Romeo and Juliet 3.5

Today was a bit chaotic but fun. The discussion digressed a bit, but I think the digression into the nature of fate, fortune, and free will was worthwhile. The controversy arose of out of your discussion of Juliet’s line, “O Fortune, Fortune, all men call thee fickle” (3.5.60). Besides personifying fortune, or fate, Juliet apostrophizes Fortune and reacts to her change in fortune by noting that all humans see Fortune as capricious. However, the question arose as to whether Fortune could be fickle ever. If a life is fated, the path of that life is determined before it begins. It cannot deviate from the path; or can it? We discussed fate for a bit, but never really looked into the role of free will in the play or in relation to fate. We will return to this discussion when we get to Act 5.

The other main point from today’s discussion is that Juliet is now without an ally in her household and relies, as Romeo does, on Friar Lawrence. By suggesting that Romeo is a “dishclout” in comparison to Paris, who is “An eagle,” the nurse advises Juliet to marry Paris and forget Romeo. In response, Juliet calls the Nurse, “Ancient damnation, O most wicked fiend,” and banishes the Nurse from her heart: “Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain” (3.5.348, 354).

Romeo and Juliet, 3.3-3.4

This must be quick. In general, I liked your discussion today very much. You focused more on the specific connotations of individual words to support your interpretations. This specificity bodes well for your essays due in Moodle on Monday.

You did well to parse Romeo’s self-centered and pitiful whining. The discussion about the passage in which he considers “carrion flies” more fortunate than he because they may “seize/on the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand” revealed how self-pitying he is (3.3.36-37). He sees himself worse off than flies that eat dead flesh. You also noted that his word “seize” suggests that Juliet is in danger of being seized without him.

Friar Lawrence chides Romeo as being like a clumsy soldier who burns himself by exploding the gunpowder outside the gun. He also calls him “womanish” in his tears and “beastly” in his behavior. Both, Friar Lawrence suggests, reveal how immature Romeo is.

Your discussion was far more detailed than I have time to reflect here. However, I do want to leave you with an example of good, detailed analysis. You quoted Friar Lawrence’s line that Romeo’s “noble shape is but a form of wax” (3.3.136). You focused on the word, wax. You remembered that in 1.3 Lady Capulet describes Paris as a man of wax and that Juliet was not impressed as wax is malleable and melts in the heat (of passion). Friar Lawrence here suggests that Romeo is not as noble as his name, clothes, and birth would suggest. His form is wax, or artificial, not real, and it is malleable, changeable, inconstant, and therefore ignoble and unmanly.

Romeo and Juliet, 3.2

Today’s discussion had its strengths and its weaknesses. Though I tried several times to get you to pay closer attention to particular words and to read the connotations of them, only a few of you took up the challenge. You are all very good at figuring out the way Shakespeare’s lines drive the plot or reveal character, but you still need practice deepening your analysis in support of your readings. However, you did well to understand the main action of the scene and to connect Juliet’s speeches to motifs in the play, particularly night and fate, which you deftly linked in the star imagery in the scene.

Juliet apostrophizes night and Romeo: “Come night, come Romeo, come though day in night” (3.2.17). This line evokes Romeo’s 1.1 attempt to make an artificial night in his room during the day. When he was in love with Rosaline, he could only enjoy his misery in darkness. Here, Juliet refers to night when her love can come out. Romeo, her “day in night” is a star; he burns brightly during the night, which except in church, is the only time she has seen him.

The depiction of Romeo as a star also ties into the theme of fate in the play. Sailors direct their sails, to paraphrase Romeo’s premonition in 1.4, and Juliet uses Romeo to guide her path. Stars are also a symbol for fate as we have seen with the epithet, “star-crossed lovers.” So, Juliet ties her fate to Romeo.

In your reading of Juliet’s line “I have bought the mansion of a love,” you began to read closely (3.2.28). Mansions are big, grand houses, purchased to hold rich possessions and big families. Also, they display the wealth of their owners, the way that Romeo’s beauty will display Juliet’s superficial wealth. Here, Juliet has paid for her love by exchanging wedding vows but has not consummated her ownership of the love in their wedding night. Interestingly, Shakespeare gives his young heroine sexual desire; she’s eager for the night to arrive so she can take possession of her love. She imagines herself an equal partner in this night, not merely one to be possessed.

