Figurative Language
If there's one thing we know about John Keats, it's that he's fond of a good metaphor. Practically
every line in his poem offers up a new form of figurative language.
Nature
Symbol Analysis
We're cheating a little bit here. See, nature is also part of Keats' whole understanding of negative
capability: looking at a huge, scary mountain or the tumult of a stormy sea are a way to face big,
mysterious things that are completely outside of the viewer's control. In other words, they're a
constant reminder of all that we can't understand. Looking at nature is like a shortcut to Keats'
"negative capability."
•
•
•
•
Line 4: Language is compared to wheat in a grain bin thissimile (remember, similes use
"like" or "as" in their comparison of two things).
Lines 5-6: Night and clouds become symbols of love in this passage. Oh, it's all too
heavenly to believe – and maybe that's the point.
Line 9: The "fair creature" becomes an image of the natural world, but she's an especially
weak one. Unlike the sky or the world, she'll grow old and pass away.
Line 13: The "wide world" becomes an image of nature in general – a world far too big to
understand.
Figurative Language
Symbol Analysis
If there's one thing we know about John Keats, it's that he's fond of a good metaphor. Practically
every line in his poem offers up a new form of figurative language. This dense web of metaphors and
similes does a pretty good job of turning the world into a playground for the imagination – and vice
versa. If everything can be described as something else, it's pretty hard to tell what's real. Heck,
we're getting a headache already.
•
•
•
•
Lines 1, 2, 3, 5, 11, 14: Keats uses temporal indicators as the first word of each of these
lines, creating a feeling of expectation through the use of repetition.
Line 4: This simile compares language to wheat in a grain bin (remember, similes use "like"
or "as" in their comparison of two things).
Line 5: Personifying the night by turning its stars into a "face" allows the speaker to interact
with it as he would a real person.
Lines 6-7: Tracing the face of love with the hand of chance? That's some mighty
flowery imagery, folks. It's so flowery, as a matter of fact, that it becomes rather hard to
imagine. Personifying chance by giving it a hand doesn't make it any easier to picture.
Keats' brand of love is the stuff that romantic legends are made of… if only he could ever feel any of
it himself. When Keats writes of love, it's not just of a pair of fine eyes. That would be waaaaaytoo
easy. Nope, his love is HUGE and IMPOSSIBLE and always, always tinged with a healthy dose of
despair. We get the feeling that Keats would have been a whole lot happier as a knight in shining
armor, complete with a huge white horse. Turns out that the 19th century wasn't so full of castles
and giants to conquer and damsels to rescue – so Keats is left dreaming of a love that ultimately
remains available only in his imagination.
Death. Destruction. Dreams dashed in one fell swoop. Death isn't a peaceful sleep or an easy
descent into old age in Keats' work. Instead, it's a particularly bitter reminder of all the things that the
poet imagines he'll miss in a world that's teeming with beauty and wonders. Keats may think a lot
about death, but that doesn't mean that he's comfortable with his own mortality. Luckily, he seems to
enjoy dwelling in uncomfortable spaces.
Symbol Analysis
If there's one thing we know about John Keats, it's that he's fond of a good metaphor. Practically
every line in his poem offers up a new form of figurative language. This dense web of metaphors and
similes does a pretty good job of turning the world into a playground for the imagination – and vice
versa. If everything can be described as something else, it's pretty hard to tell what's real. Heck,
we're getting a headache already.
•
•
•
•
Lines 1, 2, 3, 5, 11, 14: Keats uses temporal indicators as the first word of each of these
lines, creating a feeling of expectation through the use of repetition.
Line 4: This simile compares language to wheat in a grain bin (remember, similes use "like"
or "as" in their comparison of two things).
Line 5: Personifying the night by turning its stars into a "face" allows the speaker to interact
with it as he would a real person.
Lines 6-7: Tracing the face of love with the hand of chance? That's some mighty
flowery imagery, folks. It's so flowery, as a matter of fact, that it becomes rather hard to
imagine. Personifying chance by giving it a hand doesn't make it any easier to picture.
Analysis
This poem falls into two major thought groups:
•
•
Keats expresses his fear of dying young in the first thought unit, lines 1-12. He
fears that he will not fulfill himself as a writer (lines 1-8) and that he will lose
his beloved (lines 9-12).
Keats resolves his fears by asserting the unimportance of love and fame in the
concluding two and a half lines of this sonnet.
The first quatrain (four lines) emphasizes both how fertile his imagination is and
how much he has to express; hence the imagery of the harvest, e.g., "glean'd,"
"garners," "full ripen'd grain." Subtly reinforcing this idea is the alliteration of the key
words "glean'd," garners," and "grain," as well as the repetition of r sounds in
"charactery," "rich," "garners,"ripen'd," and "grain.". A harvest is, obviously,
fulfillment in time, the culmination which yields a valued product, as reflected in the
grain being "full ripen'd." Abundance is also apparent in the adjectives "high-piled"
and "rich." The harvest metaphor contains a paradox (paradox is a characteristic of
Keats's poetry and thought): Keats is both the field of grain (his imagination is like the
grain to be harvested) and he is the harvester (writer of poetry).
In the next quatrain (lines 5-8), he sees the world as full of material he could
transform into poetry (his is "the magic hand"); the material is the beauty of nature
("night's starr'd face") and the larger meanings he perceives beneath the appearance of
nature or physical phenomena ("Huge cloudy symbols") .
In the third quatrain (lines 9-12), he turns to love. As the "fair creature of an hour,"
his beloved is short-lived just as, by implication, love is. The quatrain itself parallels
the idea of little time, in being only three and a half lines, rather than the usual four
lines of a Shakespearean sonnet; the effect of this compression or shortening is of a
slight speeding-up of time. Is love as important as, less important than, or more
important than poetry for Keats in this poem? Does the fact that he devotes fewer
lines to love than to poetry suggest anything about their relative importance to him?
The poet's concern with time (not enough time to fulfill his poetic gift and love) is
supported by the repetition of "when" at the beginning of each quatrain and by the
shortening of the third quatrain. Keats attributes two qualities to love: (1) it has the
ability to transform the world for the lovers, but of course fairies are not real, and their
enchantments are an illusion and (2) love involves us with emotion rather than
thought
Reflecting upon his feelings, which the act of writing this sonnet has involved,
Keats achieves some distancing from his own feelings and ordinary life; this
distancing enables him to reach a resolution. He thinks about the human solitariness
("I stand alone") and human insignificance (the implicit contrast between his lone self
and "the wide world"). The shore is a point of contact, the threshold between two
worlds or conditions, land and sea; so Keats is crossing a threshold, from his desire
for fame and love to accepting their unimportance and ceasing to fear and yearn.
John Keats’s “When I Have Fears” has often been read as a poem about a poet and his
fear of mortality. Such a fear is not hard to unearth in Keats’s collection of poetry, not
to mention his famous letters to family and friends. However, this sonnet stands out
from others of its kind and those by its author because it paints a more nuanced
portrait of death. Keats’s fear is not simply his fate, but his failure to achieve love and
fame within his short span on earth. A different reading of this poem reveals that,
though the root of this anxiety is obviously death, as the speaker gets perspective on
the shore of the world, death is also the problematic cure. While the speaker’s fears
spawn from mortality and the limitations of life, it is this limitation that actually
grants him the freedom from ultimate despair.
To provide context, it is important to note that the poem was written by an author
obsessed with death and whose slowly disappearing family was plagued with disease.
In fact, his brother died one year after the poem was written, and Keats died just three
years after that (Fay 7). The work has also been described as being “conscious of itself
as the poem of a poet” (Hecht 14). Though its discussion of artistic angst and poetry is
undeniable, it would behoove the reader to go from a more poetry-centered reading to
a death-centered reading. With death at the center, it is easier to really see the shades
of gray Keats paints regarding the popular poetic subject. This concept that it is not
merely just a poem of a poet, but a more relatable and general poem about life and
death, would of course be better explained through an explication of the text:
When
I
have
fears
that
I
Before
my
pen
has
gleaned
Before
high-pilèd
books,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
may
my
in
cease
to
be
teeming
brain,
charactery,
In the opening lines, the speaker has clearly identified one of his fears for the reader.
It is not merely the cliché death that worries the poet, but the very specific and mildly
unique fear that he may not achieve his full creative potential (“full ripened grain”) by
the time death arrives (in the form of “high-piled books” he has written). Such anxiety
is relatable to any artist and any human being who is dissatisfied with his or her
current state, or those who fear the limitations of life despite the unlimited nature of
their ideas (before his pen has even “gleaned” his “teeming brain”).
When
I
behold,
upon
the
Huge
cloudy
symbols
of
And
think
that
I
may
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
night’s
starred
face,
a
high
romance,
never
live
to
trace
The speaker looks up at the sky’s mighty constellations, perhaps beautiful, and he
fears that he will “cease to be” before even tracing their shadows. The artist’s job, of
course, is to trace or represent in his or her respective medium—for that is the
definition of art. We have thus established Keats’s fear of achieving artistic success
and fame (as he will identify later). However, the use of the word romance can also be
taken in the more cultural sense relating to romantic relationships—a vital component
of Keats’s fears:
And
when
I
feel,
fair
creature
of
an
That
I
shall
never
look
upon
thee
Never
have
relish
in
the
fairy
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
hour,
more,
power
The “and” tells the reader that in addition to this fear of failure in the poetic
department, the speaker is also concerned with having never experienced the majesty
of solid love or getting another chance to see this potential lover (who is limited by,
and at the mercy of, time as she is but a “creature of an hour”). This can be read that
the fear exists during the present—not that he will “never look upon [her] more” or
“never have relish in the fairy power” because he will be dead but because of the fact
that he will never succeed in doing so in life (nor will he have unlimited time to do
so). This establishes the second and final components that make up the speaker’s
fears: failure in the realm of love. These two aspects make up the overall truth that can
be better generalized by saying that, “The speaker simultaneously faces the
opportunities life holds for him and the threat of his own untimely death”
The Poetry of Toru Dutt in the Light of Romantic
Perspective
Nagesh Nalawade
New College, Kolhapur
‘May Love defend thee from Oblivion’s curse’- Toru Dutt (1856-1877) had turned a haunting
phrase to conclude her poem Our Casuarina Tree with. How one wishes the same for the
poetess- her name literally meaning a tree- who withered away in the prime of her youth. This
March 4 is the 150th birth anniversary of Toru Dutt. It is a pity that we are not able to
commemorate it in any grander fashion than to remember her in this column. But didn’t Kahlil
Gibran say, “Remembrance is a form of meeting”. Nothing heightens the poignancy in Toru’s
verses than her untimely death at the age of 21. But 21 years were time enough for this
daughter from green valley of gangetic Bengal to prove herself ambidextrously in English and
French. This is despite the fact that in her lifetime she had had formal schooling only for four
months in France. With a lifespan lesser than Keats and Shelley, she died before savoring the
recognition and full fructation of her genius. Only A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876), a
collection of nearly one hundred translations of French poets, with special emphasis on Victory
Hugo, into English was published in her lifetime. The novella in French Le Journal de
Mademoiselle d 'Arvers (1879) was published posthumously. The first, if not only
till date, origin French fiction written by an Indian employs French characters. Toru is best
remembered for her posthumous publication Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882).
Toru Dutt was a product of 19th century Bengal Renaissance. The Hindus of Bengal were
prompt to take advantage of liberal western education dispensed through institutions
established by British. Printing press, introduced by evangelist Rev. William Carey (1761-1834)
at Seerampore, to propagate Gospels in Indian language, actually served the cause of Indian
literature. Christianity found few converts in Bengal, limited amongst Hindu upper caste elites. A
branch of Dutt family of Rambagan, North Calcutta was amongst them. Toru Dutt belonged to
this family. Toru was six in 1862, when their family of five was baptized. But this adoption of
Christianity, like with poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-1873), never alientated Toru’s
creativity from Hindu epical and mythological moorings. These treasures she had received from
stories of her mother Ksetramani Devi. Her poem on exile of Sita would moisten one’s
eye. Toru wanted to read Sanskrit originals of Ramayana and Mahabharata but was prevented
by her untimely death. Toru had inherited the literary fecundity inherent in Dutt family of
Rambagan. Toru’s father Govin Chunder Dutt was also a poet who brought out an anthology
called ‘Dutt family Album’. Hur Chunder Dutt, Greece Chunder Dutt, Omesh Chunder Dutt, not
to forget Toru’s sister Aru Dutt penned beautiful poems in English. But a versatile man of letter,
who finds a place in Indian history, also came from another branch of Dutt family of Rambagan.
He is Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848-1909)- although famous for his Economic History of India he
is known for his translation of Ramayan and Mahabharata and nationalistic novels in Bengali.
Memoirs of R.C. Dutt provide valuable information about Toru Dutt. Two bagan-baris (garden
villas) of Rambagan and Baugmaree had played great role in shaping Toru’s poetic
consciousness. About Baugmaree she writes- “A sea of foliage girds our garden round/But not a
sea of dull unvaried green/Sharp contrasts of all colours here are seen/The light green graceful
tamarinds abound/Amid the mango clumps of green profound,/And palms arise, like pillar gray,
between;/And over the quiet pools the seemuls leans/Red-red, and startling like a trumpet’s
sound. But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges/Of bamboos to the eastward, when the
moon/Looks through the gaps, and the white lotus changes/into a cup of silver. One might
swoon/Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze/On a primeval Eden, in amaze”.
Govind Chunder Dutt’s progeny was seemingly haunted by an ominous curse. His son Abju,
and daughter Aru and Toru did not live up to maturity. But R.C. Dutt ascribes the death of Aru
and Toru to infection of tuberculosis picked up during Dutt family’s four-year old sojourn of
France and England. In 1870, Toru was one the first Indian women to travel abroad. Aru and
Toru, while in Nice, France, mastered French in a short time, enough to write original works in
that language. She was possessed by the spirit of French Revolution, and her poem France:
1870 is a poetic protest against Prussian attack on land of liberty.
