ROMEO AND JULIET

Contents:

Montague Family

Old Montague and Lady Montague

The parents of Romeo. They have no part in the action of the play, but they illustrate the family feud with the Capulets. Old Montague is still eager to draw his sword and join in the fighting.

Romeo

Their only son. At the beginning of the play he thinks that he is in love with Rosaline, a lady whom we never see. It is the idea of being a lover that appeals to Romeo. He quickly forgets Rosaline when he meets Juliet. He is impulsive and passionate: he falls in love with Juliet and marries her. When his friend is killed by Juliet’s cousin, Romeo avenges the murder — and as a punishment he is banished from his native city of Verona and his newly-married wife.

Benvolio

One of Romeo’s friends. He is quite a serious young man, who is sympathetic to Romeo’s passions, and who allows Romeo and Mercutio to tease him. He is a necessary character rather than an interesting one: he is always available to offer an explanation.

Mercutio

Romeo’s other friend. He is full of energy, which is shown in the way he uses words, always playing with two or more meanings in a single word. His vitality leads him to challenge Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, to fight a duel. In the fighting, Mercutio is (almost accidentally) killed.

Capulet Household

Old Capulet and Lady Capulet

These two characters, the parents of Juliet, are more important than their counterparts, Romeo’s parents. Old Capulet is anxious for his daughter to make a good marriage, but he is also — at the beginning of the play — insistent that she should love the man she marries. After the death of his nephew Tybalt, Old Capulet changes in his attitude to Juliet’s marriage, and is prepared to force her to marry the man of his choice, Paris.

Lady Capulet is an obedient wife: she puts her husband’s will before her daughter’s wishes.

Juliet

Their only child; we learn that other children have been born to the Capulets, but they have died. Juliet is almost fourteen years old. When the play opens she has never thought about marriage, but she is prepared to obey her parents and look with favour on the man they have chosen for her husband, the County Paris. But when she meets Romeo, Juliet falls in love with him, although she knows that his family and hers are deadly enemies.

Tybalt

Juliet’s cousin. Like Mercutio, he is full of energy; but (unlike Mercutio) he has no sense of fun. He is jealous of the family honour, and proud of his own skill in fencing. In the duel he kills Mercutio; and he is himself killed by Romeo.

Juliet’s Nurse

When Shakespeare wrote his play, it was not fashionable for noble ladies (like Lady Capulet) to feed their own infants. Instead, they gave the baby to a peasant woman who had recently given birth to a child and who had plenty of healthy milk in her breasts. Such a woman would nurse (i.e. feed) the child for three or four years# and it is likely that she would develop a maternal affection for the child, as though it were indeed her own.

Juliet’s Nurse has such an affection for Juliet — strengthened, probably, by the fact that her own daughter, Susan, is dead (see Act 1, Scene 3, lines 20ff). She is eager to assist Juliet in her secret marriage, but after Tybalt’s death she is bewildered and frightened. She is a simple woman, in whom piety and strong sexuality are combined with commonsense and a desire to please.

Escalus

Prince of Verona, the ruler of the city in which the action takes place. Although he must try to be impartial, he is not indifferent to the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets, since he has relatives on both sides (both Mercutio and Paris are his kinsmen).

The Count Paris

A nobleman, endowed with all the qualities that should make him an ideal husband for Juliet.

Friar Laurence

A friar of the Order of Saint Francis. His good intentions in fact precipitate the tragedy. 

 Commentary

Most of the play takes place (as the Chorus explains) in "fair Verona" — an attractive little city in the north of Italy. The action moves swiftly from the city streets to the hall of Old Capulet’s house, to the orchard below Juliet’s balcony, to Friar Laurence’s lonely cell, and finally to the vault where the ancestors of the Capulets are entombed. The Elizabethan stage had no curtains, and of course the theatre sold no programmes, so the characters themselves tell us where they are; they even indicate the time of day. The play starts on a Sunday morning in the middle of July; less than five days later — just before dawn on the following Thursday — it is all over.

Prologue

The Chorus — a single figure — appears on stage. He is not a character and has no personality. His function is simply to explain the situation, telling us that we are now in Verona, and that this is a city divided by civil war between two noble families. Their quarrel is an old one, an "ancient grudge". We never learn its cause: it seems to have become a habit for the Capulets and the Montagues to hate each other. But if we cannot know the cause of the quarrel, we can be warned of its cure.

When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet it was not unusual for a dramatist to introduce his play in this manner. The words of the Chorus would silence a restless audience, and settle the spectators into an appropriate mood for the first scene.

Act 1

Scene 1

Sunday morning. It is not yet nine o’clock, and two of Capulet’s servants, Sampson and Gregory, have nothing very much to do as they wander through the streets of Verona. They tease each other, but when they see two of Montague’s servants approaching, their good-natured rivalry is converted to hostility. All the servants are cowards, however, and can only exchange rude words and gestures until the Montague servants are given confidence by the arrival of Benvolio. Then Sampson issues the first challenge: "Draw, if you be men". Benvolio’s attempts to make peace are frustrated by the arrival of Tybalt; at once the young noblemen are engaged in the fighting. Citizens of Verona rush to take sides, some urging a truce, some encouraging the Montague faction, and others joining the Capulet party: "Strike! Beat them down! Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!" Immediately the heads of the two families appear on the scene. Old Capulet calls for his "long-sword" — a heavy, old-fashioned weapon that would have had no effect against the modern rapiers used by the younger generation. For a moment the two wives, Lady Capulet and Lady Montague, try to restrain their husbands, but their efforts are unnecessary. The Prince has arrived.

Escalus, Prince of Verona, is the representative of law and order in the play. His commands are obeyed, and his threats disperse the crowd. But we have seen enough to realize the gravity of the situation. In fewer than a hundred lines Shakespeare has created an atmosphere of tension where the least word or gesture can trigger off unthinking violence which is shared by the entire community — old and young alike, whether they are the lowest servants or the respected heads of noble families.