Your discussion of the oxymoronic rant that Juliet gives forth after hearing that Tybalt died at Romeo’s hand was less satisfactory. When you write about an oxymoron over the weekend, I hope you will look closely at the rich imagery. After today’s class, I feel that I must defend young Juliet against your cynicism a bit. You saw the oxymorons as indicative of her capricious attitude toward Romeo and her fickle attitude toward love. Might they also indicate her deep and profound confusion?

Romeo and Juliet, 3.1

Life turns difficult for the young lovers in Act 3. Newly married and still without the opportunity to consummate his marriage, Romeo kills Tybalt in a brawl. He blames fate: “O, I am fortune’s fool!” (3.1.142). As you discussed in class today, Romeo believes the fateful stars toy with him; he is their plaything. That his fortune is tied to two deaths in this scene foreshadows his untimely end. But, so does Romeo’s refusal to accept responsibility for his actions. You and Mercutio refused to let him off the hook, however.

Twice Mercutio curses the Capulets and the Montagues with his dying breaths: “A plague o’ both houses!” (3.1.94, 111). As a member of neither warring household, Mercutio finds himself collateral damage to feud. He even blames Romeo for causing his death by stepping between him and Tybalt. Romeo, however, passes the blame onto Juliet: “O sweet Juliet,/They beauty hat made me effeminate/And in my temper softened valor’s steel” (3.1.118-20). He implies that his connection to Juliet has unmanned him. His attraction to her beauty distracted him from his manly honor and he forgot how he is supposed to act when challenged by his enemy. The steel of his valor (as if we’ve seen any evidence of Romeo’s valor to this point) weakens when exposed to the heat of Juliet’s beauty.

During discussion today, you were right to hold Romeo accountable for Tybalt’s death. Though you allowed room for the passion of Romeo’s anger, you also noted that Romeo decides to pursue Tybalt. He apostrophizes fury (remember the furies from The Odyssey) as he consciously vows revenge: “And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now” (3.1.129). In compensation for his former effeminacy, Romeo asks that fury now guide his actions.

Romeo and Juliet, 2.5 and 2.6

I don't have much to time today, so I can do little more than to urge you to be more respectful of each other during discussions. Particularly those of you sitting at the end of the table away from the Student Commons talked constantly while classmates were speaking. I promise to be more vigilant about reminding you during class to pay attention to each other.

The speeches that begin and end 2.5 are worth going back over. You hit some key images, like a wish that love's messenger flew with "swift Cupid's wings" (2.5.9) and Juliet's argument that "love's heralds should be thoughts" (2.5.4), but you didn't take the time to consider all the connotations of these lovely images.

You did pick up on Friar Lawrence's ambivalence about the wedding. He's willing to marry the passionate young lovers even though he acknowledges "These violent delights have violent ends" (2.6.9). The love Romeo and Juliet express for each other clearly delights them, but is also dangerous. You were good at seeing the contradictions in Friar Lawrence's stance, but you did not recall 2.3. Remember that Friar Lawrence believes that the nature of all things is double. Whether one gets medicine or poison from a plant depends upon how one cultivates the plant. So, Friar Lawrence can believe that the relationship has the potential for a violent end and proceed because he believes he can engineer the more positive of the two possible outcomes.

Romeo and Juliet, 2.3-2.4

It is getting late and my ability to write is fading fast, so I will make this short. The strategy of focusing on smaller pieces of scenes seemed to work well today, especially for 2.3, about which you sustained a long and interesting discussion. For some reason, you resisted discussing 2.4. Perhaps it was the number of ribald puns, or that Shakespeare’s prose is more difficult to penetrate than his verse. Whatever the case, you did not get to discuss Mercutio’s attitude toward Tybalt or the threat that Tybalt poses.

