An Idiot’s Guide to Romeo and Juliet
1. A Brief Outline
Act 1/2 (Sunday):
· Riot between the Capulet and Montague servants
· Paris asks to marry Juliet
· Feast. Romeo and Juliet meet
· Famous balcony scene. Juliet proposes marriage.
Act 2/3 (Monday):
· Friar agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet
· Tybalt challenges Romeo
· Romeo and Juliet marry
· Tybalt kills Mercutio
· Romeo kills Tybalt
· Romeo banished
· Romeo and Juliet spend the night together and consummate their marriage
Act 3/4 (Tuesday):
· Romeo is banished
· Lord Capulet insists Juliet marries Paris on Thursday
· Friar’s plan to pretend Juliet dead
· Lord Capulet brings wedding forward to Wednesday
· Juliet takes potion
Act 4 (Wednesday):
· Juliet found ‘dead’
Act 5 (Thursday):
Morning
· Romeo hears of Juliet’s ‘death’ and travels to Verona
Night
· Friar finds out his letter to Romeo was not delivered
· Romeo arrives at Capulet tomb
· Romeo kills Paris and then himself
· Juliet wakes, refuses to go with Friar and kills herself
· Prince, Capulet and Lord Montague arrive
Who’s Who
Romeo is clever, excelling at the kind of elaborate wordplay that was popular in Elizabethan times. He uses witty puns when he jokes with his friends and elaborate and stylish poetry when he talks about love. At the beginning of the play, Romeo is infatuated with Rosaline and his language is clever but artificial. Later, when he falls in love with Juliet, his language becomes simpler and more sincere.
Romeo’s name reflects his romantic nature. He is passionate and a bit of a dreamer. His emotions are the most important thing to him and he hardly notices what is going on in the real world. For example, at the beginning of the play he is so concerned with his own troubles that he does not notice that a riot has occurred. When he meets Juliet, his love for her becomes the most important thing in the world and he is determined to do anything in order for them to be together.
Juliet is the only daughter of Lord and Lady Capulet. Although Juliet is not quite fourteen, her parents are already making plans for her to marry. At the beginning of the play, she is a dutiful daughter who does what her parents tell her. After she meets Romeo, she becomes more independent. She defies her parents by secretly marrying Romeo, spending the night with him in her own house and refusing to marry Paris.
Juliet is a strong character, more practical and down-to-earth than Romeo. It is she who suggests marriage on the first night they meet and refuses to be impressed by Romeo’s clever, artificial love poetry. She insists on Romeo speaking from the heart (“swear not by the moon”).
Juliet is always honest with Romeo about her feelings even if what she says is considered unconventional for a young Elizabethan woman. Juliet is brave and willing to risk anything in order to be with Romeo: she deceives her parents, lies to her Nurse, swallows a dangerous drug, and eventually kills herself.
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Lord Capulet is a wealthy, elderly man who is used to having his own way. He can be an affectionate father and a hearty host but, if crossed, his temper is quick and violent. When Juliet is an obedient daughter, he is kind and protective. But when she refuses to obey him, he explodes. He considers Juliet his property to do with as he likes. He also dominates his wife, his relatives and his servants.
Lady Capulet is much younger than her husband. Although we don’t learn too much about their relationship, there is a hint that she is scornful of his age. When he asks for a sword to join in the riot, she suggests a crutch instead. Despite this, she usually gives in to her husband and she agrees with his plans for Juliet to marry Paris.
Lady Capulet’s relationship with Juliet is distant and formal. She is cold and unemotional throughout the play except on two occasions. First, when Tybalt dies, she becomes angry and vengeful and demands Romeo be put to death. Second, when Juliet is thought to be dead, she expresses genuine grief.
The Nurse has looked after Juliet since she was a baby. She cares deeply about Juliet and is willing to help her to marry Romeo, even though this is going against her master’s wishes. She is lively and talkative and her view of love focuses on the sexual. Her rude jokes serve to highlight the purity of Juliet’s love. Juliet relies on the Nurse as a friend and confidante and when the Nurse advises her to marry Paris, she feels betrayed.