Toru was 21 plus when she died amidst books on August 30, 1877 in Calcutta. She was visited
upon by famous names like Sir William Hunter and Anando Mohan Bose in her last days. The
publication of “A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876)” had brought her fame. But it is pity she
could not live to see the recognition that came posthumously. Toru has not been forgotten and
may our love defend her from oblivion’s curse.
Toru Dutt is one of the famous Indo-Anglican poets. Most of her poems have an Indian setting.
A sonnet deals with a single idea, the octave proposing and the sestet resolving. Within 14 lines
of the sonnet, Toru Dutt raises a problem in the Octave and resolves it in the sestet.
In this poem, Toru Dutt presents the idea that the Indian Lotus is the most beautiful of all
flowers. For a long time, Lily and Rose had been fighting for the title 'Queen of flowers.' Each
flower with its own support from poets, claimed for the title. At this time, God of Love came to
Goddess Flora asking for a flower, which would be the unchallenged queen of flowers. She
wanted for a flower, which was stately as the Lily and as delicious as the Rose. Goddess Flora
gave God of Love the lotus flower and resolved the long standing quarrel between Lily and
Rose. Great poets supported the flowers according to their wish, and some poets even raised
the doubt if the lily was beautiful than the rose. Lotus combines the
redness of the rose with the paleness of the lily. Goddess Flora created Lotus, which was both
rose red and lily white. One more thing to note is that the lotus is a flower of significance both to
Indian and the Hindu religion. We can understand Toru Dutt's affection for an Indian flower and
also she wanted to establish the superiority of Hindu religion over other religions in the world. As
Toru Dutt was brought up and educated abroad, she always turned to classical mythology to
establish her stand.
Elements of Drama
Character:-
Most simply a character is one of the persons who appear in the play, one of the
dramatic personae (literally, the persons of the play). In another sense of the term, the treatment of the
character is the basic part of the playwright's work.
Plot :-The interest generated by the plot varies for different kinds of plays. (See fiction elements on plot
for more information regarding plot.) The plot is usually structured with acts and scenes. Open conflict
plays: rely on the suspense of a struggle in which the hero, through perhaps fight against all odds, is not
doomed. Dramatic thesis: foreshadowing, in the form of ominous hints or symbolic incidents, conditions
the audience to expect certain logical developments. Coincidence: sudden reversal of fortune plays depict
climatic ironies or misunderstandings. Dramatic irony: the fulfillment of a plan, action, or expectation in a
surprising way, often opposite of what was intended.
Theme :-The plot has been called the body of a play and the theme has been called its soul. Most
plays have a conflict of some kind between individuals, between man and society, man and some
superior force or man and himself. The events that this conflict provokes make up the plot. One of the first
items of interest is the playwright\quote s treatment of the plot and what them he would draw from it. The
same plots have been and will be used many times; it is the treatment that supplies each effort with
originality or artistic worth. Shakespeare is said to have borrowed all but one of his stories, but he
presented them so much better than any of the previous authors that he is not seriously criticized for the
borrowing. Th e treatment of theme is equally varied.
Dialogue:-Dialogue provides the substance of a play. Each word uttered by the character furthers the
business of the play, contributes to its effect as a whole. Therefore, a sense of DECORUM must be
established by the characters, ie., what is said is appropriate to the role and situation of a character. Also
the exposition of the play often falls on the dialogue of the characters. Remember exposition establishes
the relationships, tensions or conflicts from which later plot developments derive.
Convention:-The
means the playwright employs are determined at least in part by dramatic
convention. Greek: Playwrights of this era often worked with familiar story material, legend about gods
and famous families that the audience was familiar with. Since the audience was familiar with certain
aspects of these, the playwrights used allusion rather than explicit exposition. In representing action, they
often relied on messengers to report off-stage action. For interpretation the Greeks relied on the
CHORUS, a body of onlookers, usually citizens or elders, whose comments on the play reflected
reactions common to the community. These plays were written in metered verse arranged in elaborate
stanzas. This required intense attention from the audience.
Genre:-
Genre is a term that describes works of literature according to their shared thematic or
structural characteristics. The attempt to classify literature in this way was initiated by Aristotle in the
Poetics, where he distinguishes tragedy, epic, and comedy and recognizes even more fundamental
distinctions between drama, epic, and lyric poetry.
Audience :-
It is the act or chance of hearing; a reception by a great person; the person to hear.
Playhouse, script, actors, audience are inseparable parts of the theatre. The concept of drama put
forward in this book insists that the audience have an indispensable role to play. While Stanislavsky is
right in saying that 'spectator come to the theatre to hear the subtext. They can read the text at home; he
is speaking as a man of the nineteenth century. We do not go to the play merely to have the text
interpreted and explained by the skills of the director and his actor. We do not go as in a learning
situation, but to share in a partnership without which the players cannot work
Shakespeare’s Source: - Shakespeare was a great borrower of plots. Hardly any of his plays has
an original plot in the sense of a story invented by himself. He took the story of almost every one
of his tragic and comic plays from another source, and then in each he adapted, altered, and
modified the borrowed material to suit his own purpose. In case of Romeo and Juliet,
Shakespeare’s source was a poem called The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet written by
Arthur Brooke. He had himself borrowed the story from a French translation of an Italian book
of stories written by an author called Bandello. The prose version of this story had also been
published in 1567 in William Painter’s Painter’s Palace of Pleasure.
The Story in Out Line:- Romeo is the son of Montague, while Juliet is the daughter of
Capulet. There has been a long- standing antagonism between the two families who live in the
kingdom of Verona. Romeo and Juliet fall in love with each other at first sight when they happen
to meet at Juliet’s house when her father is holding a formal meal and a dance to which Romeo
had not been formally invited but to which he had come masked in the company of a few
friends. It is only after Romeo and Juliet have actually fallen under each other’s spell that they
discover each other’s identity. They now both realize the danger to which they would be
exposing themselves if their love becomes known to their parents, but this realization does not
deter them from the passion which each has conceived for the other. Romeo seeks the help of a
friar(a man belonging to one of several Roman Catholic religious groups, whose members often
promise to stay poor) Laurence to get married to Juliet. The friar agrees to perform the
ceremony of marriage between Romeo and Juliet. The marriage must be performed secretly to
avoid any inconvenience. The same day Romeo gets involved in a fight with Tybalt who is a
cousin of Juliet. Tybalt is killed and Romeo is then banished by the Prince of Verona for having
committed a murder. He leaves Verona but meets Juliet at night and to consummate the marriage
before leaving Verona at dawn. Capulet now arranges his daughter’s marriage with nobleman
Paris. Juliet seeks Friar Laurence’s advice. The friar gives her a potion (a liquid that is believed
to have a magical effect on someone who drinks it) and bids her take it at night. The potion
would send her into a swoon resembling death. Thinking her to be dead, her parents would
arrange her funeral, and would have her buried in the family vault of the Capulet. Juliet would
wake up from this drugged sleep after a gap of 42 hours.
Meanwhile, the friar would send for Romeo who is now in Mantua and who would join the friar
in the family vault of Capulets to open the grave exactly at the time when she would wake up.
Then Romeo would carry her off to Mantua, beyond the reaches of her parents. Juliet does take
the potion, as advised by the friar. Everything goes off well; but the friar’s message does not
reach Romeo, so that Romeo does not know anything about Juliet’s having deliberately taken a
potion given to her by the friar. Juliet is buried in the family vault of Capulets though she is not
actually dead. Romeo gets the wrong news that Juliet has died and been buried. He finds no
purpose in life and hurriedly obtains a deadly poison from and rushes to the Capulets’ family
vault in order to kill himself by the side of Juliet’s body. There he is challenged by Paris, and
Romeo kills him in the fight. Romeo then digs out Juliet’s body and after embracing her for the
last time, drinks the poison. The friar now arrives in according with the promise he had given to
Juliet. He is dismayed to find Romeo and Paris lying dead by Juliet’s side. Juliet wakes up from
her dead- like slumber and finding Romeo dead, kills herself with a dagger. Over the dead
bodies of their children, Montague and Capulet get reconciled with each other, and the Prince
says that there never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Famous Quotations From Romeo and Juliet
1
One
One
pain
fire
is
burns
lessen'd
by
out
another's
another's
anguish.
(1.
2.
burning,
42-43)
Speaker: Benvolio. Meaning: one person's suffering makes another's suffering more bearable.
2
It
Like
Beauty
seems
a
too
she
rich
rich
for
hangs
upon
jewel
in
use,
for
earth
the
an
too
cheek
of
Ethiope's
dear!
(1.
5.
night
ear;
42-44)
Speaker: Romeo. Meaning: Juliet's beauty is like a bright star against a dark sky. Often in the play, Shakespeare uses
figures of speech involving light and darkness. In the first line of this quotation is a metaphor and, in the second line, a
simile.
.
3
But,
It
Arise,
Who
That
soft!
what
light
through
yonder
window
is
the
east,
and
Juliet
is
the
fair
sun,
and
kill
the
envious
is
already
sick
and
pale
with
thou
her
maid
art
far
more
fair
than
she.
(2.
breaks?
sun.
moon,
grief,
2.
4-8)
Speaker: Romeo. Meaning: Romeo compares Juliet with the dawning sun in a metaphor. So striking is her loveliness that
the moon becomes sick with jealousy (another metaphor).
.
4
O
Deny
Or,
And
Romeo,
thy
if
thou
I'll
no
Romeo!
father
wilt
longer
wherefore
and
not,
be
be
a
art
refuse
but
Capulet.
thou
thy
sworn
(2.
my
2.
Romeo?
name;
love,
37-40)
Speaker: Juliet. Meaning: Juliet, unaware that Romeo is below (in the orchard), addresses him as if he were next to her.
She wonders why (wherefore means why) he happens to be who he is–a young man with a name her family despises. She
then muses that he should deny who he is. If he won't, she will then deny who she is–that is, she will "no longer be a
Capulet." (See Quotation 5 for more about names.)
.
5
What's
By
any
in
a
other
name?
that
which
name
would
smell
as
we
sweet.
call
(2.
a
2.
rose
47-48)
Speaker: Juliet. Meaning: What counts, Juliet observes, is what a person is, not who a person is. In modern terms, she is
saying it does not matter whether a person is rich or poor, black or white, Catholic or Jew, American or Chinese. What
matters is what he thinks and what he feels. A rose would still smell sweet if it were called a turnip or a dandelion.
.
6
Good
That
I
night,
shall
good
night!
say
good
night
parting
till
it
is
be
such
morrow.
sweet
(2.
2.
sorrow,
201-202)
Speaker: Juliet. Meaning: Juliet says goodbye to Romeo using a figure of speech (sweet sorrow) called oxymoron. An
oxymoron juxtaposes opposites. Wise fool, little giant, and painful pleasure are other examples of oxymorons.
.
7
A
They
have
plague
made
o'
worms'
meat
both
of
me.
your
(3.
1.
houses!
70-71)
Speaker: Mercutio. Meaning: Mortally wounded by Tybalt, Romeo's friend Mercutio curses the Houses of Montague and
Capulet. Worms' meat means that Mercutio knows he is about to die and that worms will feed on his flesh after he is
buried.
Summary ACT 1
The scene opens with a brawl on the streets of Verona between servants from the affluent Montague
and Capulet households. While attempting to stop the fight, Benvolio (Romeo's cousin) is drawn into
the fray by Tybalt, kinsman of the Capulets. The fight rapidly escalates as more citizens become
involved and soon the heads of both households appear on the scene. At last, Prince Escalus arrives
and stops the riot, forbidding any further outbreaks of violence on pain of death.
After Escalus dismisses both sides, Montague and his wife discuss Romeo's recent melancholy
behavior with Benvolio and ask him to discover its cause. They exit as Romeo enters in his sad state
— a victim of an unrequited love for the cold and unresponsive Rosaline. Benvolio advises him to
forget Rosaline by looking for another, but Romeo insists that this would be impossible.
Analysis
A spirited exchange of vulgar jokes between servants opens the play and immediately links sex with
conflict. In their bawdy quarrel, the servants' references to "tool" and "naked weapon," together with
repeated images of striking and thrusting, illustrate how images of love and sex are intertwined with
violence and death — and will continue to be throughout the play.
The sudden switch from the comedic interplay between the servants to a potentially life-threatening
situation demonstrates the rapidly changing pace that drives the action of the rest of the play. For
instance, Benvolio, whose name means "goodwill," tries to act as a peacemaker by dividing the
servants, but the quick-tempered "fiery Tybalt" forces him to draw his sword, and the atmosphere
changes from harmony to hatred within a few lines. This undercurrent of uncertain fortune wrenches
the characters into and out of pleasure and pain as fate seemingly preempts each of their hopes with
another tragic turn of events.
When the elderly, hot-tempered Capulet calls for his long sword to jump into a duel with the young
swordsmen wielding light, modern weapons, both the absurdity of the feud and the gulf between the
old and the young are evident. Both patriarchs are chastised by their wives for such impetuous
behavior: "A crutch. Why call you for a sword?" chides Capulet's wife. Though Romeo and Juliet try to
separate themselves from such archaic grudges and foolish fighting, the couple can't escape the
repercussions of the feud, which ultimately deals their love a fatal wound.
The second half of the scene switches its focus from the theme of feuding and violence to the play's
other key theme, love. Romeo woefully bemoans his plight as an unrequited, Petrarchan lover. The
term Petrarchan comes from the poet, Petrarch, who wrote sonnets obsessively consumed with his
unrequited love for Laura. Romeo's feelings of love have not been reciprocated by Rosaline, and this
predicament causes him to dwell on his emotional torment.
Shakespeare chooses language that reflects youthful, idealized notions of romance. Romeo describes
his state of mind through a series of oxymorons — setting contradictory words together — blending
the joys of love with the emotional desolation of unrequited love: "O brawling love, O loving hate."
That he can express such extreme emotions for a woman he barely knows demonstrates both his
immaturity and his potential for deeper love.
Romeo's use of traditional, hackneyed poetry in the early stages of the play show him as a young,
inexperienced lover who is more interested in the concept of being in love, than actually loving
another human being. As the play progresses, Romeo's use of language shifts as he begins to speak in
blank verse as well as rhyme. Through this development, his expressions sound more genuine rather
than like a poem learned by rote. Shakespeare elevates Romeo's language as he elevates Romeo's
love for Juliet.
