Romeo and Juliet

Introduction

Romeo and Juliet remains perhaps the Bard’s most popular and well known play, along with Hamlet.

This is a play about the intensity of doomed young love, a young love that will descend into the flames of its own idealism. What we have here is the most intense romantic tragedy ever written, unmatched in world literature. A play of youthful impulsiveness and extravagance, Romeo and Juliet is a love story such as had never before been depicted on the English stage, and it certainly makes the tragic ending hard to bear.

Their deaths are indeed foretold in the prologue. We know what will become of them from the start, unbeknownst to them, of course. We know their fate and then witness their innocence, charm and love, even as it all leads to such utter tragedy. The power of their love ensures, in the world they inhabit, that it will lead inevitably to their deaths. The romanticism is intoxicating. This is the quintessential love story of Western Civilization.

Shakespeare matures substantially as a writer in Romeo and Juliet, which has marvellously written characters. Along with the two fated lovers themselves, Mercutio is one of Shakespeare’s greatest creations. According to Dryden, Shakespeare reported that he had to kill off Mercutio or else his large presence would have killed the play we know as Romeo and Juliet. Who else could possibly have delivered the ‘Queen Mab’ speech? His death gives rise to all the catastrophes that follow. His last words are ‘a plague on both your houses’, and so it becomes from his death to the precipitous tragic ending. These are two entirely different plays before and after the death of Mercutio. The nurse and friar Lawrence are also deep, genuine and powerfully written characters, who each propel the plot to its inevitability of tragedy.

Shakespeare’s maturity continues throughout the years surrounding Romeo and Juliet, easily his greatest work to date. It is written around the same time as Love’s Labour’s Lost (1594-95), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), and will be followed closely by The Merchant of Venice (1596-7), Richard II (1595), and Henry IV, Parts I (1596-7) and II, all part of a profound and unmatched initial creative explosion of productivity following his first eight plays, where only Richard III attained any similar status in the canon. He will achieve this burst of genius soon enough again, when from 1599-1606 he would write Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, All’s Well That Ends Well, Macbeth, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra. These two intense set of years produced the greatest wealth of genius in the history of world literature and defies explanation or logic.

Shakespeare discovered a new language for love in Romeo and Juliet, using sonnets and blank verse as never read or heard before. The imagery was original as well, full of richness and metaphor. Young love expressed with a tenderness and beauty new to literature and the stage. There are also over 175 puns and wordplays in Romeo and Juliet. The language is exquisite throughout, unlike anything else he had written or will write.

Romeo and Juliet is a play of opposites: light and dark, youth and age, love and hate, the moon and the stars. But it is the darkness that wins in the end, except for the notable fact that it is their fate that finally conclude the strife between the two warring families.

Act I (5 scenes)

Prologue: Enter Chorus

“Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star crossed lovers take their life; whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth with their death bury their parent’s strife. The fearful passage of their death marked love is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage.“

Analysis

The prologue tells us, the audience, pretty much what will happen in this play. It refers to Romeo and Juliet as ‘star crossed lover’s, which suggests they will not be able to escape their fate, foretold as it is in the stars themselves.

Act I

Scene i

Verona. A public place

Enter Sampson and Gregory, two servants of the house of Capulet, with swords.

Sampson: “I strike quickly, being moved.”

Gregory: But thou art not quickly moved to strike.”

Sampson: “A dog of the house of Montague moves me. I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s. ‘Tis true, women being the weaker vessels, are never thrust to the wall; therefore, I will push Montague’s men from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall. I will be civil with the maids – I will cut off their heads, or their maiden-heads.”

Gregory: “Here comes two of the house of Montague.”

Enter Abraham and Balthasar, two servants of the house of Monague

Sampson: “My naked weapon is out; quarrel, and I will back thee. I will bite my thumb at them.”

Abraham: “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir.”

Sampson: “I do bit my tongue, sir.”

Abraham: “Do you bite your tongue at us, sir?“

Sampson: (aside to Gregory) “Is the law on our side, if I say ay?”

Gregory: (aside to Sampson) “No.”

Sampson: “No sir, I do not bite my tongue at you, sir; but I bite my tongue, sir.”

Gregory: “Do you quarrel, sir?”

Abraham: “Quarrel, sir! No, sir.”

Sampson: “But if you do, sir, I am as good a man as you.”

Abraham: “No better?”

Sampson: “Yes, better, sir.”

Abraham: “You lie.”

Sampson: “Draw if you be men.”

They fight

Benvolio: “Part, fools! Put up your swords; you know not what you do.

Enter Tybalt, of the house of Capulet

Tybalt: “What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.”

Benvolio: “I do but keep the peace; put up thy sword, or manage to part these men with me.”

Tybalt: “What, drawn and talk of peace! I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues and thee.”

They fight

Enter an officer and three or four citizens with clubs

Officer: “Beat them down.”

Citizens: “Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!”

Enter Old Capulet in his gown, with his wife

Capulet: “What noise is this? My sword, I say! Old Montague is come and flourishes his blade in spite of me.”

Enter old Montague and his wife

Montague: “Thou villain, Capulet!”

Lady Montague: “Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.”

Enter the Prince

Prince: “Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, profaners of this neighbour-stained steel. Will they not hear? You men, you beasts, that quench the fire of your pernicious rage with purple fountains issuing from your veins! On pain of torture, from those bloody hands, throw your distempered weapons to the ground, and hear the sentence of your moved Prince. These civil brawls, by thee, old Capulet and Montague, have thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets. If ever you disturb our streets again, your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace. Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.”

Montague: “Who set this ancient quarrel anew?”

Benvolio: “I drew but to part them; in the instant came the fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepared. We were interchanging thrusts and blows till the Prince came.”

Lady Montague: “O, where is Romeo? Glad I am he was not at this fray.”

Montague: “Many a morning hath he been seen, with tears augmenting the fresh morning dew, adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs; but all so soon, away from light steals home my heavy son, and private into his chamber pens himself, shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out, and makes for himself an artificial night. Black and portentous must this humour prove, unless good counsel may the cause remove.”

Benvolio: “My noble uncle, do you know the cause?”

Montague: “I neither know it nor can I learn of him. But he, his own affection’s counsellor, is to himself. If we could but learn from whence his sorrows grow, we would as willingly give cure as know.”

Enter Romeo

Exit Montague and his wife

Benvolio: “Good morrow, cousin.”

Romeo: “Is the day so young?”

Benvolio: “But new struck nine.”

Romeo: “Ay, me! Sad hours seem long.“

Benvolio: “What sadness lengthens Romeo’s hours?“

Romeo: “Not having that which having makes them short.“

Benvolio: “In love?”

Romeo: “Out.”

Benvolio: “Of love?”

Romeo: “Out of her favour where I am in love. O brawling love! O loving hate! O heavy lightness! Mis-shapen chaos of well seeming forms! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh?”

Benvolio: “No, cuz. I rather weep.”

Romeo: “Good heart, at what?”

Benvolio: “At thy good heart’s oppression.”

Romeo: “Why such is love’s transgression. This love that thou hast shown doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; what is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall, and a preserving sweet. I have lost myself; I am not here; this is not Romeo; he’s some other where.”

Benvolio: “Tell me in sadness who is it that you love.”

Romeo: “In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.”

Benvolio: “I aimed so near when I supposed you loved.”

Romeo: “A right good marksman! And she’s fair I love.”

Benvolio: “A right fair mark, fair cuz, is soonest hit.”

Romeo: “Well, in that hit you miss; she’ll not be hit with Cupid’s arrow. She has Dian’s wit, and in strong proof of chastity well armed.”

Benvolio: “Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?”

Romeo: “She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste. For beauty, starved with her severity, cuts beauty off from all posterity. She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow do I live dead that live to tell it now.”

Benvolio: “Be ruled by me and forget to think of her.”

Romeo: “O teach me how I should forget to think!”

Benvolio: “By giving liberty unto thine eyes. Examine other beauties.”

Romeo: “He who is struck blind cannot forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost. Farewell; thou cannot teach me to forget.”

Analysis

Act I, Scene I is a real crowd pleaser, intended to hook the audience right from the get go with the conflict between the two households erupting into a brawl. Everyone is seen to be involved, from house servants right up to the Prince of Verona himself. We learn that Benvolio is cautious and reasonable, that Tybalt is ‘fiery’ and that Romeo is lost in love. Honour and hatred drive the ancient family feud and it will be amid this ‘ancient grudge’ that Romeo and Juliet must navigate their love. The Prince threatens torture and death to both families for soiling Verona with hatred and blood.

We also learn that Romeo has a serious melancholy, although nobody seems to understand it. Finally, Romeo confides in his cousin, Benvolio, that he is, in fact, in a love that will not be returned. Benvolio therefore recommends he look for love elsewhere but Romeo believes Rosaline is the most beautiful of all women and accepts his own inevitable sadness. We never meet Rosaline but her presence is palpable throughout the play as Romeo’s forlorned love just prior to his meeting Juliet.

Act I

Scene ii

A street in Verona

Enter Capulet, Paris and his servant

Paris: “My lord, what say you to my suit?”

Capulet: “My child is yet a stranger in this world; she hath not seen the change of fourteen years; let two more summers wither in their pride, ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.”

Paris: “Younger than she are happy mothers made.”

Capulet: “And too soon marred are those so early made. Woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart. This night I hold an accustomed feast, whereto I have invited many a guest.” (to a servant) “Go, sirrah, trudge about through fair Verona; find those persons out whose names are written there, and to them say my house and welcome on their pleasure stay.”

Exit Capulet and Paris

Servant: “But I am sent to find those persons whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned.”

Enter Benvolio and Romeo

Benvolio: “Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning. Take thou some new infection to the eye, and the rank poison of the old will die.”

Servant: “I pray, sir, can you read? Can you read anything you see?”

Romeo: “Stay, fellow; I can read.” (He reads the list)

Servant: “My master is the great rich Capulet; and if you be not from the house of Montague, I pray come and crush a cup of wine.”

Exit servant

Benvolio: “At this same ancient feast of Capulets sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so loves. Go thither, and compare her face with some that I shall show, and I will make thee think thy swan a crow.”

Romeo: “One fairer than my love! The all-seeing sun never saw her match since fist the world begun.”

Benvolio: “Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by, herself poised with herself in either eye. Let there be weighed your lady’s love against some other maid.”

