably first performed some two years earlier. During the same early and productive years, Shakespeare was also engaged with non-dramatic poetry, writing numerous sonnets that circulated in manuscript among his private friends (the phrase is from Francis Meres), a few of which were published in The Passionate Pilgrim, an anthology of poems by several hands of 1599. A collected edition appeared later, in 1609, but vocabulary tests and a few topical references indicate that many of these sonnets were written in 15935, the years of the early tragedies, others in 15989, and comparatively few in the early years of the seventeenth century. By 1598, on the strength of the poems that had come to his notice, Meres called Shakespeare one of the most passionate amongst us to bewail and bemoan the perplexities of Love, and his achievement in this manner obviously informed the writing of Romeo and Juliet. The lines: When, in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate . . . (Sonnet XXIX) were not written about Romeo banished from his Juliet, but the passionate impression they give, their images and ideas concerning disgrace, outcast state, sullen earth, and heavens gate are almost entirely relevant. In both the sonnets and this early tragedy, eyes are famished for a look, a heart in love
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with sighs himself doth smother, and a lover is happy to have thy love, happy to die (Sonnets XLVII and XCII): a wide range of very personal and inward experiences are common to both. Besides the sonnets and comedies, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece (15934) helped to prepare Shakespeare for Romeo and Juliet. Written, it seems, while the theatres were closed on account of outbreaks of the plague, the stories told in these poems led Shakespeare to imagine an obsession with sexuality and resistance to its compulsions. Decorated and often decorous verses conduct a reader carefully into these narratives so that certain moments are held still, out of the pressure of action, illuminated by sensitive description (especially in the earlier poem) or explored almost methodically as rhetorical tropes are worked out to their last detail. Both poems give the impression that their author was in complete control of his subject and chosen mode of presentation as he extended his treatment of sexual experience beyond the pleasures and limitations of comedy. All these imaginative streams flowed into the writing of Romeo and Juliet and seem to have encouraged a closer and more sustained commitment to its leading characters than in earlier tragedies. Here passionate complexity, expressed in sensuous and restless language, is linked in harness with direct and even simple engagement in the moment-by-moment life of the story. Images drawn from everyday experience carry speaker and listener into worlds of experience seldom realizable with words and still less often capable of being shared. The changing pulse of the dialogue suggests a wide range of feeling, from destructive compulsion to silent tenderness. In the sonnets, the poet claims frequently that his verses will give a deathless existence to his beloved and Shakespeare might have written the same of the heroine and hero of this first tragedy of love. In his own day, its success was immediate even though it was highly unusual for two young and inexperienced people to be the central figures of a tragedy, a form of drama thought to require noble persons of great consequence for its heroes. In its own day, Romeo and Juliet defied many generally accepted critical pronouncements and the flush of adventure can still be sensed in the energy and freshness of much of the writing; even today, it is still a tragedy that stands very much on its own. In Romeo and Juliet, speech is sometimes both highly contrived and extraordinarily ordinaryordinary in the sense that it moves and breathes as if in life itself, as an audience will know it. Much of its dialogue can be spoken as an instinctive involvement with what is happening at the moment. As we read the text, these people come alive in our minds and, when presented on stage, they can convince us completely, carrying us away from our own thoughts so that we seem to share in theirs.
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Not all the tragedy is written in this way, but that could hardly be: other tasks had to be done and an audience can respond to only so much immediacy. The play starts with a very formal sonnet as the Chorus addresses the audience, its tone and tempo respectful and its utterance obviously composed. Yet, even here, rhythms suggest that deeper feelings are involved and will be aroused later. The solemn forward flow of The fearful passage of their death-marked love . . . is off-set by the three close-linked stresses of death-marked love that disturb the iambic measure and, two lines later, by the compact parenthesis within Which, but their childrens end, naught could remove. A lighter return to the present moment and practicalitiesIs now the two hours traffic of our stageprepares for a concluding couplet that politely requests an audiences attention. The fourteen rhymed iambic lines make a strong impression before the play itself begins, but that force is controlled delicately and, it seems, without effort. Shakespeare also used a sonnet to bring Romeo and Juliet together for the first time, its lines and images shared between them, so that each speaker modifies the others speech as if sharing a playful and sensitive consciousness. Formal versepatterns establish a grave thoughtfulness while the words require the touching of hands and exchange of kisses. These specific actions ensure that the focus of an audiences attention is on the two bodies as much asperhaps more thanwhat is said. Before the second kiss, the lovers words have overflowed the measure of the sonnet, but their further speech has its own rhymes to show a new confidence in accepting both trespass and necessity: Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers kiss. Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. Juliet: Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do! They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers sake. Romeo: Then move not while my prayers effect I take. [He kisses her.] Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purged. Then have my lips the sin that they have took. Juliet: Romeo: Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
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Give me my sin again. Juliet: You kiss by th book. [They kiss.] With a skill honed in a long series of sonnets, verse-making has been used to suggest the strength and wonder of shared sexual arousal. Developing imagery implies the solemn and carefully restrained impulses of a first, holy, and lifechanging love: good pilgrim, holy palmer, prayer, and devotion. Management of the sonnet form captures the fresh sensations and creativity, mixed with pains-taking and irrepressibility, that can be experienced in the act of writing, and uses this to give credibility to the tragedys two young heroes. The word hero sits uncomfortably on Romeo and Juliet in the first and longer part of the action when neither has any further intention than those arising from the moment and each others presence. They do, however, even before their first meeting, show that other thoughts are deep within them, not moving easily with their immediate desires. This is most noticeable in Romeos: my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this nights revels . . . (I.iv.10613) But Juliets reply to her mothers enquiry about her dispositions to be married It is an honour that I dream not of (I.iii.66)may also express, even if spoken lightly, an inner gravity of spirit and fear of consequence. Once they have met and kissed, their speech is bolder, quickly responsive to each moment and freely supplied with images that draw them far away from their former selves as they interact without impediment. By description, suggestive imagery, and varying syntax, physical presence is frequently implied in the words spoken, as if the flesh-and-blood actuality of the two speakers, their heart-beats, hands and bodies, and their eyes (especially) are all involved as they express wonder, fear, excitement, tenderness, solemnity, and an overriding happiness that is instinct with both laughter and tears. The dialogue operates as music to which they move as in a dance, both together and apart, swiftly and slowly, forgetting every other need. The comparatively simple beginning can illustrate the new actuality and intimacy: Juliet: My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words Of thy tongues uttering, yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague? Romeo: Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.
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Juliet: How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here. Romeo: With loves light wings did I oerperch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do, that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me. Juliet: If they do see thee, they will murder thee. Romeo: Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords! Look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity. Juliet: I would not for the world they saw thee here. Romeo: I have nights cloak to hide me from their eyes, And but thou love me, let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate Than death prorogud, wanting of thy love. Juliet: By whose direction foundst thou out this place? Romeo: By love, that first did prompt me to inquire. He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes. I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, I should adventure for such mechandise. (II.ii.5884)
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Juliet speaks of hearing Romeos voice as if this were drinking and had a physical effect, but she keeps some distance by speaking, not of his presence, but only of his tongue. When questions follow, both speakers seek some reassurance and restrict themselves to practicalities. Romeos first response is both respectful and assertive but his second has a far wider range of feeling with talk of levitation, stone walls or cliffs, risk, physical resistance. His third reply shows him to be gazing at her eyes in fear that he may not be loved, his imagination leading him to think of a brawl, lethally one-sided, and then of life-saving, protective armour. The fourth time he replies, confidence stems from Juliets concern but is laced through with an assertion that again considers opposition and, at the same time, speaks of death. In his fifth reply, Romeo again speaks of eyes, as if gazing at each other were still, for him, the one certain reality, but then he moves on to the more sustained image of merchants venturing across whole oceans. He speaks of the farthest limit of exploration, an idea that had captured many minds in London since Sir Francis Drakes circumnavigation of the globe in 1580 and treasure brought from across the seas had become a more common sight. The rhythms are longer in this fifth response as if in