Romeo's emotional turmoil also reflects the chaos of Verona, a city divided by the feud between the
Montagues and the Capulets. Just as the city is embattled by the feud between the families, Romeo is
embattled by his unrequited love for Rosaline. Romeo illustrates his idea of love as a battlefield by
using military terms to describe the ways in which he has used his eyes and words of love in a
combined attack to win the lady over, but without success: "She will not stay the siege of loving terms
/ Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes." Shakespeare repeatedly demonstrates how closely
intertwined battles of love and hate can be. These conflicting images of love and violence ominously
anticipate the play's conclusion when the deaths of Romeo and Juliet "win" the end of the feud.
Summary 2
Paris, a relative of the prince, asks Capulet for his daughter Juliet’s hand in marriage. Capulet is
initially reluctant to give his consent because Juliet is so young. Finally, however, he agrees to the
match if Paris can gain Juliet’s consent.
A servant, who is, unfortunately, illiterate and cannot read the names. He meets Romeo and Benvolio
whom he asks for help. The guest list includes Rosaline, the object of Romeo’s affections, so Romeo
resolves to go to the feast despite the danger involved. Benvolio hopes that Romeo will see another
lady there to help him forget about Rosaline. Romeo again denies that this could happen.
Analysis
Paris and Capulet’s discussion of Juliet’s age in the beginning of this scene continues another of the
play’s resounding themes: youth versus old age. In the world of the feud, the older generation’s
conflicts and bids for power control the destinies of their children without much apparent thought for
their children’s ultimate welfare. Thus the flaws in this patriarchal system make Romeo and Juliet’s
waywardness in love seem all the more innocent.
Capulet worries that Juliet, at 13, is too young to be married. He cautiously advises Paris: “Let two
more summers wither in their pride / Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.” Shakespeare’s
emphasis on Juliet as a teenage girl poised between childhood and adulthood highlights that Juliet is a
very young tragic heroine who is forced to mature extremely quickly during the course of the play.
Although Juliet’s parents, like Romeo’s, seem to look out for their child’s best interests, Juliet’s
position is clearly subordinate to her father’s political concerns. In the discussion of her marriage,
Juliet is primarily a commodity. Paris wants her mainly because of her social status and beauty.
Capulet may even be using her youth and innocence as “selling points” to Paris rather than expressing
genuine fatherly concern for protecting her from the corruption of the big wide world. No sooner does
he insist that Paris win Juliet’s consent than he arranges the feast where Paris may woo her more
easily.
Her father’s half-hearted nod to gaining her consent is the last evidence of Juliet being empowered by
her family. Hereafter, fate and her family control the marionette strings. Her actions (although not her
words) are contrary to the powers that try to control her. Although her defiance doesn’t become
manifest until she refuses to marry Paris, this passage is both the twilight of her permissive
independence and a harbinger of her defiant independence.
This scene presents Paris and Romeo as unwitting rivals for Juliet’s hand. Paris is the model suitor — a
well-to-do relative of the prince and notably courteous toward Capulet. He complies with social
convention in his public proposal of marriage. Romeo, on the other hand, appears as a fanciful and
fashionable young lover, with idealistic concepts of love. Romeo is reckless in his attitude towards
love, quickly transferring his affections from Rosaline to Juliet, whereas Paris remains constant in his
affection for Juliet. When Romeo falls in love with Juliet, he defies social conventions and woos her in
secret.
A chance encounter with Capulet’s illiterate servant later in the scene enables Romeo and Benvolio to
find out about the feast. This chance meeting contributes to a sense of inevitability that Romeo and
Juliet are destined to meet.
In his concluding speech, Romeo is only able to describe his feelings for Rosaline through figurative
language that he has learned from poetry books. His borrowed images of love as a religious quest
suggest that his idealism has separated him from reality; he is in love with an ideal, not a real person.
Also borrowed second-hand from the sonnets are his images of “looking” — his declaration that his
eyes cannot delude him only proves that he is the stereotypical lover blinded by love. This paradox
builds dramatic suspense for Act I, Scene 5 when he falls in love at first sight with Juliet.
Summary 3
Lady Capulet questions Juliet regarding her feelings about marriage and then informs Juliet of Paris'
proposal. When her mother mentions that Paris will attend the feast that evening, Juliet reacts with
dutiful reserve, whereas her nurse, recalling incidents from Juliet's childhood, volunteers a bawdier
response.
This scene introduces Juliet on stage and explores the theme of youth versus old age and the
difference in attitudes between the Nurse, Lady Capulet, and Juliet towards love and marriage. The
Nurse's uninhibited attitude towards sex is contrasted with Lady Capulet's reserved discussion of
Juliet's proposed marriage to Paris.
The Nurse is a comic character who is a foil for Juliet, contrasting Juliet's youthful innocence with the
Nurse's older, courser outlook on life. The Nurse's reminiscence about Juliet's being weaned and
learning to walk also anticipates Juliet's move towards sexual maturity. For example, in her account of
when Juliet fell over learning to walk, the Nurse recalls that her own husband noted bawdily: "Thou
wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit." Such comments help depict Juliet as an adolescent on
the threshold of womanhood, while reinforcing the idea that Juliet has been objectified as a marriage
commodity since birth.
Juxtaposed with the Nurse's reflections on Juliet's childhood is Lady Capulet's discussion of the
proposed match between Juliet and Paris. In her relationship with Juliet, Lady Capulet seems distant
and cold, expecting Juliet's complete obedience in agreeing to the marriage. Juliet is clearly reluctant
to agree to the arranged marriage as she says demurely: "It is an honor that I dreamt not of." Lady
Capulet considers Juliet to be old enough for marriage: Besides, a marriage to Paris would bring
increased social status and wealth for the Capulets, as Lady Capulet observes: "So shall you share all
that he doth possess."
While Lady Capulet sees Paris as the chance to make a socially advantageous match for the family,
rather than considering Juliet's feelings, the Nurse regards marriage as a purely physical relationship,
almost a burden women simply must bear. She reinterprets Lady Capulet's line that marriage
increases a woman's wealth and status as referring instead to the way in which marriage increases a
woman through pregnancy. Thus, neither her mother nor her Nurse addresses the romantic concept of
love that Juliet harbors. In fact, each identifies a distinct aspect of female oppression — social and
physical.
Juliet's response to her mother's wish for her to agree to the marriage is clever and evasive: "I'll look
to like, if looking liking move / But no more deep will I endart my eye." This answer indicates Juliet's
emotional maturity because she has made up her own mind that she cannot marry someone whom
she does not love, rejecting both her mother's and the Nurse's materialistic and sexual views of love.
While she seems to acquiesce to tradition, her words suggest an awareness that there must be
something better, beyond the concept of marriage that reinforces female social subordination.
Juliet's attitude anticipates her rebellion against her parents later in the play; as the gap between
Juliet and her family widens. Juliet's view of love also points to the spiritual quality of her love for
Romeo, which is not tainted by economic and sexual concerns. Because her concept of love transcends
the temporal issues of family feuds, oppression of women, and generational differences, it is doomed
to become the victim of those jealous forces.
Summary
Romeo, Benvolio, Mercutio, and others from the Montague household make their way to
the Capulet feast. With their masks concealing their identity, they resolve to stay for just one dance.
Because Romeo continues to be lovesick for Rosaline, Mercutio teases him for being such a
stereotypical hopeless lover. Mercutio then delivers his highly imaginative Queen Mab speech in which
he describes how the fairy delivers dreams to humans as they sleep.
Analysis
Mercutio acts in contrast to the lovestruck Romeo and the peaceful Benvolio — he is a witty and quicktempered skeptic. Mercutio teases Romeo for his love melancholy by sarcastically using conventional
images of Petrarchan infatuation to underscore Romeo's naive view of love. For example, when Romeo
refuses to dance at the feast because his soul is overburdened with unrequited love, Mercutio mocks:
"You are a lover, borrow Cupid's wings / And soar with them above a common bound." Mercutio is an
anti-romantic; for him, love is a physical pursuit, which he emphasizes through his bawdy wordplay:
"If love be rough with you, be rough with love / Prick love for pricking and you beat love down."
Mercutio's repeated references to the sexual aspect of love casts Romeo's transcendent love for Juliet
in a more spiritual light.
Mercutio treats the subject of dreams, like the subject of love, with witty skepticism, as he describes
them both as "fantasy." Unlike Romeo, Mercutio does not believe that dreams can foretell future
events. Instead, painting vivid pictures of the dreamscape people inhabit as they sleep, Mercutio
suggests that the fairy Queen Mab brings dreams to humans as a result of men's worldly desires and
anxieties. To him, lawyers dream of collecting fees and lovers dream of lusty encounters; the fairies
merely grant carnal wishes as they gallop by. In juxtaposing lawyers and lovers, soldiers and the fairy
entourage, his eloquent speech touches on a number of the play's opposing themes such as love and
hate, fantasy and reality, idealism and cynicism.
It also gives insight into Mercutio's antagonistic and cynical nature: His description of the lovers is
brief compared with the bloodthirsty image of the soldier who dreams of "cutting foreign throats." The
beauty of the ladies' lips is quickly followed by the image of Mab blistering their lips with plague sores
because the women had eaten too many sweets. Mercutio is down-to-earth, whereas Romeo continues
to indulge in idealistic, lovelorn daydreaming. Indeed, his dream speech contains all the elements that
will conspire to bring down Romeo and Juliet's starry-eyed dream of love to the depths of the tomb.
Romeo's final speech anticipates his meeting with Juliet and creates an atmosphere of impending
doom, which undercuts the festivities. Instead of a date with a pretty girl on a starlit night, he intuits
that he goes to a date with destiny. The heavy tone of this premonition is far more serious than the
shallow melancholy Romeo has so far expressed. The cosmic imagery of "some consequence hanging
in the stars" echoes the prologue in which Romeo and Juliet are presented as "star-cross'd" lovers,
whose destinies are tragically interlinked.
Summary 5
Romeo and his fellow attendees arrive at the Capulet feast. The guests are greeted by Capulet, who
reminisces with his cousin about how long it has been since they both took part in a masque. Romeo
sees Juliet and falls in love with her instantly. Tybalt recognizes Romeo's voice and sends for his rapier
to kill him. A violent outburst is prevented as Capulet insists on Tybalt's obedience, reminding him of
Romeo's good character and the need to keep the peace.
Romeo and Juliet continue their exchanges and they kiss, but are interrupted by the Nurse, who sends
Juliet to find her mother. In her absence, Romeo asks the Nurse who Juliet is and on discovering that
she is a Capulet, realizes the grave consequences of their love. The feast draws to a close and Romeo
leaves with Benvolio and the others. Juliet then discovers from the Nurse that Romeo is a Montague.
Analysis
The theme of youth versus old age is again evident in this scene through Capulet's interaction with his
guests and relatives, particularly Tybalt. The reminiscence with his cousin about the masques they
danced in as young men emphasizes his position within the play as an old man past his "dancing
days."
When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, he is struck by her beauty and breaks into a sonnet. The
imagery Romeo uses to describe Juliet gives important insights into their relationship. Romeo initially
describes Juliet as a source of light, like a star, against the darkness: "she doth teach the torches to
burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night." As the play progresses, a cloak of
interwoven light and dark images is cast around the pair. The lovers are repeatedly associated with
the dark, an association that points to the secret nature of their love because this is the time they are
able to meet in safety. At the same time, the light that surrounds the lovers in each other's eyes
grows brighter to the very end, when Juliet's beauty even illuminates the dark of the tomb. The
association of both Romeo and Juliet with the stars also continually reminds the audience that their
fate is "star-cross'd."
Romeo believes that he can now distinguish between the artificiality of his love for Rosaline and the
genuine feelings Juliet inspires. Romeo acknowledges his love was blind, "Did my heart love till now?
Forswear it, sight / For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."
Romeo's use of religious imagery from this point on — as when he describes Juliet as a holy shrine —
indicates a move towards a more spiritual consideration of love as he moves away from the inflated,
overacted descriptions of his love for Rosaline.Such ethereal moments of the expression of true love
never last long within this feuding society. The threat of violence immediately interrupts the romantic
atmosphere created by Romeo's sonnet when Tybalt recognizes Romeo's voice and wants to kill him
then and there. Although forced to accept Capulet's decision as head of the family to allow Romeo to
stay, Tybalt utters a threat that indicates that he will disregard Capulet's command, as he does in Act
II, Scene 4, when he sends a challenge to Romeo. In presenting these complex social interactions in a
public space, the play explores not only the conflict between the two feuding families but also the
conflict within the families and across the generations. All the intertwined motivations become a snare
for Romeo and Juliet's newfound love.
Romeo proceeds to woo Juliet with another sonnet which continues to use the religious imagery begun
in the first sonnet to emphasize the wonder and spiritual purity of his love. Flirting with his pure
approach, Juliet teases Romeo as a lover who kisses according to convention rather than from the
heart, but the audience recognizes that he has already shed most of his pretenses. Romeo and Juliet
are so enrapt completing the sonnet and gazing into each other's sparkling eyes that they forget to
ask one another for names; instead, both discover from the Nurse the other's identity. In an instant,
Juliet concisely expresses the connection between love and hate and marriage and death: "My only
love sprung from my only hate." She also declares immediately that if she cannot marry Romeo, she
would rather die: "If he be married. / My grave is like to be my wedding bed." The image of death as
a bridegroom for Juliet is repeated throughout the play to maintain an atmosphere of impending
tragedy
Summary
Act II opens with a prologue in sonnet form that highlights two key points: how Romeo is affected by
meeting Juliet and the difficulties the lovers will face as members of two opposed families.
Analysis
The opening lines of the Prologue address the speed with which Romeo and Juliet have fallen in love,
while poking fun at the way Romeo has abandoned his pursuit of Rosaline.
The Prologue does little to enhance the story and is often omitted when the play is performed. Many
critics feel that a different author added the Prologue at some point after the play was originally
written. Nonetheless, this introductory material serves to distinguish between Romeo's cold,
miserable, unrequited love for Rosaline and his true, intensely mutual love with Juliet.
