Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet Character Analysis Romeo
The name Romeo, in popular culture, has become nearly synonymous with “lover.” Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet, does indeed experience a love of such purity and passion that he kills himself when he believes that the object of his love, Juliet, has died. During the course of the play, Romeo matures from adolescence to adulthood as a result of his love for Juliet and his unfortunate involvement in the feud, marking his development from a comic character to a tragic figure. The power of Romeo’s love, however, often obscures a clear vision of Romeo’s character, which is far more complex. Even Romeo’s relation to love is not so simple. At the beginning of the play, Romeo pines for Rosaline, proclaiming her the paragon of women and despairing at her indifference toward him. Taken together, Romeo’s Rosaline-induced histrionics seem rather juvenile. Romeo is a great reader of love poetry, and the portrayal of his love for Rosaline suggests he is trying to re-create the feelings that he has read about. He is initially presented as a Petrarchan lover, a man whose feelings of love aren't reciprocated by the lady he admires and who uses the poetic language of sonnets to express his emotions about his situation. Romeo's exaggerated language in his early speeches characterizes him as a young and inexperienced lover who is more in love with the concept of being in love than with the woman herself. Among his friends, especially while bantering with Mercutio, Romeo shows glimpses of his social persona. He is intelligent, quick-witted, fond of verbal jousting (particularly about sex), loyal, and unafraid of danger.
The play's emphasis on characters' eyes and the act of looking accords with Romeo's role as a blind lover who doesn't believe that there could be another lady more fair than his Rosaline. Romeo denies that he could be deluded by love, the "religion" of his eye. This zeal, combined with his rejection of Benvolio's advice to find another love to replace Rosaline, highlights Romeo's immaturity as a lover. Similar imagery creates a comic effect when Romeo falls in love at first sight with Juliet at the Capulet feast. When Romeo sees Juliet, he realizes the artificiality of his love for Rosaline:

"Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night" (I.5.52–53).

After first kissing Juliet, she tells him “you kiss by th’ book,” meaning that he kisses according to the rules, and implying that while proficient, his kissing lacks originality (1.5.107). In reference to Rosaline, it seems, Romeo loves by the book. Rosaline, of course, slips from Romeo’s mind at first sight of Juliet. But Juliet is no mere replacement. The love she shares with Romeo is far deeper, more authentic and unique than the clichéd puppy love Romeo felt for Rosaline. Romeo’s love matures over the course of the play from the shallow desire to be in love to a profound and intense passion. As the play progresses, Romeo's increasing maturity as a lover is marked by the change in his language. He begins to speak in blank verse as well as rhyme, which allows his language to sound less artificial and more like everyday language. One must ascribe Romeo’s development at least in part to Juliet. Her level-headed observations, such as the one about Romeo’s kissing, seem just the thing to snap Romeo from his superficial idea of love and to inspire him to begin to speak some of the most beautiful and intense love poetry ever written.
Yet Romeo’s deep capacity for love is merely a part of his larger capacity for intense feeling of all kinds. Put another way, it is possible to describe Romeo as lacking the capacity for moderation. Love compels him to sneak into the garden of his enemy’s daughter, risking death simply to catch a glimpse of her.
When Tybalt kills Mercutio, however, Romeo (out of loyalty to his friend and anger at Tybalt's arrogance) kills Tybalt, thus avenging his friend's death. In one ill-fated moment, he placed his love of Juliet over his concern for Mercutio, and Mercutio was killed. Romeo then compounds the problem by placing his own feelings of anger over any concerns for Juliet by killing Tybalt. Anger compels him to kill his wife’s cousin in a reckless duel to avenge the death of his friend. Romeo's immaturity is again manifest later when he learns of his banishment. He lies on the floor of the Friar's cell, wailing and crying over his fate. When the nurse arrives, he clumsily attempts suicide. The Friar reminds him to consider Juliet and chides him for not thinking through the consequences of his actions for his wife. Despair compels him to suicide upon hearing of Juliet’s death. Such extreme behaviour dominates Romeo’s character throughout the play and contributes to the ultimate tragedy that befalls the lovers. Had Romeo restrained himself from killing Tybalt, or waited even one day before killing himself after hearing the news of Juliet’s death, matters might have ended happily. Of course, though, had Romeo not had such depths of feeling, the love he shared with Juliet would never have existed in the first place.
Later, when Romeo receives the news of Juliet's death, he exhibits maturity and composure as he resolves to die. His only desire is to be with Juliet: "Well Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight" (V.1.36). His resolution is reflected in the violent image he uses to order Balthasar, his servant, to keep out of the tomb: The time and my intents are savage-wild,
More fierce and more inexorable far
Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
(V.3.37–40)

After killing Paris, Romeo remorsefully takes pity on him and fulfils Paris' dying wish to be laid next to Juliet. Romeo notes that both he and Paris are victims of fate and describes Paris as:
"One writ with me in sour misfortune's book" (V.3.83)
Since Paris experienced an unreciprocated love from Juliet similar to Romeo's unrequited love for Rosaline. Romeo is also filled with compassion because he knows that Paris has died without understanding the true love that he and Juliet shared.
Romeo's final speech recalls the Prologue in which the "star-cross'd" lives of the lovers are sacrificed to end the feud:
O here
Will I set up my everlasting rest
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world wearied flesh.
(V.3.109–112)

