While Romeo climbs out of the window in Act 3 Scene 5, Juliet has premonitions about the future for her and Romeo as a couple. She “sees the future” as that Romeo will not live for very long-“Methinks I see thee now, thou art so low, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb “-line 55. This suggests that Juliet sees Romeo dead soon and the audience knows that Romeo kills Tybalt, a Capulet. Also, as Romeo leaves, Juliet’s words are filled with foreboding which is suggesting that evil will happen and will happen soon and the entire scene is then full of dramatic irony and ambiguosity.
At this part of the scene, the audiences reaction would be very much predicted and it provides the audience with another bit of tragedy and another bit of drama to the plot because the audience know that throughout the entire scene, there is a lot of dramatic irony and a lot of double meanings to the characters from Juliet, especially towards her mother and the audience reactions would be very tense because they know what sort of language is being heard to people who know but the obvious people and characters it is aimed at do not have a clue and that adds another bit of drama and another twist to the story and to the plot.
When you first see Juliet and Lady Capulet in the same company with each other, the audience notices that there is not a mother daughter relationship between them because earlier in the play, the audience find out that the Nurse has raised Juliet.
In Act 3 Scene 5, Juliet uses her use of language to deceive her mother in every which way possible. Lady Capulet enters Juliet’s chamber and mistakes Juliet’s tears for Romeo as grief for Tybalt’s death. Juliet’s replies to her mother’s questions strengthen her mother’s mistaken belief, “Madam, I am not well”-Juliet, “Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death?” This shows a double meaning because Juliet is weeping for Romeo, which the audience knows but Lady Capulet thinks that Juliet is still grieving for Tybalt’s death.
Other displays of dramatic irony from Juliet to her mother in this particular scene are when Lady Capulet tells Juliet she will send someone to Mantua to Romeo to poison him and Juliet’s reply is that she will never be satisfied until she holds Romeo-dead- which means then that she will hold him dead when they are both together –dead, Lady Capulet-“Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua, Where that same banished runagate doth live…That he shall soon keep Tybalt company. And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.” Juliet’s reply to her mother’s offer is “Indeed I shall never be satisfied, With Romeo till I behold him-dead.”
Juliet pleads with her mother to delay the marriage for a month or a week-“O sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for month, a week. Or if you do not, make the bridal bed in that dim monument where Tybalt lies” and Lady Capulet’s reply to this is “Talk not to more, for I’ll not speak a word. Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee”, this tells us that Juliet has said if she marries Paris on Thursday, she might as well make the bridal bed in the family tomb because she will kill herself. Lady Capulet’s reply to Juliet is telling her that if she does not abide by her parents will then Lady Capulet would want nothing more to do with her.
Juliet may deceive her mother but her mother deceives Juliet by saying to Juliet-line 140-“I would the fool were married to her grave”. This is proving that Lady Capulet is very cold because she is saying to Juliet that if she will not listen to her parents, she can go away and die and this shows that she is quite cold and bitter towards her daughter.
Throughout this scene, the audience tries to put themselves in Juliet’s shoes and the predicament she has been left in and the audience begins to empathise with her and she probably would feel like she is growing further and further away from her mother which she deep down doesn’t want to.
The audience learns specific things about Lady Capulet in Act 3 Scene 5 because she hasn’t raised her daughter, the nurse has; Juliet treats the Nurse like her mother. We get the impression that there is an age gap between Lord and Lady Capulet and that is having an impression on their relationship to the extent that it is almost like he owns her and she has been pushed around by him because he is “the man of the house” and what he says goes.
Lord and Lady Capulet have an odd marriage and as the play moves on, the audience soon begin to recognise and get the impression that they don’t have much of a relationship because she may have had an arranged marriage with Lord Capulet and in the film, this sometimes shows in her posture and physical state and Shakespeare’s uses of stage directions help to suggest this.
Capulet comes across as being a very proud and strong man and doesn’t like the word ‘no’ when it is said to him.
After Lady Capulet has told Juliet of what they have planned, I think when Capulet enters, his expectations are that Juliet will have to marry Paris whether she wants to or not and he doesn’t expect her to answer back but she does-Capulet “Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought so worthy a gentleman to be her bride” and Juliet’s reply to her father is “Not proud you have, but thankful that you have. Proud can I never be of what I hate”- this is basically saying that she can never be proud of something she hates in her life with all her might.
Juliet’s refusal to marry Paris sparks off a ferocious temper in Capulet. He flies into a towering rage on hearing of Juliet’s refusal to marry Paris. He flies into such anger at Juliet that he threatens and insults her-“To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither”-line 154.