In contrast, your discussion of 2.3 was very good. The main point of your discussion was that Friar Lawrence recognizes the dual nature of all things; that is, all things have the capacity for good and bad. The earth nourishes life and is a grave: “The earth that’s natures mother is her tomb” (2.3.29). Even a flower, like the bud that Juliet compares to the love between her and Romeo in 2.2, can kill or heal: “Within the infant rind of this weak flower/poison hath residence and medicinal power” (2.3.23-24).

You likened this double-natured bud to the love of Romeo and Juliet, which is joyful but also filled with insidious, poisonous power. Even in this scene, Friar Lawrence, after chiding Romeo’s fickleness, recognizes the dangerous and the beneficial possibilities of the union between the two young lovers. He tells Romeo to proceed, “Wisely and slowly. They stumble that run fast” (2.3.101), yet he agrees to perform the wedding because he sees the possibility that it end the feud. So, while he suggests that Romeo acts like a little kid who can’t keep up with a fast-moving love and who may stumble as he pursues, Friar Lawrence also tells Romeo the marriage might, “turn your households’ rancor to pure love” (2.23.99).

Romeo and Juliet, 2.2

I felt like echoing Juliet’s plaintive “Ay me,” after class today. Don’t get me wrong, there were moments of brilliance, but today’s conversation lacked the cohesion and focus of yesterday’s. After class I wondered why this would be the case. I concluded that yesterday’s discussion mainly centered on 14 lines of poetry, and today’s discussion aimed to encompass 205. With so much ground to cover, no wonder the discussion jumped from topic to topic. Obviously, there will be many days when you have read more than a few lines of poetry. However, it may be more productive to break the reading down into smaller units. Someone, perhaps one of your much missed ailing fellows, might begin tomorrow’s discussion by explicitly stating the portion of the scene she would like to discuss. Only when the class agrees to move will the discussion shift to another portion of the reading.

Some of today’s interpretive nuggets:

Romeo’s pledge to be “new baptized” if Juliet loves him connects with the religious motif (2.2.54). Rosaline used to be Romeo’s religion, but if Juliet anoints him with his love his religion will be altered. Best quip: Juliet’s baptized Romeo, he’s just waiting for confirmation. He doesn’t get any by the end of the scene. That will have to wait until they’re married.

Juliet says of her love for her new crush, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea” (2.2.140). You noted that the sea is not only broad and deep, but it is driven by powerful currents and can be unpredictably destructive. Of course, one of the greatest forces that governs the movement of the sea is the gravitational pull of the moon that determines the tides. Thus, though Juliet tells Romeo not to swear his love “by the moon, th’ inconstant moon,” she suggests that her love may be governed by the force of the changeable moon (2.2.114).

Romeo and Juliet, 2 Prologue and 2.1

Days like today give me hope. I was heartened especially by your discussion of the sonnet that makes up the prologue of Act 2. Most impressively, you started to see the connotations of words and images and how they reveal the characters of the two young lovers. For instance, you noted that the characterization of Romeo’s feelings for Rosaline as “desire” that “on his death bed lie” suggests that Romeo’s feelings for his former flame are not quite finished (2 Prologue.1). They live still, but are dying out. Similarly, you pointed out that “young affection,” Romeo’s youthful feelings for Juliet, “gapes to be his heir” (2 Prologue.2).

Affection, clearly, is not the same as desire, but the way Shakespeare writes the lines, affection can grow into desire if it inherits the passion from old desire. Desire is personified as the possessor of rich passion, and affection is personified as the eager heir. You also noted that Romeo’s desire ages quickly and is not something long lived.

I also enjoyed your analysis of the description of Romeo and Juliet “alike bewitched by the charm of looks” (2 Prologue.6). You noted that those who are bewitched are under a spell and not themselves. The charm, also, is not a deep knowledge of one another but “looks,” the outward appearance of the two young lovers. It remains to be seen whether the affection can mature into desire and love.

We also talked again about Mercutio’s baser, more physical image of love as being something sexual. I mentioned that his delineation of Rosaline’s body parts is a poetic technique called a blazon.