Romeo: “I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown, but to rejoice in splendour of mine own.”

Analysis

We learn early in the scene that Capulet has consented to the courtship of his daughter, Juliet, to Paris, a kinsman to the Prince. He is not permitted to marry her yet, as she is not yet 14 years old. But he may woo her until the time is right for marriage. This is all determined between the two men before Romeo even meets Juliet. So we know there is a long feud between Romeo’s family and Juliet’s and that Juliet’s father is negotiating a future marriage to Paris. Romeo and Juliet will carry a lot of family baggage into their brief and intense relationship, but especially Juliet, as a young woman in patriarchal Verona.

We have met both lovers and we can see that while Romeo still pines for Rosaline, he and Benvolio are about to crash the Capulet party hosted by Juliet’s father and the famous and ill-fated tragic romance will all flow from there.

Shakespeare brings Romeo and Juliet together by the device of an illiterate servant, who requires Romeo to read the list of invitations to the Capulet party. On that list is Rosaline, although Benvolio rightly insists that when compared to some other woman at that gathering, Romeo may find the other woman a swan to his crow; and that woman will be Juliet.

Act I

Scene iii

Capulet’s house

Enter Lady Capulet and the nurse

Lady Capulet: “Nurse, where is my daughter?”

Nurse: “I bade her come. What, lamb! What, lady-bird! What, Juliet!

Enter Juliet

Juliet: “Madam, I am here. What is your will?”

Lady Capulet: “This is the matter. Nurse, give leave awhile. We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again; I have remembered me. Thou may hear our counsel. Thou knows my daughter is of a pretty age, not yet fourteen.”

Nurse: “Thou was the prettiest babe that ever I nursed and if I live to see thee married I will have my wish.”

Lady Capulet: “That ‘marry’ is the very theme I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet, how stands your dispositions to be married?”

Juliet: “It is an honour that I dream not of.”

Lady Capulet: “Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you are already made mothers. By my count, I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid. Thus, then, in brief: the valiant Paris seeks you for his love.”

Nurse: “A man, young lady! Lady, such a man as all the world.”

Lady Capulet: “Verona’s summer hath not such a flower. What say you? Can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast; read over the volume of young Paris’ face, and find delight writ there with beauty’s pen. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?”

Juliet: “I’ll look to like.”

Nurse: “Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.”

Analysis

This scene builds on the previous one as we learn that Juliet’s mother, as well as her father, have determined Paris an appropriate match for their daughter. We also learn that it was the nurse who suckled Juliet as a baby. The nurse, it turns out, has been more of a mother to Juliet than Lady Capulet ever was. This was typical of the age in Verona. They hired a wet-nurse, who remained with Juliet her entire life. We now know all three principle female characters in the play.

Juliet is instructed to seriously consider Paris as a potential marriage partner at the Capulet feast this very night, the feast to which Romeo will be in attendance. It is thought the Shakespeare made Juliet to be merely fourteen years old so that we might better appreciate that this is her very first experience with love. Juliet’s mother was also married and a mother to Juliet by age fourteen, as are, apparently, many Verona women of high esteem, so it also appears to have been an appropriate age for marriage back then in Verona.

Act I

Scene iv

Verona. A street

Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio and five or six other maskers.

Romeo: “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like a thorn.”

Mercutio: “If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you’ll beat love down.”

Romeo: “I dreamt a dream tonight”

Mercutio: “And so did I.”

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 Man hath been with you. She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than the fore-finger of an alderman, athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep. Her waggoner is a small grey-coated gnat, not half so big as a round little worm. Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut. Time out of mind, she gallops night by night through lover’s brains, and then they dream of love. 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 talks of nothing.”

Mercutio: “True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy; which is as thin of substance as the air, and more inconstant than the wind, and, being angered, puffs away from thence.“

Benvolio: “This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves.”

Romeo: “I fear; my mind misgives some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this night’s revels and expire the term of a despised life closed in my breast, by some vile forfeit of untimely death. But he that hath the steerage of my course direct my sail!”

Analysis

Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio are wearing their masks and making their way to the Capulet feast when Mercutio and Romeo examine the notion of love. Love has been rough on Romeo in his relationship with Rosaline and Mercutio suggests that when love is rough with you you must be rough with love. Mercutio is a profoundly important passionate man of excess in Romeo and Juliet and this scene introduces us to him. It also informs us that Romeo has a very bad feeling about the feast they are heading to, suggesting that the stars are so aligned that he fears his death is near. Star-crossed lovers indeed. Fate would seem to have a solid grasp of Romeo, and he has yet to even meet Juliet, which will occur in the very next scene, the last one of Act I. The Queen Mab speech by Mercutio is a much examined Shakespearean reflection. It begins as a child’s story about dreaming of little fairies seemingly but it turns dark and sexual, and in the end Queen Man teaches maids to have sex. Romeo stops Mercutio by telling him that he speaks of nothing. Mercutio admits that dreams are the children of an idle brain. He thinks differently than anyone else in this play. Romeo may be the genuine romantic and Tybalt will be the volatile man of honour, but Mercutio stands outside the bounds of accepted social norms. He is a genuine free thinker and mocks all convention. In some ways this is his play until Shakespeare kills him off in Act III. Only after that does the play descend into its horrors. The inter-relationships between the various superbly written characters in Romeo and Juliet are crucial to how the drama unfolds. Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Tybalt, Juliet’s parents, the nurse and the friar dance an increasingly macabre dance, propelling the plot to its star-crossed inevitabilities. Romeo and Juliet represents a new inspired genius in William Shakespeare and it launches him straight into and through his greatest masterpieces in history, comedy and, perhaps above all, tragedy. Romeo and Juliet at times gets overlooked as a high school curriculum play about these two famous lovers when in fact it is a profoundly deep and lyrical examination of life, love, death, social convention and pain. As a thirty year high school teacher I still find it astounding that Romeo and Juliet is a staple in grade nine English. Just because Juliet is thirteen years old hardly means that today’s fourteen year olds can manage to engage the profundity and tragedy of such searingly lyrical poetry and verse. No wonder so many teens graduate from high school with a deep disdain for the works of William Shakespeare. Now on to the very first encounter between the play’s very namesakes.

Act I

Scene v

The Capulet house

Enter the maskers and Old Capulet to welcome them

Capulet: “Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies who have their toes unplagued by corns will have a bout with you.”

Romeo: (to a servant) “What lady is that which does enrich the hand of yonder knight?”

Servant: “I know not, sir.”

Romeo: “O, She doth teach the torches to burn bright. She hangs upon the cheek of night as a rich jewel – beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight; for I never saw true beauty till his night.“

Tybalt: “This, by his voice, should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier, boy. To strike him dead I hold it not a sin. Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe; a villain who has come to scorn our solemnity this night.”

Capulet: “Young Romeo, is it?”

Tybalt: “Tis he, that villain Romeo.”

Capulet: “Verona brags of him to be a virtuous and well-governed youth. I would not for the wealth of all this town here in my house do him disparagement.”

Tybalt: “I’ll not endure him.”

Capulet: “He shall be endured. I say he shall. Am I the master here or you?”

Tybalt: “Why uncle, ’tis a shame.”

Capulet: “You are a saucy boy. Be quiet or I will make you quiet.”

Romeo: (to Juliet) “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, for saints have hands that pilgrim’s 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. Thus from my lips by thine my sin is purged.” (he kisses her)

Juliet: “Then have my lips the sin that thy have took.”

Romeo: “Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.” (he kisses her)

Juliet: “You kiss by the book.“

Nurse: “Madam, your mother craves a word with you.”

Romeo: “Who is her mother?”

Nurse: “Her mother is the lady of the house, wise and virtuous. I nursed her daughter, whom you talked withal.”

Romeo: “Is she a Capulet? O dear account! My life is my foe’s debt.”

Benvolio: “Away, be gone; the sport is at the best.”

Romeo: “Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.”

Capulet: “Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone. We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.”

Exit all but Juliet and her nurse

Juliet: “Come hither, nurse. Who is yonder gentleman? Go ask his name. If he be married, my grave is likely to be my wedding bed.”

Nurse: “His name is Romeo, and a Montague; the only son of your great enemy.”

Juliet: “My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late. Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed enemy.”

Nurse: “What’s this? What’s this?”

Juliet: “A rhyme I learned even now of one I dance withal.”

Nurse: “Come, let’s away; the strangers are all gone.”

Analysis

Shakespeare makes us wait for it, but alas, Romeo and Juliet have met and are instantly smitten. Who was Rosaline anyway? The exquisite language of youthful love fills their initial encounter. Romeo compares Juliet to a saint, which borders on blasphemy in Shakespeare’s Protestant England. Their fate that was forecasted in the prologue is evident when Tybalt notices Romeo and immediately calls for his sword. Tybalt’s unquenchable rage has been ignited by seeing Romeo Montague in Capulet’s house and this rage will soon erupt on the streets of Verona in a bloody act which will have a domino effect of tragedy on the entirety of the remaining play. Romeo and Juliet are both entirely aware of the blood feud between the Capulets and the Montagues but they are blinded by this instantaneous devotion to one another. Their age will bring them up against their elders, their surnames will bring them up against Tybalt and their compromised love will bring them up against the laws of Verona itself. But let’s first give them this Act II love story and the precious little time they will share together before their romance is swallowed up by this Act III-V tragedy.

Act II

Prologue: Enter Chorus

Now Romeo is beloved, and loves again, alike bewitched by the charm of looks; being held a foe, he may not have access to breathe such vows as lovers use to swear; and she as much in love, her means much less to meet her new beloved anywhere. But passion lends them power, time means, to meet, tempering extremities with extreme sweet.”

Analysis

This prologue establishes that Romeo and Juliet are indeed in love, that they are opposed in their love by being foes to one another’s family and that, hopefully, their passion and time might temper the odds against them. But we cannot forget the play’s foreboding and prophetic opening prologue. We could say that their passion might buy them some precious time before their love is truly star-crossed.

Act II (6 scenes)

Scene i

Near a wall of Capulet’s orchard

Enter Romeo

Romeo: “Can I go forward when my heart is here?” (he climbs the wall and leaps down within it)

Enter Benvolio and Mercutio

Benvolio: “Romeo! My cousin. Romeo! Romeo!”

Mercutio: “He is wise, and, on my life, hath stolen him home to bed.”

