{Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare

Themes include:

Love Civil Disorder

Themes

Love has a the effect of transformation in the play. It changes both the characters, Romeo and Juliet as it results in the ‘mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms’ (Act 1: Scene1). In addition, love establishing the end to an ‘ancient grudge’ as the ‘star –crossed lover’s’ ‘misadventure piteous ovethrows / Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife’ (Prologue).

Love

The theme of love is developed through contrasts.

In the first few scenes of the play we are presented with three different kinds of love.

Each of these understandings of love form the basis from which we can view the ‘true love’ between Romeo and Juliet.

Contrasts in Character

The play opens with the crude remarks between Sampson and Gregory as they discuss what they would do to the Montague’s maids.

Sampson: ‘…. Women being the weaker vessels are ever thrust to the wall’ (Act 1)

Sampson: ‘… When I have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the maids – I will cut off their heads’ (Act 1: Scene 2)

This is continued later in the play by the nurse as she jests to Juliet and Lady Capulet that after Juliet had fallen forwards as a child the nurse and her husband had laughed that ‘’Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age’. She jests that ‘women grow by men’ and she urges Juliet to go seek ‘happy nights to happy days’ (Act 1: Scene 3).

Mercutio also mocks Romeo’s romatic gushing: Mercution : ‘Cry, but ay me, pronounce but ‘love’ and ‘dove’ to mock rhymed expressions of love and ‘Oh that she were / An open arse and though a poperin pear.’ (Act 2:Scene 1).

Physical / Sensual Love

Shakespeare also presents infatuation through the mockery of the patrarchan lover.

A patrarchan lover suffers from unrequited love. The lover idolises and longs for the woman in his sights.

In its language:

A patrarchan sonnet will emphasis the woman’s physical beauty and physical characteristics using similes and metaphors.

uses conceit—exaggerated metaphors uses elaborate, flowery, exaggerated, embellished, artificial

language

Infatuation

Romeo is, at the beginning, a rather tiresome character. He is melancholy with love. He speaks in the elaborate language of love, fashionable at the time of the plays production.

He regards Rosaline as beyond all women in beauty: ‘The all-seeing sun / Ne’er saw her match since the world begun’

The hyperboles present in his language suggests that this love is not genuine.

Romeo as a Patrarchan lover

Romeo is very much in love with the idea of being in love.

Why the, 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! (1.1.176-81).

The use of oxymoron presents love as a nightmare state. Yet also reveals that love is inexplicitly tided to hate.

‘O me, what fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.’ p.29

These lines from Romeo seem to foreshadow later events in the play as the families feud will result in the destruction of the two young lovers. The comment seems to suggest that they cannot be separated; to hate is to feel pain ‘brawling love’ and so often people relish in hate ‘loving hate’.

Patrarchan Lover

To marry for practical reasons for wealth, social security and family alliances.

This is seen through the arranged marriage of Juliet and Paris.

In Act 1 Scene 2 Paris respectfully asks Capulet for his daughters hand in marriage: ‘But now my lord, what say you to my suit?’

Lady Capulet compares Paris to ‘a fish in the sea’ (Act 1 Scene 3) and later as a ‘noble gentle man’

Capulet: my care hath been to have her matched; and having now provided a gentleman of noble parentage, of fair demesnes, youthful and nobly liened. Stuffed as they say with honourable parts, proportioned as one’s thought would wish a man- and then to have a wretched puling fool (…) To answer ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love’. (Act 3 Scene 5).

Capulet’s tyrannical outpouring asserts his right and ‘care’ to marry his daughter off to a good man. His wife Lady Capulet stands by him and even the Nurse, who up until this point had been Juliet’s confidante and her aid in her marriage to Romeo urges Juliet to give up on the disgraced Romeo whom she describes as ‘a dishclout to him (Paris); an eagle’ (Act 3: Scene 5).

Demesnes = estates Liened = descended Puling = weeoing Conventional Love (Of the time)

Against a background of superficial and forged love, Romeo and Juliet’s love stands out as superior.