Juliet
Having not quite reached her fourteenth birthday, Juliet is of an age that stands on the border between immaturity and maturity. At the play’s beginning however she seems merely an obedient, sheltered, naïve child. Though many girls her age—including her mother—get married, Juliet has not given the subject any thought. When Lady Capulet mentions Paris’s interest in marrying Juliet, Juliet dutifully responds that she will try to see if she can love him, a response that seems childish in its obedience and in its immature conception of love.
"I'll look to like, if looking liking move" (I.3.97).
However, Juliet promises to consider Paris as a possible husband to the precise degree her mother desires. While an outward show of obedience, such a statement can also be read as a refusal through passivity. Juliet will accede to her mother’s wishes, but she will not go out of her way to fall in love with Paris. This is a show of steely determination. (I’m not sure about this point)
Juliet seems to have no friends her own age, and she is not comfortable talking about sex (as seen in her discomfort when the Nurse goes on and on about a sexual joke at Juliet’s expense in Act 1, scene 3). Juliet, like Romeo, makes the transition from an innocent adolescent to responsible adult during the course of the play. In Juliet's case, however, there is a heightened sense that she has been forced to mature too quickly. The emphasis throughout the play on Juliet's youth, despite her growing maturity, establishes her more as a tragic heroine.
Juliet is presented as quiet and obedient; however, she possesses an inner strength that enables her to have maturity beyond her years.
When she meets and falls in love with Romeo, she is prepared to defy her parents and marry Romeo in secret. In her relationship with Romeo, Juliet is loving, witty, loyal, and strong. When Romeo and Juliet kiss at the feast, Juliet teases Romeo for using the popular imagery of love poetry to express his feelings and for kissing according to convention rather than from the heart: "You kiss by th' book" (I.5.110). This establishes a pattern for their relationship in which Juliet displays greater maturity, particularly in moments of great emotional intensity. This first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward adulthood. Though profoundly in love with him, Juliet is able to see and criticize Romeo’s rash decisions and his tendency to romanticize things. Juliet is aware of the foolhardiness of their love: "It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden." This sense of rushing headlong accurately characterizes their love, yet despite her premonition, Juliet is the one who suggests later in the scene that they marry.
The news of Tybalt's death initially produces conflicting feelings for Juliet because she's torn between her love for her husband and the loyalty she feels for Tybalt, her slain cousin: "Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?" (III.2.98). Juliet's love for Romeo soon resolves the conflict:
My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain,
And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband.
All this is comfort.
(III.2.105–107)
In Act III, Scene 5, Capulet demands his right as her father to marry her to Paris, threatening her with disinheritance and public shame. Juliet, however, is resolute in her decision to die rather than enter into a false marriage: "If all else fail, myself have power to die"(III.5.244). At this point, when Juliet is most isolated from her family, even the Nurse betrays Juliet's trust by advising her to forget Romeo and comply with her father's wishes.
When Romeo is banished, Juliet does not follow him blindly. She makes a logical and heartfelt decision that her loyalty and love for Romeo must be her guiding priorities. Essentially, Juliet cuts herself loose from her prior social moorings—her nurse, her parents, and her social position in Verona—in order to try to reunite with Romeo. Juliet's decision in Act IV to take the Friar's potion rather than enter into a bigamous marriage with Paris increases Juliet's stature as a tragic heroine. She reflects on the plan but prepares to face the dangers involved bravely: "My dismal scene I needs must act alone."
When she wakes in the tomb to find Romeo dead, she does not kill herself out of feminine weakness, but rather out of an intensity of love, just as Romeo did. Juliet’s suicide actually requires more nerve than Romeo’s: while he swallows poison, she stabs herself through the heart with a dagger.
Juliet’s development from a wide-eyed girl into a self-assured, loyal, and capable woman is one of Shakespeare’s early triumphs of characterization. It also marks one of his most confident and rounded treatments of a female character. Mercutio
Kinsman to the Prince, Mercutio displays a fine if disrespectful tongue, especially towards Juliet's nurse. An unlikely source of wisdom, Mercutio is an anti-romantic character who, like Juliet's Nurse, regards love as an exclusively physical pursuit. He advocates an adversarial concept of love that contrasts sharply with Romeo's idealized notion of romantic union. In Act I, Scene 4, when Romeo describes his love for Rosaline using the image of love as a rose with thorns, Mercutio mocks this conventional device by punning bawdily:
If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.
(I.4.27–28)
He means that Romeo should be rough with love if it is rough with him, and to regain his enthusiasm for love.
The witty skeptic, Mercutio is a foil for Romeo, the young Petrarchan lover. Mercutio mocks Romeo's vision of love and the poetic devices he uses to express his emotions:
Romeo, Humors! Madman! Passion! Lover!
Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh,
Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied.
(II.1.7–9)
The Queen Mab speech in Act I, Scene 4, displays Mercutio's eloquence and vivid imagination, while illustrating his cynical side. Mercutio, unlike Romeo, doesn't believe that dreams can act as portents. Fairies predominate in the dream world Mercutio presents, and dreams are merely the result of the anxieties and desires of those who sleep.
Mercutio's speech, while building tension for Romeo's first meeting with Juliet at the Capulet ball, indicates that although Mercutio is Romeo's friend, he can never be his confidant. As the play progresses, Mercutio remains unaware of Romeo's love and subsequent marriage to Juliet.
Mercutio meets his death in Act III, Scene I when he rashly draws his sword on Tybalt who had been trying unsuccessfully to provoke Romeo into fighting. Famous for the words, "a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough" which describe his fatal wound by Tybalt, Mercutio's death results in Tybalt's death when Romeo avenges the death of his friend (Line 98).
He says wishes a plague upon the two houses, showing that he, unlike the rest of the characters, blames the tragedy on the people involved (Capulet and Montague), rather than fate. He is down to earth.