Benvolio: “He ran this way, and leapt this orchard wall. Call, good Mercutio.”

Mercutio: “Romeo! Madman! Passion! Lover! Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh. I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes, her scarlet lips and quivering thigh, that in thy likeness thou appear to us.”

Benvolio: “If he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.”

Mercutio: “This cannot anger him. I conjure only to raise him up.”

Benvolio: “Come, he hath hid himself among these trees to be consorted with the humorous night: blind is his love, and best befits the dark.“

Mercutio: “If love be blind, then love cannot hit the mark. Romeo, good night. I’ll go to my truckle bed; come, shall we go?”

Benvolio: “Go, then; for ’tis in vain to seek him here who means not to be found.”

Analysis

Romeo leaps the orchard wall and enters the property of the Capulets. This is dangerous business and a set up for perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous scene ever, the balcony scene with Juliet. His friends seem unaware, although they too were at the Capulet feast, that Romeo has already forgotten Rosaline and is very much in love with Juliet Capulet. They merely believe he has found a hidden place to consort with the night in his melancholic state. To this they leave him be. But we know better where he has gone. There is a balcony off of Juliet’s bedroom… a very famous balcony made famous precisely by this next scene.

Act II

Scene ii

The Capulet orchard

Enter Romeo in the orchard and Juliet on her balcony

Romeo: “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. It is my lady; O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eyes discourse; I will answer it. I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks. Her eyes stream so bright that birds would sing, and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!“

Juliet: “Ay, me!”

Romeo: “She speaks. O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art as glorious to this night, being over my head, as is a winged messenger from heaven unto the white-upturned wondering eyes of mortals who fall back to gaze on him, when he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air.”

Juliet: “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 I’ll no longer be a Capulet.“

Romeo: (aside) “Shall I hear more, or shall I speak to this?”

Juliet: “‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; what’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, not arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo called. Romeo, doff thy name; and for thy name, which is no part of thee, take all of myself.”

Romeo: “I take thee at thy word: call me but love, and I’ll be newly baptized; henceforth I never will be Romeo.”

Juliet: “What man art thou, that, thus bescreened in night, so stumbles on my counsel?”

Romeo: “By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am: my name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to thee; had I it written, I would tear the word.”

Juliet: “My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound: art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?”

Romeo: “Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.”

Juliet: “How came 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 love’s light wings did I over-perch 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. I would not for the world they saw you here.”

Romeo: “I have night’s 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 prorogued wanting of thy love.”

Juliet: “By whose direction found thou out this place?”

Romeo: “By love, that first did prompt me to enquire; he lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes. I am no pilot; yet, were thou as fair as that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, I should adventure.”

Juliet: “Dost thou love me? I know thou will say ay, and I will take thy word; yet, if thou swear’st, thou may prove false; at lover’s perjuries they say Jove laughs. O, gentle Romeo, if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully. In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond; but trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true than those who have more cunning. Thou overheard my true love’s passion.”

Romeo: “Lady, by yonder blessed moon I vow.”

Juliet: “O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest thy love prove likewise variable.”

Romeo: “What shall I swear by?”

Juliet: “Do not swear at all; or, if thou will, swear by thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry, and I’ll believe thee. Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract tonight: it is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; sweet, good night! This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, may prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Good night, good night! As sweet repose and rest come to thy heart as that within my breast!”

Romeo: “O, will thou leave me so unsatisfied?”

Juliet: “What satisfaction can thou have tonight?”

Romeo: “The exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.”

Juliet: “I gave thee mine before thou did request it; and yet I would it were to give again. 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 nurse calls from within

Juliet: “Anon, good nurse! Sweet Montague, be true. Stay but a little, I will come again.”

Exit Juliet

Romeo: “O blessed, blessed night! I am afeared, being in night, all this is but a dream too flattering-sweet to be substantial.“

Re-enter Juliet above

Juliet: “If that thy bent of love be honourable, thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow, by one that I will procure to come to thee, where and what time thou will perform the rite; and all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay, and follow thee, my lord, throughout the world.”

Nurse: “Madam!”

Juliet: “I come anon – but if thou meanest not well, I do beseech thee”

Nurse: “Madam!”

Juliet: “By and by, I come – to cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief. Tomorrow will I send.”

Romeo: “So thrive my soul.”

Juliet: “A thousand times good night.”

Exit Juliet

Romeo: “A thousand times the worse, to want thy light.”

Re-enter Juliet

Juliet: “Romeo!”

Romeo: “It is my soul that calls upon my name. How silver-sweet sound lover’s tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears!”

Juliet: “Romeo!”

Romeo: “My dear?”

Juliet: “At what o’clock tomorrow shall I send to thee?”

Romeo: “By the hour of nine.”

Juliet: “I will not fail. ‘Tis twenty years till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back.”

Romeo: “Let me stand here till thou remembers.”

Juliet: “I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, remembering how I love thy company.”

Romeo: “And I’ll stay, to have thee still forget.”

Juliet: “‘Tis almost morning: I would have thee gone; and yet no farther than a wanton bird, that let’s it hop a little from her hand, and with a silk thread plucks it back again, so loving-jealous of his liberty.”

Romeo: “I would I were thy bird.”

Juliet: “Sweet, so would I. Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

Exit Juliet

Romeo: “Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! Hence will I to my ghostly father’s cell, his help to crave and my dear hap to tell.”

Analysis

Act II, Scene ii is the scene of the play for most people. Romeo and Juliet meet and their language of love is incomparable and unprecedented, even still. This famous ‘balcony scene’ establishes the greatest and most familiar love story in world literature. They are so young and vulnerable, yet made resolute by their discovery of one another through a language never before expressed. Famous and exquisitely beautiful lines abound: ‘What light through yonder window breaks’, ‘O that I were a glove on that hand…’, ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo’, ‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’, ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow’. Shakespeare’s evocative writing brings both Romeo and Juliet alive right off the page. It is a delightful scene of young love in a play that must soon turn tragic. Just as Act I prepares us for this love story in Act II, so does Act II prepare us for the immense tragedy that Act III initiates. The entire play takes place in just four days. We have just experienced day one. There are countless references to day and night, moon and sun throughout the play. Romeo refers to Juliet as the sun, as she can turn night into day. Juliet will not permit Romeo to swear by the moon, ‘the inconstant moon’, which changes shape every night. Neither can bear to think of the other as members of their enemy family: ‘O, be some other name’, she pleads. ‘Romeo, Doff thy name, and for thy name, take all of myself’. ‘Art thou not Romeo and a Montague’, Juliet asks. Romeo assures her, ‘Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike’. They know what they are up against: “If my kinsmen see you, they will murder you.’ And she is only thirteen years old, he not much older. In the privacy of this scene their love is triumphant. But tomorrow the social context is added to the mix, as we know that both houses are sworn enemies and that Tibalt is already looking for Romeo because he attended the Capulet feast hours earlier. Enjoy the remainder of the Act II love story before it takes a hard turn at the outset of Act III.

Act II

Scene iii

Friar Lawrence’s cell

Enter Friar Lawrence and Romeo

Romeo: “Good morrow, father!”

Friar Lawrence: “What early tongue so sweet salutes me. Young son, it argues a distempered head so soon to bid good morrow to thy bed. And where care lodges sleep will never lie; but where unbruised youth with unstuffed brain doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign. Therefore thy earliness doth me assure thou art aroused with some distempered nature. Was thou with Rosaline?”

Romeo: “With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No; I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe.”

Friar Lawrence: ‘But where hast thou been then?”

Romeo: “I have been feasting with mine enemy; where, on a sudden, one hath wounded me that’s by me wounded; both our remedies within thy help and holy physic lies.”

Friar Lawrence: “Be plain, good son. Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.”

Romeo: “Then plainly know my heart’s dear love is set on the fair daughter of rich Capulet. As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine. And all combined by holy marriage. We met, we woo’d, and made exchange of vows. This I pray, that thou consent to marry us today.”

Friar Lawrence: “Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here! Is Rosaline, that thou did love so dear, so soon forsaken? Young men’s love, then, lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit of an old tear that is not washed off yet. These woes were all for Rosaline. And art thou changed?”

Romeo: “I pray thee, chide me not; her I love now doth grace for grace and love for love allow; the other did not so.”

Friar Lawrence: “Come, young waverer, go with me, in one respect I’ll thy assistant be; to turn your households’ rancour to pure love.”

Romeo: “O let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.”

Friar Lawrence: “Wisely and slow; they stumble who run fast.”

Analysis

Friar Lawrence is surprised how early Romeo arrives to see him and is pretty shocked that Romeo has traded in Rosaline for someone new, who he immediately asks the Friar to marry him to. But he is encouraged that the marriage of Romeo and Juliet might go a long way to patching up the hatred between the two warring families. The Friar has only the purest of intentions but will bungle the arrangement in such a way that will lead directly to both their deaths. That is where we are headed. Romeo will be trapped between the two world’s he traverses: that of his private love for Juliet, which we just witnessed in the balcony scene, and his public status as a friend to cynical and mercurial Mercutio and the reality of his being a Montague. Now on to the social and familial Romeo in scene iv.

Act II

Scene iv

A street in Verona

Enter Benvolio and Mercutio

Mercutio: “Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home tonight?”

Benvolio: “Not to his father’s.”

Mercutio: “Why, that same pale-hearted wench, that Rosaline, torments him so he will sure run mad.”

Benvolio: “Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, hath sent a letter to his father’s house. He will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared.”

Mercutio: “Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead: stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; run through the ear with a loving song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft. And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?”

Benvolio: “Why, what is Tybalt?”

Mercutio: “More than Prince of Cats. He fights as you sing; the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a very good blade, a very good whore.”

Enter Romeo

Benvolio: “Here comes Romeo.”

Mercutio: “You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.”

Romeo: “Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?”

Mercutio: “The slip, sir, the slip.”

Romeo: “Pardon, good Mercutio; my business was great.”

Mercutio: “If our wits run the wild goose chase, I am done; for thou has more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five.”

Romeo: “Thou was never with me for anything when thou was not there for the goose.”

Mercutio: “I will bite thee on the ear for that jest.”

Romeo: “Nay, good goose, bite not.”

Mercutio: “Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.”

Romeo: “And is it not then well served to a sweet goose?”

Mercutio: “O, here’s a wit that stretches from an inch narrow to a yard broad!”