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making the assertion Romeos tensions were eased and his mind had accepted the possibility of infinite riches from a hitherto far-off and unknown world reached only by risking ones entire life on unknown seas. In these exchanges, speech seems to spring from two independent consciousnesses influenced by interplay between each other; it gives an impression of instinct and improvisation, not of deliberation. The next sentence Juliet addresses to Romeo is carefully phrased and extended through three lines of verse, but then rhythms change as if speech had become more improvised. Faltering repetition and rapid contradiction reveal a renewed insecurity: Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face; Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight. Fain would I dwell on formfain, fain deny What I have spoke; but farewell compliment! Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say Ay And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swearst Thou mayst prove false. (ll. 8592) Romeo says nothing while Juliet continues to take the lead in speech, her mind veering away from the present moment to imagine other times and idle talk about false love and the laughter of Jove, the greatest of gods in the strange, mind-haunting world of ancient myth: At lovers perjuries, / They say Jove laughs. Then, immediately, in yet another tone, she answers Romeos continuing silence: O gentle Romeo, If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully, Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly won, Ill frown and be perverse and say thee nay, So thou wilt woo; but else not for the world. In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, . . . The speech is finely balanced and needs to be played delicately, in hesitation, emphasis, and repetition. Perhaps Juliet has instinctively laughed at her own contradictory feelings or at the excitement within her mind and body, and that has made her think of Jove. Perhaps she then continues in new confidence because Romeo has laughed too. Perhaps she remains solemn throughout all the variations in her speech. Soon Romeo swears his constant love, or rather attempts to swear it and is stopped by Juliet who is afraid their contract is:
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. . . too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens. (II. 11820) A moment later, they do exchange faithful vows and then it is Juliet who finds an image with which she is so satisfied that it sustains speech over three verselines. Like Romeos earlier extended image, it summons up a vision of the ocean, but now that lends its size to Juliets capacity for giving and expresses no desire for possession: Romeo: O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? Juliet: What satisfaction canst thou have tonight? Romeo: Thexchange of thy loves faithful vow for mine. Juliet: I gave thee mine before thou didst request it; And yet I would it were to give again. Romeo: Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love? Juliet: But to be frank and give it thee again, And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have for both are infinite. (II. 12535) Although separated on different levels of the stage, the two lovers will be still and rapt in thoughts of each other and in sensations that seem to have changed their very beings, but what happens next is not of their choosing: I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu! Anon, good nurse! Sweet Montague, be true. Stay but a little, I will come again. (II. 1368) Another voice and, in effect, another world have made themselves heard and Juliet takes command, quickened by fear that her Sweet Montague might not be true. In her haste, only simple words and short phrases carry the play forward but tenderness and desire are also able to speak even in the fears of such a moment. Phrasing, rhythm, tension, relaxation, metrical variations, and the breathing needed for utterance all require the actors physical engagement, and this conveys the characters involvement in the situation as much as the words themselves, and sometimes more. In performance, the activities in the actors bodies, that are the necessary means of responding to the technical demands of the dialogue, become a significant part of the plays effect. These are not fixed signs, like words, and define no clear intentions, but they are an instinctive and dynamic response to the play as it evolves moment by moment. The physical presence of
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each actor changes before the eyes of the audience and, with their bodies, their minds and feelings will also change, half lost, perhaps, in sensation but quickened and transformed by what is happening. Responding to this dialogue, they speak physically as well as verbally, communicating to the senses of an audience, perhaps more than to their minds. On stage in Shakespeares day, a young man would have played the part of Juliet. He could not provide the sexual attractions of a girl of fourteen (the age specified in the text), but an audience was free to imagine those in whatever forms were attractive to their individual minds. What the male actor could provide was mental and physical activity, the succession of changes in mind and body that make it possible to speak the words. In giving form and pressure to each moment, this was sufficient instigation for an audience to follow the play and re-create it in their own minds. The use of a young male actor meant that the task of completing the illusion of a young woman in love had to be left to the audience, and this may be one reason why in this tragedy actors and actresses are so often able to give an impression of actual sexual arousal and ardent love: actors speaking this dialogue can quicken an audiences instinctive desire to completeand so, momentarily, to re-create and possesswhat it sees and hears enacted on the stage. In retrospect, we can see that this achievement was to be crucial in the writing of Shakespeares later tragedies in which what happens on stage goes far beyond what any one actor has experienced or can adequately imagine. Freeing himself from the need to recount the true history of monarchs and the state of England, Shakespeare shaped this more domestic tragedy with two other themes in mind and, against his usual practice, announced both in an opening Chorus: the operation of fate and the conflict between private strife and social well-being. Both themes were present in Shakespeares main source, Arthur Brookes The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), a narrative poem translated from a French version of still earlier Italian accounts, but the plays presentation of them is very different. Fate often plays a part in the action as if by accident. Off-stage a messenger is prevented from delivering a letter because he has happened to stop in a plague-stricken house and this keeps Romeo in ignorance of what the Friar and Juliet have contrived and so provokes his suicide and, consequently, brings the tragedy to its close. Shakespeare has been criticized for using such a crude plot-mechanism, but it is at one with other accidental circumstances that seem to propel Romeo and Juliet forward in the fearful passage of their love. Romeo had gone to Capulets ball only to give himself more reason for loving Rosaline and so happened to see Juliet. For her part, she believes that some necessity has directed her choice:
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Prodigious birth of love it is to me That I must love a loathed enemy. (I.v.13940) Prodigious meant ominous and fateful, as well as astonishing, monstrous, or oversized. A more general impression that events are being driven forward is given by Shakespeares rearrangement of the narrative so that everything takes place in four or five days, and not over several months as in Brooke. Repeatedly, and without comment, the timing of entries seems fated, notably Tybalts, Romeos, and, in the last scene when exact timing is particularly crucial, the Friars and the watchmens. Both Romeo and Juliet acknowledge fates influence. Before he has even seen her, Romeo confesses: my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this nights revels, and expire the term Of a despised life closd in my breast By some vile forfeit of untimely death. (I.i.10611) After killing Tybalt, Romeo is silent and then cries out, O, I am Fortunes fool (III.i.138); for the moment, his own will seems paralysed and he has to be urged to leave the place where he is bound to be arrested. Juliets premonitions of fate do not ring out so strongly, but she is repeatedly preoccupied by thoughts of death: in the midst of her joy, she senses that lightning will strike (see II.ii.116 20) and, while she waits for Romeo on their wedding night, she imagines him lying like snow upon a ravens back and then metamorphosed into stars (III. ii.1725). This emphasis on fate is new in Shakespeares tragedies and may have been suggested by the narrative presenter in Brookes poem. From the start his Romeus is seen as a pawn: How happy had he been had he not been forsworn But twice as happy had he been had he been never born, For ere the moon could thrice her wasted horns renew, False Fortune cast for him poor wretch, a mischief new to brew. Events follow each other inevitably: Whom glorious Fortune erst had heavd to the skies By envious Fortune overthrown on earth now grovelling lies.
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Brookes Friar sums up the outcome as the wreck of frantic Fortunes rage (l. 2840). Shakespeare retained something of Brookes sense that no one could stop what was fated to happen, but he did not leave the matter there. After Romeos death, the Friar concludes that A greater power than we can contradict / Hath thwarted our intents (II. 1523), but his view does not go unchallenged, not least because it is his conscious decision to leave Juliet alone in the tomb where she follows Romeo in suicide. After Romeo and Juliet have spent their night together, she sees death as imminent: Juliet: [looking down from her window] O God, I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or thou lookst pale. Romeo: And trust me, love, in my eye so do you. Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu. (III.v.549) Significantly, both lovers have a rational explanation for this premonition of death and nowhere in the play does the operation of fate release them, or anyone else, from making choices for which they may be held responsible. The new immediacy of the lovers speeches is of crucial importance in the presentation of fate because the spontaneous freedom, with which their minds seem to function underneath the words spoken, is the polar opposite of an inevitable and directed response to events. An audience senses that these persons think and do as they wish, whatever happens to them. In their last moments they act decisively and in unshakeable independence: Romeo insists on being alone in the tomb where Juliet lies, drugged as if in death, and although he honours Paris as One writ with me in sour misfortunes book (I. 82), he has already resolved to take his own life. Juliet disregards the Friars advice which until now has guided her: Go, get thee hence, for I will not away (I. 160). Fate or accident decrees that her suicide must be swift, but it is, essentially, the result of a long process of self-determination. When all is known at the end of the play, the Prince reconciles free will and fate in a traditional way that accepts the outcome of events as the response of divine justice to human actions: Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague, See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love; And I, for winking at your discords too, Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punishd. (II. 2904)