Friar Lawrence
Friar Laurence is presented as a holy man who is trusted and respected by the other characters. The Friar's role as the friend and advisor to Romeo and Juliet highlights the conflict between parents and their children within the play. The centrality of the Friar's role suggests a notable failure of parental love. Romeo and Juliet can't tell their parents of their love because of the quarrel between the two families. A Franciscan priest, he plays a crucial role in the play by marrying Romeo and Juliet's in his cell in the hope that the feud between the Montague's and the Capulet's will now end. He is a friend of Romeo and initially can't believe how quickly Romeo has abandoned Rosaline and fallen in love with Juliet, and does not take Romeo's love for Juliet seriously, remembering Romeo's obsession with Rosaline. He reminds Romeo of the suddenness of his decisions
In their isolation, Romeo and Juliet turn to the Friar who can offer neutral advice. The Friar uses the formal language of rhyme and proverbs to stress the need for caution to Romeo. However, he agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet in the hope that their marriage will heal the rift between the Montagues and the Capulets. His decision to marry the lovers is well-meaning but indicates that he has been naive in his assessment of the feud and hasn't reflected on the implications of Romeo and Juliet's clandestine marriage.
The conflict between youth and old age also manifests itself in the Friar's relationship with Romeo and Juliet. When Friar Laurence tries to soothe Romeo's grief at the news of his banishment with rational argument, Romeo quickly responds that if the Friar was young and in love, he wouldn't accept such advice any better.

“Thou canst speak of that thou dost not feel.
Wert though as young as I Juliet thy love,
An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,
Doting like me, and like me banished, then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,
And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
Taking the measurement of an unmade grave.”
(3.3.63-70)

Later he unwittingly plays a part in the two lover's deaths when he devises the plan to reunite Romeo and Juliet through the deceptive ruse of a sleeping potion that seems to arise from almost mystic knowledge. This mystical knowledge seems out of place for a Catholic friar; why does he have such knowledge, and what could such knowledge mean? He first puts Juliet to sleep with a deathlike potion which fools Romeo into thinking Juliet is dead leading to his suicide by self administered poison followed by Juliet's death after her discovery that Romeo is dead. Friar Laurence's letter to Romeo explaining that Juliet was not really dead never made it to Romeo.
The Friar's knowledge of plants — especially their dual qualities to heal and hurt, play an important role in the action that follows. His attempts to heal the feud by reversing nature, causing Juliet's "death" in order to bring about acceptance of her life with Romeo is notably unnatural. The Friar must extricate Juliet from the tomb in order to save her life — another reversal of nature. This use of nature for unnatural purposes precipitates many of the consequences leading to the tragic conclusion of the play.
At the end of the play, despite his own admission of guilt for Romeo's and Juliet's death, Escalus, The Prince of Verona forgives him.
Friar Lawrence occupies a strange position in Romeo and Juliet. He is a kind hearted cleric who helps Romeo and Juliet throughout the play. He performs their marriage and gives generally good advice, especially in regard to the need for moderation. He is the sole figure of religion in the play. But Friar Lawrence is also the most scheming and political of characters in the play: he marries Romeo and Juliet as part of a plan to end the civil strife in Verona. In addition, though Friar Lawrence’s plans all seem well conceived and well intentioned, they serve as the main mechanisms through which the fated tragedy of the play occurs. Ultimately, the Friar acts distinctly human — he flees the tomb and abandons Juliet. Nurse In many ways a surrogate mother to Juliet, she cares deeply for Juliet's best interests, even encouraging Juliet's dangerous relationship with Romeo in the hope that it will make Juliet happy. The Nurse's key function within the play is to act as a go-between for Romeo and Juliet, and is the only other character besides Friar Laurence to know of their wedding. The Nurse, despite being a servant in the Capulet household, has a role equivalent to that of Juliet's mother and regards Juliet as her own daughter.
The Nurse's relationship with Juliet focuses attention on Juliet's age. In Juliet's first scene, the Nurse repeatedly asserts that Juliet has not yet had her 14th birthday. In contrast to Juliet's youth, the Nurse is old and enjoys complaining about her aches and pains.
The Nurse, like Mercutio, loves to talk at length. She often repeats herself, and her bawdy references to the sexual aspect of love set the idealistic love of Romeo and Juliet apart from the love described by other characters in the play.
The Nurse doesn't share Juliet's idea of love. For her, love is a temporary and physical relationship, so she can't understand the intense and spiritual love Romeo and Juliet share. When the Nurse brings Juliet news of Romeo's wedding arrangements, she focuses on the pleasures of Juliet's wedding night, "I am the drudge, and toil in your delight, / But you shall bear the burden soon at night" (II.5.75–76).
This clash in outlook manifests itself when she advises Juliet to forget the banished Romeo and marry Paris, betraying Juliet's trust by advocating a false marriage:
I think it best you married with the County.
O, he's a lovely gentleman.
Romeo's a dishclout to him.
(III.5.218–220)
After Tybalt's death, Nurse becomes less sympathetic and later when Capulet orders Juliet to marry Paris, she defends Juliet at first but later pragmatically suggests that Paris would not be so bad after all. Juliet can't believe that the Nurse offers such a course of action after she praised Romeo and helped bring the couple together. The Nurse is ultimately subject to the whims of society. Her social position places her in the serving class — she is not empowered to create change around her. Her maternal instinct toward Juliet buoys her to aid Juliet in marrying Romeo; however, when Capulet becomes enraged, the Nurse retreats quickly into submission and urges Juliet to forget Romeo.