The Role of Women
The world of the Elizabethans was patriarchal, if not misogynistic. Women held substandard positions in society and, quite often, this was reflected on the stage. Other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramas, such as Epicoene and The Dutch Courtesan, both by contemporaries of Shakespeare’s, drew heavily on female stereotypes of the time:
1. The virtuous woman (chaste, obedient and silent)
2. The seductress (unchaste, luring men away from their morals)
3. The “shrew” (loud, shrill and bossy – things which were considered by men to be very, very negative traits)
“For both girl and wife, silence is recommended as a virtue in itself as well as a feature of the general requirements of modesty and obedience…From the pulpit and the printing press, Renaissance Englishwomen were enjoined to avoid contentious (controversial) discourse and persuaded that silence enhanced their femininity” – (Henderson and McManus, p.54)
This kind of society placed women in an impossible situation: to do anything other than be obedient and silent (e.g. to be independent and speak your mind) was proving men that they were right, that women were unable to be silent, were unable to control themselves.
Furthermore, in the late 16th and early 17th century, pamphlets (sort of like magazines) were published, displaying very aggressive male attitudes towards women. The most famous of these was Joseph Swetnam’s The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Woman, which was published in 1615, some years after Romeo and Juliet.
“…who can but say that women sprung from the Devil? Whose heads, hands and hearts, minds and souls are evil, for women are called the hook of all evil because men are taken by them as fish is taken with the hook…They are ungrateful, perjured, full of fraud, flouting and deceit, unconstant, waspish, toyish, light, sullen, proud, discourteous, and cruel” – Joseph Swetnam.
The strongest arguments made by men at the time for their belief that women were unable to resist temptation and sin was the belief in the Biblical story of Genesis as historical fact: Eve gives into temptation from the Devil and, in turn, persuades Adam to be tempted also. Therefore, women were seen to be untrustworthy, unable to control themselves sexually, unable to resist temptations and therefore needed to be controlled by men.
“[Moses] saith that [women] were made of the rib of a man, and that their froward nature showeth; for a rib is a crooked thing good for nothing else, and women are crooked by nature” – Joseph Swetnam.
In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is exposed to these kinds of attitudes by her father: although he says to Paris at the beginning that Paris can have Juliet only if she agrees to it, he expects that she will agree to it and obey him: “I think she will be rul’d / in all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not” (Act Three, Scene V, 13 – 14). When she does not, he becomes aggressive and angry and tries to force her to comply. Juliet first tries to avoid making her father angry by telling him she is grateful for the trouble he has taken to find her a good husband, but that she can’t be “proud” (she doesn’t want to marry) the man he has chosen: “Not proud that you have, but thankful that you have” (Act 3, Scene V, 46). Her father works himself up into a rage and does not listen when she begs for him to hear her out:
JULIET: Good father, I beseech you on my knees
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
CAPULET: Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wretch!
I tell thee what – get thee to church a Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face.”
He tells her not to bother replying or speaking because “his fingers itch”, presumably meaning that he will beat her in his rage if she replies. Both the Nurse and Lady Capulet are shocked by the strength of his anger and try to intervene in vain. Capulet goes on to tell Juliet that if she does not marry Paris, her father will throw her out and let her “hang, beg, starve, die in the streets” and he will “ne’er acknowledge [her]”. These are strong, strong threats. Juliet is entirely dependent on her father; in a sense, he owns her, and her only survival if she were to end up on the streets is likely to be prostitution, which was dangerous (physical violence from men was always a threat and most prostitutes died from ‘the pox’ – syphilis – a disease for which there was no cure and which caused skin and bone to rot away whilst the sufferer was still alive). Besides this, Juliet would have led a very sheltered life, never venturing out of the house alone, never doing anything much alone, so to break from her old life would be very daunting. The easiest option for her, and the one which the nurse advises for her, is to forget Romeo. He has murdered her cousin and will never be accepted by Lord Capulet now. Most girls in Juliet’s situation would take this advice and obey their fathers, which is why Juliet’s decision to visit the Friar is extraordinary. Here, Shakespeare has defied convention and abandoned stereotypes: in Juliet he has created a strong, independent character, despite all odds and despite her young age and inexperience. She refuses to be ruled by her father, by society or by rules; instead, she is ruled by her own heart.