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This is not the only change from Shakespeares source. To the very end, human decisions are seen to influence what happens. In the play, but not in the poem, the two families announce their reconciliation and clearly articulate their mutual remorse; Brookes explanation of their reconciliation in a distant future is, simply, so mighty Jove it would. After the two fathers have taken each others hands and promised to erect golden statues to each others children, the Prince takes up his duties as a mortal judge, calling on everyone to understand and to accept responsibility: Go hence to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardond, and some punished. (II. 3047) While the Prologue speaks of the lovers as star-crossed, it also implicates fair Verona in their fate, declaring that the wrongs of civil strife between Capulets and Montagues preceded the beginning of the play and influenced Romeo and Juliet from their births; it warns that only their childrens end could change the families deadlocked antagonism. To widen the context of the love-story and so raise these issues, Shakespeare used devices that had been well tried in the comedies. He developed other charactersBenvolio, Tybalt, Paris, and Mercutiowell beyond their status in Brookes poem so that they both spur Romeo to reveal more of himself and serve as reflectors in which the consequences of his thoughts and actions can be shown to the audience. Together they function in much the same way as Thurio, Launce, and Sir Eglamour in The Two Gentlemen of Verona or Costard, Jacquetta, Armado, and Moth in Loves Labours Lost. Benvolio shows Romeos capacity for friendship. Tybalts passionate sense of family honour contrasts with Romeos willingness to consort with both Rosaline and Juliet. Paris, courteous and amenable, shows how powerful families expected to arrange their childrens affairs. Together these three provide a context in which Romeos single-minded love is more clearly viewed. Mercutio, the fourth companion figure in Romeo and Juliet, is developed in an exceptional way. Like Tybalt, he dies because of the family feud but he fights out of personal choice, being kin to the Prince and neither a Capulet nor Montague. More significantly, he shares Romeos immediacy and freedom of speech, in the more variable pace of prose as well as in verse, which means he can at times take command of everyone else on stage. He articulates an independent view of Romeo while Romeo responds to his company by becoming both sociable and solely singular, his wit running a wild goose chase (II.iv.724, 89, 656). Actors take great pleasure in creating their own interpretations of Mercutio. The role is so full of detail that they can surprise an audience by emphasizing what is reckless in the character, or what is
The Social Context
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disappointed, doomed, idealistic, immature, cynical, or frightened. He can be a prey to fantasies and sexually frustrated, or someone in love with Romeo or with himself. Every interpretation must, in some way, make credible Mercutios combative energy of mind and persistent use of lewd sexual allusions. When explaining Mercutios saucy behaviour to the Nurse, Romeo provides a few clues to his personality which only deepen the mystery: One, . . . that God hath made, himself to mar . . . . A gentleman . . . that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. (II.iv.11415, 1446) This is no satisfactory explanation of Mercutios buoyant comedic sense, his ability to turn any occasion into a carnival of laughter and bravado. Shakespeare has, through him, set Romeo over against an intellectually brilliant, physically alert, and highly sexed contemporary, with a generous capacity for friendship and, perhaps, an instinctive love of danger. Because Mercutio is in the tragedy, an audience cannot miss the mannerly devotion (I.v.97) of Romeos love or his attempts to make peace with Tybalt after he has been insulted by him. Juliet does not have the support of companions as Romeo does. Except in soliloquies or scenes when the two are alone together, she becomes known to an audience through confrontations with her nurse, her mother and father, and Paris, her parents choice of husband. However, the Nurse, like Mercutio, is presented in freely associative speech and intimate exchanges with Juliet. Her prose also has a kinship with Shakespeares earlier writing for clowns such as Costard, Launce, or Bottom, and her role responds similarly to strongly independent and wittily timed performance. Hers is another role that has proved exceptionally attractive to actors: she takes time to speak self-indulgently from a long memory and quick affection; her frequent sexual innuendoes seem intuitive rather than calculated. She shares memories of a pretty fool that is techy and fall[s] out with the dug and of the time when She could have run and waddled all about (I.iii.302, 37) and encourages an audience to imagine the prettiest babe that ere I nursd and so appreciate the praise and affection that Juliet has always received, although not, it seems, from her mother. As in the comedies, the relevance of these contrasts must speak for itself, but at a few crucial moments a clash of purpose has an effect that cannot be missed. When Mercutio associates Queen Mab with maids losing their virginity, Romeo interrupts him with: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace. Thou talkst of nothing. (I.v.956)
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In a flash, Mercutio accepts the charge, completing the half-line with True, I talk of dreams and continuing to speak of an idle brain and vain fantasy. As if an entertainment had been completed, Benvolio urges them all to move off to the feast but Romeo, who had become silent, now holds them back to voice a very private misgiving of Some consequence yet hanging in the stars which threatens untimely death. Mercutio has shown Romeo to be alone in holding back and fearing such misfortune. After Romeos intervention has caused him to be fatally wounded by Tybalt, Mercutios A plague o both your houses reaches beyond the accident of his death to mark the underlying antagonisms which are its less immediate causes. The next moment, his question, Why the devil came you between us? marks personal responsibility just as clearly and provokes Romeos helpless and ineffectual I thought all for the best. Mercutio continues to insist on the wider view as he turns to Benvolio, leaving Romeo speechless: Help me into some house, Benvolio, Or I shall faint. A plague o both your houses, They have made worms meat of me. I have it, and soundly too. Your houses! Exit Mercutio with Benvolio. (III.i.92110) When Mercutios death off-stage has been announced and Tybalt returns, fighting starts again and Romeo kills his opponent rapidly but then, again, falls silent. Benvolio urges him to leave at once, saying that the Prince will have him killed for what he has done, but he has to repeat this message three times before Romeo responds with O, I am Fortunes fool (I. 138). He still does not move, until Benvolios further effort: Why dost thou stay? In this scene, full of action and tension, first Mercutio and then Benvolio are the means whereby Shakespeare draws an audience to follow Romeo closely and fill out his speechlessness with its own imaginations. By consciously taunting Juliet as she longs to be with Romeo and, later, unconsciously tormenting her with a muddled account of Tybalts death and Romeos banishment, the Nurse encourages Juliet to express her feelings more fully and strongly than she would to a more rational messenger. Later this intimate companion makes still greater impact when Juliet refuses to confide in her. The Nurse has argued that it would be better to marry Paris than stay faithful to her banished husband and have no use of him (III.iv.21225) and Juliet has listened in silence except for a brief hint of contrary feelings before pretending to acquiesce. Only when the Nurse has left does a passionate refusal break out with Ancient damnation (I. 235). These two words have the greater strength by contrast with Juliets earlier intimacy with the Nurse; they can suggest to an
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audience, that her words that soon conclude the third ActIf all else fail, myself have power to dieare likely to be no less than truth. For the young male actors who were the first to play Juliet, the Nurse provided a contrast against which the complex and deep emotions of this scene could be expressed step by step and given credibility by a comparatively simple show of independence and strength of mind. Moreover, by encouraging an audience to pay attention to Juliets silent presence while the Nurse has to wait for a responsean incomplete verse-line, 218, marks at least one pauseand when Juliet waits for the Nurse to leave, Shakespeare has ensured that an audiences imaginations will work to comprehend and fill out those silences. The scene may well find its fullest dramatic life, not on stage, but in the minds of spectators. While its two lovers are an undisputed triumph, the rest of this tragedy is sometimes dismissed as crudely written, ineptly plotted, and far too long. Brutal sexual innuendo, clumsy literary artifice, rhymed moralizing, unnecessary amplification and repetition can all be held against Shakespeares management of the drama. Directors, staging the play in present-day theatres, are apt to cut large sections of the text as well as making many smaller excisions. Yet in the face of these adverse judgements, the play has a long record of success in performance, regardless of changes in taste and methods of production. This implies that its basic structure is sound and outweighs any defects, both real and imagined. The text has survived in two versions. By far the better is the second Quarto of 1599 (Q2), which was printed from an authorial manuscript. The Quarto of 1597 (Q1) is a shorter text, at some 2215 lines to Q2s 2986, and seems to represent a purposefully cut version, with longer speeches reduced in length, some phrasing simplified (and some muddled in consequence), some dialogue replaced with descriptive stage directions, and a number of smaller roles removed. What is notable about Q1 is that, in spite of some rewriting (or reliance on an earlier Shakespearean draft) and a smaller role for Julietits length and complexity in Q2 made greater demands on a young male actor than was usualthe structure of the play remains very much the same. The alternation of intimate love scenes with those involving the Capulet family, the Friar, and Romeos companions, seems to have been accepted as necessary and effective at whatever length the text was played. The presentation of the story in this sequence of scenesthe argument or plot of the play, as Elizabethans would call itwas a great source of this tragedys appeal, even in a greatly shortened version. Its dramatic structure makes large demands on any company staging the play. In the first minutes a civic mutiny must build up rapidly with improvised fighting involving an unusual assortment of weapons. The arrival of the Prince with his peace-keeping force requires still more actors and changes the scene radically as they bring order and comparative silence for the pronouncement of judgement.
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On his order, large-scale exits follow, leaving the stage with signs of the recent fray still visible (see I.i.115). Much the same happens all over again in Act III, scene i, except that its fighting is restricted to three young principals. In between these two violent crowd scenes is placed another which requires the entire company to change into other clothes that are suitable for dancing and lavish feasting. Again the spectacle has to be of two kinds, one more formal than the other: one with the excitement of lusty masquers (I.iv.113), with their beetlebrowed vizors and torch bearers; the other more decorous for the entertainment provided by the Capulets. When the two parties eventually join in courtly dance, its concord is threatened by Tybalts intervention and then reaffirmed and intensified by the formal sonnet shared between Romeo and Juliet. At the end of the tragedy, for a fourth time, a crowd is required with two contrasting elements again opposing unruly improvisation and authoritative control. This time the build-up is very much slower over a series of short scenes and episodes that grow ever more fearfully alarmed before concluding with a stage crowded by awed and silent spectators. The process starts with busy entries and music that herald a formal wedding for Paris and Juliet. Before the expected order is fully achieved, it is fractured and replaced with violent expressions of grief and outrage. The scene then shifts to Mantua where Romeo has gone after being banished from Verona: here a frightened Balthasar arrives with news of Juliets death and Romeo, pale and wild (V.i.289), resolves to return and kill himself at his loves side. In another short scene, the Friar learns that his message to Romeo telling him to rescue the drugged Juliet from the grave had never reached him: it finishes with rushed preparations for breaking into the grave. The scene now shifts to the Capulets monument and action is briefly both formal and tense as Paris sets a watch on the grave and mourns his intended bride. This carefully controlled business is disturbed very quickly, as Romeo and Balthasar arrive with a torch, a mattock and a crow[bar] of iron. Despatching his attendant to keep a look-out, Romeo forces open the tomb and is challenged by Paris; they fight; the Page hurries to summon the watch; and Paris is killed. This violence over, nothing further disturbs Romeo until, in his own time, he poisons himself and dies kissing his bride. Immediately after this, Friar Laurence enters, frightened and hurried; he finds, successively, the opened tomb, blood, and the dead bodies. Knowing that the watch is coming, and failing to get Juliet to leave, he hurries off. Juliet has only a short time alone, but kisses Romeo and then very swiftly kills herself with his dagger. After this, two different sets of watchmen enter and the alarm spreads; at first, even the Princes entry does not stop the startling cries and shrieks of fear (V.iii.183, 18993). After Montagues entry, the Prince takes complete charge and starts an investigation. Unlike the three earlier occasions when the stage has been crowded, everyone naturally becomes very still and quiet while the Friar tells the whole story as he knows it. For forty lines of verse, too involved in syntax to be spoken quickly, no one from either