MINOR CHARACTERS: Benvolio: Nephew to Montague, and friend to Mercutio and Romeo, his role in the play is minor, serving mainly as a friend to Romeo. Tybalt: Nephew to Lady Capulet, this rash, hot-blooded young man is adversarial and hateful towards all Montagues, especially Romeo. When he sees Romeo at the Capulet party, his immediate instinct is to fight, but only the increasingly firm warnings from Capulet to hold his peace restrain him. Tybalt is slain by Romeo in Act III, Scene I, after he had killed Romeo's friend, Mercutio. Until this point, Tybalt had failed to provoke Romeo into fighting, but dies when he finally fights Romeo. Escalus: The Prince of Verona, his continued annoyance with the ongoing feud between the Capulet and Montague families leads him to warn both families that further fighting between the two will be punished by death. Escalus is also responsible for banishing Romeo from Verona after Romeo killed Tybalt, an act of mercy on the Prince's part. At the end of the play when both Romeo and Juliet are dead, Escalus tells the two grieving families they are largely to blame for this tragedy in addition to his own lack of intervention to stop the Capulet / Montague feud... (Lines 281-295) Paris: A young nobleman, Kinsman to the Prince. Introduced to us in Act I, Scene II, it is Capulet's desire that the young Paris marry his daughter Juliet. Juliet later reveals her reluctance to be married so early in life rather than a dislike of Paris personally. When Juliet falls in love with Romeo, Paris is increasingly ignored by Juliet but remains polite, perhaps ignorant that Juliet does not want to marry him nor that she does not love him. At the end of the play (Act V, Scene III), he is killed by Romeo, but has his death wish of being placed near Juliet whom he loved, granted by Romeo. (Lines 73 & 74) Montague and Capulet: The heads of two houses opposed to each other. Their feud has been going on for some time, described in the Prologue as an "ancient grudge" (Line 3). We never learn the cause of it, only that it continues to this day. Montague's son is Romeo, Capulet's daughter is Juliet. The two heads of their respective households never fight, only it appears do their servants, nephews and children. At the end of the play each man loses their beloved child. Montague's role in the play appears to be limited to concern for his son, and his last act in the play in Act V, Scene III is to raise a gold statue of his former enemy's daughter Juliet. Capulet's role, however is much greater. First we see him as the wise and charismatic, charming man who prevents Tybalt fighting Romeo at his party and graciously talks with various guests, then later as the firm, ruthless father who would see his daughter marry against her will rather than have his rule questioned. Lady Montague: The wife of Montague, she worries about her son's happiness in Act I, Scene I. Later she dies, grief stricken that her son was banished from Verona. "Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath" Montague later explains (Act V, Scene III, Line 211). Lady Capulet: Juliet's mother, we see her as a distant figure in Juliet's life; Juliet's nurse remembers more about Juliet's childhood than Lady Capulet, suggesting a distance between mother and daughter. Nonetheless she appears close to her daughter, assisting her husband to convince Juliet into marrying Paris. When Capulet orders Juliet to marry Paris, Lady Capulet, falls into line, agreeing with Capulet and betraying Juliet. Friar John: Of the same order as Friar Laurence, this Friar's detainment by quarantine in Verona (Act V, Scene II) leads to Romeo not receiving Friar Laurence's letter of explanation that Juliet was not really dead, leading to Romeo killing himself in despair... Balthasar: Servant to Romeo, he witnesses the final moments of Romeo's life at the churchyard from a hiding place. He later backs up Friar Laurence's explanation of events to Escalus, Prince of Verona. Sampson and Gregory: Servants to Capulet, these two men initially try to pick a fight with their opposites from the Montague family, Abraham and Balthasar in Act I, Scene I, establishing the feud that exists between Capulet and Montague families by showing that their mutual hatred even extends to their servants. This fight in a civic space leads Escalus to warn both families that further fighting will be punished by death... Peter: Servant to Juliet's nurse. Abraham: Servant to the Montague family, he is involved in the fight in Act I, Scene I. An Apothecary: A minor character, he supplies the poison that Romeo uses to end his life. At first he is unwilling to sell poison to Romeo but later sells it out of necessity against his conscience.