Romeo: “I stretch it out for that word ‘broad’, which, added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.”

Mercutio: “Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo. This drivelling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his toy in a hole.”

Enter the nurse and her man, Peter

Nurse: “Peter!”

Peter: “Anon.”

Nurse: “My fan, Peter.”

Mercutio: “Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan’s the fairer face.”

Nurse: “Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo?”

Romeo: “I am the youngest of that name.”

Nurse: “If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you.”

Mercutio: “A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! Farewell, ancient lady, farewell.”

Exit Mercutio and Benvolio

Nurse: “Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word; my young lady bid me enquire you out; but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her in a fool’s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour; for the gentlewoman is young; and therefore if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.”

Romeo: “Nurse, commend me to the lady.”

Nurse: “Lord, lord! She will be a joyful woman.”

Romeo: “Bid her devise some means to come to shrift this afternoon; and there she shall at Friar Lawrence’ cell by shrived and married.”

Nurse: “Well, she shall be there.”

Romeo: “Stay, good nurse – bring thee cords made like a tackled stair; which to the high top-gallant of my joy must be my convoy in the secret night. Commend me to thy mistress.”

Nurse: “Now God in heaven bless thee! My mistress is the sweetest lady – Lord, Lord! O, there is a nobleman in town, one Paris; but she, good soul, had as lief see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the more proper man.”

Romeo: “Commend me to thy lady.”

Nurse: “Ay, a thousand times.”

Analysis

We see Romeo with his friends and learn what a keen wit he has in his banter with Mercutio, who loves this Romeo more so than the love-sick young man he also is. “Why is this (punning) not better than groaning for love. Now art thou Romeo.” Juliet and Mercutio know two very different Romeos and they will come to cross-purposes in the scenes and act to come. Juliet has sent the nurse to see Romeo and it is agreed that they will be married by Friar Lawrence this very afternoon, having just met yesterday.

Act II

Scene v

Capulet’s orchard

Enter Juliet

Juliet: “The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse; in half an hour she promised to return. O, she is lame! And from nine till twelve is three long hours, yet she is not come.”

Enter the nurse

Juliet: “O God, she comes! Now, good sweet nurse, why look thou sad?”

Nurse: “I am weary, give me leave a while; fie, how my bones ache.”

Juliet: “I would thou had my bones, and I thy news. I pray thee speak.”

Nurse: “Jesu, what haste? Do you not see I am out of breath?”

Juliet: “How art thou out of breath, when thou has breath to say to me that thou art out of breath? The excuse that thou does make in this delay is longer than the tale thou does excuse. Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that.”

Nurse: “You know not how to choose a man. Romeo! No, not he; though his face be better than any man’s, yet his leg excels all men’s. He is not the flower of courtesy, but I’ll warrant him as gentle as a lamb.”

Juliet: “What says he of our marriage? What of that?

Nurse: “Lord, how my head aches! Ah, my back, my back! Beshrew your heart for sending me about.”

Juliet: “I am sorry that thou art not well. Tell me, what says my love? What says Romeo?”

Nurse: “Hie you hence to Friar Lawrence’ cell; there stays a husband to make you a wife.”

Juliet: “Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell.”

Analysis

Act II is magical, with the innocence and vitality of young love, pure and simple. Scene iii is a very touching scene of Juliet waiting to hear from her nurse what Romeo had to say to her. It is also quite comic and dear as the nurse is achy, tired and out of breath from her walk to meet Romeo and must wait to inform Juliet of their encounter until she has her energy restored, which makes Juliet excitedly impatient for the news. Finally, at the very end of the scene the nurse informs her that she will be married to Romeo today at Friar Lawrence’ cell, again, at age 13 and having met just yesterday. It won’t be the least bit funny the next time the nurse withholds news from Juliet, once things turn tragic.

Act II

Scene vi

Friar Lawrence’ cell

Enter Friar Lawrence and Romeo

Friar Lawrence: “So smile the heavens upon this holy act.”

Romeo: “Amen, amen! But 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.”

Friar Lawrence: “These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die; like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore, love moderately and love long; too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.“

Enter Juliet

Juliet: “Good even to my ghostly confessor.”

Romeo: “Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy be heaped like mine, then sweeten with thy breath this neighbouring air, and let rich music’s tongue unfold the imagined happiness of this dear encounter.”

Juliet: “My true love is grown to such excess I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.”

Friar Lawrence: “Come, come with me, and we will make short work till holy church incorporate two into one.”

Analysis

This is the final scene of Act II and there are some disturbing foreshadowings afoot. Friar Lawrence says straight up that ‘these violent delights have violent ends’ and warns Romeo to ‘love moderately’, which is the one things these two lovers seem incapable of doing. We all know that this is a tragedy and the opening prologue informed us of the tragic ending awaiting both lovers, so here is one final reminder before the tragedy truly commences next. Romeo himself states, now that he is about to marry Juliet, ‘come what sorrow can’ and ‘do but close our hands with holy words, then love devouring death may do what he dares.’ Perhaps this is why they rush into this union with such unabated enthusiasm. They are aware of the totality of their situation as a Capulet and a Montague in Verona at this time. Let the tragedy begin…

Act III (5 scenes)

Scene I

A public place

Enter Mercutio and Benvolio

Benvolio: “I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire. The day is hot and the Capulets are abroad, and if we meet we shall not escape a brawl. For now, in these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.”

Mercutio: “Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy.; and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved.”

Benvolio: “And what to?”

Mercutio: “Thou! Why thou will quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou has. Thou will quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou has hazel eyes. Thy head is full of quarrels. Thou has quarrelled with a man for coughing in the streets. And yet thou will tutor me from quarrelling!”

Benvolio: “I were so apt to quarrel as thou art.”

Enter Tybalt

Benvolio: “By my head, here come the Capulets.”

Mercutio: “By my heels, I care not.”

Tybalt: “Gentlemen, good den; a word with one of you.”

Mercutio: “Couple it with something else; make it a word and a blow.”

Tybalt: “You shall find me apt enough for that, sir. Mercutio, thou consortist with Romeo.”

Benvolio: “Reason coldly your grievances, or else depart.”

Mercutio: “I will not budge for no man’s pleasure.”

Enter Romeo

Tybalt: “Well, peace be with you, sir. Here comes my man. (to Romeo) Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford no better term than this: thou art a villain.”

Romeo: “Tibalt, 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 knows me not.”

Tybalt: “Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries that thou has done me; therefore turn and draw.”

Romeo: “I do protest I have never injured thee, but love thee better than thou can devise till thou shall know the reason of my love; And so, good Capulet – which name I tender as dearly as my own – be satisfied.”

Mercutio: “O calm, dishonourable, vile submission! Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?”

Tybalt: “What would thou have with me?”

Mercutio: “Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives; that I mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me thereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight.”

Tybalt: “I am for you.” (he draws his sword)

Mercutio: “Come, sir.” (they fight)

Romeo: “Draw Benvolio and beat down their weapons. Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage! Tybalt! Mercutio! The Prince expressly hath forbid this bandying in Verona streets. Hold. Tybalt! Good Mercutio!”

Tybalt goes under Romeo’s arm and thrusts his sword into Mercutio and then flees with his friends

Mercutio: “I am hurt. A plague on both your houses.“

Benvolio: “What, art thou hurt?”

Mercutio: “Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, ’tis enough. Fetch a surgeon.”

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 on both your houses! Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.”

Romeo: “I thought all for the best.”

Mercutio: “Help me, Benvolio, or I shall faint. A plague on both your houses! They have made worm’s meat of me.”

Exit Mercutio and Benvolio

Romeo:”My very friend, has got this mortal hurt on my behalf; my reputation stained with Tybalt’s slander – Tybalt, that an hour hath been my cousin. O sweet Juliet, thy beauty hath made me effeminate, and in my temper softened valour’s steel.”

Re-ener Benvolio

Benvolio: “O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio is dead! This day’s black fate on more days doth depend; this but begins the woe others must end.”

Re-enter Tybalt

Benvolio: “Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.”

Romeo: “Alive in triumph and Mercutio slain. Fire-eyed fury be my conduct now! Now, Tybalt, Mercutio’s 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.”

Tybalt: “Thou, wretched boy, that did consort him here, shalt with him hence.”

Romeo: “This shall determine that.”

They fight and Tybalt falls

Benvolio: “Romeo, away, be gone. The citizens are up and Tybalt is slain. Stand not amazed. The Prince will doom thee death if thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away.”

Romeo: “O, I am fortune’s fool!”

Exit Romeo

Enter many citizens, the Prince, Monague, Capulet and their wives

Prince: “Where are the vile beginnings of this fray?”

Benvolio: “O, noble Prince, there lies the man, slain by young Romeo, that slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.”

Lady Capulet: “Tybalt, my cousin! Prince, as thou art true, for blood of ours shed blood of Montague.”

Prince: “Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?”

Benvolio: “Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo’s hand did slay; Romeo, that spoke him fair and urged withal your high displeasure. All this, uttered with gentle breath, could not take truce with the unruly spleen of Tybalt, deaf to peace, but that he tilts with piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast; who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point. Romeo cried aloud ‘hold friends, part’, and swifter than his tongue, his agile arm beat down their fatal points and twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm an envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life of stout Mercutio; and then Tybalt fled; but by and by comes back to Romeo, who had but newly entertained revenge, and to it they go like lightning; for ere I could draw to part them was stout Tybalt slain; and as he fell did Romeo turn and fly. This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.”

Lady Capulrt: “He is a kinsman to the Montague. Affection makes him false; he speaks not true. I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give: Romeo slew Tybalt; Romeo must not live.”

Prince: “For the life of Tybalt, immediately do we exile Romeo hence. I will be deaf to pleading and excuses. Let Romeo hence in haste, else when he is found that hour is his last.”

Analysis

So much for the innocence of young love. An hour after Romeo and Juliet are wed, the play takes its major turn toward tragedy in the two fatal street brawls in which Tybalt kills Mercutio and Romeo kills Tybalt. The family feud has essentially destroyed the romance, as Lady Capulet insists on the life of Romeo. The Prince hears Benvolio’s detailed account of Tybalt’s aggression in the conflict and determines that Romeo be banished from Verona. Among Mercutio’s final words is ‘a plague on both your houses’, whereas Romeo’s final words in the scene are ‘I am fortune’s fool’, as he kills his new cousin and gets himself banished from Verona and Juliet Capulet. He may blame fortune, but his friend, Mercutio, lays responsibility at the feet of both the houses of the Montgues and the Capulets. Romeo is both the man who loves Juliet as well as the man who kills Tybalt. His love is now opposed by the Capulets more than ever and the very state itself. It already seems a long way back to that balcony scene.