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family interrupts, but as the Friar speaks of one person after another, he may well provoke audible cries and visible signs of grief and guilt: the text gives no guidance about this so the actors must improvise their characters reactions as if drawn forth instinctively. All four crowd scenes must be managed with both freedom and control as they alternately express unruly and dangerous reactions and peaceful acceptance of authoritative suppression. The same contrast is found elsewhere in the play, especially in reactions to the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt where the text is usually heavily cut for performance. When the Nurse brings news of Tybalts death and Romeos banishment, the verse, wordplay, and rhetorical forms are stretched and broken repeatedly, as misunderstandings jostle with forceful repetitions, exclamations, and antitheses. Only rarely does strained and unruly speech yield here to simple statement or instruction. The next scene, in Friar Laurences cell, sees Romeo on the ground with his own tears made drunk (III. iii.839) and on the point of committing suicide. The Friars arguments and hopes for a peaceful solution at last calm the violent behaviour and lead the narrative forward. Capulets plans for Juliets marriage to Paris bring further violence of language and action, and this time relief comes only when Juliet, left alone, steadfastly resolves, if all else fail, to commit suicide. In following scenes, Juliet accepts the Friars plan to take a potion which will render her as if dead and then, on her own and on her marriage bed, she faces, in her vivid imagination, the horrors of death itself before taking the drink as if in tribute to her love: she has controlled the most unruly fears imaginable. The alternation of violence and calm formality in these scenes is seldom managed with confidence in twentiethcentury productions of the play, and their text is often heavily cut. Nor will a reader find them any more acceptable without a sense of the skill and energy needed to bring the highly formal speeches alive in performance. The new immediacy of thought and feeling returns to the text as the tragedy moves to its deeply affecting climax. Briefly, Romeo offers his own death as a favour to Tybalt and asks for his forgiveness and then turns towards his wife and marvels at her beauty: Ah, dear Juliet, / Why art thou yet so fair? . . . A jealously possessive and strangely fantastic question follows: Shall I believe That unsubstantial Death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? Before he kills himself, he must embrace Juliet and Seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing Death.
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This kiss, in which formality and passion mix, is bound to be different each time the actor takes hold of Juliets inert body and that will ensure that his acting is, in part, improvised and draws instinctively on his deepest sense of what is happening. His mind reverts to the sea that had come, as if unsummoned, when he had first declared his love (see above, pp. 823); only this time the image draws together violent desperation and decisive control: Come, bitter conduct, come unsavoury guide, Thou desperate pilot now at once run on The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark. After this, Romeo is in command and can ceremoniously drink to his love and die with another kiss. What an audience experiences here is both the brutal fact of Romeos suicide and the utmost sensitivity of his feelings. It will know, as he does not, that he dies unnecessarily because Juliet is alive and not dead, and yet neither accident nor waste is likely to make the strongest impression: that stems rather from his physical and emotional courage when faced with appalling loss, and his calm resolve. In his eyes and, almost certainly, in an audiences, death is a shaking off the yoke of inauspicious stars as he sets up his everlasting rest (V.iii.11012). Juliets suicide is no less remarkable, although hurried as she hears the watchmens approach. Her dismissal of Friar Laurence, Go, get thee hence, for I will not away, marks decisively her inner assurance. In kissing Romeos poisoned lips, she hopes to die with a restorative and she does indeed respond to the warmth of their touch. She then becomes conscious of noise off-stage and, with two compact and charged lines, kills herself: Yea, noise? Then Ill be brief. O happy dagger. This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die. Although an audience hardly has time to follow each rapid step, the effect of all she has said and done is absolutely clear: however uncertainly the actor completes the hurried words and actions, Juliet so outpaces an audiences comprehension that her self-control is likely to be more amazing than her suffering. As in Romeos death, a sense of achievement is present and here, possibly, a sense of a consummating sexual arousal, as strong or stronger than that experienced earlier in the play. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare brought an intense dramatic focus to bear on the last moments of its hero and heroine, and required of his actors the imaginative strength to sum up their involvement in the entire play, controlling wildest thoughts and feelings in consistent and compelling performance. Outwardly the result can be very simple and probably should be so that an
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audiences imagination will be aroused by what seems to be happening deep within the two young lovers. Wonder is likely to be its dominant response but it may also feel shocked, bruised, depleted, indignant, outraged, trapped, or bemused, implicated in some immediate and very personal way. The play proceeds to show the effect of the deaths on almost all the remaining characters and to invite an audience to search for degrees of responsibility and possible consequences of what has happened.
QQQ
2006Daryl W. Palmer. Motion and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet , from Philosophy and Literature
Daryl W. Palmer is associate professor of English at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. He is the author of Hospitable Performances: Dramatic Genre and Cultural Practices in Early Modern England (1992).
There is nothing permanent that is not true, what can be true that is uncertaine? How can that be certaine, that stands upon uncertain grounds?1
It is by now a commonplace in modern scholarship that drama, particularly Tudor drama, poses questions, rehearses familiar debates, and even speculates about mere possibilities.2 In 1954, Madeleine Doran spelled out some of the ways in which debate affected the structure of Elizabethan drama.3 In turn, Joel B. Altman, having eloquently extended Dorans examination, concludes that the plays functioned as media of intellectual and emotional exploration for minds that were accustomed to examine the many sides of a given theme, to entertain opposing ideals, and by so exercising the understanding, to move toward some fuller apprehension of truth that could be discerned only through the total action of the drama.4 Altman points to Henry Medwalls Fulgens and Lucres (c. 1490) as an exemplar of this practice. Although the interlude instructs and entertains, the center of interest has shifted from demonstration to inquiry. The action develops not from an abstract assertion, but from a specific question: who is the nobler man, Cornelius or Gaius?5 By the time William Shakespeare began to write his plays, inquiry was an essential part of dramatic construction. So Juliet asks, Whats in a name?6 Hamlet opens with the question: Whos there? (1.1.1), and achieves a kind of apotheosis in the figure of its hero: To be, or not to be, that is the question . . . (3.1.55). Everyone recognizes these familiar questions, and we know (or think we know) how to describe the most
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viable answers. I want to suggest, however, that this familiarity has dulled our appreciation of the dramas interrogative range. As a way of resisting this tendency, I want to argue that Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet takes up an ancient conversation about motion, a dialog that originates with the pre-Socratics. This is not to say that the play is ultimately about motion. It obviously engages a panoply of thematic materials. I have simply chosen, in this limited space, to concentrate on the way the playwright stages his questioning as a kind of fencing lesson. My goal is to produce neither a reading of the play nor an allegory of philosophy, but rather to recollect the ways in which Shakespeares drama qualifies and extends an ancient interrogative tradition. In so doing, I follow Stanley Cavell who maintains that Shakespeare could not be who he isthe burden of the name of the greatest writer in the language, the creature of the greatest ordering of Englishunless his writing is engaging the depth of the philosophical preoccupations of his culture.7 Some of the most venerable documents of Western philosophy fix on the problem of motion. If we go back more than 2,300 years, we come upon Platos Theaetetus, in which Socrates explains a first principle to the title character, namely that the universe really is motion and nothing else.8 A kind of history lesson in ontology and epistemology, this tentative explanation has its origins in Heraclitus or Empedocles or Protagoras or some combination of the aforementioned. Perhaps the most famous expression of this ideal comes from Heraclitus: You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on.9 More to the point is the following declaration from the same philosopher: Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.10 In this spirit, Protagoras declares, All matter is in a state of flux.11 Such precedents provide the backdrop for Socrates in the Theaetetus as he summarizes: The point is that all these things are, as we were saying, in motion, but there is a quickness or slowness in their motion (Thea, 156c). In this historical spirit, he identifies a tradition from the ancients, who hid their meaning from the common herd in poetical figures, that Oceanus and Tethys, the source of all things, are flowing streams and nothing is at rest (Thea, 180de). To be sure, the dialog depends on the rehearsal of such positions, but far more important for our purpose is Platos attempt, through the figure of Socrates, to grasp motion through dialog. More inclined toward Parmenides distrust of motion, Socrates has, from the outset, been setting up the terms of inquiry in a form that anticipates the dramatic shape of the Renaissance play by fixing the (ineffable) object of study so that it gives up its essence, its being. Contemporary critics and philosophers will of course raise many objections to this motive,12 and rightly so; but in the conversation I want to trace, the motive endures dramatically. Plato even pays attention to character. From the outset, Theaetetus marks himself as a green pupil, charming and polite. The young fellow finds