Unlike the first Prologue, this one speaks less of fate; rather, it helps to build suspense. "But passion
lends them power, time means, to meet / Temp'ring extremities with extreme sweet." Romeo and
Juliet forge onward in pursuit of their love — empowered to dare cross thresholds that have before
been barriers.
Summary and Analysis Act II: Scene 1
Summary
This scene takes place outside the Capulet orchard. Romeo hopes to see Juliet again after falling in
love with her at first sight during the Capulet masquerade ball. He leaps the orchard wall when he
hears Mercutio and Benvolio approaching. His friends are unaware that Romeo has met and fallen in
love with Juliet. Mercutio beckons to Romeo by teasing him about Rosaline's seductive beauty. Romeo
continues to hide, and Benvolio persuades Mercutio to leave the scene, knowing Romeo's love of
solitude.
Analysis
In this scene, Romeo begins a separation from his friends that continues throughout the play. His
inability to reveal his love of a Capulet heightens his isolation. By leaping the wall surrounding the
Capulet orchard, Romeo physically separates himself from Mercutio and Benvolio — a separation that
reflects the distance he feels from society, his friends, and his family.
Romeo previously wallowed in a "prison, kept without food" (I.2.55) as his unrequited love for
Rosaline withered from lack of reciprocation. Having joked at Romeo's Petrarchan miseries earlier in
the play, Mercutio now adds a more cutting edge to his barbs. He calls to Romeo using physical and
sexual innuendo to describe the female allure. To Mercutio, love is a conquest, a physical endeavor.
Mercutio jests that Romeo will think of Rosaline as a medlar fruit, which was supposed to look like the
female genitalia, and himself as a poperin pear shaped like the male genitalia.
Romeo's leap over the Capulet wall is symbolic of his flight to a spiritual conceptualization of love. He
has moved beyond Mercutio's crude understanding of love — "quivering thigh, / And the demesnes
that there adjacent lie" — to a less physical, more mystical perception of love.
Romeo describes Juliet in light images — conspicuously nonphysical descriptions. When he first sees
Juliet, he says, "she doth teach the torches to burn bright." Romeo has often sought sanctuary in the
dark, but the deepest shade has never satisfied him. Recall that he locked himself away in his room
and shut the windows to create an "artificial night" while pining for Rosaline in Act I, Scene 1. Juliet
transports him from the dark into the light, moving Romeo to a higher spiritual plane. Ironically,
however, Romeo and Juliet's clandestine love can only flourish under the shelter of night.
Summary and Analysis Act II: Scene 2
Summary
Romeo stands in the shadows beneath Juliet's bedroom window. Juliet appears on the balcony and
thinking she's alone, reveals in a soliloquy her love for Romeo. She despairs over the feud between
the two families and the problems the feud presents. Romeo listens and when Juliet calls on him to
"doff" his name, he steps from the darkness saying, "call me but love."
After the two exchange expressions of devotion, the Nurse calls Juliet from the balcony. Juliet leaves,
but returns momentarily. They agree to marry. Juliet promises to send a messenger the next day so
that Romeo can tell her what wedding arrangements he has made. The scene concludes as day breaks
and Romeo leaves to seek the advice of Friar Laurence.
Analysis
The scene contains some of the more recognizable and memorable passages in all of Shakespeare.
Here, in the famous balcony scene, Romeo and Juliet reveal their love to each other, and at Juliet's
suggestion, they plan to marry.
Shakespeare uses light and dark imagery in this scene to describe the blossoming of Romeo and
Juliet's romance. As Romeo stands in the shadows, he looks to the balcony and compares Juliet to the
sun. He then asks the sun to rise and kill the envious moon. Romeo had always compared Rosaline to
the moon, and now, his love for Juliet has outshone the moon. Thus, as Romeo steps from the moonlit
darkness into the light from Juliet's balcony, he has left behind his melodramatic woes and moved
toward a more genuine, mature understanding of love.
The scene takes place at nighttime, illustrating the way Romeo and Juliet's love exists in a world quite
distinct from the violence of the feud. Throughout the play, their love flourishes at night — an allusion
to the forbidden nature of their relationship. As night ends and dawn breaks, the two are forced to
part to avoid being discovered by the Capulet kinsmen. Romeo and Juliet fear that they might be
exposed — that the artificial light of discovery might be shone upon them, thereby forcing their
permanent separation.
Shakespeare describes the natural quality of their love by juxtaposing the balcony scene with
Mercutio's lewd sexual jokes in the previous scene. Romeo returns to the religious imagery used
between the lovers in their sonnets at the feast when he describes Juliet as, "a bright angel" and "dear
saint." The recurring use of religious imagery emphasizes the purity of Romeo and Juliet's love — as
distinguished from the Nurse and Mercutio's understanding of love that is constituted in the physical,
sexual aspects.
Romeo begins to display signs of increasing maturity in this scene. His speeches are now in blank
verse rather than the rhymed iambic pentameter evident in his earlier sonnets and couplets. Romeo is
no longer the melancholy lover of Act I. Up to this point, Romeo has expressed his emotions in a
traditional, colloquial style. His behavior has been notably antisocial — he preferred to submit to the
misery of his own amorous failures.
Although Romeo has matured in the brief time since the beginning of the play, he remains somewhat
immature when compared with Juliet — a pattern that recurs throughout their relationship. Although
Juliet is only 13, she considers the world with striking maturity. As later acts reveal, her
parents do not provide an emotionally rich and stable environment, possibly forcing Juliet
to mature beyond her years.
Juliet shows the beginnings of increasing self-possession and confidence that ultimately
lead her to seek her own fate rather than a destiny imposed upon her by her parents. Juliet
introduces the idea of marriage to Romeo. She makes the practical arrangements for
sending a messenger to Romeo the next day. Juliet stops Romeo from swearing his love on
the moon as it is too "inconstant" and "variable." She stops him from using traditional,
colloquial poetic forms in expressing his affection. She encourages him to be genuine and to
invest himself in a less traditional, more spiritual concept of love.
Juliet's soliloquy examines another of the play's themes — the importance of words and names.
Juliet compares Romeo to a rose and reasons that if a rose were given another name, it would still be
a rose in its essence. If Romeo abandoned his family name, he would still be Romeo. Juliet calls into
the night for Romeo to "refuse thy name" and in return, she will "no longer be a Capulet." Therein lies
one of the great conflicts of the play — the protagonists' family names operate against their love.
While their love blossoms in oblivion to any barriers, the people who affect their lives use their familial
battles to impose separation upon the two young lovers.
Juliet's promise to Romeo to "follow thee my lord throughout the world" is full of dramatic irony and
foreshadows the final scene of the play, when Juliet follows Romeo into death. Interruptions from the
Nurse add to the atmosphere of intense urgency as the lovers frantically say good-bye. The
heightened anticipation of their forthcoming marriage continues to build further tension and increase
the pace of the play.
Summary and Analysis Act II: Scene 3
Summary
Romeo arrives at Friar Laurence's cell as day breaks. The Friar is collecting herbs and flowers while he
postulates on their powers to medicate and to poison. Romeo tells him of his love for Juliet and asks
the Friar to marry them later that day. The Friar is amazed and concerned at the speed with which
Romeo has transferred his love from Rosaline to Juliet, but agrees to help the couple in the hope that
the marriage might ease the discord between the two families.
Analysis
This scene introduces the Friar, a philosophical man who wishes to heal the rift between the families.
His discourse on the healing and harming powers of plants will echo loudly later in the play. He will
provide Juliet the sleeping potion that she drinks to avoid marrying Paris.
The dual nature within the Friar's plants suggests a coexistence of good and evil. The tension between
good and evil is a constant force in this play — a strong undercurrent that conveys fate into the
characters' lives. The Friar is a good example. His intentions are good; he wishes to end the feud in
Verona. His plan, however, precipitates the tragic end to the play.
As the play progresses, the contentious coexistence of love and hate unfolds. Capulet loves his
daughter, but treats her like his personal property. Romeo and Juliet's love exists in an atmosphere
electrified by the darkness of the hatred between the families. The Friar's comment that "[t]he earth
that's nature's mother is her tomb; / What is her burying grave that is her womb" harkens back to
Capulet's statement about his daughter in Act I, Scene 2 — "the earth has swallowed all my hopes but
she."
The theme of nature destroying life in order to create life recurs frequently. While an undeniable
certainty exists within this natural cycle, the Friar suggests that the deeply flawed human being
imposes some degree of mutability on the entire process. Good and evil coexist in imperfect harmony.
"Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; / And vice sometimes by action dignified."
The Friar is a religious idealist, a philosopher who understands the big picture while other characters
in the play are too involved in their interrelationships to share his perspective. The Friar, like the herbs
he collects, displays conflicting characteristics. He is a holy man, anxious to help the lovers in order to
reconcile the Montagues and Capulets and bring peace to Verona. Yet his decision to marry Romeo
and Juliet in a secret ceremony and deceive the Capulet family when Juliet takes the sleeping potion
emphasizes the Friar's naive underestimation of the feud and the workings of fate — a failing that will
prove deadly for Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo's relationship with the Friar again highlights the theme of youth versus old age, while
underscoring Romeo's isolation from his friends and family. The Friar acts as a father figure to Romeo.
The Friar is the only person to whom Romeo can confide the secret of his love for Juliet and his plans
to marry. Romeo is typically impulsive and wants to be married that day whereas the Friar, using the
formal language of rhyme, advises caution, reminding Romeo of the love he recently had for Rosaline
and the speed with which he has abandoned that love.
Summary
Now, the morning after the Capulet feast, Mercutio and Benvolio search for Romeo. Mercutio blames
Romeo's absence on his love for the "pale, hard-hearted wench," Rosaline. Benvolio has discovered
that Tybalt has sent Romeo a challenge to duel, and Mercutio is amused at the thought of an
encounter between Romeo, the romantic, and Tybalt, the fashionable "Prince of Cats." Romeo then
arrives and engages in a long series of linked puns and quibbles with Mercutio.
The Nurse arrives with her servant, Peter, looking for Romeo. Mercutio exasperates her with his quick,
sharp mockery. Mercutio leaves with Benvolio, and Romeo tells the Nurse that Juliet should meet him
at Friar Laurence's cell at 2 p.m. that afternoon to be married. The Nurse is to collect a rope ladder
from Romeo so that he can climb to Juliet's window to celebrate their wedding night.
Analysis
Once melancholy and depressed by his passions, Romeo is now rejuvenated, buoyed by a renewed
romantic energy after seeing Juliet at her balcony. Thoughts of his impending marriage have enlivened
him to meet all of Mercutio's barbed, verbal challenges with equally gilded retorts. An air of excited
anticipation energizes the atmosphere. Mercutio continues to ridicule Romeo as a Petrarchan lover for
employing the popular love poetry of the sonnets. However, his speech is ironic because he still
believes that Romeo is in love with Rosaline, and he never discovers Romeo's love for Juliet. These
rapid, highly energized exchanges between the two friends reflect Romeo's own feelings of anticipation
at his forthcoming wedding.
Mercutio, who has little patience for the emotional aspects of romantic pursuit, is delighted that
Romeo has gotten over his lovesickness. Mercutio impishly engages in lewd wordplay and is
preoccupied with the physical aspects of love. When Benvolio declares a truce in the talk between the
two friends, Mercutio turns his verbal rapier on the Nurse, flustering her to distraction.
This mischievous repartee contrasts with the darkly ominous threats of Tybalt's challenge to duel
Romeo. As in other parts of the play, vastly contrasting ideas coexist — love and hate; euphoria and
despair; good and evil; levity and danger.
The news of Tybalt's challenge threatens to embroil Romeo in the violence of the family feud. While
Romeo is well-liked in the community and has a peaceable reputation, Tybalt is a proud and vengeful
foe. He is determined to confront Romeo despite Lord Capulet's opposition to continuing the feud.
Although Capulet has forbidden any further violence, he remains the figurehead of the old conflict.
"Fiery" Tybalt is Capulet's heir-apparent in carrying on the hostility since both men are quicktempered and ready for a battle at a moment's notice. In contrast, Romeo is elated by his love for
Juliet. His romantic idealism lightens his steps and carries him above these dark concerns.
The motive for Tybalt's quarrel with Romeo arguably stems from Tybalt's own masculine aggression
rather than a sense of honor, thus emphasizing the trivial nature of the feud and Tybalt's isolation in
maintaining the grudge.
The antagonism between Mercutio and Tybalt is intensely portrayed in this scene because both men
are adversarial and quick-tempered. Mercutio scorns Tybalt's challenge and mocks him as someone
more concerned with fashion than substance — a man who employs foreign styles of fencing and their
terminology, which Mercutio regards as effeminate: "Ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the
hay!"
The sense of anticipation increases in this scene through repeated references to time. The Nurse's
delay in finding Romeo amplifies an already intense sense of urgency. News that the wedding
ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. illustrates the speed with which Romeo and Juliet meet and are to
be married — in less than 24 hours.
Summary
Three hours after sending the Nurse for news from Romeo, Juliet waits impatiently for her return. The
Nurse, knowing of Juliet's eagerness, deliberately teases the young bride-to-be by withholding the
word of the upcoming wedding. Instead, the Nurse complains about her aches and pains. The Nurse
finally relents when Juliet is almost hysterical with frustration and tells her that she is to marry Romeo
that afternoon at Friar Laurence's cell. The Nurse then leaves to collect the rope ladder that Romeo
will use to climb into Juliet's bedroom that night.
Analysis
The dizzying speed with which the lovers met, fell in love, and agree to marry is now contrasted with
the way in which the hours appear to lengthen for Juliet as she waits for news. The emphasis on the
passing of time evokes Juliet's parting lines to Romeo from the balcony in Act II, Scene 2, when he
promised to send word to her the next day: "@'Tis twenty years till then."
The scene echoes Romeo's discussions with the Friar because both Romeo and Juliet are desperately
impatient to wed. Juliet's soliloquy and her subsequent exchanges with the Nurse show her youthful
energy and enthusiasm in contrast with the Nurse, who is old, decrepit, and slow. Unlike her
demeanor in other scenes, Juliet acts like a young teenage girl who has little patience for deferred
gratification. Since the Nurse has been much more of a mother figure to Juliet than Juliet's biological
mother, it follows that Juliet would feel free to act her age in the Nurse's presence.