Act III

Scene ii

Capulet’s orchard

Enter Juliet

Juliet: “Bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, that Romeo may leap into these arms, untacked of and unseen. If love be blind, it best agrees with night. Come, civil night, played for a pair of stainless maidenheads; hood my unmanned blood, till strange love, grown bold, think true love acted like simple modesty. Come, night; come, Romeo; come thou day in night; come, gentle 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. O, I have bought the mansion of a love, but not possessed it; and though I am sold, not yet enjoyed. So tedious is this day as is the night before some festival to an impatient child who hath new robes, and may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse.”

Enter nurse

Juliet: “What news? Why dost thou wring thy hands?”

Nurse: “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead. We are undone, lady, we are undone. O Romeo, Romeo! Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!”

Juliet: “What devil art thou that torments me thus? This torture should be roared in distant hell. Hath Romeo slain himself? If he be slain, say ‘I’; or if not, ‘no’.”

Nurse: “I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, here on his manly breast, all in gore-blood. I swooned at the sight.”

Juliet: “O, break, my heart!”

Nurse: “O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had! O courteous Tybalt! O honest gentleman! That ever I should live to see thee dead.”

Juliet: “What storm is this that blows so contrary? Is Romeo slaughtered, and is Tybalt dead? My dearest cousin and my dearer lord? Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom; for who are living if those two are gone?”

Nurse: “Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished; Romeo who killed him, he is banished.”

Juliet: “O God! Did Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood?“

Nurse: “It did, it did; alas the day, it did!”

Juliet: “O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven! Wolfish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seemed, a damned saint, an honourable villain! O nature, what had thou to do in hell when thou did bower the spirit of a fiend in mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever a book containing such vile matter so fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace!“

Nurse: “There’s no trust, no faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, all forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. These griefs, these woes, these sorrows, make me old. Shame come to Romeo!”

Juliet: “Blistered be thy tongue for such a wish! He was not born to shame. O, what a beast was I to chide at him!”

Nurse: “Will you speak well of him who killed your cousin?“

Juliet: “Shall I speak ill of him who is my husband? Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, when I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? But wherefore, villain, did thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have killed my husband. My husband lives who Tybalt would have slain, and Tybalt’s dead who would have slain my husband. All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then? Tybalt is dead and Romeo banished. That ‘banished’, that one word ‘banished’, has slain ten-thousand Tybalt’s. Tybalt’s death was woe enough, if it had ended there; but, with a rear-ward following Tybalt’s death, Romeo is banished – to speak that word is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, all slain, all dead. ‘Romeo is banished’ – there is no end, no limit, measure, bound, in that word’s death. Where are my mother and father, nurse?”

Nurse: “Weeping and wailing over Tybalt’s corpse.”

Juliet: “Wash they his wounds with tears! Mine shall be spent, when theirs are dry, for Romeo’s banishment. I, a maid, die maiden-widowed. I’ll to my wedding bed; and death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!”

Nurse: “Hie to you chamber; I’ll find Romeo to comfort you. He is hid at Lawrence’ cell.”

Juliet: “O, find him! Give this ring to my true knight, and bid him come to take his last farewell.”

Analysis

They are now both fully aware of their mutual plight. Romeo has fled to Friar Lawrence’ cell as the nurse, once again, with agonizing slowness, brings the horrible news to Juliet. At first Juliet is highly critical of Romeo for killing Tybalt, but she recovers and speaks lovingly again of her banished husband. They are in trouble deep. Juliet’s parents are mourning Tybalt’s death and have no idea about Juliet’s relationship to Romeo, let alone that their 13 year old daughter was married to him this afternoon, having met him at last night’s Capulet feast. But the nurse will find Romeo so that the young couple might share a last farewell before banishment. Here, the nurse is Juliet’s sole support, as Friar Lawrence is to Romeo. Best intentions aside, both supporters will be vehicles that will catapult the story toward catastrophe. In Shakespeare’s tragedies, there is always a point reached where there is no recovery possible. There are some events so devastating that not even Shakespeare can resurrect a romance or a comedy from the jaws of such tragedy. That point has been reached here. Note the many references to suicide, on behalf of both lovers, foreshadowing what we already know is inevitable.

Act III

Scene iii

Friar Lawrence’ cell

Enter Friar Lawrence

Friar Lawrence: “Romeo, come forth, thou fearful man; affliction is enamoured of thy parts and thou art wedded to calamity.“

Enter Romeo

Romeo: “Father, what news? What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand that I yet know not?”

Friar Lawrence: “I bring thee tidings of the Prince’s doom. Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.”

Romeo: “Ha, banishment! Be merciful and say ‘death’, for exile hath more terror in his look, much more than death. Do not say ‘banishment’.”

Friar Lawrence: “Here from Verona art thou banished. Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.”

Romeo: “There is no world without Verona walls, but purgatory, torture and hell itself. Hence banished is banished from the world, and world’s exile is death. Then banish is death mis-termed.”

Friar Lawrence: “O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness! Thy fault our laws call death; but the kind Prince, taking thy side, turned that black word death to banishment. This is dear mercy, and thou sees it not.”

Romeo: “‘Tis torture and not mercy, heaven is here where Juliet lives. Has thou no poison mixed, no sudden means of death? Banished? O friar, the damned use that word in hell; howling attends it; how has thou the heart, being a divine, a ghostly confessor, a sin-absolver, and my friend professed, to mangle me with that word ‘banished'”?

Friar Lawrence: “Thou fond mad man, hear me a little speak.”

Romeo: “O, will thou speak again of banishment?”

Friar Lawrence: “I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word, adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy, to comfort thee, though thou art banished.”

Romeo: “Yet ‘banished’? Hang up philosophy, unless philosophy can make a Juliet, displant a town, reverse a Prince’s doom; it helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more.”

Friar Lawrence: “O, then I see that madmen have no ears.”

Romeo: “How should they, when wise men have no eyes? Thou cannot speak of that thou does not feel. Were thy as young as I, Juliet thy love, an hour but married, Tybalt murdered, and me banished, then might thou speak, then might thou tear thy hair and fall upon the ground, as I do now, taking the measure of an unmade grave.“

Knocking within

Friar Lawrence: “Arise; one knocks. Romeo, hide thyself. Who’s there? Romeo, run to my study. I come, I come.”

More knocking

Friar Lawrence: “Who knocks so hard? What is your will?”

Nurse: “Let me in and you shall know my errand; I come from Lady Juliet.”

Enter nurse

Friar Lawrence: “Welcome, then.”

Nurse: “O holy friar; where’s my lady’s lord, where’s Romeo?”

Friar Lawrence: “There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk. O, woeful sympathy! Piteous predicament!”

Nurse: “Even so she lies, blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. Stand up, stand up, and be a man, for Juliet’s sake.”

Romeo: “How is it with Juliet? Does not she think me a murderer, now that I have stained the childhood of our joy with blood removed but little from her own.”

Nurse: “She says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps.”

Romeo: “O, tell me, friar, in what vile part of this anatomy does my name lodge? Tell me that I might sack the hateful mansion.” (drawing his sword)

Friar Lawrence: “Hold thy desperate hand. Art thou a man? Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote the unreasonable fury of a beast. Unseeming woman in a seeming man! An ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! Thou has amazed me. I thought thy disposition better tempered. Will thou slay thyself? And slay thy lady that in thy life lives? Fie, fie! Thou shames thy shape, thy love, thy wit; rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive. There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee, but thou slew Tybalt; there art thou happy too. The law, that threatened death, becomes thy friend, and turns it to exile; there art thou happy. A pack of blessings lights upon thy back; happiness courts, but like a misbehaved and sullen wench, thou pouts upon thy fortune and thy love. Take heed, for such die miserable. Go, get thee to thy love, ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her. Then to Mantua, where thou shall live until we can find a time to blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back with twenty thousand times more joy than thou went forth in lamentation. Go before, nurse, and bid hasten all the house to bed. Romeo is coming.”

Nurse: “My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come. Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you.”

Romeo: “How well my comfort is revived by this.”

Friar Lawrence: “Good night. By the break of day be disguised from hence to Mantua.”

Analysis

The dreaded word ‘banishment’ plays prominently in this scene. The friar insists that this is good fortune, as the Capulets asked the Prince for Romeo’s life. But banishment is a form of death for Romeo and Shakespeare makes a link between the disasters Romeo and Juliet face and their suicides. They both reference self-slaughter as a response to the absence of the other and as a preface to their actual Act V suicides. Neither wants to live without the other. Both the friar and the nurse, the grieving couple’s two agents in the tragic final three acts of the play, try to get Romeo to snap out of his extreme despair. They each ask him if he is indeed a man. The friar has a plan to whisk Romeo away to Mantua, until the intense storm of Tybalt’s death passes, when he might return someday to Verona. His suggestion that he spend this night with Juliet before departing early in the morning for Mantua, is, finally, a comfort to Romeo. It will be their last living moments together.

Act III

Scene iv

Capulet’s house

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet and Paris

Capulet: “Things have fallen out, sir. She loved her kinsman, Tybalt, dearly, and so did I.”

Paris: “These times of woe afford no time to woo.“

Capulet: “Wife, acquaint her here of my son Paris’ love. But soft, what day is this?”

Paris: “Monday, my lord.”

Capulet: “Thursday let it be. Tell her she shall be ready to marry this noble earl on Thursday. Do you like this haste, Paris? Will you be ready? What say you to Thursday?”

Paris: “My lord, I would that Thursday were tomorrow.”

Capulet: “Thursday be it then.”

Analysis

Juliet’s parents have no idea that their daughter is already married and that she is married, in fact, to Tybalt’s banished killer. Clearly Juliet took her own life into her hands in marrying a Montague, the enemy to her family. But her father obviously does not think Juliet has a say in who she marries. Her wedding is set for Thursday and she has not even been consulted. Perhaps Capulet wants to supplant the sorrow with some joy. Perhaps he wants Juliet to get over the death of her cousin, although that is not what she mourns. Perhaps Capulet believes these troubled time in Verona would be best endured if his daughter married a close kinsman to the Prince himself. Two days earlier he spoke of waiting two years before Juliet is old enough to marry. More likely, this is simply Renaissance Italy, where a father’s daughter is his property to do with as he so pleases.