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Socrates talk hard to follow. He becomes wary: Really, I am not sure, Socrates. I cannot even make out about you, whether you are stating this as something you believe or merely putting me to the test (Thea, 157c). As Shakespeare will always emphasize, character emerges out of dialog. Human disposition inflects inquiry. Maturity affects analysis. Assuming that every change is a motion, Socrates proceeds to confront his pupil with the difficult task of studying motion only in terms of motion, change in terms of change. That which fixes undoes what we study, but how difficult to adhere to such an injunction! Later in this dialog, Theodorus complains of thinkers who attempt such a task: Faithful to their own treatises they are literally in perpetual motion; their capacity for staying still to attend to an argument or a question or for a quiet interchange of question and answer amounts to less than nothing . . . (Thea, 179e180a). According to his plan, Plato is preparing his readers to admit that they can only have knowledge of being. That which is ever becoming (something other) may be perceived, but not known. Motion, if it can be probed at all, will register as perception, not knowledge, a crucial distinction for what follows because literary scholarship often conflates perception and knowledge (Thea, 186e).13 This is not to say that Shakespeare read a given dialog by Plato as a source the way he read Ovid. To approach the Renaissance is to encounter Plato in every nook and cranny. We know, in general, that early modern thinkers read Plato, but his presence was more ubiquitous than simple citation would indicate.14 Paul F. Grendler explains that The Renaissance drew upon a centuries-old tradition whose roots went back to Platos Laws and Republic, as well as Christian antiquity . . . 15 With more particular application to Shakespeares world, Sears Jayne declares, at no time during the Renaissance were the English people ever limited, as the myth suggests, to a single conception of Plato; rather, they knew about Plato from many different sources, and entertained several different conceptions of his work.16 Finally, Melissa Lane describes the way the philosophers heirs have understood their role in the conversation: Plato was, after all, Aristotles teacher and a key source for Ciceronian Rome and Augustinian Christianity. And this status made him a magnet in the search for originalityboth as the beginning and as the inspired genius.17 I take this search to be paradigmatic for subsequent centuries as it pops up in learned books and busy streets, even among the rapiers and daggers of Elizabethan London. As J. D. Aylward puts it in The English Master of Arms, most Englishmen of the period wanted to associate themselves with the practice of swordplay.18 Theater audiences relished the expert fencing of actors.19 London buzzed with talk of Continental fencing masters who claimed followings in their schools and in print. To these masters, fencing was both physical and mental, a palpable conflict and the basis for intellectual dialog. Vincentio Saviolo
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illustrates this motive in his Practice (1595). For Saviolo, combat comes down to discernment. He complains that There are many that when they come to fight, runne on headlong without discretion.20 In this same spirit, Giacomo Grassi warns his readers of the need for judgment, noting that, amongst divers disorderlie blowes, you might have seen some of them most gallant lie bestowed, not without evident conjecture of deepe judgment.21 Disorder must be avoided; the point, in other words, is to approach the physicality of combat through reason honed by reading. George Silver, Saviolos main English competitor, remarked the projects difficulty by foregrounding motion: The mind of man a greedie hunter after truth, finding the seeming truth but chaunging, not alwayes one, but alwayes diverse, forsakes the supposed, to find out the assured certaintie: and searching every where save where it should, meetes with all save what it would.22 No Socrates, Silver nonetheless shares a certain skepticism with the ancient philosopher. More confidently than Silver, Saviolo pursues his inquiry in keen prose carefully tied to illustrations. The combatants appear on a grid that suggests geometric attention to their motion. The diagram, like the words in a dialog, seems to stabilize motion and permit thoughtful evaluation. In this manner, Saviolo scrutinizes the cut. An obviously dramatic maneuver, the cut adds a thrilling sound to motion in ways that modern directors of action films take for granted. An audience can easily appreciate a cut, and an opponent must respect the obvious wound. Such satisfactions, however, cannot be the test of a movement. In order to grasp this argument, the student will want to make the motion answerable, fixing it in some manner, questioning it, and responding to it. Saviolo does precisely this when he outlines the cut in a mathematical diagram.23 With the aid of his illustration, the author explains the moves limited effectiveness, numbering positions so as to better fix the represented motion. In the end, he concludes that the cut may satisfy the passions, but it will not win the combat. With this lesson and many others like it, Saviolo returns to his primary theme, warning his reader about motion inspired by e-motion. Indeed, everything in the treatise aims at distancing the pupil from his passions. Master and pupil sit on a riverbank. Urging calm attention, this sage spokesman takes advantage of the stillness to advocate deliberate attention to speed and slowness. Not unlike Socrates, Vincent encourages his young pupil to expounde questions.24 For some time now, scholars have recognized that Shakespeare and his contemporaries were reading these manuals. Indeed, as Joan Ozark Holmer explains, Saviolos articulation of the ethic informing the truly honorable duello . . . significantly illuminate[s] the tragic complexity of the fatal duels in Romeo and Juliet.25 What has not been fully appreciated is the way the manuals emphasis on Platonic dialectic informs the practice of questioning at the heart of Shakespeares great love story. Depending on the dramas inquisitive tradition,
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Shakespeare could center his love story on scenes of combat in order to expound questions about motion because he knew that his principal players were capable swordsmen. Juliet wants to know what is in a name. Shakespeare, in writing Romeo and Juliet, might well have answered, motion. We know that Romeo suggests the wandering pilgrim; but long before Shakespeare, Plato emphasized the physics of such a name. In the Cratylus, Socrates muses about the letter r, suggesting that the great imposer of names used the letter because, as I imagine, he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least at rest in the pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order to express motion . . . . 26 No mere allusion, the name Romeo demands that players agitate their tongues so as to play a part in the main characters motion. Moreover, the rough r of Elizabethan speech would have heightened this effect. There is, after all, no rest in Romeo, and so it makes sense that his cherished friend is named Mercutio. As we have already noted, the Greeks thought of any change as motion. Mercutio embodies that sense of the word as he restlessly engages his friends sphere of activity, even threatening to displace Romeo as the plays real interest. All of this activity takes shape in the streets of Verona, where the plays initial questioning turns on the nobility of moving versus standing. Standing, it turns out, is a kind of obsession in this play: the words stand and stands occur some 30 times. Throughout the drama, the words signal a nexus of male identity in combat, sexual arousal, and simple motionlessness. Sampson and Gregory quickly announce the theme: Gregory: I strike quickly, being movd. Sampson: A dog of the house of Montague moves me. Gregory: To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand; therefore, if thou art movd, thou runst away. Sampson: A dog of that house shall move me to stand! (1.1.611) With breathtaking alacrity, Shakespeare initiates his tale of star-crossd love with a dialog devoted to motion. Gregory puts his faith in speed, and does not doubt that he can be moved to anger. Yet he willingly abandons this formulation in order to sport with Samsons expression of resolution. Does motion or fixity define the valiant man? More clown than philosopher, Sampson chooses to stand even as he boasts of his desire for maidenheads: Sampson: Me they shall feel while I am able to stand, and tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.
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Gregory: Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poorJohn. Draw thy tool, here comes [two] of the house of Montagues. (1.1.2832) That all this talk of motion evolves inevitably into talk of manhood may seem forced to a modern audience, and the playing of this translation on the stage can easily elide the way that Gregory baits Samson through these stages of thought. A pitiful imitation of Socrates, Gregory adopts that old Platonic device of the dialog, but his instruction ends in an ambiguous validation of standing. Because of the way it merges with male sexuality, this proof becomes an integral part of the plays deadly orchestrations. Of course the real assay of this discourse in Romeo and Juliet (as in Saviolos treatise) will demand swords and bucklers (1.1.1SD). For this reason, Samsons battle cry deserves attention: Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy washing blow (1.1.6263). Primed by his partner, Samson draws his tool, confident that he can determine his manhood by doing so. The caesura concretizes the characters recognition that his manhood is linked to washing blows and other sorts of codified motion. Such is the world inhabited by Romeo, Tybalt, and Mercutio, the main interlocutors of the play. Extensions of Samson and Gregory, these young men confound all attempts to tutor them. When Mercutio rhapsodizes of Queen Mab, Romeo tries in vain to lead him home (1.4.95). For his part, Capulet fruitlessly tries to teach Tybalt about hospitality (1.5.7681). Benvolio fails to lead Mercutio out of the hot day (3.1.1). This list goes on and on, leaving Shakespeares audience with real doubts about the possibility of successful pedagogy and utter suspicion of all attempts to make motion answerable. At the plays beginning, Romeo and the Friar seem to embody the old Platonic model as they discuss Romeos new love on a grey-eyd morn (2.3.1). Romeo propounds his notions with an early tongue (32). In this pastoral setting, the counselor challenges his young pupils passion with an energy worthy of Socrates and Saviolo. Adopting the language of fencing that already permeates the play, the Friar expresses a certain self-confidence in his analytical abilities: then here I hit it right / Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night (4142). In early modern England, the study of motion seems to hinge on being able to hit it right. Having done so, the Friar presses on: And art thou changd? Pronounce this sentence then: / Women may fall, when theres no strength in men (2.3.7980). Galvanized by the sudden appearance of Romeos change, the teacher wants to make the motion answerable. He seizes on the passion with a question followed by a caesura, indicating the instructors cogitation before he attempts to fix the phenomena with a legalistic phrase: Pronounce this