The Nurse delivers Juliet news of her wedding — a message for a woman or young lady, not a 13year-old girl. Maturity beckons Juliet with ominous, fateful overtones.
The Nurse's comic role increases the tension in this scene as she deliberately refuses to be hurried by
Juliet in imparting her news. Juliet is forced to wait and coax the news from the Nurse, stifling her
impatience when the Nurse continually changes the subject. The Nurse focuses on Romeo's physical
attributes, describing his legs, feet, and hands in a speech that echoes Mercutio's description of
Rosaline in Act II, Scene 1. Both the Nurse and Mercutio share a bawdy sense of humor and view love
as a purely physical relationship.
The Nurse then comments knowingly on the pleasures that await Juliet on her wedding night with the
pregnancy that will likely follow. This comment reflects the inverted life/death theme that runs
throughout the play. Although Juliet will not live to give life, her death unifies her and Romeo in spirit
and mends the feud — both forms of life-giving.
Summary and Analysis Act II: Scene 6
Romeo and Friar Laurence wait for Juliet, and again the Friar warns Romeo about the hastiness of his
decision to marry. Romeo agrees, but boldly challenges "love-devouring death" to destroy his
euphoria. The friar then warns,
Analysis
The wedding scene is notable for its brevity and pervasive atmosphere of impending doom. Images of
happiness and marriage are repeatedly paired with images of violence and death. Romeo believes that
not even death can counteract the pleasure he feels in marrying Juliet. This speech reflects both the
impetuous and tragic nature of Romeo's love. Although he is unhesitating in his desire to be married
to Juliet, Romeo's challenge to fate is prophetic and full of dramatic irony because it foreshadows his
final speech in Act V, Scene 3, when death triumphs over both protagonists.
The explosive image in the Friar's "violent ends" speech recalls Montague's question in Act I, Scene 1,
after the brawl: "Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?" The term "abroach" was used to describe
the way in which a barrel of gunpowder would be pierced to allow the contents to pour out and form a
trail. The Friar's words are prophetic because he draws parallels between the destructive passion of
Romeo and Juliet and the feud that will cause the violent deaths of Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Tybalt,
and Paris.
Derek Walcott was born in 1930 in the town of Castries in Saint Lucia, one of the Windward Islands in the Lesser
Antilles. The experience of growing up on the isolated volcanic island, an ex-British colony, has had a strong
influence on Walcott's life and work. Both his grandmothers were said to have been the descendants of slaves. His
father, a Bohemian water colourist, died when Derek and his twin brother, Roderick, were only a few years old. His
mother ran the town's Methodist school. After studying at St. Mary's College in his native island and at the University
of the West Indies in Jamaica, Walcott moved in 1953 to Trinidad, where he has worked as theatre and art critic. At
the age of 18, he made his debut with 25 Poems, but his breakthrough came with the collection of poems, In a Green
Night (1962). In 1959, he founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop which produced many of his early plays.
Walcott has been an assiduous traveler to other countries but has always, not least in his efforts to create an
indigenous drama, felt himself deeply-rooted in Caribbean society with its cultural fusion of African, Asiatic and
European elements. For many years, he has divided his time between Trinidad, where he has his home as a writer,
and Boston University, where he teaches literature and creative writing.
Derek Walcott's ‘‘A Far Cry from Africa,’’ published in 1962, is a painful and jarring depiction of ethnic conflict and
divided loyalties. The opening images of the poem are drawn from accounts of the Mau Mau Uprising, an extended
and bloody battle during the 1950s between European settlers and the native Kikuyu tribe in what is now the republic
of Kenya. In the early twentieth century, the first white settlers arrived in the region, forcing the Kikuyu people off of
their tribal lands. Europeans took control of farmland and the government, relegating the Kikuyu to a subservient
position. One faction of the Kikuyu people formed Mau Mau, a terrorist organization intent on purging all European
influence from the country, but less strident Kikuyus attempted either to remain neutral or to help the British defeat
Mau Mau. The ongoings in Kenya magnified an internal strife within the poet concerning his own mixed heritage.
Walcott has both African and European roots; his grandmothers were both black, and both grandfathers were white.
In addition, at the time the poem was written, the poet's country of birth, the island of St. Lucia, was still a colony of
Great Britain. While Walcott opposes colonialism and would therefore seem to be sympathetic to a revolution with an
anticolonial cause, he has passionate reservations about Mau Mau: they are, or are reported to be, extremely
violent—to animals, whites, and Kikuyu perceived as traitors to the Mau Mau cause. As Walcott is divided in two, so
too is the poem. The first two stanzas refer to the Kenyan conflict, while the second two address the war within the
poet-as-outsider/insider, between his roles as blood insider but geographical outsider to the Mau Mau Uprising. The
Mau Mau Uprising, which began in 1952, was put down—some say in 1953, 1956, or 1960—without a treaty, yet the
British did leave Kenya in 1963. Just as the uprising was never cleanly resolved, Walcott, at least within the poem,
never resolves his conflict about whose side to take.
Act 4, scenes 1–2
Summary: Act 4, scene 1
In his cell, Friar Lawrence speaks with Paris about the latter’s impending marriage to Juliet. Paris says
that Juliet’s grief about Tybalt’s death has made her unbalanced, and that Capulet, in his wisdom, has
determined they should marry soon so that Juliet can stop crying and put an end to her period of
mourning. The friar remarks to himself that he wishes he were unaware of the reason that Paris’s
marriage to Juliet should be delayed.
Juliet enters, and Paris speaks to her lovingly, if somewhat arrogantly. Juliet responds indifferently,
showing neither affection nor dislike. She remarks that she has not married him yet. On the pretense that
he must hear Juliet’s confession, Friar Lawrence ushers Paris away, though not before Paris kisses Juliet
once. After Paris leaves, Juliet asks Friar Lawrence for help, brandishing a knife and saying that she will
kill herself rather than marry Paris. The friar proposes a plan: Juliet must consent to marry Paris; then, on
the night before the wedding, she must drink a sleeping potion that will make her appear to be dead; she
will be laid to rest in the Capulet tomb, and the friar will send word to Romeo in Mantua to help him
retrieve her when she wakes up. She will then return to Mantua with Romeo, and be free to live with him
away from their parents’ hatred. Juliet consents to the plan wholeheartedly. Friar Lawrence gives her the
sleeping potion.
Summary: Act 4, scene 2
Juliet returns home, where she finds Capulet and Lady Capulet preparing for the wedding. She surprises
her parents by repenting her disobedience and cheerfully agreeing to marry Paris. Capulet is so pleased
that he insists on moving the marriage up a day, to Wednesday—tomorrow. Juliet heads to her chambers
to, ostensibly, prepare for her wedding. Capulet heads off to tell Paris the news.
Analysis: Act 4, scenes 1–2
Friar Lawrence is the wiliest and most scheming character in Romeo and Juliet: he secretly marries the
two lovers, spirits Romeo to Mantua, and stages Juliet’s death. The friar’s machinations seem also to be
tools of fate. Yet despite the role Friar Lawrence plays in bringing about the lovers’ deaths, Shakespeare
never presents him in a negative, or even ambiguous, light. He is always treated as a benign, wise
presence. The tragic failure of his plans is treated as a disastrous accident for which Friar Lawrence
bears no responsibility.
In contrast, it is a challenge to situate Paris along the play’s moral continuum. He is not exactly an
adversary to Romeo and Juliet, since he never acts consciously to harm them or go against their wishes.
Like almost everyone else, he knows nothing of their relationship. Paris’s feelings for Juliet are also a
subject of some ambiguity, since the audience is never allowed access to his thoughts. Later textual
evidence does indicate that Paris harbors a legitimate love for Juliet, and though he arrogantly assumes
Juliet will want to marry him, Paris never treats her unkindly. Nevertheless, because she does not love
him, he represents a real and frightening potentiality for Juliet.
Act 4, scenes 3–5
Summary: Act 4, scene 3
In her bedchamber, Juliet asks the Nurse to let her spend the night by herself, and repeats the request to
Lady Capulet when she arrives. Alone, clutching the vial given to her by Friar Lawrence, she wonders
what will happen when she drinks it. If the friar is untrustworthy and seeks merely to hide his role in her
marriage to Romeo, she might die; or, if Romeo is late for some reason, she might awaken in the tomb
and go mad with fear. She has a vision in which she sees Tybalt’s ghost searching for Romeo. She begs
Tybalt’s ghost to quit its search for Romeo, and toasting to Romeo, drinks the contents of the vial.
Summary: Act 4, scenes 4–5
Early the next morning, the Capulet house is aflutter with preparations for the wedding. Capulet sends the
Nurse to go wake Juliet. She finds Juliet dead and begins to wail, soon joined by both Lady Capulet and
Capulet. Paris arrives with Friar Lawrence and a group of musicians for the wedding. When he learns
what has happened, Paris joins in the lamentations. The friar reminds them all that Juliet has gone to a
better place, and urges them to make ready for her funeral. Sorrowfully, they comply, and exit.
Left behind, the musicians begin to pack up, their task cut short. Peter, the Capulet servant, enters and
asks the musicians to play a happy tune to ease his sorrowful heart. The musicians refuse, arguing that to
play such music would be inappropriate. Angered, Peter insults the musicians, who respond in kind. After
singing a final insult at the musicians, Peter leaves. The musicians decide to wait for the mourners to
return so that they might get to eat the lunch that will be served.
Analysis: Act 4, scenes 3–5
Once again Juliet demonstrates her strength. She comes up with reason after reason why drinking the
sleeping potion might cause her harm, physical or psychological, but chooses to drink it anyway. In this
action she not only attempts to circumvent the forces that obstruct her relationship with Romeo, she takes
full responsibility for herself. She recognizes that drinking the potion might lead her to madness or to
death. Drinking the potion therefore constitutes an action in which she takes her life into her own hands,
and determines its worth to her. In addition to the obvious foreshadow in Juliet’s vision of Tybalt’s
vengeful ghost, her drinking of the potion also hints at future events. She drinks the potion just as Romeo
will later drink the apothecary’s poison. In drinking the potion she not only demonstrates a willingness to
take her life into her own hands, she goes against what is expected of women and takes action.
In their mourning for Juliet, the Capulets appear less as a hostile force arrayed against the lovers and
more as individuals. The audience gains an understanding of the immense hopes that the Capulets had
placed in Juliet, as well as a sense of their love for her. Similarly, Paris’s love for Juliet seems wholly
legitimate. His wailing cannot simply be taken as grief over the loss of a wife who might have brought him
fortune. It seems more personal than that, more like grief over the loss of a loved one.
Many productions of Romeo and Juliet cut the scene depicting Peter and the musicians. Productions do
this for good reason: the scene’s humor and traded insults seem ill placed at such a tragic moment in the
play. If one looks at the scene as merely comic relief, it is possible to argue that it acts as a sort of
caesura, a moment for the audience to catch its breath from the tragedy of Act 4 before heading into the
even greater tragedy of Act 5. If one looks at the scene in context with the earlier scenes that include
servants a second argument can be made for why Shakespeare included it. From each scene including
servants, we gain a unique perspective of the events going on in the play. Here, in the figure of the
musicians, we get a profoundly different view of the reaction of the lower classes to the tragedy of Juliet’s
death. Initially the musicians are wary about playing a happy song because it will be considered improper,
no matter their explanations. It is not, after all, for a mere musician to give explanations to mourning
noblemen. As the scene progresses it becomes clear that the musicians do not really care much about
Juliet or the tragedy in which she is involved. They care more about the fact that they are out of a job, and
perhaps, that they will miss out on a free lunch. In other words, this great tragedy, which is, undoubtedly,
a tragedy of epic proportions, is still not a tragedy to everyone
Act 5, scenes 1–2
Summary: Act 5, scene 1
On Wednesday morning, on a street in Mantua, a cheerful Romeo describes a wonderful dream he had
the night before: Juliet found him lying dead, but she kissed him, and breathed new life into his body. Just
then, Balthasar enters, and Romeo greets him happily, saying that Balthasar must have come from
Verona with news of Juliet and his father. Romeo comments that nothing can be ill in the world if Juliet is
well. Balthasar replies that nothing can be ill, then, for Juliet is well: she is in heaven, found dead that
morning at her home. Thunderstruck, Romeo cries out “Then I defy you, stars” (5.1.24). He tells Balthasar
to get him pen and paper (with which he writes a letter for Balthasar to give to Montague) and to hire
horses, and says that he will return to Verona that night. Balthasar says that Romeo seems so distraught
that he is afraid to leave him, but Romeo insists. Romeo suddenly stops and asks if Balthasar is carrying
a letter from Friar Lawrence. Balthasar says he is not, and Romeo sends his servant on his way. Once
Balthasar is gone, Romeo says that he will lie with Juliet that night. He goes to find an apothecary, a
seller of drugs. After telling the man in the shop that he looks poor, Romeo offers to pay him well for a vial
of poison. The Apothecary says that he has just such a thing, but that selling poison in Mantua carries the
death sentence. Romeo replies that the Apothecary is too poor to refuse the sale. The Apothecary finally
relents and sells Romeo the poison. Once alone, Romeo speaks to the vial, declaring that he will go to
Juliet’s tomb and kill himself.
Summary: Act 5, scene 2
At his cell, Friar Lawrence speaks with Friar John, whom he had earlier sent to Mantua with a letter for
Romeo. He asks John how Romeo responded to his letter (which described the plan involving Juliet’s
false death). Friar John replies that he was unable to deliver the letter because he was shut up in a
quarantined house due to an outbreak of plague. Friar Lawrence becomes upset, realizing that if Romeo
does not know about Juliet’s false death, there will be no one to retrieve her from the tomb when she
awakes. (He does not know that Romeo has learned of Juliet’s death and believes it to be real.) Sending
for a crowbar, Friar Lawrence declares that he will have to rescue Juliet from the tomb on his own. He
sends another letter to Romeo to warn him about what has happened, and plans to keep Juliet in his cell
until Romeo arrives.