With the departure of the Prince, the mood of the scene changes. Lady Montague asks the question that the audience wants to ask: "O where is Romeo? Saw you him today?" We have seen war; and now we hear about love, as Benvolio describes the behaviour of his infatuated friend. Romeo is up before dawn, walking alone in the woods and weeping; when the sun rises, he hurries home, locks himself in his room, and shuts out the daylight. These are the early symptoms of unrequited love, although neither Benvolio nor Romeo’s parents appear to recognize this.

We wait for Romeo to show us the extent of his love-sickness. Romeo is miserable — we can have no doubt about that. We can be equally sure, however, that he enjoys his misery. He knows that there has been some kind of disturbance in the streets, but he is not interested. What matters to Romeo is the emotion that he calls "love". It makes him happy — and at the same time it makes him sad. He tries to express these two conflicting states in a series of witty paradoxes — phrases which seem absurd, and where the meaning of one word contradicts the sense of the word to which it is linked:

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health.

He expects Benvolio to be amused, but Benvolio is a solemn young man and offers sympathy to his friend. Romeo welcomes the sympathy: it gives him an opportunity to talk even more about himself and his feelings — and this gives us the information that we need about his state of mind.

Romeo believes himself to be in love, but the woman he loves takes no interest in him. He describes her to Benvolio and tells us that she is perfect; but we can learn no more. (From the next scene we discover that her name is Rosaline and that she is a Capulet.) We can safely conclude, however, that this is only a young man’s fancy, and a kind of sickness that could probably be cured if Romeo would follow Benvolio’s prescription and "Examine other beauties".

He will soon be able to do this.

Scene 2

Old Capulet has returned home after his talk with the Prince, and he seems to be reconciled to the idea that he and Old Montague should start to live at peace with each other. He has important business to deal with. The County Paris is eager to make Juliet his wife. Capulet is a good father and Juliet is his only child. There have been other children, but they are dead: "Earth hath swallow’d all my hopes but she". This must make Juliet very precious to him and he is reluctant to lose her. However, if she should fall in love with Paris, her father will be happy to give his consent to the marriage.

That evening (it is still Sunday) Old Capulet will hold "an old accustom’d feast" — an elaborate ball which will be attended by all the nobility of Verona. It is a regular event, and the message that Capulet now sends to his guests is probably not so much an invitation as a reminder.

The servants in the first scene speak in plain, simple prose. Benvolio and Tybalt speak a flexible blank verse — that is to say, verse where the regular stresses of the iambic pentameter fit in with the formal rhythms of speech. Prince Escalus, coming on to the stage at line 78, speaks a much more dignified blank verse; his is the kind of speech that is delivered from a platform. Romeo uses rhymes when he speaks of the nature of his love: the subject is "poetic", and so it is appropriate that the verse should seem equally unreal — remote from everyday speech. In the second scene there is always a tendency for the lines to rhyme in couplets, and the effect is to speed up the action: it is important that we should know about the feast, but there is no need for us at the moment to pay very close attention. The servant who carries Capulet’s invitation speaks in prose. This is not the same kind of prose as that spoken by Sampson and Gregory in the first scene; Shakespeare’s contemporaries would recognize this passage as being a parody of a kind of ornate prose that was fashionable in the last decade of the sixteenth century. It is a comic moment, and the scene continues with comedy (and often with rhymed couplets) as Romeo and Benvolio learn about the Capulet ball and Benvolio makes a suggestion.

Scene 3

The couplets give way to blank verse again as the scene changes once more. We are inside the Capulet house again, this time awaiting an introduction to Juliet. She stands quiet and obedient whilst her Nurse — the foster-mother who has cared for her since the day that she was born — remembers incidents in the child’s life. At the beginning of the scene Lady Capulet dismisses the Nurse: "Nurse, give us leave awhile. We must talk in secret." But immediately the Nurse is recalled: "Nurse, come back again. I have remember’d me, thou’s hear our counsel." The Nurse, we realize, is not an ordinary servant; she is almost a member of the family. When she begins to tell us about Juliet’s childhood we learn not only Juliet’s age (although this is very important) but also a great deal about the character of the Nurse. She has known personal sorrow in the death of her daughter, Susan, but she is philosophical about this: "Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me." She remembers trivial details; her speech is repetitive; and she cannot continue a line of thought for very long. Lady Capulet is a complete contrast. She asks a direct question: "Tell me, daughter Juliet, how stands your disposition to be married?" Juliet’s answer is evasive: "It is an honour that I dream not of"; after all, she is not yet fourteen. But her mother persists: "Well, think of marriage now". She introduces the subject of Paris and his proposal of marriage. Her description of Paris is no doubt intended to recommend the gentleman to her daughter, but the extended metaphor (spread over eleven lines of verse) has no effect upon our emotions. Juliet’s reply shows only a young girl’s obedience.

The arrival of the servants with the information that "the guests are come", breaks into the strained formality, and we are made aware that time has been passing. It is now Sunday evening. Lady Capulet responds to the servant’s request and leaves the stage in order to receive her guests at supper. She is followed by Juliet and the Nurse.

Scene 4

Their departure does not leave the stage empty for long. Romeo enters (at the opposite side). He is accompanied by Mercutio and Benvolio. As well as the three close friends, there are other gentlemen in the party. They are all disguised — wearing fancy dress and comic masks to hide their faces. Attendants bear torches, and there are probably musical instruments — certainly there is a drum (line 114). Benvolio has organized a masquerade — an amateur entertainment, fashionable in the sixteenth century, in which gentlemen could visit a party to which they had not been invited. After making a speech to the host (the speech referred to by Benvolio in the first line of the scene) the gentlemen dance, flirt with the ladies, pay compliments to the host, and then depart. The host regarded the arrival of masquers as a form of flattery, not in any sense an intrusion into the privacy of his party.