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sentence. As in Saviolos dialog, this pastoral pedagogy ends up being about strength in men. As it did in Platos dialog, the scene also takes shape through the old tension between youth and experience as the pupil attempts to come to terms with motion: O let us hence, I stand on sudden haste (2.3.93). Romeo here casts himself in a comic version of the manly debate between Gregory and Samson. Shakespeares audience would have understood what Romeo meant, but many probably laughed at the callow bawdy and the embedded contradiction. Literally, Romeo insists on haste, but his standing would also suggest an erection and/or a kind of standstill that frustrates haste. The typical pupil, Romeos passion will frustrate his execution. And what of the Friar? His wisdom fits neatly into the second line of a couplet: Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast (2.3.94). In his own imperfect way, more Heraclitus than Socrates, Friar Lawrence tries to respond to this turmoil by attending to the question of speed. He urges slowness, and it remains his constant focus. A little later in the play, he insists on the due and proper speed: Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow (2.5.15). To be sure, the plays critics have been divided over how they view the Friars sagacity, but I think Socrates provides the perfect measure for his advice. Instead of knowledge, the Friar deals in perception; and this focus has the ring of common sense even though it lacks knowledge. It is worth noting that praise for Friar Lawrences mental faculties comes from the Nurse (3.3.160). In the end, the Friar is so fearful of speed that he orchestrates standstill. When faced with Romeos murder of Tybalt, he counsels waiting so we can find a time (3.3.150). (One could contextualize the Friars taste for slowness by pointing out that the fencing community endorsed it with its formal requirements for a duel alla stoccata.) Sizing up the lovers situation, he concludes, here stands all your state (3.3.166). How appropriate then that his plan for peace involves a vial of distilling liquor that will leave Juliet fixed, in a state like death (4.1.95). Frightened by motion, the Friars passion for fixity seems to poison the whole play. When Paris and Romeo each arrive at the Capulet tomb, they tell their men to stand aloof (5.3.1; 5.3.26), and the two lovers destroy each other. How ironic that the Friar, having discovered the carnage, misreads the motionless forms and abandons the sleeping Juliet. The Friars absurd reason flows through a single line: Come go, good Juliet, I dare no longer stay (5.3.159). Unable to make motion answerable, the counselor is reduced to Come go. At the plays end, he reckons his own part in the action with these words: here I stand both to impeach and purge / Myself (5.3.226227). At the other end of the spectrum, Tybalt buzzes about the stage, all motion and little scrutiny. Saviolo might have invoked Tybalt as the perfect illustration of the fighter doomed by his own passions. When Benvolio would part the contestants in the plays first scene, Tybalt cries, What, drawn and talk of
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peace? (1.1.6667). The very presence of the sword and buckler in his culture seems to truncate all dialog. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the Capulets ball, when the host must rage in order to get his attention: What, goodman boy? I say he shall, go to! / Am I the master here or you? Go to! (1.5.7778). In a culture of combat that revered the role of master, Tybalt has no time for authority. When he announces that he goes to speak to them at the beginning of 3.1, we know that he really seeks what Mercutio offers, namely a word and a blow (3.1.40). The inherently bad pupil explains that, for this, You shall find me apt enough (3.1.41). Mercutio, by contrast, has more of the philosopher in him, and this aspect takes shape in terms of fencing. Unafraid of motion, he can, nonetheless, step back and observe. In ways no other character in the play does, Mercutio recollects knowledge; he understands numbers and technical terms. As the Queen Mab speech brilliantly shows, he has the capacity to reflect on the nature of motion and Shakespeare indulges him with impressive set speeches: Sometime she driveth oer a soldiers neck, / and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, / Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades (1.4.8284). Whatever we make of Queen Mab, we may admit that she instantiates, for Mercutio, a deadly dreaming realm of perception where passion leads men to their doom. If the soldier gives into passion, we may lay the blame on Queen Mab. Mercutios auditors cannot follow such a poetical lesson. Peace, Romeo pleads, peace, Mercutio, peace! / Thou talkst of nothing (1.4.9596). We may hear in this complaint (and not for the only time in the play) something of Theaetetus: Really, I am not sure, Socrates. I cannot even make out about you, whether you are stating this as something you believe or merely putting me to the test. Whereas Romeo and Tybalt embody motion, Mercutio puts motion to the test, but his pupils always fumble over the examination. Nowhere are Mercutios aspirations on this score more apparent than in 2.4. The scene opens with Benvolio and Mercutio discussing the whereabouts of Romeo, but it turns quickly into a fencing lesson. Mercutio expands on his theme with Tybalt as his subject: He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion; he rests his minim rests, one, two and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay (2.4.2026). Mercutio offers a complex lesson here, laden with technical vocabulary, real and invented. His reference to the very first house identifies Tybalt with both a family and a school of fencing. As though he were consulting Saviolo, Mercutio sets forth the terms that always organized a critique of fencing, namely time, distance, and proportion.27 Meanwhile, words such as passado, punto reverso, and hay give the instructor the opportunity to demonstrate each technique, animating the pictures Saviolo made popular. Mercutio even coins the term duellist, a feat that suggests the teachers original mind. Yet for all of
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this learning and bravado, Mercutio frames his lesson in the most thoughtful of ways by returning to the Platonic concern with due occasion, due time, due performance.28 For Plato, a life lived among perceptions would have to aim for the right time, occasion, etc. Mercutio notes (rather enviously, I think) that Tybalt embodies this attention, and so finds his point in your bosom. In ways a modern audience will find difficult to follow in performance, Mercutio aims to dazzle his auditor with a discourse as applicable to life as it is to fencing. A veritable Theaetetus, Benvolio tries to follow this brilliant account. He says, The what? (2.4.27). A better teacher would listen to his pupils question, perhaps pause to recollect the matter and begin anew. Mercutio merely presses on in his pedagogical fury, halting only when he sees Romeo approach. At this point, Mercutio spies a more intriguing pupil and commences a history lesson: Laura to his lady was a kitchen wench . . . Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gipsy . . . (3941). When Romeo attempts to make an apology for having missed his friends the night before, noting that in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy, Mercutio diagnoses Romeos strain: Thats as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams (5051, 5253). Mercutio believes that Romeo has so indulged in amorous motions that he can no longer perform the simple courtesy of a bow. Romeo catches on, and Mercutio declares, Thou hast most kindly hit it (55). In ways that Benvolio cannot manage, Romeo proceeds to take up this challenge; and the two exchange verbal hits until Mercutio cries, Come between us, good Benvolio, my wits faints (6768). Romeo, for his part, demands more intense motion: Switch and spurs, switch and spursor Ill cry a match (6970). Brighter than Benvolio, Romeo knows how to play, but he lacks a certain capacity for reflection. Mercutio, by contrast, has the prescience to embrace motion and draw away in the same instant. Nay, he chides Romeo, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done; for thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five (7174). In this lively exchange, we come to understand Mercutios aspirations. Like the Friar, Mercutio wants to be a kind of pedagogue. At the same time, he envies Tybalts passion and remains too interested in the competition to drive his point home. Mercutio wants to know if he has won the verbal duel: Was I with you there for the goose? (74). Like the Friar, Mercutio fails. Romeo never learns his lesson. In fact, Mercutios insights into motion were probably lost on the audience members as well. As Adolph L. Soens remarked some time ago, Mercutio, who seems to fight by the Italian book after the English habit, identifies Tybalt with the Spanish book of fence as mannered and artificial as that book of poetics by which Romeo makes love and sonnets.29 Soens argues convincingly that Shakespeares audience would have wanted to dislike Tybalts brave manner even as they respected his technical expertise (Soens, p. 125). What fascinates me about this set of identifications is less their relative accuracy than their effectiveness in
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(apparently) fixing motion in ethnic stereotypes for the Elizabethan audience. Silver announces this combative agenda in his treatise when he complains that Englishmen have lusted like men sicke of a strange ague, after the strange vices and devises of Italian, French, and Spanish Fencers . . . . 30 To his credit, Soens avoids this trap and offers a stunning description of motion that I quote at length in order to suggest a more formalistic appreciation for the way motion matters to Mercutios death. At the beginning of 3.1, Shakespeare envisions a hot street that ensures motion. Soens explains: The efficient and popular Italian fencing of Mercutio contrasts in posture and motion, as well as implications with the formal, deadly, and pedantic Spanish fencing of Princox (I.v.84) Tybalt. Mercutio and Tybalt circle each other, Tybalt upright, his arm outstretched, rapier and shoulder in a line, trying to keep his point in Mercutios face; Mercutio, crouched in stoccata, holds his rapier low, by his right knee, cocked back for a thrust. Both extend their daggers toward the opponent to parry thrusts or to beat aside a threatening rapier in preparation for a thrust. Their motions contrast as effectively, though not so absolutely, as their postures. Tybalt dances to and fro, attempting to evade his opponent, to catch him off balance and to gain angular advantage, while Mercutio moves with wider steps (and both move a great deal) and rushes in a series of tangents to the circle whose radius is Tybalts outstretched rapier and sword-arm. Mercutio, in other words, rushes rapidly in and out of distance, hoping to catch Tybalt unprepared, and to throw a thrust from stoccata or imbroccata (in which the sword is held, knuckles up, over the head) while Tybalt is both off balance and within distance. Both parry with the dagger as a rule, although stop thrusts combined with parries can be found in both the Italian and Spanish manuals. The difference in styles suggests the mechanics of Mercutios death. Mercutio takes his fatal thrust, not by accident, but in a situation where the advantage is all with the Spanish style . . . (Soens, p. 126). In ways that no other scholar has done for this scene, Soens helps us to grasp Mercutios death as a matter of contrasting motions. For Soens, this difference is the point: Romeos intervention puts Mercutios fighting style at a disadvantage. More compelling still is Romeos well-meaning yet clumsy attempt to bring all this complex motion to a standstill in the name of reason (3.1.62, 70). In Platonic terms, reason would be precisely what these men need, but Romeo is talking about reason colloquially as cause, specifically his marriage to Juliet (Holmer, p. 182). Romeo wants to stop the motion, but lacks the reason to do so. For Holmer, this confrontation recalls Saviolos condemnation of ill-considered quarrels spurred on by fury (Holmer, pp. 18185).