Motifs and Symbols 1) Light/Darkness

One of the play’s most consistent visual motifs is the contrast between light and dark, often in terms of night/day imagery. This contrast is not given a particular metaphoric meaning—light is not always good, and dark is not always evil. On the contrary, light and dark are generally used to provide a sensory contrast and to hint at opposed alternatives.
When Romeo initially sees Juliet, he compares her immediately to the brilliant light of the torches and tapers that illuminate Capulet's great hall: "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" (1.4.46). Juliet is the light that frees him from the darkness of his perpetual melancholia. One of the more important instances of this motif is Romeo’s lengthy meditation on the sun and the moon during the balcony scene, in which Juliet, metaphorically described as the sun, is seen as banishing the “envious moon” and transforming the night into day (2.2.3-4) In turn, Juliet compares their new-found love to lightning (2.2.120), primarily to stress the speed at which their romance is moving, but also to suggest that, as the lightning is a glorious break in the blackness of the night sky, so too is their love a flash of wondrous luminance in an otherwise dark world -- a world where her every action is controlled by those around her.

“Take [Romeo] and cut him out into 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.” (3.2.23-6) |
Here Romeo, transformed into shimmering immortality, becomes the very definition of light, outshining the sun itself. However, despite all the aforementioned positive references to light in the play, it ultimately takes on a negative role, forcing the lovers to part at dawn. Romeo, forced to leave for exile in the morning, and Juliet, not wanting him to leave her room, both try to pretend that it is still night, and that the light is actually darkness:

“Romeo. It was the lark, the herald of the morn
No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops.
I must be gone and live or stay and die” (3.5.6-11)

From this point on, darkness becomes the central motif. Romeo exclaims: "More light and light: more dark and dark our woes!" (3.5.36).
The final indication that darkness has triumphed over light comes from The Prince: "A glooming peace this morning with it brings/The sun for sorrow will not show his head" (5.3.304-5).

2) Opposing Viewpoints
Shakespeare includes numerous speeches and scenes in Romeo and Juliet that hint at alternative ways to evaluate the play. Shakespeare uses two main devices in this regard: Mercutio and servants. Mercutio consistently skewers the viewpoints of all the other characters in play: he sees Romeo’s devotion to love as a sort of blindness that robs Romeo from himself; similarly, he sees Tybalt’s devotion to honor as blind and stupid. His punning and the Queen Mab speech can be interpreted as undercutting virtually every passion evident in the play. Mercutio serves as a critic of the delusions of righteousness and grandeur held by the characters around him.
Where Mercutio is a nobleman who openly criticizes other nobles, the views offered by servants in the play are less explicit. There is the Nurse who lost her baby and husband, the servant Peter who cannot read, the musicians who care about their lost wages and their lunches, and the Apothecary who cannot afford to make the moral choice, the lower classes present a second tragic world to counter that of the nobility. The nobles’ world is full of grand tragic gestures. The servants’ world, in contrast, is characterized by simple needs, and early deaths brought about by disease and poverty rather than dueling and grand passions. Where the nobility almost seem to revel in their capacity for drama, the servants’ lives are such that they cannot afford tragedy of the epic kind.

3) Time
*I’m not sure about this part, because it’s not what we did in school about “time standing still”
Early in the play, Romeo is painfully aware of the passage of time as he pines for Rosaline: "sad hours seem long" (1.1.159). Mercutio is the first to address the problem of "wasted time", and after his complaint, a sudden shift occurs and time quickens to rapid movement. Capulet laments that the years are passing too fast, and Juliet cautions that her love for Romeo is "too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden...too like the lightning" (2.2.120). Soon time begins to aid in the destruction of the lovers. Capulet rushes ahead the marriage date, insisting Juliet wed Paris a day early, and thus forcing her into swift and, ultimately, fatal action. The fast-paced world that Shakespeare builds up around his characters allows little possibility for adherence to Friar Lawrence's counsel of "Wisely and slow." Time is portrayed as an increasingly menacing force against the lovers. 4) Poison
In his first appearance, in Act 2, scene 2, Friar Lawrence remarks that every plant, herb, and stone has its own special properties, and that nothing exists in nature that cannot be put to both good and bad uses. Thus, poison is not intrinsically evil, but is instead a natural substance made lethal by human hands. Friar Lawrence’s words prove true over the course of the play. The sleeping potion he gives Juliet is concocted to cause the appearance of death, not death itself, but through circumstances beyond the Friar’s control, the potion does bring about a fatal result: Romeo’s suicide. As this example shows, human beings tend to cause death even without intending to. Similarly, Romeo suggests that society is to blame for the apothecary’s criminal selling of poison, because while there are laws prohiting the Apothecary from selling poison, there are no laws that would help the apothecary make money. Poison symbolizes human society’s tendency to poison good things and make them fatal, just as the pointless Capulet-Montague feud turns Romeo and Juliet’s love to poison. After all, unlike many of the other tragedies, this play does not have an evil villain, but rather people whose good qualities are turned to poison by the world in which they live. 5) Thumb-biting
In Act 1, scene 1, the buffoonish Samson begins a brawl between the Montagues and Capulets by flicking his thumbnail from behind his upper teeth, an insulting gesture known as biting the thumb. He engages in this juvenile and vulgar display because he wants to get into a fight with the Montagues but doesn’t want to be accused of starting the fight by making an explicit insult. Because of his timidity, he settles for being annoying rather than challenging. The thumb-biting, as an essentially meaningless gesture, represents the foolishness of the entire Capulet/Montague feud and the stupidity of violence in general. 6) Queen Mab
In Act 1, scene 4, Mercutio delivers a dazzling speech about the fairy Queen Mab, who rides through the night on her tiny wagon bringing dreams to sleepers. One of the most noteworthy aspects of Queen Mab’s ride is that the dreams she brings generally do not bring out the best sides of the dreamers, but instead serve to confirm them in whatever vices they are addicted to—for example, greed, violence, or lust. Another important aspect of Mercutio’s description of Queen Mab is that it is complete nonsense, albeit vivid and highly colorful. Nobody believes in a fairy pulled about by “a small grey-coated gnat” whipped with a cricket’s bone (1.4.65). Finally, it is worth noting that the description of Mab and her carriage goes to extravagant lengths to emphasize how tiny and insubstantial she and her accoutrements are. Queen Mab and her carriage do not merely symbolize the dreams of sleepers, they also symbolize the power of waking fantasies, daydreams, and desires. Through the Queen Mab imagery, Mercutio suggests that all desires and fantasies are as nonsensical and fragile as Mab, and that they are basically corrupting. This point of view contrasts starkly with that of Romeo and Juliet, who see their love as real and ennobling.

