When he first describes feelings for Juliet he uses contrasts between light and dark. Some of these examples are:
“O she doth teaches the torches to burn bright,
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night,
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.”
The first line of this quote:
“O she doth teaches the torches to burn bright.”
O really isn’t a word; it’s a cry of love. This tells us Romeo is thinking about love. Romeo is making Juliet seem brighter than fire and this makes the fire seem dull.
“It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night.”
This is like she is a tear shining upon a dark face.
When Romeo sees her for the first time, she alights the room with her beauty and stands out to him. When he says “ as a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear,” he is trying to say she is a shiny jewel on a black African’s ear, which stands out. (An Ethiop is a black African.) It is like she is the only person in the room to Romeo. The “Ethiop’s ear” quote is a contrast and it shows that Shakespeare has chosen the jewel because jewels are precious.
“Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.”
This quote is a metaphorical statement. He is saying she is too beautiful to touch. He is also trying to say that she’s too beautiful that she shouldn’t exist on Earth; she should be in heaven. He is trying to say she is an angel.
“So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows.”
This is another contrast because a dove is white, soft, beautiful and represents love, peace and purity; on the other hand a crow is black and ugly and represents darkness and evil.
The scene where Romeo and Juliet meet is a sonnet. (Line 92, Page 43).
At time of writing, sonnets were a very fashionable type of poem.
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem that is split into three sections and there are ten syllables per line. It also has a specific rhyming scheme. William Shakespeare is very famous for his sonnets especially the love poems. One very famous love sonnet is
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.”
In Act 1 Scene 5 page 43 from line 92 Romeo and Juliet are talking religion. When Juliet says “This holy shrine” she is trying to say she is a shrine and Romeo is the pilgrim. This is like the cleansing which happens at Lourdes where people go and bathe in the water to cleanse themselves of their sins. When Juliet says, “For saint’s have hands that pilgrims’ do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss”.
A saint is a good person one Earth who is represented by a statue at a shrine. Palm or a ‘palmer’ is another word for a pilgrim, Juliet talks about palms, which are hands, it is a play on words.
Aziz Hussain
GSCE English Coursework
04/02/04