Word Bank
1. Patriarchal: a social system in which the father is the head of the family and men have authority over women and children.
2. Misogynistic: a social system based on the hatred of women
3. Chaste: not having sex before marriage, being pure, innocent, virtuous
4. Shrew: a scolding, evil-tempered woman
Themes
Love
There are many kinds of love in Romeo and Juliet. At the centre of the play is the love between Romeo and Juliet. This ‘love at first sight’ develops quickly into a strong, mutual attachment. The love scenes between Romeo and Juliet are apart from the haste and bustle of the rest of the play. When the lovers meet, time seems to stand still. Even in the middle of the Capulet party, it is as if Rome and Juliet are alone together.
Romeo and Juliet are willing to do anything to be together, but fate is against them. Their words to each other are tender and intimate but, at the same time, there are many reminders of their tragic destiny.
In contrast to the purity and strength of the love between Romeo and Juliet, the characters of the Nurse, Mercutio, Sampson and Gregory delight in their own naughty humour, which is full of sexual jokes. They seem to view love only in the physical sense.
Romeo and Juliet marry because their love for each other is so deep. Others in the play see marriage as achieving a particular, usually financial, purpose. Lord and Lady Capulet try to arrange a marriage for Juliet for status and financial gain. Even Friar Lawrence agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet because he thinks it will end the feud. Other expressions of love in the play include the relationships between Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio, Romeo and his parents, Juliet and the Nurse and her parents.
Conflict
In Romeo and Juliet there are many forms of conflict. The central one is the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. There does not seem any reason for this ancient grudge and yet many people die because of it. Members of each family seem governed by a macho code of honour that requires them to hate, insult and fight each other. Even the household staff become caught up in this rivalry.
There are other forms of conflict in the play as well: between men and women, parents and children, the individual and society, the impatience of youth and the caution of old age.
Act 1, Scene iii
The Nurse and Lady Capulet
Whereas the Nurse speaks freely on the subject of marriage, often using sexual imagery, Lady Capulet seems almost embarrassed to bring up the subject, even though that is what she has called Juliet to her to do. It’s not until the Nurse introduces the subject that Lady Capulet asks the question, ‘how stands your disposition to be married?’
Lady Capulet and the Nurse speak and act very differently. The Nurse is loud, coarse and chatty. She uses slang and shortened words. The rhythm of her language is uneven, sometimes in verse (poetry), sometimes in prose. She reports speech and tells stories. She interrupts herself and others and can’t seem to keep quiet. Lady Capulet is much more formal. She says only what is necessary. Her lines are short, factual and to the point. She expects the same kind of response from her daughter, asking her to ‘Speak briefly’. The only times she speaks at length is when she describes Paris, speaking in rhyming verse and using an elaborate book metaphor. This way of speaking could be compared to Romeo’s love poetry about Rosaline – clever but artificial.
Act 1, Scene V: Style and Language
Romeo’s words when he first sees Juliet are a complete contrast to the chatter and noise of the party. He speaks in poetry, using rhyming couplets. If you read the lines aloud you will notice the ‘o’ and ‘s’ sounds. This has the effect of slowing down and softening the lines. Compared to the soft love poetry in Romeo’s speech, Tybalt’s language is harsh and clipped, reflecting the aggression that he introduces into the action. Romeo and Juliet’s words to each other are tender and intimate. This is a direct contrast to Tybalt’s angry lines and is part of the theme of love vs. hate.