Act III

Scene v

Juliet’s chamber

Enter Romeo and Juliet

Juliet: “Will thou be gone? It is not yet near day; it was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear. Believe me, my love, it was the nightingale.”

Romeo: “It was the lark, the herald of the morn. Night’s candles are burning out. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.”

Juliet: “Yonder light is not daylight; I know it, it is some meteor that the sun exhales to be to thee this night a torch-bearer, and light thee on thy way to Mantua. Therefore, stay yet.”

Romeo: “Let me be taken, let me be put to death; I am content. I have more care to stay than will to go. Come death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.”

Juliet: “It is the lark; hence, be gone away. More light and light grows.”

Enter nurse

Nurse: “Your mother is coming to your chamber. The day is broke; be wary.“

Juliet: “Then, window, let day in and let life out.“

Romeo: “Farewell, farewell! One kiss and I’ll descend.”

Romeo descends from the chamber

Juliet: “Art thou gone, love, lord, husband, friend? Think thou we shall ever meet again?”

Romeo: “I doubt it not.”

Juliet: “I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now that thou art below, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb.”

Exit Romeo

Enter Lady Capulet

Lady Capulet: “Why, how now, Juliet?”

Juliet: “Madam, I am not well.”

Lady Capulet: “Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death? Will thou wash him from his grave with tears? Therefore, have done. Some grief shows much of love; but much of grief shows still some want of wit.“

Juliet: “Yet let me weep.”

Lady Capulet: “Well, girl, thou weeps not so much for his deaths that the villain lives who slaughtered him.”

Juliet: “What villain, madam?”

Lady Capulet: “Romeo. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not and weep no more. I’ll send one to Mantua – where that same banished runagate doth live – and he shall give him such an unaccustomed dram that he shall soon keep Tybalt company; and then I hope thou will be satisfied. But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl. Early next Thursday morn, the gallant, young, and noble gentleman, Paris, shall happily make thee a joyful bride.”

Juliet: “Now, by St Peter, he shall not make me a joyful bride. I wonder at this haste. I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam, that I will not marry yet, and when I do, I swear it shall be to Romeo, whom you know I hate, rather than Paris.”

Lady Capulet: “Here comes your father; tell him so yourself, and see how he will take it.”

Enter Capulet and nurse

Capulet: “How now, girl? Still in tears? How now, wife? Have you delivered to her our decree?”

Lady Capulet: “Ay, sir, but she will have none of it. I would the fool were married to her grave.”

Capulet: “Does she not give us thanks? Does she not count herself blessed, unworthy as she is, that we have wrought so worthy a gentleman to be her groom? How, how, how how! What is this? Mistress minion, you, thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds. Thursday next , you go with Paris to St Peter’s Church, or I will drag thee on a hurdle hither. Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage! You tallow-face!”

Juliet: “Good father, I beseech you on my knees, hear me with patience but speak a word.”

Capulet: “Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wretch! I’ll tell thee what – get thee to church on Thursday, or never after look me in the face. Speak not, reply not, do not answer me. My wife, I see we have a curse in having her.”

Nurse: “God in heaven bless her! You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.”

Capulet: “Why, my lady wisdom? Hold your tongue. Peace, you mumbling fool! Utter your gravity over a gossip bowl, for here we need it not.”

Lady Capulet: “You are too hot.”

Capulet: “My care has been to have her matched; and having now provided a gentleman of noble parentage, youthful, stuffed with honourable parts, proportioned as one’s thought would wish a man, and then to have a wretched puling fool, a whining mammet to answer ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love, I am too young’. Look to it, think on it. Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise. Trust to it, bethink you, I’ll not be forsworn.”

Exit Capulet

Juliet: “Is there no pity sitting in the clouds that sees into the bottom of my grief? O, sweet mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage, or, if you do not, make the bridal bed in that dim monument where Tybalt lies.”

Lady Capulet: “Talk not to me. Do as thou will, for I have done with thee.”

Exit Lady Capulet

Juliet: “O God – O nurse! How shall this be prevented? My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven; how shall that faith return again to earth, unless that husband send it me from heaven by leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me, that heaven should practice stratagems upon so soft a subject as myself! What says thou? Some comfort, nurse!”

Nurse: “Faith, here it is. Romeo is banished. I think it best you married Paris, as he is a lovely gentleman! Romeo is a dishcloth to him. 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 dead, or there as good he were.”

Juliet: “Speak thou from thy heart?”

Nurse: “And from my soul too.”

Juliet: “Well, thou has comforted me marvellous much. Go and tell my lady I am gone, having displeased my father, to Prior Lawrence’ cell to make confession, and to be absolved.”

Nurse: “Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.”

Exit nurse

Juliet: “Ancient damnation. I’ll go to the friar to know his remedy; if all else fail, myself have power to die.”

Analysis

Romeo and Juliet spend their one married night together. Juliet tries to get him to linger longer by insisting the bird song is from the nightingale and not the morning lark. But they can no more alter time than they can change their last names or restructure the tragic events of Act III. Romeo leaves Juliet’s balcony as he did in the famous Act II balcony scene, only this time he is leaving for good. They will never again see one another alive. Juliet accurately foresees the future as she watches him depart: ‘Methinks I see thee, now as thou art below, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb.’ And what a time for Juliet’s mother to arrive to chide Juliet for her apparent grief for her cousin’s death. Lady Capulet insists that the Capulets will have vengeance on Romeo by way of a man they will send to Mantua to poison him. ‘And then I hope thou will be satisfied.’ Mother has no clue that the man who slew Tibalt is, in fact, Juliet’s husband. She next changes the topic toward ‘joyful tidings’ by informing Juliet that she will marry Paris on Thursday. Juliet lashes back at her mother that she will not marry Paris and Lady Capulet turns it over to the fury of her husband, telling him ‘I would the fool were married to her grave.’ Capulet says he will drag her to the church to be married if necessary and turns on her with a vengeance: ‘Hang thee, disobedient wretch… green-sickness carrion… baggage.’ After her father storms out Juliet appeals to her mother for mercy where there is none: “Do as you will, for I am done with thee.’ Even the nurse advises no course of action other than for Juliet to marry Paris, so Juliet deceives her into thinking, as she will her parents, that she will obediently marry Paris. Her only hope now rests with Friar Lawrence, who she goes to see, under the guise of repentance. ‘I’ll to the friar to know his remedy; if all else fails, myself hath the power to die.’ More foreshadowing.

Act III is the game changer. Scene i is the explosion of death, as Tybalt kills Mercutio and Romeo kills Tybalt, sealing their fates. Juliet learns of these tragic events and of Romeo’s banishment in scene ii. In scene iii the Friar peels sobbing Romeo off the ceiling and then sends him to Mantua until things calm down in Verona. Scene iv sees Juliet’s parents arrange with Paris his marriage to Juliet for later in the week and in scene v Romeo spends his one night with his wife, Juliet, before fleeing for his life to Mantua, immediately after which her parents inform her that she will marry Paris on Thursday. Where there was a love story there now only remains a tragedy.

Act IV (5 scenes)

Scene i

Friar Lawrence’ cell

Enter Friar Lawrence and Paris

Friar Lawrence: “On Thursday, sir? The time is very short.”

Paris: “Father Capulet will have it so.”

Friar Lawrence: “You say you do not know the lady’s mind; uneven is the course; I like it not.”

Paris: “Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt’s death, and therefore have I little talked of love, for Venus smiles not in a house of tears. Her father counts it dangerous that she do give her sorrow so much sway, and in his wisdom hastes our marriage, to stop the inundation of her tears. Now do you know the reason for this haste.”

Frir Lawrence: “Look, sir, here comes the lady.”

Enter Juliet

Paris: “Happily met, my lady and my wife!”

Juliet: “That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.”

Paris: “That may be must be, love, on Thursday.”

Juliet: “What must be shall be.”

Paris: “Come you to make confession to their father? Do not deny to him that you love me.”

Juliet: “I will confess to you that I love him.”

Paris: “I am sure that you love me. Poor soul, thy face is much abused with tears. Thy face is mine, and thou has slandered it.”

Friar Lawrence: “My lord, we must entreat this time alone.”

Paris: “God shield I should disturb devotion! Juliet, on Thursday early I will rouse ye.”

Exit Paris

Juliet: “O, shut the door, and when thou has done so, come weep with me – past hope, past cure, past help.“

Friar Lawrence: “O Juliet, I already know thy grief and it strains me past the compass of my wits. I hear thou must on Thursday be married to Paris.”

Juliet: “Tell me not, friar, that thou hears of this, unless thou tell me how I may prevent it; if, in thy wisdom, thou can give no help, with this knife I’ll help it presently. Therefore, give me some present counsel; or, behold, this bloody knife shall play the umpire. I long to die if what thou speaks speaks not of remedy.”

Friar Lawrence: “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 Paris, thou has the strength of will to slay thyself, then it is likely thou will undertake a thing like death to chide away this shame. If thou dares, I’ll 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, over-covered quite with dead men’s rattling bones, or bid me go into a new-made grave, and I will do it without fear or doubt, to live an unstained wife to my sweet love.“

Friar Lawrence: “Hold, then; go home, be marry, give consent to marry Paris. Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone; let not the nurse lie with thee in thy chamber. Take thou this vial and this distilled liquor drink; when presently through all thy veins shall run a cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse, no warmth, no breath, shall testify thou lives. Like death, each part shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death; and in this borrowed likeness of death thou shall continue for two and forty hours, and then awake as from a pleasant sleep. Now when the nurse in the morning comes to rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead. Then, thou shall be borne to that same ancient vault where all the kindreds of the Capulets lie. In the meantime, shall Romeo by my letters know our drift, and hither shall he come; and he and I will watch thy waking, and that very night shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua. And this shall free thee from this present shame, if no inconstant womanish fear abate thy valour in the acting it.”

Juliet: “Give me, give me! O, tell me not of fear!”

Friar Lawrence: “I’ll send a friar with speed to Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.”

Juliet: “Love give me strength! farewell, dear father.”