When Capulet and his wife talk as if Juliet were not in the room, I think Juliet would respond to her father’s insults and her mother’s rejection by probably breaking down inside and outside because she has already lost her cousin and she doesn’t know if she will ever see her husband again and now her own parents are turning there backs on her and they do not want Juliet there marriage-line 188-“Graze where you will, you shall not house with me”-Capulet tells Juliet to go anywhere but she is not staying with them so he is throwing her out onto the street.
After Capulet has excited the scene, Juliet turns to her mother for help and asks her to delay the marriage by a little bit-“…….Delay this marriage for a month, a week, or if you do not, make the bridal bed in that dim monument where Tybalt lies”-line 198. Juliet is saying to her mother that if she can delay it a tiny bit then please do that otherwise she can make the bridal bed in the tomb where Tybalt is lying dead because she will kill herself. Lady Capulet’s reply to this astonishes to the audience-“I would the fool married to her grave!”-line 140, Lady Capulet is cursing her daughter and saying if she won’t marry Paris then she can die and as the audience knows something will go drastically wrong and her wish will be fulfilled later in the play. I think Lady Capulet does mean this and this shows that she is mentally damaged and as if she never wanted Juliet in the first place and was forced into having a child which then had a Nurse to raise her.
Capulet responds so angrily to Juliet’s refusal because in Elizabethan times, it was almost as if children, especially daughters, were a possession and whatever the father said went and it was like the fathers in the households were like the bosses of businesses and they had the final word In every situation. His use of language is frightening as a person sitting in the audience because he goes into a fit of anger but then he goes as far as to say that he wants to hit her-line 164-165-“My fingers itch. Wife, we scare thought us blest that God had lent us but this only child.” Capulet has just told Juliet that he wants to hit her and he wants this on Juliet as an only child born to the Capulet family. Shakespeare makes this scene so dramatic by having such language in it and he used stage directions to add depth to the rising of violent language and physical violence. Shakespeare is very good at using stage directions to show how Juliet is feeling in this scene. He shows how Juliet is really feeling when she has been told the news of her marriage to Paris and tells her father she will not because she falls onto her knees begging Capulet not to give her away so soon.
The way Lord and Lady Capulet seems to be very odd considering that it is their only child and she would be the future heiress to the Capulet Empire but it is almost as if they treat her like one of the house staff and a servant but at scenes in the play, they do seem to threat her as one of the most important people around them and as the play goes on, I think she gradually becomes more and more isolated until Act 3 Scene 5 when Juliet seems to be completely alone.
My reaction to Juliet is that of admiration because even though it is only a play, it shows that she feels so much about the predicament she is in that she rebels against her father’s wishes and in the time that this play was written and set by Shakespeare, the fathers would have had the last word and I think it is very strong of Juliet to stand up to her father and take the chance of doing that, not knowing what his reaction would be.
Capulet’s attitude in Act 1 is very different to his attitude towards Juliet in Act 3 Scene 5. He seems to be very caring and indulgent of her when Paris first asks to marry her and he says no-line 8-“My child is yet a stranger in the world; She hath not yet seen the change of fourteen years-Let two more summers wither in their pride, Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.” Capulet is saying to Paris to not marry Juliet yet because she is only 14 and she hasn’t experienced much in the world but leave it a few more years and perhaps Capulet will think about it then, however, when it gets to Act 3 Scene 5 and Juliet has told Capulet she will not marry Paris, he goes into a fit of anger and tells her he wants nothing more to do with her and wants to hit her in a fit of rage and anger-line 164-“My fingers itch……”It seems that as long as Juliet is saying yes to everything and being obedient, then he is constantly very nice and caring for her best interests at heart but when Juliet decides to stand up for herself, he is angry and violent with not only her but in this scene he can be violent towards Lady Capulet and ever so slightly to the nurse.
At the point when Juliet has been isolated by her parents, she turns to her Nurse thinking that her Nurse will be there for her and look after her because she knows that she is married to Romeo and it was the Nurse that helped her arrange their marriage to each but the Nurse’s response is not what Juliet had hoped it would be. Juliet pleas with the Nurse to comfort her but the Nurse’s response is to marry Paris-“Romeo is banishes, and the entire world to nothing……I think it best you married with the County. O, he’s a lovely gentleman!” The Nurse has just told Juliet that she and Romeo will probably never come back so she should marry Paris-a rich, handsome young man. When the Nurse has said her opinion, Juliet cannot believe how hypocritical the Nurse is being about the marriage to Paris. When Juliet realises she is totally isolated from absolutely everyone, this is where she feels can only turn to Friar Laurence and she is so desperate at this point that she does.
My conclusion of this essay is that in this scene Juliet undergoes severe and violent changes of emotion in this scene and expresses these different changes all in completely different ways. By the end of the scene, I think Juliet has changed completely into a very different character and Shakespeare explores this characters development as the drama of the play unfolds.
Hannah Broughton.