Act 5, scene 3
Summary
In the churchyard that night, Paris enters with a torch-bearing servant. He orders the page to withdraw,
then begins scattering flowers on Juliet’s grave. He hears a whistle—the servant’s warning that someone
is approaching. He withdraws into the darkness. Romeo, carrying a crowbar, enters with Balthasar. He
tells Balthasar that he has come to open the Capulet tomb in order to take back a valuable ring he had
given to Juliet. Then he orders Balthasar to leave, and, in the morning, to deliver to Montague the letter
Romeo had given him. Balthasar withdraws, but, mistrusting his master’s intentions, lingers to watch.
From his hiding place, Paris recognizes Romeo as the man who murdered Tybalt, and thus as the man
who indirectly murdered Juliet, since it is her grief for her cousin that is supposed to have killed her. As
Romeo has been exiled from the city on penalty of death, Paris thinks that Romeo must hate the Capulets
so much that he has returned to the tomb to do some dishonor to the corpse of either Tybalt or Juliet. In a
rage, Paris accosts Romeo. Romeo pleads with him to leave, but Paris refuses. They draw their swords
and fight. Paris’s page runs off to get the civil watch. Romeo kills Paris. As he dies, Paris asks to be laid
near Juliet in the tomb and Romeo consents.
Romeo descends into the tomb carrying Paris’s body. He finds Juliet lying peacefully, and wonders how
she can still look so beautiful—as if she were not dead at all. Romeo speaks to Juliet of his intention to
spend eternity with her, describing himself as shaking “the yoke of inauspicious stars / From this worldwearied flesh” (5.3.111–112). He kisses Juliet, drinks the poison, kisses Juliet again, and dies.
Just then, Friar Lawrence enters the churchyard. He encounters Balthasar, who tells him that Romeo is in
the tomb. Balthasar says that he fell asleep and dreamed that Romeo fought with and killed someone.
Troubled, the friar enters the tomb, where he finds Paris’s body and then Romeo’s. As the friar takes in
the bloody scene, Juliet wakes.
Juliet asks the friar where her husband is. Hearing a noise that he believes is the coming of the watch,
the friar quickly replies that both Romeo and Paris are dead, and that she must leave with him. Juliet
refuses to leave, and the friar, fearful that the watch is imminent, exits without her. Juliet sees Romeo
dead beside her, and surmises from the empty vial that he has drunk poison. Hoping she might die by the
same poison, Juliet kisses his lips, but to no avail. Hearing the approaching watch, Juliet unsheathes
Romeo’s dagger and, saying, “O happy dagger, / This is thy sheath,” stabs herself (5.3.171). She dies
upon Romeo’s body.
Chaos reigns in the churchyard, where Paris’s page has brought the watch. The watchmen discover
bloodstains near the tomb; they hold Balthasar and Friar Lawrence, who they discovered loitering nearby.
The Prince and the Capulets enter. Romeo, Juliet, and Paris are discovered in the tomb. Montague
arrives, declaring that Lady Montague has died of grief for Romeo’s exile. The Prince shows Montague
his son’s body. Upon the Prince’s request, Friar Lawrence succinctly tells the story of Romeo and Juliet’s
secret marriage and its consequences. Balthasar gives the Prince the letter Romeo had previously written
to his father. The Prince says that it confirms the friar’s story. He scolds the Capulets and Montagues,
calling the tragedy a consequence of their feud and reminding them that he himself has lost two close
kinsmen: Mercutio and Paris. Capulet and Montague clasp hands and agree to put their vendetta behind
them. Montague says that he will build a golden statue of Juliet, and Capulet insists that he will raise
Romeo’s likeness in gold beside hers. The Prince takes the group away to discuss these events,
pronouncing that there has never been “a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”
(5.3.309).
Important Quotations Explained
1.
But
It
is
Arise,
light
maid,
and
and
already
her
through
east,
sun,
is
thou,
what
the
fair
Who
That
soft,
Juliet
kill
sick
art
yonder
far
is
the
and
more
window
the
sun.
envious
pale
fair
breaks?
than
moon,
with
she.
grief
.
.
.
Romeo speaks these lines in the so-called balcony scene, when, hiding in the Capulet orchard after the
feast, he sees Juliet leaning out of a high window (2.1.44–64). Though it is late at night, Juliet’s
surpassing beauty makes Romeo imagine that she is the sun, transforming the darkness into daylight.
Romeo likewise personifies the moon, calling it “sick and pale with grief” at the fact that Juliet, the sun, is
far brighter and more beautiful. Romeo then compares Juliet to the stars, claiming that she eclipses the
stars as daylight overpowers a lamp—her eyes alone shine so bright that they will convince the birds to
sing at night as if it were day.
This quote is important because in addition to initiating one of the play’s most beautiful and famous
sequences of poetry, it is a prime example of the light/dark motif that runs throughout the play. Many
scenes in Romeo and Juliet are set either late at night or early in the morning, and Shakespeare often
uses the contrast between night and day to explore opposing alternatives in a given situation. Here,
Romeo imagines Juliet transforming darkness into light; later, after their wedding night, Juliet convinces
Romeo momentarily that the daylight is actually night (so that he doesn’t yet have to leave her room).
2.
O
Romeo,
wherefore
art
Deny
thy
Or
if
thou
father
thou
wilt
Romeo,
and
not,
Romeo?
refuse
be
thy
but
name,
sworn
my
love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
Juliet speaks these lines, perhaps the most famous in the play, in the balcony scene (2.1.74–78). Leaning
out of her upstairs window, unaware that Romeo is below in the orchard, she asks why Romeo must be
Romeo—why he must be a Montague, the son of her family’s greatest enemy (“wherefore” means “why,”
not “where”; Juliet is not, as is often assumed, asking where Romeo is). Still unaware of Romeo’s
presence, she asks him to deny his family for her love. She adds, however, that if he will not, she will
deny her family in order to be with him if he merely tells her that he loves her.
A major theme in Romeo and Juliet is the tension between social and family identity (represented by
one’s name) and one’s inner identity. Juliet believes that love stems from one’s inner identity, and that the
feud between the Montagues and the Capulets is a product of the outer identity, based only on names.
She thinks of Romeo in individual terms, and thus her love for him overrides her family’s hatred for the
Montague name. She says that if Romeo were not called “Romeo” or “Montague,” he would still be the
person she loves. “What’s in a name?” she asks. “That which we call a rose / By any other word would
smell as sweet” (2.1.85–86)
3.
O,
She
In
then
I
is
see
the
shape
On
Mab
fairies’
no
the
Drawn
Queen
hath
midwife,
bigger
a
with
you.
and
than
forefinger
with
been
an
of
.
of
.
she
comes
agate
stone
an
team
.
alderman,
little
atomi
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.
Mercutio’s famous Queen Mab speech is important for the stunning quality of its poetry and for what it
reveals about Mercutio’s character, but it also has some interesting thematic implications (1.4.53–59).
Mercutio is trying to convince Romeo to set aside his lovesick melancholy over Rosaline and come along
to the Capulet feast. When Romeo says that he is depressed because of a dream, Mercutio launches on
a lengthy, playful description of Queen Mab, the fairy who supposedly brings dreams to sleeping humans.
The main point of the passage is that the dreams Queen Mab brings are directly related to the person
who dreams them—lovers dream of love, soldiers of war, etc. But in the process of making this rather
prosaic point Mercutio falls into a sort of wild bitterness in which he seems to see dreams as destructive
and delusional.
4.
From
forth
A
pair
of
Whose
Doth
O,
the
fatal
star-crossed
loins
lovers
misadventured
with
I
their
death
am
of
these
take
two
their
piteous
bury
fortune’s
their
parents’
fool!
foes
life,
overthrows
strife.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Then I defy you, stars.This trio of quotes advances the theme of fate as it plays out through the story: the
first is spoken by the Chorus (Prologue.5–8), the second by Romeo after he kills Tybalt (3.1.131), and the
third by Romeo upon learning of Juliet’s death (5.1.24). The Chorus’s remark that Romeo and Juliet are
“star-crossed” and fated to “take their li[ves]” informs the audience that the lovers are destined to die
tragically. Romeo’s remark “O, I am fortune’s fool!” illustrates the fact that Romeo sees himself as subject
to the whims of fate. When he cries out “Then I defy you, stars,” after learning of Juliet’s death, he
declares himself openly opposed to the destiny that so grieves him. Sadly, in “defying” fate he actually
brings it about. Romeo’s suicide prompts Juliet to kill herself, thereby ironically fulfilling the lovers’ tragic
destiny.
Study Questions
1. What effect does the accelerated time scheme have on the play’s development? Is it plausible that a
love story of this magnitude could take place so quickly? Does the play seem to take place over as little
time as it actually occupies?
Because of the intensity of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet and the complex development of
events during the few days of the play’s action, the story can certainly seem to take place over a time
span much longer than the one it actually occupies. By compressing all the events of the love story into
just a few days, Shakespeare adds weight to every moment, and gives the sense that the action is
happening so quickly that characters barely have time to react, and, by the end, that matters are
careening out of control. This rush heightens the sense of pressure that hangs in the atmosphere of the
play. While it may not seem plausible for a story such as Romeo and Juliet to take place over a span of
only four days in the real world, this abbreviated time scheme makes sense in the universe of the play.
2. Compare and contrast the characters of Romeo and Juliet. How do they develop throughout the play?
What makes them fall in love with one another?
Romeo is a passionate, extreme, excitable, intelligent, and moody young man, well-liked and admired
throughout Verona. He is loyal to his friends, but his behavior is somewhat unpredictable. At the
beginning of the play, he mopes over his hopeless unrequited love for Rosaline. In Juliet, Romeo finds a
legitimate object for the extraordinary passion that he is capable of feeling, and his unyielding love for her
takes control of him.
Juliet, on the other hand, is an innocent girl, a child at the beginning of the play, and is startled by the
sudden power of her love for Romeo. Guided by her feelings for him, she develops very quickly into a
determined, capable, mature, and loyal woman who tempers her extreme feelings of love with sobermindedness.
The attraction between Romeo and Juliet is immediate and overwhelming, and neither of the young
lovers comments on or pretends to understand its cause. Each mentions the other’s beauty, but it seems
that destiny, rather than any particular character trait, has drawn them together. Their love for one
another is so undeniable that neither they nor the audience feels the need to question or explain it.
3. Compare and contrast the characters of Tybalt and Mercutio. Why does Mercutio hate Tybalt?
As Mercutio tells Benvolio, he hates Tybalt for being a slave to fashion and vanity, one of “such antic,
lisping, affecting phantas- / ims, these new tuners of accent! . . . these fashionmongers, these ‘pardonme’s’ ” (2.3.25–29). Mercutio is so insistent that the reader feels compelled to accept this description of
Tybalt’s character as definitive. Tybalt does prove Mercutio’s words true: he demonstrates himself to be
as witty, vain, and prone to violence as he is fashionable, easily insulted, and defensive. To the selfpossessed Mercutio, Tybalt seems a caricature; to Tybalt, the brilliant, earthy, and unconventional
Mercutio is probably incomprehensible. (It might be interesting to compare Mercutio’s comments about
Tybalt to Hamlet’s description of the foppish Osric in Act 5, scene 2 of Hamlet, lines 140–146.)
Plot Overview
I N THE STREETS OF
VERONA another brawl breaks out between the servants of the feuding noble
families of Capulet and Montague. Benvolio, a Montague, tries to stop the fighting, but is himself
embroiled when the rash Capulet, Tybalt, arrives on the scene. After citizens outraged by the constant
violence beat back the warring factions, Prince Escalus, the ruler of Verona, attempts to prevent any
further conflicts between the families by decreeing death for any individual who disturbs the peace in the
future.
Romeo, the son of Montague, runs into his cousin Benvolio, who had earlier seen Romeo moping in a
grove of sycamores. After some prodding by Benvolio, Romeo confides that he is in love with Rosaline, a
woman who does not return his affections. Benvolio counsels him to forget this woman and find another,
more beautiful one, but Romeo remains despondent.
Meanwhile, Paris, a kinsman of the Prince, seeks Juliet’s hand in marriage. Her father Capulet, though
happy at the match, asks Paris to wait two years, since Juliet is not yet even fourteen. Capulet dispatches
a servant with a list of people to invite to a masquerade and feast he traditionally holds. He invites Paris
to the feast, hoping that Paris will begin to win Juliet’s heart.
Romeo and Benvolio, still discussing Rosaline, encounter the Capulet servant bearing the list of
invitations. Benvolio suggests that they attend, since that will allow Romeo to compare his beloved to
other beautiful women of Verona. Romeo agrees to go with Benvolio to the feast, but only because
Rosaline, whose name he reads on the list, will be there.
In Capulet’s household, young Juliet talks with her mother, Lady Capulet, and her nurse about the
possibility of marrying Paris. Juliet has not yet considered marriage, but agrees to look at Paris during the
feast to see if she thinks she could fall in love with him.
The feast begins. A melancholy Romeo follows Benvolio and their witty friend Mercutio to Capulet’s
house. Once inside, Romeo sees Juliet from a distance and instantly falls in love with her; he forgets
about Rosaline completely. As Romeo watches Juliet, entranced, a young Capulet, Tybalt, recognizes
him, and is enraged that a Montague would sneak into a Capulet feast. He prepares to attack, but
Capulet holds him back. Soon, Romeo speaks to Juliet, and the two experience a profound attraction.
They kiss, not even knowing each other’s names. When he finds out from Juliet’s nurse that she is the
daughter of Capulet—his family’s enemy—he becomes distraught. When Juliet learns that the young man
she has just kissed is the son of Montague, she grows equally upset.
As Mercutio and Benvolio leave the Capulet estate, Romeo leaps over the orchard wall into the garden,
unable to leave Juliet behind. From his hiding place, he sees Juliet in a window above the orchard and
hears her speak his name. He calls out to her, and they exchange vows of love.
Romeo hurries to see his friend and confessor Friar Lawrence, who, though shocked at the sudden turn
of Romeo’s heart, agrees to marry the young lovers in secret since he sees in their love the possibility of
ending the age-old feud between Capulet and Montague. The following day, Romeo and Juliet meet at
Friar Lawrence’s cell and are married. The Nurse, who is privy to the secret, procures a ladder, which
Romeo will use to climb into Juliet’s window for their wedding night.