Themes 1) Love
The Forcefulness of Love
Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. Love is naturally the play’s dominant and most important theme. The Nurse and Mercutio speak in vulgar terms about love, referring to its physical side. Romeo's love for Rosaline is simply superficial, childish infatuation. Paris represents a contractual love. He does not actually know Juliet, just her family and what she represents. He is marrying a name, not a person. Juliet questions Romeo at first as to his intentions, the type of love he has to offer.
The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions. In the course of the play, the young lovers are driven to defy their entire social world: families (“Deny thy father and refuse thy name,” Juliet asks, “Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet”); friends (Romeo abandons Mercutio and Benvolio after the feast in order to go to Juliet’s garden); and ruler (Romeo returns to Verona for Juliet’s sake after being exiled by the Prince on pain of death in 2.1.76–78). Love is the overriding theme of the play, but a reader should always remember that Shakespeare is uninterested in portraying a prettied-up, dainty version of the emotion, the kind that bad poets write about, and whose bad poetry Romeo reads while pining for Rosaline. This also shows that his love for Rosaline is shallow and insincere. Love in Romeo and Juliet is a brutal, powerful emotion that captures individuals and catapults them against their world, and, at times, against themselves.
The powerful nature of love can be seen in the way it is described, or, more accurately, the way descriptions of it so consistently fail to capture its entirety. At times love is described in the terms of religion, as in the fourteen lines when Romeo and Juliet first meet. At others it is described as a sort of magic: “Alike bewitchèd by the charm of looks” (2.Prologue.6). Juliet, perhaps, most perfectly describes her love for Romeo by refusing to describe it: “But my true love is grown to such excess / I cannot sum up some of half my wealth” (3.1.33–34). Love, in other words, resists any single metaphor because it is too powerful to be so easily contained or understood.
Romeo and Juliet does not make a specific moral statement about the relationships between love and society, religion, and family; rather, it portrays the chaos and passion of being in love, combining images of love, violence, death, religion, and family in an impressionistic rush leading to the play’s tragic conclusion.
Love as a Cause of Violence (Or, Love and Death)
The themes of death and violence permeate Romeo and Juliet, and they are always connected to passion, whether that passion is love or hate. The connection between hate, violence, and death seems obvious. But the connection between love and violence requires further investigation.
Love, in Romeo and Juliet, is a grand passion, and as such it is blinding; it can overwhelm a person as powerfully and completely as hate can. The passionate love between Romeo and Juliet is linked from the moment of its inception with death: Tybalt notices that Romeo has crashed the feast and determines to kill him just as Romeo catches sight of Juliet and falls instantly in love with her. From that point on, love seems to push the lovers closer to love and violence, not farther from it. Romeo and Juliet are plagued with thoughts of suicide, and a willingness to experience it: in Act 3, scene 3, Romeo brandishes a knife in Friar Lawrence’s cell and threatens to kill himself after he has been banished from Verona and his love. Juliet also pulls a knife in order to take her own life in Friar Lawrence’s presence just three scenes later. After Capulet decides that Juliet will marry Paris, Juliet says, “If all else fail, myself have power to die” (3.5.242). Finally, each imagines that the other looks dead the morning after their first, and only, sexual experience (“Methinks I see thee,” Juliet says, “. . . as one dead in the bottom of a tomb” (3.5.55–56). This theme continues until its inevitable conclusion: double suicide. This tragic choice is the highest, most potent expression of love that Romeo and Juliet can make. It is only through death that they can preserve their love, and their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense. In the play, love emerges as an amoral thing, leading as much to destruction as to happiness. But in its extreme passion, the love that Romeo and Juliet experience also appears so exquisitely beautiful that few would want, or be able, to resist its power.