Analysis

How strange that when Juliet arrives to see Friar Lawrence, Paris is there, explaining why Capulet has arranged his hasty marriage to Juliet. Of course, the friar has married Romeo and Juliet, which Paris knows nothing about. He politely woos Juliet, insisting that she loves him and informing her that he will rouse her for the wedding on Thursday morning. Paris is guiltless. He asked Capulet for Juliet’s hand in marriage and received his blessing. He can only assume that Juliet is as excited as he is. But Juliet certainly does not love Paris and as soon as Paris leaves Friar Lawrence’ cell she informs the friar that unless he has a remedy in mind, she will use her ‘bloody knife’ to solve the problem with self slaughter. But of course the friar does have a remedy. Since she is prepared to kill herself then the friar assumes she would be willing to stage her own death and drink a vial of some curious distilled liquor, which will render her dead-like for forty-two hours, long enough to be buried by her family in the Capulet tomb. The friar will inform Romeo of the plan and they will enter the tomb just as she is awakening comfortably, as though from pleasant sleep. Sure sounds like a plan. What could go wrong? Well, Friar Lawrence is a friend to both Romeo and Juliet and certainly means them well and does all he can to help them navigate this nightmarish scenario they find themselves trapped in. He has secretly married them without their parent’s knowledge or consent, even though Juliet is but thirteen years old. He has Romeo shipped off to Mantua during his banishment and now he going to fake Juliet’s death in order to then allow Romeo and Juliet to slip away to Mantua together once she awakens forty-two hours later, after the family burial. It all might have worked, except again, the prologue foretold that these star-crossed lovers will take their lives. So despite the Friar’s well-intentioned meddling, fate would necessitate that he fail to save them. But at least throughout Act IV the Friar’s plan is enacted and sustained, all the while we know it cannot ultimately succeed, since Romeo and Juliet are fated to take their own lives, as they so often speak of doing throughout the play.

Act IV

Scene ii

Capulet house

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet and the nurse

Capulet: “What, is my daughter gone to Friar Lawrence?

Nurse: “Ay, forsooth.”

Capulet: “Well, he may chance to do some good on her. A peevish self-willed harlotry it is.”

Enter Juliet

Capulet: “How now, my headstrong!”

Juliet: “I have learned to repent the sin of disobedient opposition to you, and am enjoined by holy Lawrence to fall prostrate here, to beg your pardon. Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.”

Capulet: “Send for Paris and go tell him of this. I will have this knot knit up tomorrow morning.”

Juliet: “I met the youthful lord at Lawrence’ cell, and gave him what becomes love I might, not over-stepping the bounds of modesty.”

Capulet: “Why, I am glad. This is well – stand up- this is as it should be.”

Exit Juliet and the nurse

Capulet: “My heart is wondrous light since this same wayward girl is so reclaimed.”

Analysis

Juliet goes home and plays the part of the scheme that Friar Lawrence has devised. She makes peace with her father and seemingly accepts his plans to have her promptly married to Paris. Peace in the Capulet household has seemingly been restored.

Act IV

Scene iii

Juliet’s chamber

Enter Juliet and her nurse

Juliet: “Ay, gentle nurse, I pray thee, leave me to myself tonight. For I have need to move the heavens to smile upon my state, which well thou knows is cross and full of sin.”

Enter Lady Capulet

Lady Capulet: “Are you busy? Need you my help?”

Juliet: “No, madam; so please you, let me now be left alone and let the nurse sit up with you; for I am sure you have your hands full in this so sudden business.”

Lady Capulet: “Good night. Get thee to bed and rest; for thou hast need.”

Exit Lady Capulet and the nurse

Juliet: “Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. My dismal scene I must act alone. Come, vial. What if this mixture does not work at all? Shall I be married, then, tomorrow morning? No, no; this shall forbid it. Lie down there. (lays down her dagger). What if it be a poison that the friar subtly has ministered to have me dead, lest in this marriage he should be dishonoured, because he married me before to Romeo? How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo come to redeem me? There’s a fearful point. Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, and there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, and madly play with my forefathers’ joints, and pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud, and, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone, as with a club, dash out my desperate brains? O, look! Methinks I see my cousin’s ghost seeking out Romeo, who did split his body upon a rapier’s point. Stay, Tybalt, stay. Romeo, I come. This do I drink to thee.” (She drinks and falls upon her bed)

Analysis

Juliet ensures that her mother and her nurse leave her alone this night and then proceeds to consider her impending action, first doubting it, then concocting every conceivable reason for its demise, before finally consuming the vial and falling asleep and apparently dead. Obviously, Juliet is all in. She has grown up immensely in this play, displaying courage rare for a thirteen year old. She now anticipates waking up in forty-two hours to Friar Lawrence and her Romeo. Unfortunately, there is no plan B.

Act IV

Scene iv

Capulet house

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet and the nurse

Capulet: “Come, stir, stir, stir! The second cock hath crowed, the curfew bell hath rung; ’tis three o’clock.”

Nurse: “Go, get you to bed. You’ll be sick tomorrow for this night’s watching.”

Capulet: “No, not a whit! Paris will be here with music straight. I hear him near. Nurse, go waken Juliet and trim her up. I will go and chat with Paris. Make haste, make haste, I say.”

Analysis

The Capulets are up all night preparing for a tomorrow that will never be. The Capulet household is about to dramatically change its mood, as the nurse goes to awaken Juliet.

Act IV

Scene v

Juliet’s chamber

Enter the nurse

Nurse: “Mistress! Juliet! Lamb! Lady! Fie, you slug-a-bed! Why, love, I say! Madam! Sweetheart! What, not a word? Paris has set up his rest that you shall rest but little. God forgive me! How sound she is asleep! I must awake her. Madam! Madam! Madam! Lady! Lady! Lady! Alas! Alas! Help! Help! My lady’s dead! My lord! my lady!”

Enter Lady Capulet

Lady Capulet: “What noise is here?”

Nurse: “O, lamentable day! Look! Look! O, heavy day!”

Lady Capulet: “O me! O me! My child, my only life. Revive, look up, or I will die with thee! Help! Help! Call help!”

Enter Capulet

Capulet: “For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord has come.”

Nurse: “She is dead, deceased.”

Lady Capulet: “Alack the day. She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!”

Capulet: “Let me see her. Alas, she is cold. Her blood is settled and her joints are stiff. Life and these lips have long been separated.”

Nurse: “O lamentable day!”

Lady Capulet: “O, woeful time.”

Enter Friar Lawrence, Paris and musicians

Friar Lawrence: “Come, is the bride ready to go to church?”

Capulet: “Ready to go, but never to return. O son, the night before thy wedding day hath death lain with thy wife. There she lies. Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir; my daughter he hath wedded; I will die. All is death’s.”

Paris: “Have I thought long to see this morning’s face, and doth it give me such a sight as this?”

Lady Capulet: “Accursed, unhappy, wretched, hateful day! Most miserable hour that ever time saw in lasting labour of his pilgrimage!”

Nurse: “O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day that ever, ever I did behold! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this.”

Paris: “Most detestable death, by thee beguiled. Love! O life!”

Capulet: “Uncomfortable time, why came thou now to murder our solemnity? O child! Dead art thou; Alack, my child is dead, and with my child my joys are buried.”

Friar Lawrence: “Peace, for shame! Confusion’s cure lives not in these confusions. Heaven and yourself had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all, and all the better is it for the maid; your part in her you could not keep from death, but heaven keeps his part in eternal life. Weep ye now, seeing she is advanced above the clouds, as high as heaven itself? Dry up your tears.”

Capulet: “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. All things change to the contrary.”

Friar Lawrence: “Everyone prepare to follow this fair body unto her grave.”

Exit all but the nurse and the musicians

Musician: “Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone.”

Enter Peter

Peter: “Musicians, play ‘Hearts Ease’ because my heart itself plays ‘my heart is full of woe’.”

Musician: “This is no time to play now.”

Analysis

This is not just a tragedy for Romeo and Juliet, as Mercutio and Tybalt have also lost their lives, affecting both the Montague’s and the Capulets and disrupting the entire city. Now the tragedy extends further and deeper throughout the Capulet household, with Juliet’s ‘apparent’ death. Her nurse, her parents and Paris are all devastated and mourn sincerely and whole-heartedly. There are many sharp turns in Romeo and Juliet and this is indeed one of them, albeit hardly the last. The real tragedy of Romeo and Juliet still lies ahead in Act V.

Act V (3 scenes)

Scene i

Mantua, a street

Enter Romeo

Romeo: “If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, my dreams presage some joyful news at hand. I dreamt my lady came and found me dead – strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think -.”

Enter Balthasar, Romeo’s man

Romeo: “How doth my lady? For nothing can be ill if she is well.”

Balthasar: “Her body sleeps in Capulet’s monument, and her immortal part with angels lives. I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault and presently took post to tell it you.”

Romeo: “Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars. 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 deceived. Hath thou now letters to me from the friar?”

Balthasar: “No, my good lord.”

Romeo: “No matter; get thee gone, and hire those horses. I’ll be with thee straight.”

Exit Balthasar

Romeo: “Well Juliet, I will live with thee tonight. O mischief, thou art swift to enter in the thoughts of desperate men. I do remember an apothecary, and here about he dwells with overwhelming brows; eager are his looks; sharp misery has worn him to the bones; And if a man did need a poison now, whose sale is present death in Mantua, here lives a wretch who would sell it him.”

Enter apothecary

Apothecary: “Who calls so loud?”

Romeo: “Here is forty ducats; let me have a dram of poison, as will disperse itself through all the veins, that the life-weary taker may fall dead.”

Apothecary: “Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua’s law is death to any that utters them.”

Romeo: “Are thou so bare and full of wretchedness and fears to die? Famine is in thy cheeks, deed and oppression starves in thy eyes, contempt and beggary hang upon thy back. The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law; then be not poor 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. If you had the strength of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.”

Romeo: “There is thy gold. Farewell, buy food. Come cordial and not poison, go with me to Juliet’s grave; for there must I use thee.”

Analysis

So begins the plunge into the final tragedy. Informed of Juliet’s death by Balthasar, who saw her placed in the Capulet tomb, Romeo immediately takes action and acquires poison from a desperate apothecary and is headed to Verona to be with his love in a perpetual peace not available in this life. The fates are closing in.

Act V

Scene ii

Friar Lawrence’ cell

Enter Friar John and Friar Lawrence

Friar Lawrence: “Welcome from Mantua! What says Romeo?”