The next day, Benvolio and Mercutio encounter Tybalt—Juliet’s cousin—who, still enraged that Romeo
attended Capulet’s feast, has challenged Romeo to a duel. Romeo appears. Now Tybalt’s kinsman by
marriage, Romeo begs the Capulet to hold off the duel until he understands why Romeo does not want to
fight. Disgusted with this plea for peace, Mercutio says that he will fight Tybalt himself. The two begin to
duel. Romeo tries to stop them by leaping between the combatants. Tybalt stabs Mercutio under Romeo’s
arm, and Mercutio dies. Romeo, in a rage, kills Tybalt. Romeo flees from the scene. Soon after, the
Prince declares him forever banished from Verona for his crime. Friar Lawrence arranges for Romeo to
spend his wedding night with Juliet before he has to leave for Mantua the following morning.
In her room, Juliet awaits the arrival of her new husband. The Nurse enters, and, after some confusion,
tells Juliet that Romeo has killed Tybalt. Distraught, Juliet suddenly finds herself married to a man who
has killed her kinsman. But she resettles herself, and realizes that her duty belongs with her love: to
Romeo.
Romeo sneaks into Juliet’s room that night, and at last they consummate their marriage and their love.
Morning comes, and the lovers bid farewell, unsure when they will see each other again. Juliet learns that
her father, affected by the recent events, now intends for her to marry Paris in just three days. Unsure of
how to proceed—unable to reveal to her parents that she is married to Romeo, but unwilling to marry
Paris now that she is Romeo’s wife—Juliet asks her nurse for advice. She counsels Juliet to proceed as if
Romeo were dead and to marry Paris, who is a better match anyway. Disgusted with the Nurse’s
disloyalty, Juliet disregards her advice and hurries to Friar Lawrence. He concocts a plan to reunite Juliet
with Romeo in Mantua. The night before her wedding to Paris, Juliet must drink a potion that will make
her appear to be dead. After she is laid to rest in the family’s crypt, the Friar and Romeo will secretly
retrieve her, and she will be free to live with Romeo, away from their parents’ feuding.
Juliet returns home to discover the wedding has been moved ahead one day, and she is to be married
tomorrow. That night, Juliet drinks the potion, and the Nurse discovers her, apparently dead, the next
morning. The Capulets grieve, and Juliet is entombed according to plan. But Friar Lawrence’s message
explaining the plan to Romeo never reaches Mantua. Its bearer, Friar John, gets confined to a
quarantined house. Romeo hears only that Juliet is dead.
Romeo learns only of Juliet’s death and decides to kill himself rather than live without her. He buys a vial
of poison from a reluctant Apothecary, then speeds back to Verona to take his own life at Juliet’s tomb.
Outside the Capulet crypt, Romeo comes upon Paris, who is scattering flowers on Juliet’s grave. They
fight, and Romeo kills Paris. He enters the tomb, sees Juliet’s inanimate body, drinks the poison, and dies
by her side. Just then, Friar Lawrence enters and realizes that Romeo has killed Paris and himself. At the
same time, Juliet awakes. Friar Lawrence hears the coming of the watch. When Juliet refuses to leave
with him, he flees alone. Juliet sees her beloved Romeo and realizes he has killed himself with poison.
She kisses his poisoned lips, and when that does not kill her, buries his dagger in her chest, falling dead
upon his body.
The watch arrives, followed closely by the Prince, the Capulets, and Montague. Montague declares that
Lady Montague has died of grief over Romeo’s exile. Seeing their children’s bodies, Capulet and
Montague agree to end their long-standing feud and to raise gold statues of their children side-by-side in
a newly peaceful Verona.
Character List
Romeo - The son and heir of Montague and Lady Montague. A young man of about sixteen, Romeo is
handsome, intelligent, and sensitive. Though impulsive and immature, his idealism and passion make him
an extremely likable character. He lives in the middle of a violent feud between his family and the
Capulets, but he is not at all interested in violence. His only interest is love. At the beginning of the play
he is madly in love with a woman named Rosaline, but the instant he lays eyes on Juliet, he falls in love
with her and forgets Rosaline. Thus, Shakespeare gives us every reason to question how real Romeo’s
new love is, but Romeo goes to extremes to prove the seriousness of his feelings. He secretly marries
Juliet, the daughter of his father’s worst enemy; he happily takes abuse from Tybalt; and he would rather
die than live without his beloved. Romeo is also an affectionate and devoted friend to his relative
Benvolio, Mercutio, and Friar Lawrence
Juliet - The daughter of Capulet and Lady Capulet. A beautiful thirteen-year-old girl, Juliet begins the
play as a naïve child who has thought little about love and marriage, but she grows up quickly upon falling
in love with Romeo, the son of her family’s great enemy. Because she is a girl in an aristocratic family,
she has none of the freedom Romeo has to roam around the city, climb over walls in the middle of the
night, or get into swordfights. Nevertheless, she shows amazing courage in trusting her entire life and
future to Romeo, even refusing to believe the worst reports about him after he gets involved in a fight with
her cousin. Juliet’s closest friend and confidant is her nurse, though she’s willing to shut the Nurse out of
her life the moment the Nurse turns against Romeo.
Friar Lawrence - A Franciscan friar, friend to both Romeo and Juliet. Kind, civic-minded, a proponent of
moderation, and always ready with a plan, Friar Lawrence secretly marries the impassioned lovers in
hopes that the union might eventually bring peace to Verona. As well as being a Catholic holy man, Friar
Lawrence is also an expert in the use of seemingly mystical potions and herbs.
Mercutio - A kinsman to the Prince, and Romeo’s close friend. One of the most extraordinary characters
in all of Shakespeare’s plays, Mercutio overflows with imagination, wit, and, at times, a strange, biting
satire and brooding fervor. Mercutio loves wordplay, especially sexual double entendres. He can be quite
hotheaded, and hates people who are affected, pretentious, or obsessed with the latest fashions. He finds
Romeo’s romanticized ideas about love tiresome, and tries to convince Romeo to view love as a simple
matter of sexual appetite.
The Nurse - Juliet’s nurse, the woman who breast-fed Juliet when she was a baby and has cared for
Juliet her entire life. A vulgar, long-winded, and sentimental character, the Nurse provides comic relief
with her frequently inappropriate remarks and speeches. But, until a disagreement near the play’s end,
the Nurse is Juliet’s faithful confidante and loyal intermediary in Juliet’s affair with Romeo. She provides a
contrast with Juliet, given that her view of love is earthy and sexual, whereas Juliet is idealistic and
intense. The Nurse believes in love and wants Juliet to have a nice-looking husband, but the idea that
Juliet would want to sacrifice herself for love is incomprehensible to her.
Tybalt - A Capulet, Juliet’s cousin on her mother’s side. Vain, fashionable, supremely aware of courtesy
and the lack of it, he becomes aggressive, violent, and quick to draw his sword when he feels his pride
has been injured. Once drawn, his sword is something to be feared. He loathes Montagues.
Capulet - The patriarch of the Capulet family, father of Juliet, husband of Lady Capulet, and enemy, for
unexplained reasons, of Montague. He truly loves his daughter, though he is not well acquainted with
Juliet’s thoughts or feelings, and seems to think that what is best for her is a “good” match with Paris.
Often prudent, he commands respect and propriety, but he is liable to fly into a rage when either is
lacking.
Lady Capulet - Juliet’s mother, Capulet’s wife. A woman who herself married young (by her own
estimation she gave birth to Juliet at close to the age of fourteen), she is eager to see her daughter marry
Paris. She is an ineffectual mother, relying on the Nurse for moral and pragmatic support.
Montague - Romeo’s father, the patriarch of the Montague clan and bitter enemy of Capulet. At the
beginning of the play, he is chiefly concerned about Romeo’s melancholy.
Lady Montague - Romeo’s mother, Montague’s wife. She dies of grief after Romeo is exiled from
Verona.
Paris - A kinsman of the Prince, and the suitor of Juliet most preferred by Capulet. Once Capulet has
promised him he can marry Juliet, he behaves very presumptuous toward her, acting as if they are
already married.
Benvolio - Montague’s nephew, Romeo’s cousin and thoughtful friend, he makes a genuine effort to
defuse violent scenes in public places, though Mercutio accuses him of having a nasty temper in private.
He spends most of the play trying to help Romeo get his mind off Rosaline, even after Romeo has fallen
in love with Juliet.
Prince Escalus - The Prince of Verona. A kinsman of Mercutio and Paris. As the seat of political power
in Verona, he is concerned about maintaining the public peace at all costs.
Friar John - A Franciscan friar charged by Friar Lawrence with taking the news of Juliet’s false death to
Romeo in Mantua. Friar John is held up in a quarantined house, and the message never reaches Romeo.
Balthasar - Romeo’s dedicated servant, who brings Romeo the news of Juliet’s death, unaware that her
death is a ruse.
Sampson & Gregory - Two servants of the house of Capulet, who, like their master, hate the
Montagues. At the outset of the play, they successfully provoke some Montague men into a fight.
Abram - Montague’s servant, who fights with Sampson and Gregory in the first scene of the play.
The Apothecary - An apothecary in Mantua. Had he been wealthier, he might have been able to afford
to value his morals more than money, and refused to sell poison to Romeo.
Peter - A Capulet servant who invites guests to Capulet’s feast and escorts the Nurse to meet with
Romeo. He is illiterate, and a bad singer.
Rosaline - The woman with whom Romeo is infatuated at the beginning of the play. Rosaline never
appears onstage, but it is said by other characters that she is very beautiful and has sworn to live a life of
chastity.
The Chorus - The Chorus is a single character who, as developed in Greek drama, functions as a
narrator offering commentary on the play’s plot and themes.
Analysis of Major Characters
Romeo The son and heir of Montague and Lady Montague. A young man of about sixteen, Romeo is
handsome, intelligent, and sensitive. Though impulsive and immature, his idealism and passion make him
an extremely likable character. He lives in the middle of a violent feud between his family and the
Capulets, but he is not at all interested in violence. His only interest is love. At the beginning of the play
he is madly in love with a woman named Rosaline, but the instant he lays eyes on Juliet, he falls in love
with her and forgets Rosaline. Thus, Shakespeare gives us every reason to question how real Romeo’s
new love is, but Romeo goes to extremes to prove the seriousness of his feelings. He secretly marries
Juliet, the daughter of his father’s worst enemy; he happily takes abuse from Tybalt; and he would rather
die than live without his beloved. Romeo is also an affectionate and devoted friend to his relative
Benvolio, Mercutio, and Friar Lawrence
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. 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.
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. 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.
Anger compels him to kill his wife’s cousin in a reckless duel to avenge the death of his friend. Despair
compels him to suicide upon hearing of Juliet’s death. Such extreme behavior 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.
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.
Juliet The daughter of Capulet and Lady Capulet. A beautiful thirteen-year-old girl, Juliet begins the play
as a naïve child who has thought little about love and marriage, but she grows up quickly upon falling in
love with Romeo, the son of her family’s great enemy. Because she is a girl in an aristocratic family, she
has none of the freedom Romeo has to roam around the city, climb over walls in the middle of the night,
or get into swordfights. Nevertheless, she shows amazing courage in trusting her entire life and future to
Romeo, even refusing to believe the worst reports about him after he gets involved in a fight with her
cousin. Juliet’s closest friend and confidant is her nurse, though she’s willing to shut the Nurse out of her
life the moment the Nurse turns against Romeo.
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. 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 gives glimpses of her determination, strength, and sober-mindedness, in her earliest scenes, and
offers a preview of the woman she will become during the four-day span of Romeo and Juliet. While Lady
Capulet proves unable to quiet the Nurse, Juliet succeeds with one word (also in Act 1, scene 3). In
addition, even in Juliet’s dutiful acquiescence to try to love Paris, there is some seed of steely
determination. 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.
Juliet’s 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.
After Romeo kills Tybalt and 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. 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.
Friar Lawrence - A Franciscan friar, friend to both Romeo and Juliet. Kind, civic-minded, a proponent of
moderation, and always ready with a plan, Friar Lawrence secretly marries the impassioned lovers in
hopes that the union might eventually bring peace to Verona. As well as being a Catholic holy man, Friar
Lawrence is also an expert in the use of seemingly mystical potions and herbs.
Friar Lawrence occupies a strange position in Romeo and Juliet. He is a kindhearted 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; he spirits Romeo into Juliet’s room and then out of
Verona; 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? The answers
are not clear. 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. Readers should
recognize that the Friar is not only subject to the fate that dominates the play—in many ways he brings
that fate about.
Mercutio A kinsman to the Prince, and Romeo’s close friend. One of the most extraordinary characters in
all of Shakespeare’s plays, Mercutio overflows with imagination, wit, and, at times, a strange, biting satire
and brooding fervor. Mercutio loves wordplay, especially sexual double entendres. He can be quite
hotheaded, and hates people who are affected, pretentious, or obsessed with the latest fashions. He finds
Romeo’s romanticized ideas about love tiresome, and tries to convince Romeo to view love as a simple
matter of sexual appetite.
With a lightning-quick wit and a clever mind, Mercutio is a scene stealer and one of the most memorable
characters in all of Shakespeare’s works. Though he constantly puns, jokes, and teases—sometimes in
fun, sometimes with bitterness—Mercutio is not a mere jester or prankster. With his wild words, Mercutio
punctures the romantic sentiments and blind self-love that exist within the play. He mocks Romeos selfindulgence just as he ridicules Tybalt’s hauteur and adherence to fashion. The critic Stephen Greenblatt
describes Mercutio as a force within the play that functions to deflate the possibility of romantic love and
the power of tragic fate. Unlike the other characters who blame their deaths on fate, Mercutio dies cursing
all Montagues and Capulets. Mercutio believes that specific people are responsible for his death rather
than some external impersonal force
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
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 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. 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
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.
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.
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.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the
text’s major themes.
Light/Dark Imagery
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. 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
(2.1.46). A similar blurring of night and day occurs in the early morning hours after the lovers’ only night
together. 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: “More light and light, more
dark and dark our woes” (3.5.36).