Throughout the scene we are constantly made aware of the fact that it is dark; night has fallen, and torches must be used to give the illusion of darkness. Benvolio and Mercutio are full of enthusiasm for the masquerade. Romeo is reluctant to join them, because he would prefer to be alone with his love-sick misery and because he has a strong sensation of impending disaster: "I dream’d a dream tonight". But before Romeo’s dream can threaten to spoil the light-hearted fun of the scene, Mercutio’s energetic imagination explodes into life with his fantastic "Queen Mab" speech.

The speech is sheer invention. It has no particular relevance to the action of the play — except to allow enough time for Capulet’s guests to eat their supper. The speech has to be enjoyed for itself. There is no deeply significant meaning.

Before the masquers leave the stage Romeo voices his unease, and then resigns himself to fate.

Scene 5

The stage is now filled with activity as the Capulet servants rush about, moving furniture and dishes as a clear indication that the meal is over and that the dancing is about to begin. Once again we are inside Capulet’s house.

Old Capulet is a jovial host and welcomes the masquers in a happy mood, recalling the masquerades that he himself took part in when he was a young man. The masquers mix with the guests in the dance; two old men (Capulet and his cousin) chat about their acquaintances; and Romeo catches sight of Juliet.

Romeo is overwhelmed by Juliet’s beauty. But whilst he stands in wonder he is observed by Tybalt, who recognizes him as an enemy. Tybalt’s reaction is immediate: a foe means a fight. Fortunately Old Capulet is watching, and we see that the older man has become a little wiser since this morning. He restrains Tybalt — but we realize that his restraint will not be effective for very long.

The altercation between Capulet and his nephew has given Romeo time to approach Juliet, and we must imagine the two lovers standing quite apart from the rest of the characters on stage. The dancing continues, but they are not a part of it. Their separateness is emphasized by the form of the verse in which they have begun to speak. Romeo starts with devout religious utterance:

If I profane with my unworthiest hand,

This holy shrine. . . .

He develops the religious image for four lines which rhyme alternately (ABAB), then Juliet picks up the same image, speaking the next four lines in the same pattern (with rhyme CBCB). A third quatrain is shared between the two (rhyme DEDE) and a final couplet is spoken — the first line by Juliet, the second by Romeo, who clearly takes advantage to kiss Juliet at the end of his line.

Then move not, while my prayers’ effect I take.

The fourteen lines are in fact a sonnet — a complex and highly artificial verse form, popular in the sixteenth century and generally regarded as the proper medium for love poetry. The form is used to emphasize the lovers’ isolation from the society in which they live; and the way in which they share the same extended image and same verse form emphasizes the harmony of their thoughts. Even so, we must notice that Juliet manages to tease Romeo a little within the solemn expression of devotion. After the kiss, it appears that the lovers are about to start a second sonnet; but this is interrupted by the Nurse.

Now the lovers must be brought back from the state of isolation to the real world; and they must begin to understand what has happened to them. The Nurse chats to Romeo and answers his question in a very down-to-earth way as she explains that Juliet is the daughter of the host and that the man who "can lay hold on her Shall have the chinks" (i.e. he will be rich). It is time for the masquerade to end.

And now Juliet must learn the truth. Once again the Nurse is the source of information. The last lines of the scene combine ordinary speech with formal rhymed couplets. Juliet’s mind, we can see, is working on two levels of thought: her questions to the Nurse are naturalistic, but her inner thoughts — spoken for the hearing of the audience alone — are prophetic.

Chorus

"The use of this Chorus is not easily discovered." These are the words of one of the first and greatest of Shakespeare’s editors, Dr Samuel Johnson, who was writing in the eighteenth century. He complained that the information given in the speech is unnecessary; and indeed it is! But look at the play from the point of view of an actor — the actor playing the part of Romeo. He has just performed an intense love-duet, and then brought the character to a terrifying appreciation of the dangers of Romeo’s position. He leaves the stage in Act 1, Scene 5 at line 126; the scene ends less than twenty lines later. Act 2, Scene 1 demands Romeo’s appearance at the very beginning. The fourteen lines (another sonnet) spoken by the Chorus are necessary to allow the actor to get his breath back, and perhaps even to dash round the back of the stage, and enter from the opposite side, so that the audience does not think he has returned to the ballroom.

Act 2

Scene 1

We now have to pay close attention to the words of the actors when they mention the location of the scenes that follow. Benvolio tells us that Romeo, after speaking two lines, has disappeared and "leap’d this orchard wall". Whilst Mercutio and Benvolio fool around on one side of the wall — outside the orchard — Romeo lurks on the other side, hearing Mercutio’s jokes, but not responding.

Mercutio is in high spirits. He calls for his friend, pretending to be a magician who can raise the ghosts of the dead by mysterious invocations, calling on the name of a deity. He invokes Venus and Cupid, and then decides that Rosaline is the goddess whom Romeo worships — with sexual, not spiritual desire. Like the "Queen Mab" speech, this display of verbal fireworks is delightful for itself; but it also presents two different aspects of love. We are reminded of Romeo’s passion for Rosaline — the fanciful emotion that made him feel ill, yet which he indulged because (probably) he had nothing better to do. He worshipped Rosaline as a goddess. Mercutio’s own attitude to women is in complete contrast; there is no emotion at all here, only sexual desire. We shall now be shown a third kind of love — one which has elements of the other two, but which is far more powerful than either of them.

Mercutio and Benvolio decide that they might just as well go home to bed, since they cannot find Romeo:

’tis in vain

To seek him here that means not to be found.

Romeo completes the couplet:

He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.

We must, however, be aware that the setting has changed: we are now inside the orchard, and Romeo is looking up at the light shining through a window.

He begins to speak about his love for Juliet. At first there seems to be very little difference between this love, and the emotion he pretended to feel for Rosaline:

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou her maid art far more fair than she.

