him and decides to go. In the Capulets house they are getting ready for the
mask ball and the Nurse is talking to Lady Capulet until she calls for her young
daughter Juliet, aged at 13. Lady Capulet calls for Juliet to ask her about her
intentions to marry but Juliet says,
“It is an honor that I dream not of”, so she has no intentions of getting married,
but her mother Lady Capulet and the Nurse disagree with her intentions, but
decides to leave her and also tells her when they are at the masked ball to take
great interest in the County Paris which Lord and Lady Capulet wish she marry
as he is rich and wealthy and is the Princes kinsmen. Juliet obediently agrees and says she will ‘look to like’.
The day of the masked ball has finally come and all the guests are arriving
followed by Romeo, Benvolio, and Mercutio. They enter the celebration and
stand by the refreshment table and listen to Romeo moaning over Rosaline and
how she was in his dreams. While Mercutio talks to Romeo, the beauty of
Juliet distracts him,
“A rich Jewel in an Ethiops ear”. Juliet’s cousin Tybalt recognises Romeo
voice as he is describing Juliet. Then his Uncle Lord Capulet comes along half
drunk talking to him; this is when Tybalt tells him that Romeo is at the masked
ball. Lord Capulet was suprised to hear this but then decides to let him stay as
he is not causing any trouble and he says Romeo has a good reputation in
Verona, known to be virtuous and well behaved. Tybalt is then forced to
compromise as Lord Capulet had threatened him; Tybalt is comforted when
Capulet says he can ‘get him later’. Romeo goes up to her and takes her hand
and starts to tell her how much he likes her and she tries to play hard to get
with him and moves away. Romeo and Juliet’s speeches to each other are full
of religious overtones, although a bulk of what they say concerns the human
body. Although they talk of lips and hands kissing and touching, and actually
kiss each other, they also talk about holy shrines, gentle sins, pilgrims,
devotion, saints and prayers. Romeo’s language is still a little forced and
exaggerated yet completely shaken off somewhat studied manner. Juliet says
he kiss by the book rather than from the heart the duet between Romeo and
Juliet is in sonnet form and its use of religious words isolates the characters
from the rest of the scene and its bustling activity. Now in the beginning of the
play she has no intentions of getting married as you would think when you read
this in the play she has no experience on how to come about meeting guys. As
Juliet moves away. They kiss twice that night and then the Nurse comes and
gives Juliet a message that her mother wants her. Romeo then asks the Nurse,
“What is her mother” and the Nurse replied,
“Marry, bachelor, Her mother is the lady of the house, And a good lady, and a
wise and virtuous. I nursed her daughter that you talk to withal. I tell you, he
who can get hold of her shall have the chinks”, meaning whoever marrys Juliet
will be rich and wealthy, when Romeo heard this news he was startled. Juliet is
very distraught that she has found her only love within the family she has been
brought up to hate. Juliet says that she met him and loved him before she knew
who he was. Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether the play is more about
the nature of hate than the nature of love, more concerned with death and the
darkness than wife life and light. Juliet then asks the Nurse who is he and she
replies,
“His name is Romeo, and a Montegue, The only son of your great enemy”.
When she found out she was shocked but decides that its just a name and it
doesn’t really matter as long as you love each other. Juliet, unaware that
Romeo is hiding below in the garden, say that she does not care that he Is a
Montague. She says that if a rose were called by a different name it would still
smell as sweet. Notice that Juliet uses an image of a beautiful flower to talk
about Romeo. Her description of her ears drinking in his words shows that all
her senses are awakened by her love for him and introduces imagery of
mouths, drinking, etc.
Juliet tells the Nurse to find Romeo and give him a message. The Nurse goes
back and forth giving messages to one another from one another, until they
plan on getting married secretly. Romeo goes to see Friar Lawrence and asks
him to marry them, he agrees though he is suprised and they meet up in the
Friars cell where they marry. After Romeo and Juliet were married Tybalt
wants to fight with Romeo so he sends him a letter for a challenge, but Romeo
refuses to fight as they are family now. Mercutio fights for Romeo and dies so
Romeo seeks revenge for him and kills Tybalt, after Romeo kills Tybalt he is
banished from Verona to Mantua but before he leaves, he consummates the
wedding. Romeo leaving upsets Juliet very much, after they have consummated
the wedding Romeo has to leave and Juliet was in tears, then her mother come
and Juliet was still crying so she said if her mother sees her crying she was
crying over lossing her cousin Tybalt.
After Juliet’s loss she gets ver upset with Romeo gone anal. She intends to take
a poison to fake death but she has taken the precaution of bringing a knife with
her in case the potion does not work at all; she clearly intends to carry out her
threatened suicide if this is necessary. When Romeo hears of her ‘dying’ he is
very upset and comes back to Verona and buys a poison from the apothecary,
he then goes to her tomb after she has been buried and he echoes the imagery
of Death lying with Juliet, with its sexual as well as literal meaning: ‘Well,
Juliet I will lie with thee tonight’ but the ominous meaning is that he will join
her in death. Notice that, appropriately, ‘lie’ can also mean falsehood and we
all know Juliet is not real dead. Soon after Romeo has taken the potion Juliet
soon awakens and finds him sleeping by her side, and trying to wake him she
kisses the poison from his lips! Now releasing Romeo is dead she takes the
knife and stabs herself. After both families what has come upon there
hate they become friends and buries the two lovers bodies together and displays
a statue of the Romeo and Juliet in the middle of Verona in memory of them.
The two characters Romeo and Juliet are upset and hidden in the beginning of
the play but coming to the end they can’t resist to marry each other. The two
get married secretly but that goes all wrong as their families want to kill one
another as Romeo has killed Tybalt but they don’t. I think Romeo and Juliet
change a lot in the play as in the beginning they hate each other then coming
near the end they can’t wait to marry and be with one another. This part is also
related to the story of Tony Kytes, women in the 19th Century could not do as
they wished they were men’s property all their lives and had to obey there
fathers. The only education they had was from their mothers, which in Juliet’s
case the Nurse. Coming back to Romeo and Juliet, I would say that there
characters have changed a lot in the play, however Juliet has presented rather
differently form Romeo as we see her much more in a convincing family
situation where the coldness of her mother suggests why Juliet forms her
opinions for herself.