Friar John: “While visiting the sick, the searchers of the town suspected I was in a house where the infectious pestilence did reign and they sealed up the doors and would not let me forth.”

Friar Lawrence: “Who then did bear my letter to Romeo?”

Friar John: “I could not send it – here it is.”

Friar Lawrence: “Unhappy fortune. The letter was full of charge of dear import; and neglecting it may do much danger. Friar John, go hence.”

Exit Friar John

Friar Lawrence: “Now must I to the monument alone. Within these three hours will fair Juliet awaken.”

Analysis

Friar Lawrence sent Friar John to Mantua to inform Romeo of Juliet’s staged death but Friar John visited some sick parishioners in plague-struck Mantua and he missed Romeo altogether, so Romeo believes Juliet is actually dead. Now it’s a race against time. Who will arrive at the tomb first? I fear we know, as we approach the final scene of the play.

Act V

Scene iii

Tomb of the Capulets

Enter Paris and his page

Paris: “With flowers thy bridal bed I strew.”

The page indicates to Paris that someone approaches

Paris: “What cursed foot wanders this way tonight?”

Enter Romeo and Balthasar

Romeo: “Take this letter and see thou delivers it to my father. Whatever thou sees or hears stand aloof and do not interrupt me in my course. Therefore, hence be gone. If thou does return to pry into what I further shall intend to do, by heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint and strew this churchyard with thy limbs. The time and my intents are savage wild and more fierce than the roaring sea.“

Balthasar: “I will be gone, sir, and not trouble thee.”

Romeo: “Live and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow.”

Balthasar: (aside) “For all this game, I’ll hide me hereabout; his looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.”

Romeo: “Thou detestable tomb of death.” (Romeo breaks open the tomb)

Paris: “This is that banished haughty Montague who murdered my love’s cousin – with which grief it is supposed the fair creature died – and here is come to do some villainous shame to the dead bodies. I will apprehend him. Stop, vile Montague. Can vengeance be pursued further than death? Condemned villain, thou must die.”

Romeo: “I must indeed; and therefore came I hither. Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man. Fly hence and leave me. I beseech thee, youth. Put not another sin upon my head by urging me to fury. Be gone and live!”

Paris: “I do apprehend thee here.”

Romeo: “Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!”

They fight and Paris falls

Paris: “O, I am slain! If thou be merciful, open the tomb and lay me with Juliet.”

Paris dies

Romeo: “In fate, I will. Let me peruse this face. Mercutio’s kinsman, noble Paris! My man told me Paris should have married Juliet, or did I dream it so? Or am I mad?”

He lays Paris in the tomb

Romeo: “O, my love! My wife! Death, that has sucked the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Tybalt, O what more favour can I do thee than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain to sunder his who was thy enemy? Dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair? I will stay with thee, and never from this place of dim night depart again. With worms that are thy chambermaids, here will I set up my everlasting rest. Eyes, look your last. Here’s to my love! (drinks the poison) O true apothecary, thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.”

Romeo dies

Enter Friar Lawrence

Friar Lawrence: “Saint Francis be my speed. Who’s there?”

Balthasar: “Here’s one, and a friend.”

Friar Lawrence: “What torch is that burning in the Capulet monument? Who is it”

Balthasar: “Romeo.”

Friar Lawrence: “Stay, then, I’ll go alone; fear comes upon me. I fear some ill unthrifty thing. Romeo! Alack, what blood is this, that stains the sepulchre? Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris, too? And steeped in blood. The lady stirs.

Juliet awakens

Juliet: “O comfortable friar. Where is my lord? I do remember well where I should be. Where is my Romeo?”

Friar Lawrence: “I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest of death, contagion and unnatural sleep. A greater power than we can contradict has thwarted our intents. Come, come away. Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead; and Paris too. Come, I’ll dispose of thee among a sisterhood of holy nuns.”

Juliet: “Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.”

Exit Friar Lawrence

Juliet: “What’s here? A cup. Poison, I see. Drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after? I will kiss thy lips; happily some poison yet doth hang on them, to make me die with a restorative.” (she kisses him). Thy lips are warm.”

A watchman approaches

Juliet: “Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!” (she snatches Romeo’s dagger, stabs herself and falls on Romeo’s body)

Enter the watchman with Paris’ page

Watchman: “The ground is bloody. Pitiful sight! Here lies Paris slain; and Juliet bleeding, warm and newly dead. Go tell the Prince; run to the Capulets; raise up the Montagues. Some others search.”

Enter another watchman with Balthasar

2 Watchman: “Here’e Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard.”

Enter a third watchman and Friar Lawrence

3 Watchman: “Here is a friar who trembles, sighs and weeps.”

Enter the Prince

Prince: “What misadventure is so early up, that calls our person from our morning rest?”

Enter Capulet and Lady Capulet

Capulet: “What should it be that is so shrieked abroad?”

Lady Capulet: “The people in the street cry ‘Romeo’, some ‘Juliet’ and some ‘Paris’, and all run toward our monument.”

1 Watchman: “Sovereign, here lies Paris slain; and Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before, but warm and newly killed.”

Capulet: “O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds! This dagger is mis-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom.”

Lady Capulet: “O me! This sight of death is as a bell that warns my old age to a sepulchre.”

Enter Montague

Prince: “Come, Montague, for thou art early up to see thy son and heir more early down.”

Montague: “Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight; grief of my son’s exile hath stopped her breath. What further woe conspires against my age?”

Prince: “Look, and thou shall see.”

Montague: “O, what manners is this, to press before thy father to a grave?”

Prince: “Seal up the mouth of outrage for awhile, till we can clear these ambiguities and know their spring. Let mischance be slave to patience. Bring forth the parties of suspicion.”

Friar Lawrence: “I am the greatest, able to do least, yet most suspected of this direful murder.”

Prince: “Then say at once what thou dost know in this.”

Friar Lawrence: “I will be brief. Romeo there dead, was husband to that Juliet; and she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife, I married them; and their stolen marriage day was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death banished the new bridegroom from this city; for whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined. You, to remove the siege of grief from her, would have married her perforce to Paris. Then comes she to me, and with wild looks bid me devise some mean to rid her from this second marriage, or in my cell there would she kill herself. Then I gave her a sleeping potion, which wrought on her the form of death. Meantime, I wrote to Romeo that he should hither come to help take her from her borrowed grave, being the time the potion’s force should cease. But he who bore my letter, Friar John, was stayed by accident and last night returned my letters back to me. Then all alone at the prefixed hour of her wakening came I to take her from her kindred’s vault; meaning to keep her closely at my cell till I conveniently could send for Romeo. But when I came here untimely lay the noble Paris and true Romeo dead. She wakes and I entreated her to come forth. But she, too desperate, would not go with me, but, as it seems, did violence upon herself. All this I know, and to the marriage her nurse is privy. Let my old life be sacrificed unto the rigour of severest law.”

Prince: “We still have known thee for a holy man. Where is Romeo’s man? What can he say to this?”

Balthasar: “I brought my master news of Juliet’s death; and then in post he came from Mantua to this same monument. This letter he early bid me give to his father.”

Prince: “Give me the letter, and I will look upon it. Where is Paris’ page? Sirrah, what made your master in this place?”

Page: “He came with flowers to strew upon his lady’s grave; and bid me stand aloof, and so I did. Anon comes one with light to open the tomb; and by and by my master drew on him; and then I ran away to call the watch.”

Prince: “This letter doth make good the friar’s words, their course of love the tidings of her death; and here he writes that he did buy a poison of a poor apothecary, and therewithal came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet. Capulet, Montague, see what a scourge is laid upon your hate, that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love! All are punished.”

Capulet: “O brother Montague, give me thy hand.”

Montague: “But I can give thee more; for I will raise her statue in pure gold, and there shall no figure at such rate be set as that of true and faithful Juliet.”

Capulet: “As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady’s lie – poor sacrifices of our enmity!”

Prince: “A glooming peace this morning with it brings; the sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talks of these sad things; some shall be pardoned and some punished; for never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.“

Analysis

So there we have it. A love so intense that it is consumed by its own flame. They must live together or die together, as fate dictates. They have flirted with the idea of their own suicides throughout the play and it has finally united them in eternity in more ways than one. First, they are dead together. As well, their families are finally at peace on account of their love and death and the conflict between them is over, and finally Shakespeare’s characters remain to this day the literary embodiment of young and impassioned lovers. The may have died but they also cheated death forever. Their violence is a declaration of the profound love between them, for their re-united families and for readers of Shakespeare all these hundreds of years thereafter. The fates doomed them to this rendering of life. They did their best to find a way that their love might live and in the end they succeeded in death. The many social and familial forces aligned against them made it impossible to live their love. Only through their mutual suicides could they escape the world that would not permit their love. And they helped to heal the wounds of that very world that conspired to destroy their innocence and passion. When their love died in that tomb so died the hate that killed them. In this way they are transcendent. The ultimate irony is that this famous couple had to sacrifice their lives to heal the forces that betrayed them. Their deaths fostered the healing between the families that would have permitted their love. The stars may have been aligned against them, as was indicated in the prologue, but the ending is more than merely tragic due the nature of their love against all odds. This is a play about the pinnacle of love between these two young archetypes who never stopped loving for an instant in the face of the overwhelming odds against them. Long live Romeo and Juliet!

Final Thoughts

Shakespeare took the story from a poem by Arthur Brooke (1562) and from a 1530 novel, Giulietta e Romeo, by Luigi da Porto. The two famous families were historical and even Dante wrote of the strife between them in 13th century Verona.

Shakespeare’s achievement here in his still early career is to take an old story about youth and love and transform it into the most popular romantic tragedy in the English language.

From Shakespeare’s time onward Romeo and Juliet has remained one of the most popular stage productions in English and theatre history and likely Shakespeare’s most successful tragedy, along with Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. It has also been produced in film more often than any other Shakespeare play.

At least 30 operas and ballets have been adapted from Shakespeare’s play. West Side Story is a variation on Romeo and Juliet. There have over 60 film versions, including Franco Zeffirelli’s beautiful 1968 film and a 1996 version with Leonardo DIcaprio titled Romeo + Juliet, set in California today, on Verona Beach.

Youtube has a plethora of stage productions of Romeo and Juliet, both professional and amateur. There are also several films and countless clips.