This is the conventional language of love poetry: it was fashionable for lovers to speak in this way. Very quickly, however, the language becomes more simple; Romeo is learning to express genuine feelings:

It is my lady. O, it is my love!

O that she knew she were!

That second line is especially effective because it is incomplete — there are three poetic "feet" instead of five; we have become accustomed to the rhythm of the pentameter, so we wait for the completion of the line, and the silence indicates that Romeo cannot find words to express his thoughts.

The Elizabethan stage had a small area (probably at the centre back) which had curtains, and a roof supported by pillars. Actors could come on to the main, open stage through the curtains; or they could appear and act short scenes from the roof itself, which supplied a second acting level. Now this becomes the balcony outside Juliet’s bedroom; Juliet comes out into the night, believing that she is alone, and begins to speak of her love for Romeo.

Fear and delight are mingled in Juliet’s heart. She has found a "dear perfection" in Romeo’s person, but she knows well that his name is her enemy — because "Romeo" is one of the family names of the Montagues. Juliet is startled, even a little embarrassed, when she realizes that Romeo has overheard her private thoughts, but soon the two lovers are able to discuss their feelings with simple honesty. The mood of the scene varies between intense passion and gentle teasing. It is interrupted when the Nurse calls to Juliet from within — she is off-stage, and we must imagine her to be waiting in Juliet’s bedroom. The effect is the same as that achieved in the ballroom scene, when the lovers were drawn back from the isolation of their love into the real world. After the interruption they renew their promises to each other. Suddenly Juliet makes a proposal which must come as a surprise (although a delightful one) to her new lover:

If that thy bent of love be honourable,

They purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow . . .

Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;

Only a few moments before, Juliet had expressed her anxieties about this new relationship: "It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden". Now she seems to have forgotten the worry, or else her love has become so strong that she cannot restrain herself.

Scene 2

It is Monday morning:

The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,

Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light.

The scene changes completely now, as we go ahead of Romeo to Friar Laurence’s "close cell" — the remote hermitage where the holy man devotes his time to prayer, study, and the concoction of medicines from the herbs that grow around his home. He delivers a short lecture on herbal drugs that can kill and cure; and once again this allows Romeo to travel from one location — the Capulet orchard at daybreak — to another: the friar’s cell, where he arrives "ere the sun advances his burning eye".

He confesses everything to Friar Laurence, who is clearly accustomed to hearing Romeo’s confessions of love and who has obviously given him sound advice in the past (which Romeo has ignored until now). Friar Laurence can see a way in which this new love of Romeo and Juliet — Montague and Capulet — could perhaps be turned to an even greater good. It might make peace between the two families: "turn your households’ rancour to pure love".

Scene 3

After the solemn interview with the friar, the mood and scene of the play change completely. Back in the city of Verona Romeo’s two friends, Benvolio and Mercutio are fresh and full of energy; presumably they have been able to sleep a little — and at least they have changed out of their masquerade costumes. Romeo, when he joins them at line 34, is still wearing fancy dress: Mercutio jokes about it — "Signor Romeo, bon jour! There’s a French salutation to your French slop."

Before Romeo appears, the two young men have been discussing Tybalt, the fierce nephew of Old Capulet who had tried to attack Romeo at the masquerade. Old Capulet’s restraint has not lasted long: Tybalt has already, we hear, sent a letter to Romeo challenging him to fight a duel. Mercutio describes Tybalt, and again we hear the same excited imagination that presented Queen Mab to us. Mercutio laughs at Tybalt and his affectations — his correct fencing technique, his accent, and his fondness for using the latest slang expressions. At the same time, however, he has some respect: Tybalt is not to be taken lightly — he is "More than Prince of Cats". This passage serves to remind us of the character whom we met for a short time at Capulet’s party, and to prepare us for his second appearance.

Romeo joins his friends, and all three engage in witty chatter; they are full of energy, and the outlet for this energy is (at the moment) verbal fighting in the best of friendly relationships. At the height of the fun, Juliet’s Nurse appears. She is (we must assume) a fairly large woman, wearing a flowing dress. As she comes into view Romeo pretends that she is a ship: "A sail! A sail!" The Nurse pretends to be shocked by the bawdy jokes; but she enjoys them. She delivers Juliet’s message to Romeo in her rambling prose. Since we already know what the message is, we can concentrate on the comedy of the Nurse’s speech. The action of the play is now moving very fast; it is still Monday, and the time is twelve noon.

Scene 4

For Juliet, however, the time seems to pass slowly; her Nurse has been away since nine o’clock, "and from nine till twelve is three long hours". More comedy follows when the Nurse returns with Romeo’s greetings and instructions to his love, because the Nurse is in a mischievous mood and enjoys keeping Juliet in suspense. She encourages the girl’s expectations:

Your love says, like an honest gentleman,

And a courteous and a kind and a handsome . . .

She can see that Juliet grows more excited with every word — and so she breaks off, ceasing her praise of Romeo to ask a plain question on quite another matter: "Where is your mother?" The great news — that the marriage ceremony has been arranged — is communicated simply, mixed with the Nurse’s complaints about the trials that she must undergo to serve the child she loves. She sends Juliet to the wedding — and she herself goes for her dinner.

Scene 5

At Friar Laurence’s cell, the bridegroom waits eagerly for his bride; the friar’s words of hesitation and foreboding do not diminish Romeo’s delight, and very soon he is rewarded by the appearance of Juliet. A few brief words of love are spoken by each of the two before the friar hurries them off to his chapel, refusing to let them "stay alone Till holy church incorporate two in one."

Act 3

Scene 1

Italian summer afternoons are hot, and it is sensible to take a rest in the shade, or even indoors. Benvolio recommends this to Mercutio, pointing out that members of the Capulet family are about in the streets, "And if we meet we shall not "scape a brawl". Mercutio responds with his usual good-natured humour, but his invention seems slower than usual; probably he too feels hot and rather tired. His energy is restored when Tybalt appears, in search of Romeo and determined to fight. Mercutio is outraged when Romeo receives Tybalt’s abuse with mildness, and draws his own sword to attack the Capulet.