2) Fate and Destiny
The Inevitability of Fate
In its first address to the audience, the Chorus states that Romeo and Juliet are “star-crossed”—that is to say that fate (a power often vested in the movements of the stars) controls them (Prologue.6). This sense of fate permeates the play, and not just for the audience. The characters also are quite aware of it: Romeo and Juliet constantly see omens. When Romeo believes that Juliet is dead, he cries out, “Then I defy you, stars,” completing the idea that the love between Romeo and Juliet is in opposition to the decrees of destiny (5.1.24). Of course, Romeo’s defiance itself plays into the hands of fate, and his determination to spend eternity with Juliet results in their deaths. The mechanism of fate works in all of the events surrounding the lovers: the feud between their families (it is worth noting that this hatred is never explained; rather, the reader must accept it as an undeniable aspect of the world of the play); the horrible series of accidents that ruin Friar Lawrence’s seemingly well-intentioned plans at the end of the play; and the tragic timing of Romeo’s suicide and Juliet’s awakening. These events are not mere coincidences, but rather manifestations of fate that help bring about the unavoidable outcome of the young lovers’ deaths.
The concept of fate described above is the most commonly accepted interpretation. There are other possible readings of fate in the play: as a force determined by the powerful social institutions that influence Romeo and Juliet’s choices, as well as fate as a force that emerges from Romeo and Juliet’s very personalities.

3) Individual vs. Society
The Individual Versus Society
Much of Romeo and Juliet involves the lovers’ struggles against public and social institutions that either explicitly or implicitly oppose the existence of their love. Such structures range from the concrete to the abstract: families and the placement of familial power in the father; law and the desire for public order; religion; and the social importance placed on masculine honor. These institutions often come into conflict with each other. The importance of honor, for example, time and again results in brawls that disturb the public peace.
Though they do not always work in concert, each of these societal institutions in some way present obstacles for Romeo and Juliet. The enmity between their families, coupled with the emphasis placed on loyalty and honor to kin, combine to create a profound conflict for Romeo and Juliet, who must rebel against their heritages. Further, the patriarchal power structure inherent in Renaissance families, wherein the father controls the action of all other family members, particularly women, places Juliet in an extremely vulnerable position. Her heart, in her family’s mind, is not hers to give. The law and the emphasis on social civility demands terms of conduct with which the blind passion of love cannot comply. Religion similarly demands priorities that Romeo and Juliet cannot abide by because of the intensity of their love. Though in most situations the lovers uphold the traditions of Christianity (they wait to marry before consummating their love), their love is so powerful that they begin to think of each other in blasphemous terms. For example, Juliet calls Romeo “the god of my idolatry,” elevating Romeo to level of God (2.1.156). The couple’s final act of suicide is likewise un-Christian. The maintenance of masculine honor forces Romeo to commit actions he would prefer to avoid. But the social emphasis placed on masculine honor is so profound that Romeo cannot simply ignore them.
It is possible to see Romeo and Juliet as a battle between the responsibilities and actions demanded by social institutions and those demanded by the private desires of the individual. Romeo and Juliet’s appreciation of night, with its darkness and privacy, and their renunciation of their names, with its attendant loss of obligation, make sense in the context of individuals who wish to escape the public world. But the lovers cannot stop the night from becoming day. And Romeo cannot cease being a Montague simply because he wants to; the rest of the world will not let him. The lovers’ suicides can be understood as the ultimate night, the ultimate privacy. 4) Death

“O love! O life! Not life, but love in death” (5.4.58)
Paris’ reaction when he finds out about Juliet’s death
Literature Quotes:
Love: Act 1
“Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why then, O brawling, O loving hate,
O any thing of nothing first created!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!”
Romeo (1.1.175-181).
And quotes 3 and 4 on page 334 of R+J book
CONTEXT: Romeo is whining about Rosaline not loving him * Rosaline exists in the play only to demonstrate Romeo’s passionate nature, his love of love. So even though he is only infatuated, he believes that he is in love * Romeo spouts clichés for Rosaline, e.g. poetic lines such as “Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health” This shows that his supposed love for Rosaline is in fact him trying to recreate the feelings that he imagines love to be. It also suggests that he is ready for love, but is not in love yet (despite what he may say) * He is also willing to love anyone who is beautiful and willing to share his feelings, and initially appears to share the same kind of attraction with Juliet. However, throughout the play, their love proves its genuineness, purity and power.
“When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turns tears to fires,
And these who, often drowned, could never die,
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars.
One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun
Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.”
Romeo (1.2.88-93) page 52-53
CONTEXT: Romeo is scoffing at Benvolio’s idea of crashing the Capulet ball to find a prettier girl than Rosaline so that Romeo would stop whining. * Here Romeo refers to his love for Rosaline as a ‘religion’ which implies that he is restricted by the ‘rules’ which he has created for himself (for Rosaline). Therefore, he sees himself giving up on loving Rosaline as a blasphemy, something sacrilegious, and that he would be punished severely for falling out of ‘love’ with Rosaline. * Because of this ‘punishment’ of falling out of love with Rosaline, he dies, since it is Juliet whom his love has been directed at in the end. This love for Juliet killed him.