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Just as important, I contend, is Saviolos pragmatic recognition that some of the most compromised of motions, say combats between friends and kin, do not permit analysis. For the teacher who longs for truth and justice in quarreling, certain situations nonetheless demand an end to thought. In a description that seems to anticipate the conflict in Romeo and Juliet, Saviolo urges his pupil to abandon reflection: consider that he which challengeth him, dooth not require to fight with him as a freend, but as an enemye, and that he is not to think any otherwise of his minde but as full of rancour and malice towards him: wherefore when you see one with weapons in his hand that will needs fight with you, although hee were your freend or kinseman, take him for an enemy . . . . 31 Saviolos account neatly exposes Romeos error. Faced with such a predicament, Romeo appeals to the minde and encourages Tybalt and Mercutio to think any otherwise, contrary to Saviolos advice. As Holmer has noted (Holmer, p. 174), Mercutios dying words come straight from Saviolo: They have made worms meat of me (3.1.107). Only when it is too late does Romeo grasp at the masters injunction: take him for an enemy. Even as Shakespeare offers his audience a veritable laboratory of fencing mechanics and the geometric spectacle of Mercutios death, the playwright spins out a mechanics of catastrophe that cannot satisfy the rational mind. Romeos teacher sends a friar with speed, but the messenger arrives too late (4.1.123). Romeo chooses quick drugs that enable him to die before Friar Lawrence arrives and Juliet awakes. A moment too late, Friar Lawrence exclaims, how oft tonight / Have my old feet stumbled at graves! (5.3.121 122). In time to see that the lady stirs, the counselor determines he can no longer stay (5.3.147, 59). If we step back from this action, I think we can describe this early tragedy anew: Shakespeare has created a work that teases us with the possibility of making motion answerable. Who can watch such motions and not demand an inquiry? Yet with Mercutio dead, who will expound the questions? For centuries, audiences have been mesmerized by the character that inspired Coleridge to write the following encomium: O! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind that, without cares of
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its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of others, and yet to be interested in them . . . . 32 Generations of readers have agreed with this appraisal, but what we have failed to appreciate is the pedagogical (and therefore interrogative) motive behind all this exquisite ebullience. When Plato bequeathed his brilliant dialogs to posterity, he left behind more than questioning: the philosopher left us with the idea of the brilliant teacher whose radiance would always authenticate the asking. This is precisely the role Socrates gives to himself in the Theaetetus: And the highest point of my art is the power to prove by every test whether the offspring of a young mans thought is a false phantom or instinct with life and truth (Thea, 150c). For a dramatist like Shakespeare, the old conversation about motion must have held all sorts of attractions, but the implications for character must have been tantalizing. Aspiring to both embody motion and test it, Mercutio longs to be the young mans guide: he is the obvious product of Shakespeares musing over motion, on the page, on the stage. Although his lessons never approach the rigor of Socrates, his wit ever wakeful energizes audiences with ambitions worthy of the ancient Greeks. Were we able to make motion answerable, we would be very close to the origins of life itself. Mercutio aspires in this direction. Perhaps Romeo and Juliet feels so profound because we experience this aspiration and mourn its failure.
1. George Silver, Paradoxes of Defence (London, 1599), A3r, v. 2. The author would like to thank Jose Ramn Daz-Fernndez and Peter S. Donaldson for organizing A Boundless Sea: Shakespeares Mediterranean on Film at the Seventh World Shakespeare Congress in Valencia, Spain, where the initial version of this essay was presented. And special thanks to my colleague in philosophy Alan Hart for his wise reading of the work in progress. 3. Madeleine Doran, Endeavors of Art (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1954), p. 312. 4. Joel B. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 6. 5. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind, p. 21. 6. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed., ed. G. Blakemore Evans (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 2.2.43. 7. Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, updated ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 2. 8. Plato, Theaetetus, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 156a; hereafter abbreviated Thea. 9. Heraclitus, The Presocratics, ed. Philip Wheelwright (New York: Odyssey Press, 1966), p. 71. 10. Heraclitus, The Presocratics, p. 70. 11. Protagoras, The Presocratics, p. 239.
Notes
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12. See, for instance, Jacques Derrida, Disseminations, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 6584. 13. On this fundamental distinction between perception and knowledge, see Gail J. Fine, Knowledge and LOGOS in the Theaetetus, Philosophical Review 88 (1979): 36697. 14. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Humanism, The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt, et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 129. 15. Paul F. Grendler, Printing and Censorship, The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, p. 42. 16. Sears Jayne, Plato in Renaissance England (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), p. xiii. 17. Melissa Lane, Platos Progeny (London: Duckworth, 2001), p. 9. 18. J. D. Aylward, The English Master of Arms (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), pp. 1731. 19. Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 15741642, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 4. 20. Vincentio Saviolo, Vincentio Saviolo His Practice (London, 1595), 14r. 21. Giacomo Grassi, DiGrassi His True Arte of Defence, trans. Thomas Churchyard (London, 1594), A2r. 22. Silver, Paradoxes of Defence, A3v. 23. Aylward, The English Master of Arms, p. 58. 24. Saviolo, Vincentio Saviolo His Practice, B4v. 25. Joan Ozark Holmer, Draw, if you be Men: Saviolos Significance for Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994): 163; hereafter abbreviated Holmer. 26. Plato, Cratylus, 426 d,e. 27. On Mercutios debt to Saviolo, see Holmer, p. 173. 28. Plato, Statesman, 284e. 29. Adolph L. Soens, Tybalts Spanish Fencing in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare Quarterly 20 (1969): 121, 12325; hereafter abbreviated Soens. 30. Silver, Paradoxes of Defence, A4v. 31. Saviolo, Vincentio Saviolo His Practice, E2r,v. On Saviolos recommendation not to part combatants, see Holmer, p. 183. 32. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Romantics on Shakespeare, ed. Jonathan Bate (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 515.
QQQ
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Twenty-first Century
Index
q
Abram, 5 Accident, 153, 203204, 207, 268 Action dramatic, 106107 unity of, 52, 61 Alexander, Peter, 1 Alliteration, 139 Altman, Joel B., 312 Antitheses, 180181, 261 Apothecary, 2931, 207 Appearance, versus reality, 178 Aristocracy, 131 Aristotle, 203 Artificiality, 183, 188 As You Like It, 107 Atmosphere, 8687, 115, 117, 209, 214215 Auden, W. H., 178 Aylward, J. D., 314 Balcony scene, 89, 111, 222227, 229232 Balthasar, 5, 13, 14, 30 Bawdy humor, 157, 182, 227229, 240 Beauty destruction of, 221222 images of, 5859, 70 of Juliet, 230232, 236 Bells for John Whitesides Daughter (Ransom), 140142 Benvolio, 56, 169 character of, 34 Goddard on, 161162 Johnson on, 47 Biography, of Shakespeare, 13 Birth, of Shakespeare, 1 Blazon, 287 Bloom, Harold, xi, 132, 254255, 290292 Boas, Frederick S., 51, 53, 115128 Book references, 130, 176, 178, 187188 Bremond, Abb, 143, 144 British theaters, 39 Brooke, Arthur, 3738, 4142, 85, 108109, 111, 116117, 205, 251 252, 275276, 303304 Brown, John Russell, 293, 294312 Burbage, James, 2 Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 68, 83 Capulet-Montague feud. See Montague-Capulet feud Chapman, George, 266 Character configuration, 197 Charles II, 39 Charlton, H. B., 214 Chikamatsu, 252 Chivalry, 71 Chorus, 5, 206, 222, 254 331
332
Index Density, lack of, 201202 Dialogue, 293, 296302 Dibdin, Charles, 46, 4850 Digby, Kenelm, 271 Divine justice, 151 Doran, Madeleine, 312 Dove, 18 Dowden, Edward, 51, 5253, 83100 Drama, 101107, 165 Dramatic structure, 180181, 308 312, 312 Dreams, 89, 129, 158, 182, 249250 Drummond, William, 143 Dryden, John, 40, 43, 45, 143 Dualities, 190199, 258259 Eastman, Max, 144 Education, of Shakespeare, 1 Edward, Richard, 184 Eliot, T. S., 147148, 253 Elizabethan conventions, 190, 222, 225, 244 Elliptical poetry, 145146, 148149 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 168 Enclosure symbolism, 282283 Epic poetry, 102104 Epithalamion, 211, 265266 Eros, 243, 245, 247 Evil, potential for, 24 Eyes, 190 False loves, 7 Falstaff, 155156 Family feuds, 62, 180, 252253, 258 Fate, 126, 127, 152153, 166, 187, 207, 252, 265, 270271, 293, 302 305 Fear, 129, 174 Feelings, transitions of, 74 Female coquetry, 278 Feminist criticism, 132
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 52, 6163, 222, 322323 Comedy, 130, 131, 179, 254, 259261, 274275, 294295 Comedy of Errors, A, 106 Communication, faulty, 2830, 126, 203204, 219 Condell, Henry, 3 Conflict, role of, in drama, 104 Conquest of Granada, The (Dryden), 40, 43 Consecrate, 140 Contrasts, 190199, 261, 285 Conventions Elizabethan, 190, 222, 225, 244 love, 243244 violation of, 175176 County Paris. See Paris Couplets, 242 Courtly love, 211212, 243244, 244245 Cromwell, Oliver, 39 Cultural studies, 132 Cupid, 243, 245, 247 Dante, 151, 167, 244, 251 da Porta, Luigi, 37, 79, 82, 116, 205 Darkness imagery, 180, 192194, 249, 265 Date of play, 115116 Daysong, 211212 Death contrasted with life, 194195 foreshadowing of, 28 of Juliet, 14, 80, 127, 173, 184 love and, 281283 of Mercutio, 94, 114, 165166, 214, 216, 246, 289290, 307, 321 of Paris, 126 of Romeo, 14, 126127, 172173 of Tybalt, 167, 169170 de la Mare, Walter, 129, 132133
Index Fencing, 293294, 314315, 317, 319320 Fergusson, Francis, 130, 205212 Figurative language, 77, 79 Figures of speech, 199 First Folio, 3 Fletcher, George, 100n20 Floral imagery, 265, 267 Foreshadowing, 230 Formalism, 286 Forster, Leonard, 261 Free will, 127, 187, 271, 293, 302305 Freytag, Gustav, 108 Friar Laurence, 910, 1214 Boas on, 121122 character of, 33 contrasted with the nurse, 156157, 196 Dowden on, 9697 Frye on, 252 Goddard on, 173174 Holland on, 194 Levin on, 182 McAlindon on, 258259 Palmer on, 318 plan of, 2628 Seward on, 232233 Snyder on, 217220 spiritual themes and, 2224 Frye, Northrop, 131, 214, 239254 Garden scenes, 59 Generational theme, 154155, 182, 205, 208 Genre, 131 Genre conversion, 130, 212221 Globe Theater, 2 Goddard, Harold C., 129, 152175, 291 Good, potential for, 24 Grassi, Giacomo, 315 Grave imagery, 282283 Greek mythology, 2526 Greene, Robert, 1 Gregory, 56, 278, 316317 Grendler, Paul F., 314 Grief, 138, 140142, 184, 274275
333