Romeo tries to stop the fighting; his interference seems to confuse Mercutio, and he fails to evade Tybalt’s sword. We are shown the accuracy of Tybalt’s fencing, described earlier by Mercutio: "one, two, and the third in your bosom" (2, 3, 21). Even at the point of death, Mercutio is witty. His wit, as much as his curse on the houses of Montague and Capulet alike, awakens Romeo’s own sense of honour. For a moment he forgets his new bride and takes his sword to attack her cousin in an act of vengeance for the death of Mercutio.

Once again the citizens of Verona rush to the scene of the fighting; and once again Prince Escalus appears and tries to enforce peace. The first time that we saw this (Act 1, Scene 1) the intervention came before any harm was done. This time it is too late. Mercutio’s body has been taken from the scene; but Tybalt lies at Romeo’s feet, and the blood-stained sword is in Romeo’s hand.

Prince Escalus hears of the sequence of events from Benvolio’s mouth, and he listens to the pleas of Lady Capulet and Old Montague, who speak as representatives of the warring families. Escalus promises strict justice: his first ruling is to banish Romeo from Verona:

Let Romeo hence in haste,

Else, when he is found, that hour is his last.

He can do neither more nor less than this. Romeo has broken the law and must be duly punished; otherwise, all civil law will break down, and a state of anarchy will result:

Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.

Scene 2

Ignorant of what is happening in Verona’s streets, Juliet longs for night to come, when Romeo will "Leap to these arms" untalk’d of and unseen". She is passionately in love, with a physical longing to possess Romeo and to be possessed by him. She is in an ecstasy of impatience. But the Nurse shatters her dreams with the confused reports of death and banishment, Tybalt and Romeo. Juliet’s heart and mind are torn by conflicting emotions as she struggles to understand what the Nurse is saying. At the end of the scene she subsides into grief for the loss of her husband, and sends the Nurse to seek for him at Friar Laurence’s cell.

Scene 3

The Friar is trying to calm Romeo, preaching the virtue of stoic resignation to fate and pointing out that things might be worse. Romeo is condemned to banishment, not to death. But for Romeo, banishment from Verona means separation from Juliet; and this is worse than death. When the Nurse tells of Juliet’s grief, Romeo’s distress increases and he is ready to kill himself. The friar, however, has a plan; and after another lecture (which is much admired by the Nurse) he takes control of the situation.

Scene 4

So much has happened in such a short time that the characters themselves find it difficult to remember what day it is; Old Capulet has to ask Paris — "But, soft! What day is this?" It is still only Monday. Juliet has gone to bed, and Old Capulet himself "would have been a-bed an hour ago" had it not been for the presence of the County Paris, who wants to know whether or not he can marry Juliet.

Capulet reaches a sudden decision: Paris shall marry his daughter, and the wedding will be held that same week, on Thursday. It will not be a grand occasion, because the family is in mourning for the death of Tybalt: there will be "some half a dozen friends, And there an end."

It is time for bed; in fact "It is so very very late, That we may call it early by and by."

Scene 5

For Romeo and Juliet it is far too early. Romeo has obeyed the friar, climbed the balcony to Juliet’s bedroom, and consummated the marriage whose religious ceremony was performed on Monday afternoon. Without the physical consummation, the marriage would not have been complete; the vows would not be irrevocable — Romeo and Juliet would not have been man and wife.

Now they must be separated. The birdsong they hear comes from the lark, the first bird to sing in the morning, and the light in the east heralds the rising sun. Romeo must save his life by escaping to Mantua.

The lovers’ farewells are interrupted by the Nurse, warning that Lady Capulet is looking for her daughter. Romeo climbs down from the balcony and Juliet, standing above, imagines that she sees him, "As one dead in the bottom of a tomb".

Lady Capulet probably enters through the curtained area below Juliet’s balcony; the restricted space of the upper acting-level would not be able to accommodate all the members of the Capulet family (including the Nurse) who are needed for the rest of the scene.

Juliet’s mother is cold and unsympathetic. She does not understand her daughter’s grief, of course, and naturally assumes that the tears are for Tybalt. Juliet’s words deceive Lady Capulet, but their meaning is clear to the audience when she speaks of her anguish and her longing to be close to the man who murdered her cousin. She speaks politely to her mother, addressing her formally as "Madam" and "your ladyship", and appearing to be thankful for the promised "day of joy" that is so unexpected. But when she learns of the nature of the celebration, Juliet forgets all her obedience and good manners. The news is a shock; obstinate refusal to marry Paris is the only possible reaction.

Juliet’s father enters. His own distress at the death of his nephew turns to sympathy with what he believes to be Juliet’s grief for Tybalt. But sorrow instantly turns to rage when he learns that Juliet has refused the offered marriage. He bullies and threatens, cursing his daughter and swearing at the Nurse. In a storm of anger he leaves the stage, followed by his wife, who, like him, has disowned their child: "Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee."

Juliet demands comfort from her Nurse, whom she has loved and trusted for fourteen years. But the Nurse has no comfort to offer. She too has experienced grief and shock at the events of the previous day, and now she can only think of the most practical way of getting out of all their difficulties. No one knows about the marriage to Romeo; he is now banished and will never dare to return to Verona and claim Juliet as his wife. It would be so easy if Juliet were to forget about Romeo, and marry Paris — who, after all, is "a lovely gentleman".

Juliet is completely alone.

Act 4

Scene 1

Whilst the Capulet household is in an uproar of conflicting passions, the County Paris has acted quickly and efficiently; we find him with Friar Laurence, making arrangements for the wedding. He speaks gentle and affectionate words to Juliet when she appears, and Juliet replies with calm courtesy. When she is alone with the friar, however, Juliet gives way to her grief once more, threatening to kill herself rather than break the sacred vow she made to Romeo. Her passion becomes hysterical as she describes what she will suffer rather than marry Paris:

chain me with roaring bears,

Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house,

O’er-cover’d quite with dead men’s rattling bones . . .