Opposite Points of View
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.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
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.
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.
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.
A Far Cry from Africa Summary
Background
‘‘A Far Cry from Africa’’ discusses the events of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya in the early 1950s. In the midtwentieth century, British colonialism was a fading but still potent force in the world. In the African nation of Kenya,
British colonists had settled and introduced European concepts to the local people: money, taxation, and ownership
of land. When the British asked, ‘‘Who owns this land?’’ tribal people responded, ‘‘We do,’’ and the British assumed
that "we" referred to the tribal government, although the land was actually owned by individual families. Because the
British were replacing the tribal government with their own, they then claimed all the land in the name of the new
British government. Naturally, the Kenyan people were outraged. Now, instead of owning and farming their own land,
they were reduced to being laborers for the British owners. As employees, they were further insulted by being paid
only a fraction of the amount a British worker received for doing the same work.
The Kikuyu tribe was the largest in Kenya, and the most educated. In 1951, some Kikuyu outbursts of violence
against the British occurred, and in 1952 a secret Kikuyu society known as the Mau Mau began a war of violence
against the British and any Africans who were loyal to them. By October of 1952, the situation was so serious that the
British called out troops to fight the rebels, and a three-year war ensued, during which 11,000 rebel warriors were
killed and 80,000 Kikuyu men, women, and children were locked up in detention camps. One hundred Europeans and
2,000 Africans loyal to them were killed. Later, the leader of the rebellion, Jomo Kenyatta, was elected prime minister
of Kenya when Kenya became independent from Britain in 1963.
In the poem, Walcott presents some graphic images of the conflict and asks how he can be expected to choose one
side over the other, since he is of both African and European descent. He cannot condone the colonialism of the
British, or the violence of the Mau Mau, because choosing either side would mean he is turning against that part of
himself. “A Far Cry from Africa” uses metaphors, such as “colonel of carrion , and ironic statements, such as “corpses
are scattered through a paradise” to describe the death and destruction and inhumanity that has occurred in both
Africa and Europe. As half-European and half-African, Walcott was privileged to bear both horrible histories. The fullblooded natives’ desire was to look and behave like the colonizers. However, they did not have to bear the burden of
being genetically similar to the colonizers, and not only being torn between two cultures but “divided to the vein”
Derek Walcott uses his genetic hybridity and cultural hybridity to express the extremity of his unhomliness.
Theme
Violence and Cruelty :- The wind ''ruffling the tawny pelt of Africa'' refers to the Mau Mau Uprising that occurred
in what is now independent Kenya, roughly from October 20, 1952, to January of 1960. During this span, the white
government called an emergency meeting against a secret Kikuyu society that came to be known as Mau Mau and
was dedicated to overthrowing the white regime. Against the backdrop of a cruel, long-lasting British colonialism
erupted the more short-term cruelty of Mau Mau insurrection.
STYLE: ‘‘A Far Cry from Africa’’ contains four stanzas of mostly iambic tetrameter. Actually, the poem starts off in
iambic pentameter, the prevalent form of poetry written in English, but it soon veers off course metrically—a change
that reflects the changing scene and perspective in the poem—with lines of varying length and number of stresses. A
point of consistency is Walcott's use of masculine endings (lines ending with accented syllables) and masculine
rhymes (one syllable rhymes). Rhyme is as irregular as meter. The rhyme scheme of the first stanza might be
rendered ababbcdecd.
Critical Analysis When analyzing ‘‘A Far Cry from Africa,’’ most critics comment on the poem's message and
what it reveals about the poet, rather than the technical aspects of its creation. In an article titled ‘‘West Indies II:
Walcott, Brathwaite, and Authenticity,’’ Bruce King remarks, ‘‘The poem is remarkable for its complexity of emotions’’
and that it ‘‘treats of the Mau Mau uprising in terms that mock the usual justifications for and criticisms of colonialism.’’
King notes that the narrator is stricken with ‘‘confused, irreconcilably opposed feelings:...
In his 1993 critical biography, Derek Walcott, Robert D. Hamner observes, ''It is not a simple choice between cultures
for Walcott, but a matter of laying claim to his mixed heritage.’’ This ‘‘mixed heritage,’’ which the Swedish Academy,
in awarding Walcott the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, referred to as ‘‘the complexity of his own situation,’’ takes a
variety of often-paradoxical forms. For example, Walcott is of both English and African genetic ancestry. The blood of
colonizers and colonized, oppressors and oppressed, flows in his veins. Derek Walcott often described himself as a
“mongrel”; both grandmothers were African and both grandfathers were European. He hated the English culture but
loved the English language and empathized with the Irish for they were also the victims of colonization. In “A Far Cry
from Africa,” Walcott does not express all aspects of British and African culture; instead he focuses only on the brutal
history of both. He is “poisoned with the blood of both,” and he is torn between the two horrific options of a bloodied
Africa or the attacker that is England.
"A Far Cry From Africa" is the story of a man half African and half English, who is witnessing the death and
destruction of his homeland resulting from the English colonization of South Africa. In his description he does not,
however, favor one side over the other, but focuses rather on the injustices of both cultures. At the end of the poem,
the narrator cries out, asking how he can choose between the two. Several aspects of this poem show signs of
transculturation. Perhaps the most obvious sign is the narrator's adoption of the dominant English language to write
this poem. As a matter of fact, this aspect of the English culture has so become a part of the narrator that he refers to
the language as, "the English tongue [he] loves”. Another sign of transculturation is the narrator’s adoption of derisive
European names for uncivilized peoples to describe the Kikuyu. For example, the narrator likens the Kikuyu “to
savages” and to a “gorilla” . In addition the narrator also borrows the expression, “a waste of our compassion” from
the phrase he characterizes to be British in line six. In the last stanza the narrator shows another sign of
transculturation by “[cursing]/ the drunken officer of British rule”. These subtle rejections and adaptations of British
imperialism, all signs of transculturation, can be found throughout the poem.
The personal struggle characteristic of this transculturation finally emerges in the last stanza of Walcott's poem:
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
From this it is clear that the narrator is having difficulty choosing between the two cultures in his personal struggle
with transculturation. In an essay entitled "Conflicting Loyalties in 'A Far Cry from Africa,'" the author, Heather Bradley
contends, "this severely pessimistic image illustrates a consequence of displacement—isolation" (1). Indeed, there
are several images of isolation in the final lines of the poem, and even the title takes part in the withdrawn tone of the
rest of the poem. Isolation, however, does not always have to be the resultant state of personal struggle as long as
one can determine to which culture he or she feels the most loyalty. But then Bradley goes a step further claiming,
"an individual's sense of identity arises from cultural influences which define his or her character according to a
particular society's standards" . Although one's perceived identity may be defined by a particular society's standards,
true identity can only be obtained through a self-analysis, such as the personal struggle characteristic of
transculturation. In the intersection of two cultures, the process of transculturation defines one’s identity.
Homi Bhabha's concept of "colonial mimicry" will serve to explain exactly why personal struggle is characteristic of
transculturation. According to Bhabha, "colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject
of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite" (1). In essence, "colonial mimicry" is the process by which a
subjugated people are driven to reproduce the characteristics and ideals of a dominant culture in a way that closely
resembles the true dominant culture; hence, it is a form of transculturation. On a more personal level, this concept
may translate to one individual's mimicry of someone who wields power over him or her. The result of this mockery is
ambivalence the subordinate feels towards his superiors: on one hand, he respects and envies the power of his
superiors and on the other hand he scorns their oppression of him. The subordinate’s search for balance between
respect and scorn for his superiors is a form a personal struggle, and this ambivalence is reproduced almost exactly
in Walcott's "A Far Cry from Africa": the narrator curses his tyrant English conquerors at the same he time worships
the language they speak.
African mimicry of British themes, which Bhabha sees as indicative of ambivalence, and thus personal struggle, can
be seen throughout Walcott's poem. For example, the Kikuyu are characterized as flies that "batten upon the
bloodstreams of the veldt" (3) just as the English are represented by a worm, the "colonel of carrion" (5). In addition,
the murder of an innocent white child in bed mimics the holocaust-like genocide of the natives. The narrator also
mocks the English by reproducing their language only to curse and criticize British imperialism. Even the title mocks
British rule. By calling British colonization "a far cry from Africa," the narrator is criticizing the attempt of the British to
civilize Africa and make it a better place. All these images of mimicry are signs of the narrator's personal
transculturation of British paradigms.
Returning to Pratt with a better understanding of transculturation in its context as a personal struggle, the drawback of
viewing transculturation as an emotionless transition becomes apparent. In her article, Pratt cites three examples of
transculturation on an individual basis: an Incan under Spanish rule, a class taught by a teacher, and a child
discovering the world of baseball. However, in each instance Pratt fails to recognize the emotion characteristic
of personal struggle involved in the transculturation process. When discussing her six-year-old son, Pratt casually
mentions that baseball cards taught him “what it means to get cheated, taken advantage of, even robbed.” She
doesn’t even spend one sentence analyzing what kind of effect these types of lessons would have on a six-year-old
kid. Pratt then goes on to objectify the life’s work of the Incan under Spanish rule by treating his letter as a
monumental example of “autoethnography” instead of what it simply is: a plea to King Phillip III of Spain to end the
oppression of the Incas. In the classroom, Pratt is "struck" by the realization that "the lecturer's traditional (imagined)
task--unifying the world in the class's eyes by means of a monologue that rings equally coherent, revealing, and true
for all...[is] not only impossible but anomalous and unimaginable" . Whatever she teaches to a diverse group of
students will be received and interpreted by each student differently. That which is surprising to Pratt is self-evident to
those who understand transculturation in its context as a personal struggle. The student has the power to accept or
reject all aspects of the instruction based on his own values and therefore must every day take part in his or her own
intellectual development through personal transculturation. Hence, it is important to analyze cultural intersections on
a small scale as well as a large one and to pay attention to how each individual is affected by cultural interaction.
After all, Walcott's narrator isn't just an individual assuming a dominant culture's traits; he is one man torn between
loyalties to two opposing countries. He is one man "divided to the vein" (Walcott 18), struggling with himself .In order
to effectively colonize another’s land, the colonizer’s culture has to become so widely spread and deeply embedded
in the colonized land’s culture so that the indigenous peoples will begin to accept that they are inferior to the
colonizers. Mimicry is a term used to explain the natives’ imitating the colonizing country due to their want to be
“accepted by the colonizing culture” and their feeling of inferiority and shame for their own culture (Tyson 221). In
order to fully dominate a land by supporting their culture as superior, the colonizer must use one of the most powerful
conveyances for the dispersion of ideologies: language. When the British colonized the West Indies, they enforced
English as the official language, the main means of causing the natives to accept the British culture as their own.
However, in “A Far Cry from Africa,” Walcott ironically describes how he rejects the British culture – the colonialist
ideology – but accepts the British language as superior. As a colonial subject, Walcott would have been seen by the
colonizers as an other, and as half-European, Walcott would have been seen as different from the completely
indigenous peoples. While these full-blooded natives would also have learned Standard English along with the
French Creole and emulated British culture, their hybridity would not be as extreme as Walcott’s background. As a
person of mixed blood and having family members that were European, Derek Walcott would have had a First World
upbringing in a Second World country.
Nurse: Character Analysis
The nurse is a servant in the Capulet household. The nurse is often interpreted as a comic foil to
Juliet. (A foil is a character who through strong contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive qualities
of another character.) She seems to be in higher standing than the other servants since she is a companion
to Juliet, is present in private family conversations, and has her own servant, Peter. In Renaissance
England, unmarried, widowed, or poor women might work for relatives in positions like the one in
which the nurse finds herself. At any rate, she is trusted by the Capulets and informed about their
intimate affairs.
The nurse's main role in the play is as a companion and advisor to Juliet. She feels affection for
Juliet, whom she has cared for since Juliet was an infant. It is revealed that the nurse lost her own child,
Susan, and perhaps she views Juliet as a daughter. The nurse's affection for Juliet remains constant
throughout the play, even if her advice is of questionable value. Juliet trusts the nurse enough to send her
to Romeo the morning after the balcony scene to learn what Romeo's intentions are. On this errand, the
nurse takes it upon herself to make sure that Romeo's intentions are honorable, since Juliet is young and
inexperienced. When Juliet learns of what has happened in the marketplace, the nurse tries to comfort her
and decides to bring Romeo to Juliet. On the morning after the lovers' one night of married happiness
together, the nurse warns them that Romeo needs to leave Juliet's bedroom because Lady Capulet is
coming. When Lord Capulet scolds Juliet harshly, the nurse tells him he is wrong to do so. She does not
back down, so that he even yells at her. When Juliet and the nurse are left alone after the angry scene with
Juliet's parents, the nurse tries to comfort and console Juliet.
The nurse, with her bumbling mannerisms and her bawdy language, is often thought to be one of
Shakespeare's great comic characters. She is a talkative woman and tends to repeat herself and to
free-associate in her conversations. When she and Lady Capulet and Juliet are about to discuss Paris's
offer for the first time, she repeats a story about Juliet as a toddler several times. Lady Capulet has to ask
her to stop. When she brings the message back to Juliet from Romeo, Juliet has to ask her to get to the
point faster. Under pressure, she also talks in a confusing style that misleads her listener. When she tries
to tell Juliet about what has happened in the Verona marketplace, Juliet at first thinks that Romeo is dead
because of the way the nurse is garbling the details.
Another aspect of the nurse's conversation is that she does not mind making vulgar jokes. She
even does so with Juliet, since the jokes pertain to Juliet's wedding night and the possibility of pregnancy.
The nurse also converses in this vulgar manner with Mercutio.
The nurse is depicted as a practical, down-to-earth character. She advises Juliet to marry Paris.
Even though she knows Juliet is married to Romeo, she considers that Romeo's banishment makes him
useless to Juliet. She sees no obstacle to a second marriage in Juliet's secret wedding vows pronounced to
Romeo. She even helps in the kitchen the night before the planned wedding between Juliet and Paris. In
this scene, she jokes with Lord Capulet and he calls her by her name, Angelica.