“’Yea,” quoth my husband, ‘fall’st upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;
Wilt thou not Jule?’ it stinted, and said ‘Ay’.”

Nurse (1.3.55-57) page 58

CONTEXT: Nurse is reminiscing about her late husband when Lady Capulet is talking about Juliet.

* The nurse is focusing on the physical aspect of love/marriage, a stark contrast to Romeo and Juliet’s innocent love which focuses on the emotional aspect. * Contrast is shown here between some characters’ different ways of perceiving love, many types of ‘love’ here in the play though they are all under one theme.
“your love
Must climb a bird’s nest soon when it is dark.
I am the drudge, and toil in your delight,
But you shall bear the burden soon at night.”
Nurse (2.5.73-76) page 143-144
CONTEXT: Nurse is being dirty. * The nurse, as usual, focuses on the physical aspect of love. She makes a sexual joke at Juliet’s expense (about Romeo making advances on her).
“That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less.”
Lady Capulet (1.3.91-94) Page 61
CONTEXT: Lady Capulet talking to Juliet, persuading her to marry Paris at once, or else. * She means that every man, especially nobles, must have a worthy lady to display as an accessory, like icing on a cake, so as to show off their power. * Juliet must be Paris’s ‘book-cover’, in other words merely an item to magnify his greatness; his wife. * This shows her view of love as pragmatic and materialistic. She thinks that love is unnecessary for marriage, and Juliet just has to accept him as a worthy husband in order for their marriage to be successful. * This is again a contrast to the pure love of Romeo and Juliet. This is another one of different ways love is portrayed in the play by the different characters.
“If love be rough with you, be rough with love.
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.”
Mercutio (1.4.27-28) page 64
CONTEXT: Mercutio is teaching Romeo how to be manly.
“Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover!
Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh,
Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied;
Cry but ‘Ay me’, pronounce but ‘love’ and ‘dove’;”
Mercutio (2.1.7-10) page 99 and 100
CONTEXT: Mercutio is mocking the lovesick Romeo. * He does not take love seriously, and sees people in love as insane. He also believes that love cannot last long, and focuses on the physical aspect of love, much like the nurse (Queen Mab monologue). * He also has a very crude sense of humour. Also much like the nurse… very compatible
“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it sight,
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
Romeo (1.5.52-53) page 76
CONTEXT: Romeo is obsessing over Juliet (because she is oh so pretty). * This line appears ironic to the reader, because it seems like Romeo is being very hypocritical and fickle with his feelings, seeing as he claims never to have loved before, despite being lovesick for Rosaline but a few moments ago. * However, Shakespeare is hinting that their love might just be true love, unlike the ‘love’ with Rosaline. By saying this, Romeo might be considering if his brief infatuation with Rosaline was true love while he questions himself. * It also shows that Romeo falls in love with beauty easily, “saw true beauty” and “Forswear it SIGHT”. This makes the reader a little skeptical over the trueness of Romeo’s love towards Juliet. This is however disproved towards the end of the story as he actually kills himself when he thinks that Juliet is dead, proving the intensity of his feelings towards Juliet.

“But soft , what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
Romeo (2.2.2-3) page 103
CONTEXT: Romeo is still obsessing over Juliet (to himself). * He compares Juliet to the sun rising from the east, because he sees her appearing at the window, much like how sunlight appears through a window. * This quote shows a change in his expressions of love and speech, and he does not use clichéd poetic devices any longer. The poetic devices used here are now less abstract, and more relevant to the real feelings of Romeo. It also does not seem like something straight out of a book. * This hints that his love for Juliet is genuine after all, and this love may work out! This contrasts sharply with his superficial infatuation with Rosaline.
“Young men’s love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.”
Friar Lawrence (2.3.67-68) page 121
CONTEXT: Friar Lawrence is being wise (for once). * Friar Lawrence has doubts about the love between Romeo and Juliet, which echoes the reader’s doubts as well. * He is saying that Romeo has fallen for Juliet’s looks, and has switched from Rosaline to Juliet too quickly. He is criticizing Romeo for being too fickle.
“For this alliance may so happy prove,
To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.”
Friar Lawrence (2.3.91-92) page 123
CONTEXT: Friar Lawrence being annoyingly pragmatic. * The friar is using Romeo and Juliet’s pure, innocent love as a means to restore peace to Verona by uniting the Capulets and the Montagues. * This action shows the Friar’s practical outlook on their love, even though he might not support it. * He is also peace loving. This contrasts Romeo and Juliet’s view on their own love, as they do not even think of this as an opportunity to unite their families. Rather, they are prepared to take the risk of ‘betraying’ their own households for each other (eg. Balcony scene: “Deny thy father and refuse thy name.”)
“ ‘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; no words can that woe sound.”
Juliet (3.2.124-126) page 182-183
CONTEXT: Juliet is being drama queen (she needs to get her priorities straight). * This quote shows that Juliet is so deeply taken with Romeo, that she even forgets about her cousin’s murder at the hand of Romeo. She doesn’t blame him, because she is actually glad that Tybalt was killed by Romeo instead of vice versa. * She compares Romeo being banished to being worse her entire household, and even Romeo dying. She would rather be together with Romeo, dead, than together with him alive. This is very strong obsession on her part as she feels that death is better than lack of Romeo. *