Friar Laurence can offer a solution — although even this is not free from fear and danger. His researches into the medicinal qualities of herbs have enabled him to concoct a "distilled liquor" which Juliet must drink. She will fall into a coma, and her body will have every appearance of death. She will be laid in the family vault, and there she will sleep until Romeo, recalled from Mantua by Friar Laurence, comes to rescue her.

Scene 2

The conference with Friar Laurence is reassuring, and when Juliet returns home she is able to ask her father’s forgiveness. We find Old Capulet in a state of excitement, preparing for the wedding: he seems to have forgotten that he had decided to invite only "some half a dozen friends" (3, 4, 27) — now he is asking for "twenty cunning cooks". Pleased with Juliet’s new obedience, he decides to have the wedding one day early: "We’ll to church tomorrow".

This is still Tuesday, but it is quite late: Lady Capulet points out that it is "now near night" when she attempts to change her husband’s mind, but Old Capulet is firm; he will take care of the preparations:

I’ll not to bed tonight. Let me alone;

I’ll play the housewife for this once.

Scene 3

Juliet and her Nurse have also been preparing for the wedding, choosing Juliet’s best clothes and jewels. Now Juliet asks to be left alone. She is excited and frightened — perhaps the friar’s drug is really a poison; perhaps she will wake up to find herself alone in the vault among the dead bodies. She is terrified; but she drinks the potion.

Scene 4

Very early in the morning — Old Capulet points out that "’tis three o’clock" — the servants are rushing around making preparations for the feast. The Nurse is sent to wake Juliet, and the bridegroom, the County Paris, has arrived to claim his bride. He has brought musicians with him, intending that they should wake Juliet and accompany the happy couple throughout the day. This has become quite a grand wedding, in the English style of the sixteenth century.

The curtains are drawn around Juliet’s bed, and the Nurse chatters to her mistress, whom she is unable to see. The discovery is slow: Juliet is sleeping; she is fully dressed; she appears to be dead. Lady Capulet is called to the scene; then Juliet’s father; and then Paris and Friar Laurence. A general lamentation follows, and each of the characters is allowed a short recitation of grief.

The scene is not an easy one to act. The audience cannot share the emotions expressed by the characters, because we know the truth: Juliet is not dead, and all this is unnecessary. We must save our tears — we shall need them later. To prevent undue audience involvement, Shakespeare gives the characters an exaggerated kind of verse; there are too many words, and they are too strong for us to pay much attention to their meaning. All four recitations start with a list of adjectives; the effect is almost comic — we find it difficult to sympathise with the father who expresses himself in this way:

Despis’d, distressed, hated, martyr’d, kill’d!

Uncomfortable time, why cam’st thou now

To murder, murder our solemnity?

Friar Laurence preaches a short funeral sermon and gives instructions for the removal of Juliet’s body.

The musicians try to comprehend what is happening; they are not deeply involved, but they will wait for the mourners, and accompany them to the churchyard.

Act 5

Scene 1

Bad news travels fast, and that same day (Wednesday) Romeo is informed of the catastrophe that has befallen his bride and her family. He is safe in Mantua, but life has no meaning for him now. He describes an apothecary’s shop, whose owner is so poor that he can be bribed to sell poison. The sale is completed, and Romeo leaves for Verona.

Scene 2

But Romeo was given the wrong information. We hear now how Friar John, who should have delivered a letter to Romeo, was prevented from leaving Verona. In this scene we cannot fail to realize that Shakespeare’s time-scheme for Romeo and Juliet is too compressed; perhaps the dramatist was himself working at high speed when he condensed the nine months of Arthur Brooke’s narrative action into a mere five days.

The short scene, however, allows Romeo to travel from Mantua to Verona, arriving outside the Capulet vault on Wednesday night.

Scene 3

Juliet’s tomb already has a visitor — the County Paris, who has vowed to bring flowers and scented water to the grave every night. His ritual is interrupted by the arrival of Romeo, who proceeds to force open the tomb where he expects to find his wife’s body.

Romeo is no longer the dreamy youth that we met at the beginning of the play. He describes himself as "a desperate man" and, when Paris ignores his gentle warning, he fights with a serious determination which is totally different from the rough assaults of the servants (Act 1, Scene 1) and from the elegant sword-play of the young nobleman (Act 3, Scene 1). Romeo intends to kill Paris without ceremony and without delay.

He has no regrets when he has killed Paris, but he feels pity for the "Good gentle youth". He is preparing to lay Paris, tenderly, in the tomb when he looks on Juliet’s face. Although he is prepared for death, he in fact sees life: "beauty’s ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks". The audience knows that he is not deceived, and the tension is great. Juliet might wake in time; all might yet be well.

The hope is in vain, of course. Romeo drinks his poison, whose action is swift: he dies kissing Juliet, a second before Friar Laurence, stumbling in the graveyard, enters the tomb to comfort Juliet in her waking moments. Juliet seems refreshed after her sleep, but her resolution is not diminished. As soon as she understands the situation, she acts — first kissing the poison on Romeo’s lips, then making sure of her death with Romeo’s dagger, which she plunges into her own breast: "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath!"

Once again the citizens of Verona are drawn to the scene, and Prince Escalus appears among them. Friar Laurence provides the narrative this time, freely confessing his own part in the events and offering himself for punishment. The County’s Page and Balthasar fill in some missing details. Capulet and Montague join hands; they have paid a high price for their new friendship. There is not much to be said:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;

The sun for sorrow will not show his head.

It is Thursday morning.