Their love is constructed as genuine through the moral character of the Friar who does not allow them to stay alone ‘till holy church incorporate two in one’ (Act 2: Scene 6).

This superior love is asserted through the use of religious imagery in the famous balcony scene, in which Romeo admires his new found love. He describes Juliet’s eyes using the metaphor, ‘Two of the fairest stars in all of heaven’. He urges his ‘bright angel’ to speak. He declares ‘Call me but ‘love’ and I’ll be new baptized’ (Act 2: Scene 2)

True Love Made Genuine Through Religion

Juliet is a mature lover and rejects Romeo’s elaborate language as a means of wooing her.

Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear, That tips with silver all these fruit – tree tops –

Juliet: O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,/ That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest, that thy love prove likewise variable.

Romeo: What shall I swear by?

Juliet: Do not swear at all… (Act 2: Scene 2).

For Juliet, love should not be based on extravagant promise and these ideas a fickle and changeable ‘like the moon’ which moves in cycles. Instead his actions should reveal his true love.

Juliet

Romeo has noticeably matured in Act 2: Scene 2. He has moved away from the melodramatic and melancholy expressions of love. His declarations of love are now in blank verse, which adds realism and a more natural quality to their love. His expression of his love for Juliet, although still full of imagery, are not the crafted rhymes of his previous declarations. These expressions are therefore not limited by the need to construct a cleaver rhyming scheme, but instead seen as more genuine, unedited expressions.

The genuine nature of their love is also borne out by their actions.

Structure and Plot

During Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting, their conversation takes the form of a shared sonnet. (A popular poetic expression of love at the time of the play’s creation).

The shared nature of the rhyme brings the couple together and their lives, like their language, is intertwined.

Just as a sonnet comes to a climax in the final lines, so does the couples meeting and they are bound with a kiss.

Language The Sonnet

Motif Light and Dark

Shakespeare uses light and dark imagery in the balcony scene (Act 2: Scene 2) to describe the blossoming of Romeo and Juliet's romance.

Light represents the lovers as they see one another in the darkness of their troubles; darkness also as the shroud of secrecy; also light as lightning and therefore transitory and easily burnt out.

Romeo: But soft, what light through yonder windowbreaks?/ It is the east and Juliet is the sun!(Act 2, scene 2)

Romeo: O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright./ It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night/ As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear—(Act 1, scene 5)

The two major themes of love and conflict are intertwined through the plot.

This is especially true of Act 1 Scene 5, in which the lovers first meet. The contrast between love and hate is striking in this scene. Tybalt believes Romeo has come to ‘scorn’. His bitter mutterings are in complete contrast to Romeo’s admiration for Juliet. To him she is ‘like a jewel’ and a ‘snowy dove among crows’. His imagery here reflecting her preciousness, purity, peace and innocence.

The plot involves, as the prologue suggests from the plays onset, a feud between two opposed families, a pair of lovers who are brought to death as a result of the feud, and the end of the feud as a result of the deaths of the lovers.

Plot

Beginning is comic. It is full of love and conflict.

Turning Point occurs in Act 3 with the death of Mercutio and events become much more tragic.

His death leads to: Romeo killing Tybalt, Romeo’s banishment, The separation of the lovers, Juliet’s sadness causes Capulet to arrange her marriage, Leads to the poison potion plan, Which results in the lover’s deaths.

Key Events

There are three views of love in the play. Describe Romeo’s love for Rosaline. How do we know that Romeo’s love for Juliet is genuine? The nurse’s view of love is quite different to that of Lady Capulet’s; compare and contrast the two. Discuss Lady Capulet’s opinion of Paris in this context.

Consider the motifs in the play. What are the various ways that Shakespeare uses to enhance Romeo’s discovery of Juliet at the end? What are some of Romeo’s images for Juliet in both Act 1 and in the balcony scene? Discuss the light and dark images throughout the play?

The characters of Romeo and Juliet develop as the play progresses. Describe Romeo’s character at the beginning of the play? How does he mature as the play continues? What kind of daughter was Juliet at the beginning of the play? How has she changed by the end? How does she react to Romeo’s charms?

Areas to Revise