Hamlet, 52, 59, 8586 Hamlet, compared with Romeo, 59, 86 Hand symbolism, 262264 Happy endings, 174 Harting, James, 18 Haste, 2526, 28, 30, 237238, 267 268, 318 Hate, 113, 186187, 191, 206, 258, 287288 Hathaway, Anne, 1 Hazlitt, William, 52, 5561 Heat, 8687, 110111, 117 Helena, 9192 Helios, 25 Hemings, John, 3 Heroic figures, 103, 104, 268 History and Fall of Caius Marius (Otway), 3940, 4344 Holland, Norman N., 130, 186204 Holmer, Joan Ozark, 315 Horatio Ode (Marvell), 148 Human nature, 45, 121 Imagery, 66, 7778, 120, 223, 264, 267 darkness, 180, 192194, 249, 265 grave, 282283 light, 180, 192194, 249, 265 Imagination, 7677, 7879, 81 Imagists, 143, 144 Impatience, 2526, 28, 30, 237238, 267, 268 Impurity, 136137 Infatuation, 222, 227, 228 Innocence, 285
334 Inquiry, 312 Intensity, lack of, 201202 Irony, 141, 150151, 198, 248, 253, 260 Irrelevance, principle of, 219 Italy, 86, 115, 117 Jameson, Anna, 51, 52, 6383 Jayne, Sears, 314 Johnson, Samuel, 4546, 4648, 222 Jonson, Ben, 3, 143, 231 Joyce, James, 200 Juliet, 7 beauty of, 70, 236 Bloom on, xi, 132, 255, 292 Boas on, 119120, 125126 character of, 33 childhood of, 242 death of, 14, 80, 127, 173, 184 Dowden on, 53, 9093, 9395 feigned death of, 13, 9394, 126 Goddard on, 171172 impatience of, 2526 Jameson on, 52, 6481 Johnson on, 47 language of, 176177, 178, 183, 188, 248, 297301 love for Romeo by, 26, 28, 6481, 229231 poetry of, 159 proposed marriage of, to Paris, 1112, 125, 218, 279 purity of, 124 simplicity of, 6667 soliloquy of, 175177 ten Brink on, 112 transformation of, 125, 171172, 269, 276277 Juliets nurse. See Nurse Justice, human vs. divine, 151 Juxtapositions, 191192
Index Key passages, 1731 Kings Men, 2 Lady Capulet, 7, 7273, 92 Boas on, 119 character of, 34 Frye on, 242 Goddard on, 169170 Mack on, 281282 ten Brink on, 113 Lady Macbeth, 92 Lady Montague, 6, 34, 241 Lammas Eve, 18 Lane, Melissa, 314 Laws, 213 La Zare (Voltaire), 46 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 45, 46 Letters, 189190 Levin, Harry, 129130, 175186 Life-death contrast, 194195 Life, progression of, 5758 Light imagery, 180, 192194, 249, 265 London, 2 Lord Chamberlains Men, 12 Lost love, 139 Love conventions, 243244 courtly, 211212, 243244 death and, 281283, 284285 Elizabethan conventions of, 190, 222, 225, 244 hate and, 191, 196, 206, 287288 Juliets, 26, 28, 6481, 229231 as literary convention, 19 lost, 139 Mercutio on idealized, 1922 as religion, 247, 261262 romantic vs. physical, 190191, 197198, 225227, 278 of Romeo for Juliet, 5960, 7172, 8990, 119, 177, 223
Index of Romeo for Rosaline, 6, 6263, 71, 8889, 112, 118, 176, 222 223, 227228, 244 transcendent, 2224, 51, 54, 154 155, 268269 transformative power of, 112, 276277 types of, 186 violence and, 129, 130, 153, 163 168, 186187 youthful, 4849, 52, 5558, 210 211 Loves Labours Lost, 106, 178 Lucrece, 102 Lyricism, 188189, 261, 264 Macbeth, 92, 200, 219220 Mack, Maynard, 131, 273290 Male aggression, 278 Male friendship, 245246 Marlowe, Christopher, 266 Marriage courtly love and, 243244 subject of Juliets, 1719 Marvell, Andrew, 148 Masque, 21, 175176 McAlindon, Thomas, 131, 256273 Medwall, Henry, 312 Melancholy, 144 Men, Shakespeares, 91 Merchant of Venice, The, 115, 167 Mercutio, 8 bawdiness of, 157, 182, 227229 Bloom on, 132, 291292 Boas on, 122123 Brown on, 305306 character of, 34 Coleridge on, 63 contrasted with Romeo, 280 death of, 94, 114, 165166, 214, 216, 246, 289290, 307, 321 Dowden on, 94
335
Dryden on, 40, 45 fight between Tybalt and, 1011, 163167 Goddard on, 155, 157159, 161 162, 165166 Holland on, 196 on idealized love, 1922 Johnson on, 45, 48 Levin on, 182 Mack on, 280 motion and, 319323 Palmer on, 319323 Queen Mab and, 18, 1922, 123, 129, 136, 158160, 249250, 280 ten Brink on, 113, 114 Tybalt and, 160164 Warren on, 136137 Meres, Francis, 294 Metapmorphoses (Ovid), 252 Milton, John, 103 Moderation, 9697 Mollycoddle, 163 Momento mori, 24 Montague-Capulet feud, 56, 1415, 160, 165166, 214, 240, 252253, 258 Moon, 223224 Moore, George, 143, 144 Moral values, 226227, 232233, 236237 Motion, 313323 Much Ado about Nothing, 252 Muller, Herbert, 150, 151152 Music, 184185, 202 Names, 189, 316 Nature dual aspect of, 24, 258259 human passion and, 87 in poetry, 135136, 138139 New historicism, 132 Night, 87, 111, 117, 249250
336
Index death of, 126 Dowden on, 9596 Levin on, 177178 marriage of Juliet to, 218, 279 marriage to, 125 Parody, 248249 Passion, 58, 66, 85, 87, 124, 205, 224 225, 226, 236, 253, 276 Pasternak, Boris, 179 Paynter, William, 108 Pepys, Samuel, 39, 42 Pestilence, 174, 204 Petrarch, 19, 244 Petrarchan tradition, 3, 211, 261, 278279, 288 Phaeton, 2526, 267 Physical love, 190191, 197198, 225 Plato, 293, 313314, 316, 320, 323 Plot construction, 106108 Plot summary, 515 Poe, Edgar Allen, 143144 Poems, 133134 Poetic structure, 149 Poetry, 221 drama and, 165 elliptical, 145146, 148149 epic, 102104 of Juliet, 159 prose elements in, 145146 pure and impure, 134152 Polarity, 183, 285 Political plot, 53, 117118, 131, 239240 Pope, Alexander, 45 Portia, 65, 66, 72, 76, 91, 97, 154 Pottle, Frederick, 145146, 148 Predestination, 121122, 127, 187, 271 Presentiments, 125, 217 Prince Escalus, 6, 1415, 34, 216, 241 Private-public contradictions, 180, 282 Prologue, 5
Nurse, 7 Boas on, 119, 125 Brown on, 306, 307308 character of, 33 Coleridge on, 63 compared with Falstaff, 155156 contrasted with the friar, 156157, 196 de la Mare on, 129, 132133 Dowden on, 93 Frye on, 241242, 250251 Goddard on, 155157 Jameson on, 73 Johnson on, 46, 48 Levin on, 182 Mack on, 279280 persona of, 1719 Seward on, 234236 Snyder on, 217218, 219220 ten Brink on, 113 Old Capulet, 67, 1112, 92 Boas on, 125 character of, 34 Frye on, 243 Jameson on, 73 ten Brink on, 113 Old Montague, 6, 34 Ophelia, 86 Oppositions, 190199, 216217, 261, 270, 285 Othello, 220, 250, 253, 272 Otway, Thomas, 3940, 4344 Ovid, 2526, 252 Oxymorons, 179, 192, 249, 261, 269 Painter, William, 37, 116 Palmer, Daryl W., 293294, 312324 Paradise Lost (Milton), 103 Paradox, 261 Paris, 67, 1112, 14, 1819, 179 character of, 3334
Index Prose elements, in poetry, 145146 Prospero, 271 Puns, 189, 248249, 261, 262 Pure poetry, 134152 Puritanism, 2, 39 Purity, 136137 Queen Mab, 8, 1922, 123, 129, 136, 158160, 182, 196, 249250, 280, 294, 306307 Ransom, John Crowe, 140142 Realism, 138 Reality, versus appearances, 178 Reconciliation, 174, 208, 253, 269 Reduplication, 181182, 183 Religion Juliets abandonment by, 174 love as, 247, 261262 Religious imagery, 223 Restoration, 39 Rhyme, 188 Rhythm of play, 208209 Richard III, 256257, 291 Romantic love, 190191, 197, 278 Romantic tragedy, 179, 275276 Romeo apothecary and, 2931 banishment of, 11 Bloom on, 292 Boas on, 118119, 120121, 124 capacity for love in, 130131 character of, 33 compared with Hamlet, 59, 86 contrasted with Mercutio, 280 death of, 14, 126127, 172173 Dowden on, 53, 8890, 92, 9496 failure of, 168 Goddard on, 164168, 168171, 172173 growth of, 9495 inconstancy of, 269270
337
Jameson on, 7172 language of, 120, 179, 183, 188, 227, 297301 love for Juliet by, 5960, 7172, 8990, 119, 177, 223 love for Rosaline by, 6, 6263, 71, 8889, 112, 118, 176, 222223, 227228, 244 Mercutio-Tybalt fight scene and, 160168 Seward on, 130131, 223227 ten Brink on, 112, 114 transformation of, 112, 172173, 247248, 269270, 277278 Tybalt and, 162163 Rosaline, 6, 10, 6263, 71, 8889, 112, 118, 176, 196, 227228, 244, 278, 288 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 81 Rowe, Nicholas, 45 Salernitano, Masuccio, 37 Sampson, 56, 278, 316317 Saviolo, Vincentio, 314315, 322 Schiller, Friedrich, 6869 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 5152, 5355, 86 Self-consciousness, 8990, 91, 183 Setting, 8687, 115, 206, 209210, 214, 257258 Seward, James H., 130131, 221239 Shakespeare, John (father), 1 Shakespeare, William biography of, 13 sources used by, 3738, 4142, 106, 108109, 116117, 205, 251252, 275276 ten Brink on, 101114 Shelley, Percy, 135, 143, 144 Sidney, Sir Philip, 143 Silver, George, 315 Snyder, Susan, 130, 212221
338 Social context, 305308 Soens, Adolph L., 320321 Sonnets, 3, 102, 188189, 295298 Speculum Mundi (Swan), 42 Spiritual themes, 2324 Staging, 184 Star-crossed lovers, 152154, 171, 187, 252, 283 Stauffer, Donald, 223 Steevens, George, 45 Stock responses, 199201 Structure, 308312 Sublimity, 143 Suicide, 246247, 248 Summer heat, 8687, 110111, 117 Sun, 2526, 249, 265 Swan, John, 38, 42 Symmetry, 180181, 286 ten Brink, Bernhard, 51, 53, 101114 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 135 Theaetetus (Plato), 313314, 323 Thekla, 6869 Themes, 130, 153 generations, 154155, 182, 205, 208 love and violence, 153 time, 264268 Theobald, Lewis, 45 Time, 2526, 87, 213 inconsistencies in, 208209 pace of, 216217, 237, 285 passage of, 5758 theme of, 264268 in tragedies, 218219 Titus Andronicus, 256257, 291 Tomb, 282283 Tone, unity of, 201 Tragedy, 8385, 97, 130, 131 romantic, 179, 275276 transformation into, 212221
Index Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, The (Brooke), 4142, 116117, 205, 275276 Tragic effect, 203 Tragic flaws, 154 Transcendent love, 2224, 51, 54, 154155, 268269 Transitions, 121 Triumph, 269 Two Gentleman of Verona, 179, 246 Tybalt, 6, 8 Boas on, 118, 123 character of, 34 death of, 167 fight between Mercutio and, 1011, 163167 Frye on, 250 Goddard on, 160164 Mercutio and, 160164 Palmer on, 318319 reaction to death of, 169170 Romeo and, 162163 Snyder on, 215 ten Brink on, 113114 Ulysses, 151 Ulysses ( Joyce), 200 Unconscious mind, 129 Unity of action, 52, 61 impulse toward, 257 of tone, 201 Venus and Adonis, 102 Verona, 8687, 115, 206, 209210, 214, 257258 Villains, 250 Violence, 129, 130, 153, 163168, 186187, 267, 284285 Virtue, 24
Index Vocabulary, poetic, 144145 Voltaire, 46 Wallace, John, 39 Wallenstein (Schiller), 6869 Warren, Robert Penn, 129, 133152 White, Richard Grant, 98n1 Wisdom, 318 Women nature of Shakespeares, 9192 Petrarchan image of, 287288 Wordsworth, William, 57, 168 Worldliness, 285 Young-old duality, 196, 205 Youthful love, 4849, 52, 5558, 210211
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Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages

Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages

Edited and with an introduction by

t Romeo and Juliet in the Eighteenth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

t Romeo and Juliet in the Nineteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

t Romeo and Juliet in the Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

t Romeo and Juliet in the Twenty-first Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Romeo and Juliet

Introduction by Harold Bloom

Romeo and Juliet

Biography of William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet

Biography of William Shakespeare

Summary of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Summary of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Summary of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Summary of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Summary of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Summary of Romeo and Juliet

Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Key Passages in Romeo and Juliet

List of Characters in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Criticism Through the Ages

Romeo and Juliet in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Romeo and Juliet

1635John Swan. From the Speculum Mundi

1662Samuel Pepys. From The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Romeo and Juliet in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

1680Thomas Otway. Prologue, from History and Fall of Caius Marius

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet in the Eighteenth Century

Romeo and Juliet

1767Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. From Hamburgische Dramaturgie

1768Samuel Johnson. From Notes on Shakespears Plays

Romeo and Juliet

1794Charles Dibdin. From Shakespear, in A Complete History of the Stage

Romeo and Juliet in the Eighteenth Century

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet in the Nineteenth Century

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet in the Nineteenth Century