Art and Nature

It is very rarely possible to give a precise date for plays produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it is generally agreed that Romeo and Juliet was written between 1594 and 1596 — at much the same time that Shakespeare was working on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The two plays have a lot in common, and it could even be argued that the interlude of "Pyramus and Thisbe" which is performed by amateur actors in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s own parody of romantic tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet.

The chronology in the Background section will show you how busy Shakespeare was during the last decade of the sixteenth century; he seems to have been intensely active during the middle years of the decade. It is as though his mind were overflowing with ideas. He had read a great deal, and he wanted to write. His reading included popular fiction, classical poetry (both in Latin and in English translation), the Bible, and works by his contemporaries in prose and poetry, as well as drama. During this period, poets and dramatists alike were experimenting with a variety of styles: blank verse was a new form, and so was the sonnet. Shakespeare experimented with both of these forms, and with many others; as you read through the Commentary on Romeo and Juliet you will see that I have tried to point out some of the different styles and explain the effects that I think Shakespeare was trying to achieve.

He is not always successful. This is a fairly early play, and Shakespeare has not yet acquired the skills that are developed in the great tragedies (King Lear and Macbeth, for example). But he often does succeed. I admire the love sonnet spoken by Romeo and Juliet at Capulet’s ball, and I am very moved by Juliet’s eager anticipation of her wedding-night, and by her terror before drinking the friar’s potion. I believe that the Nurse’s rambling account of Juliet’s childhood and Mercutio’s brilliant account of Queen Mab have no equals in the drama of this, or any other, period of English Literature.

Against these, however, we must balance the tediousness of Lady Capulet’s description of the County Paris; Friar Laurence’s sermons which (although the Nurse admires his philosophy) I find rather boring; and the curious mixture of pathos and farce when Juliet’s "death" is discovered by her family on the wedding morning.

Shakespeare is often careless too. The characters are very specific about the timing of events, and very careful to tell us about the location of scenes; but this becomes slightly confusing when we find that Romeo has rushed from Verona to Mantua and back again in less than two days, whilst Friar John has been unavoidably delayed for (apparently) a considerable time when he ought to have been in Mantua. There is even a lack of care sometimes in the words of the play; we cannot excuse (by calling it "common Elizabethan usage") the grammar of lines 7–8 of the Chorus’s first speech, where the singular verb "Doth" comes uncomfortably with the plural subject "overthrows". And when the servants are bringing logs for the fire at Capulet’s ball, we realize that Shakespeare has forgotten, in adapting Arthur Brooke’s poem, that in the narrative the ball is held at Christmas; in his play he has transferred the action to July.

The faults as well as the virtues of Romeo and Juliet seem to me to indicate an enthusiastic playwright working under considerable pressure. He is experienced enough to know what the audience wants from him: excitement; romance; horror; bawdy jokes; low comedy; and sophisticated word-play. He is skilled enough to provide all these: the frequent sword-fights; young lovers who sacrifice all for love; scenes in a family vault at dead of night; Mercutio’s witty conjuration of Romeo; servants who cannot draw their daggers without making puns; and the constant flow of doubles entendres, paradoxes, classical allusions, rhymes. . . .

Romeo and Juliet is a very artificial play — it was made by an artist. It is also the work of a craftsman, who had a sound knowledge of the resources and limitations of the theatre in which his play would be performed. With two acting levels, he could plan for a balcony scene; since there was no fixed scenery and nothing to interrupt the action, he could allow the characters to change place (from street to bedroom, from Verona to Mantua) without any break in the movement of the play — though he must always take care to write a reference to the place into someone’s speech, so that the audience does not get lost. All performances in the public theatres took place in daylight — so for the night scenes Shakespeare makes sure that at least one character mentions the torches that the actors should be carrying.

Dr Johnson, the eighteenth-century editor, did not appreciate the second speech made by the Chorus which (as he said) "conduces nothing to the progress of the play". Dr Johnson was writing from his study: any actor, breathless after the ballroom scene and preparing for the big balcony scene that follows, could tell the scholar why these fourteen lines are necessary. Shakespeare was himself an actor (he is more likely to have played the part of Friar Laurence than that of Romeo) and he understood an actor’s needs.

To satisfy contemporary audiences and actors is a considerable achievement for any dramatist at any time. It was especially difficult in the sixteenth century when the large audiences were made up of spectators from every level of society, with all kinds of interest and degrees of intelligence. What Elizabethan audiences did not expect — and what we today always look for — is the detailed, sensitive character-portrayal for which Shakespeare is most famous. No other dramatist of this period creates characters as Shakespeare does: their dramatis personae are types, Shakespeare’s are individuals. The characters’ vitality comes in part from the precise information we learn about them — information which is unnecessary to the plot of the play: we do not need to know that the Nurse’s daughter was called Susan, or that her husband was "a merry man". And they speak in ways that vary subtly from one character to another — just as no two human beings speak quite alike. The rhythms of the Nurse’s speech are quite different from those of Mercutio’s explosive outbursts, and these again are totally unlike Benvolio’s solemn utterances.

With the central characters, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare takes even greater care. Romeo’s witty introspection when he is describing his passion for Rosaline sounds very different from the quiet eloquence with which he speaks his love for Juliet; in the balcony scene Shakespeare shows the change in Romeo as the young man hesitates between his former rhetoric ("It is the east, and Juliet is the sun") and his new-found simplicity:

It is my lady. O, it is my love!

O that she knew she were!

Romeo seems to grow older — to mature — as the play progresses; and the verse both reflects and expresses the change in his character. Juliet is more straightforward, and the verse she speaks creates a character of purity and passion. After the death of Tybalt she is confused, and her conversation with Lady Capulet shows how she is resolving the confusion: Juliet speaks at the same time to her mother and, with a different meaning, to the audience, who hear her private thoughts.

Such revelations of character can only be made in verse: prose is too inflexible and insensitive. Romeo and Juliet needs to be read with great sensitivity — just as one would listen sympathetically to a young girl or boy telling of her/his first love. Don’t react to the different styles of writing by dismissing them as false — artificial — unnatural. They are all artificial, in the sense that they are made by art. Occasionally passages of virtuoso writing serve very little purpose: the "Queen Mab" speech, for instance, tells us something about Mercutio, but it is really intended to be admired — like a firework display. Far more often, however, the form of the verse reveals something about the character who is speaking, or about the situation. The best example of this is the sonnet in Act 1, Scene 5, where the most artificial of verse forms is used to express the most natural of emotions — and at the same time to point out the complexity of the situation in which the two young lovers find themselves.

The Elizabethans would have admired the art of Romeo and Juliet; today we are more likely to enjoy the play because it seems so real, so true to life as we know it. But a full appreciation must (I believe) combine an understanding of both art and life.

Shakespeare’s Verse

Shakespeare’s plays are mainly written in "blank verse", the form preferred by most dramatists in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It is a very flexible medium, which is capable — like the human speaking voice — of a wide range of tones. Basically the lines, which are unrhymed, are ten syllables long. The syllables have alternating stresses, just like normal English speech; and they divide into five "feet". The technical name for this is "iambic pentameter".

Tybalt What, árt thou dráwn amóng these héartless hínds?

Túrn thee, Benvóio, loók upón thy déath.

Benvolio I dó but keép the peáce. Put úp thy swórd,

Or mánage ít to párt these mén and mé.

Tybalt What! Dráwn, and tálk of péace? I háte the wórd,

As Í hate héll, all Móntagúges, and theé.

Have át thee, cóward.

1, 1, 63–9

Here the pentameter accommodates a variety of speech tones — Tybalt’s angry challenge, Benvolio’s steady calm, and the scorn and hatred with which Tybalt renews his attack. In this quotation, most of the lines are regular in length and normal in iambic stress pattern. Sometimes Shakespeare deviates from the norm, varying the stress patterns for unusual emphasis, and writing lines that are longer or shorter than ten syllables. The stress is reversed, for instance, in Tybalt’s "Turn thee", and a threatening movement (rather than words) completes the line after "coward".

The speech of Prince Escalus, a little later in this scene, demonstrates another feature of Shakespeare’s verse.

Prince On paín of tórture, fróm those blóody hánds

Throw yoúr mistémper’d weápons tó the groúnd,

And heár the séntence óf your móved prince.

1, 1, 83–5

Sometimes the grammatical unit of meaning is contained within the verse line — "And hear the sentence of your moved prince". This allows for a pause at the end of the line, before a new idea is started. At other times the sense runs on from one line to the next — "from those bloody hands Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground". This makes for the natural fluidity of speech, avoiding monotony but still maintaining the iambic rhythm.

 Background

ON its first appearance in print, in 1597, Romeo and Juliet was described as ‘An excellent conceited tragedy’ that had ‘been often (with great applause) played publicly’; its popularity is witnessed by the fact that this is a pirated version, put together from actors’ memories as a way of cashing in on its success. A second printing, two years later, offered a greatly superior text apparently printed from Shakespeare’s working papers. Probably he wrote it in 1594 or 1595.

The story was already well known, in Italian, French, and English. Shakespeare owes most to Arthur Brooke’s long poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which had already supplied hints for The Two Gentlemen of Verona; he may also have looked at some of the other versions. In his address ‘To the Reader’, Brooke says that he has seen ‘the same argument lately set forth on stage with more commendation than I can look for’, but no earlier play survives.

Shakespeare’s Prologue neatly sketches the plot of the two star-crossed lovers born of feuding families whose deaths ‘bury their parents’ strife’; and the formal verse structure of the Prologue — a sonnet — is matched by the carefully patterned layout of the action. At the climax of the first scene, Prince Escalus stills a brawl between representatives of the houses of Montague (Romeo’s family) and Capulet (Juliet’s); at the end of Act 3, Scene 1, he passes judgement on another, more serious brawl, banishing Romeo for killing Juliet’s cousin Tybalt after Tybalt had killed Romeo’s friend and the Prince’s kinsman, Mercutio; and at the end of Act 5, the Prince presides over the reconciliation of Montagues and Capulets. Within this framework of public life Romeo and Juliet act out their brief tragedy: in the first act they meet and declare their love--in another sonnet; in the second they arrange to marry in secret; in the third, after Romeo’s banishment, they consummate their marriage and part; in the fourth, Juliet drinks a sleeping draught prepared by Friar Laurence so that she may escape marriage to Paris and, after waking in the family tomb, run off with Romeo; in the fifth, after Romeo, believing her to be dead, has taken poison, she stabs herself to death.

The play’s structural formality is offset by an astonishing fertility of linguistic invention, showing itself no less in the comic bawdiness of the servants, the Nurse, and (on a more sophisticated level) Mercutio than in the rapt and impassioned poetry of the lovers. Shakespeare’s mastery over a wide range of verbal styles combines with his psychological perceptiveness to create a richer gallery of memorable characters than in any of his earlier plays; and his theatrical imagination compresses Brooke’s leisurely narrative into a dramatic masterpiece.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

CHORUS

ROMEO

MONTAGUE, his father

MONTAGUE’S WIFE

BENVOLIO, Montague’s nephew

ABRAHAM, Montague’s servingman

BALTHASAR, Romeo’s man

JULIET

CAPULET, her father

CAPULET’S WIFE

TYBALT, her nephew

His page

PETRUCCIO

CAPULET’S COUSIN

Juliet’s NURSE

PETER }

SAMSON } servingmen of the Capulets

GREGORY }

Other SERVINGMEN

MUSICIANS

Escalus, PRINCE of Verona

MERCUTIO }

County PARIS } his kinsmen

PAGE to Paris

FRIAR LAURENCE

FRIAR JOHN

An APOTHECARY

CHIEF WATCHMAN

Other CITIZENS OF THE WATCH

Masquers, guests, gentlewomen, followers of the Montague

and Capulet factions