During Act I scene v Juliet meets Romeo and falls deeply in love. The meeting of Romeo and Juliet dominates the act, and, with extraordinary language that captures both the excitement and wonder that the two protagonists feel, Shakespeare proves equal to the expectations he has set up by delaying the meeting for the entire act.
Shakespeare has converted the first conversation between Romeo and Juliet into an extended Christian metaphor. Using this metaphor, Romeo ingeniously manages to convince Juliet to let him kiss her. But the metaphor holds many further functions. The religious overtones of the conversation clearly implies that their love that can be described only through the vocabulary of religion, that pure association with God. In this way, their love becomes associated with the purity and passion of the divine. But there is another side to this association of personal love and religion. In using religious language to describe their burgeoning feelings for each other, Romeo and Juliet tiptoe on the edge of blasphemy. Romeo compares Juliet to an image of a saint that should be worshiped (“…dear saint…”), a role that Juliet is willing to play.
When Romeo and Juliet meet they speak just fourteen lines before their first kiss. These fourteen lines make up a shared sonnet, with rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. A sonnet is a perfect, idealized poetic form often used to write about love. Encapsulating the moment of origin of Romeo and Juliet's love within a sonnet therefore creates a perfect match between literary content and formal style.
The first conversation between Romeo and Juliet also provides a glimpse of the roles that each will play in their relationship. In this scene, Romeo is clearly the aggressor. He uses all the skill at his disposal to win over a struck, but timid, Juliet. Note that Juliet does not move during their first kiss; she simply lets Romeo kiss her. She is still a young girl, and though already in her dialogue with Romeo has proved herself intelligent, she is not ready to throw herself into action. But Juliet is the aggressor in the second kiss. It is her logic that forces Romeo to kiss her again and take back the sin he has placed upon her lips. In a single conversation, Juliet transforms from a proper, timid young girl to one more mature, who understands what she desires and is quick-witted enough to procure it. Juliet's subsequent comment to Romeo, “…You kiss by th' book…”, can be taken in two ways. First, it can be seen as emphasizing Juliet's lack of experience. But it is possible to see a bit of wry observation in this line. Juliet's comment that Romeo kisses by the book is akin to noting that he kisses as if he has learned how to kiss from a manual and followed those instructions exactly. In other words, he is proficient, but unoriginal. Juliet is clearly smitten with Romeo, but it is possible to see her as the more incisive of the two, and as nudging Romeo to a more genuine level of love through her observation of his tendency to get caught up in the forms of love rather than love itself.
Act II is the happiest and least tragic act in the play. In it, Shakespeare devotes himself to exploring the positive, joyful, and romantic aspects of young love. Scene ii, the balcony scene, is one of the most famous scenes in all of the play, owing to its beautiful and evocative poetry. Shakespeare plumbs the depths of the young lovers' characters, and captures the subtleties of their interaction, as in Juliet's struggle between the need for caution and an overpowering desire to be with Romeo.
Many of the most important scenes in Romeo and Juliet, such as the balcony scene, take place either very late at night or very early in the morning, since Shakespeare must use the full length of each day in order to compress the action of the play into just four days. Shakespeare exploits the transition between day and night with a recurring light/dark motif (“…two of the fairest stars in all the heaven…”), sometimes drawing a sharp distinction between night and day, at other times blurring the boundaries between them.
Here, in Act II scene ii Juliet also questions why Romeo must be her enemy (“…tis but thy name that is my enemy…”). She refuses to believe that Romeo is defined by being a Montague, and therefore implies that the two of them can love each other without fear of the social repercussions. But language as an expression of social institutions such as family, politics, or religion cannot be dismissed so easily because no other character in the play is willing to dismiss them. Juliet loves Romeo because he is Romeo, but the power of her love cannot remove from him his last name of Montague or all that it stands for. In the privacy of the garden the language of love is triumphant. But in the social world, the language of society holds sway. This battle of language, in which Romeo and Juliet try to remake the world so that it would allow for their love, is one to keep an eye on.
Throughout Act II scenes v and vi, Shakespeare emphasizes the thrilling joy of young, romantic love. Romeo and Juliet are electric with anticipation. In a wonderfully comic scene, Juliet can barely contain herself when the Nurse pretends to be too tired to give her the news (is this the poultice for my aching bones?…”).
Though the euphoria of love clearly dominates these scenes, some ominous foreshadowing is revealed. The Nurse's joking game in which she delays telling Juliet the news will find its sad mirror in a future scene, when the Nurse's anguish prevents her from relating news to Juliet and thereby causing terrible confusion.
The love between Romeo and Juliet, blissful in Act II, is tested under dire circumstances as the conflict between their families takes a turn more disastrous than either could have imagined. The respective manners in which the young lovers respond to their imminent separation helps define the essential qualities of their respective characters. After hearing that he is to be exiled, Romeo acts with customary drama: he is grief-stricken and overcome by his passion. He collapses on the floor. Romeo refuses to listen to reason and threatens to kill himself. Juliet, on the other hand, displays significant progress in her development from the simple, innocent girl of the first act to the brave, mature, and loyal woman of the play's conclusion. After criticizing Romeo for his role in Tybalt's death, and hearing the Nurse malign Romeo's name, Juliet regains control of herself and realizes that her loyalty must be to her husband rather than to Tybalt, her cousin.
Romeo's actual threat of suicide in Friar Laurence's cell, in which he desires to "sack / The hateful mansion" (III.iii.106–107) that is his body so that he may eradicate his name, recalls the balcony scene, in which Romeo scorns his Montague name in front of Juliet by saying, "Had I it written, I would tear the word" (II.i.99). In the balcony scene, a name seemed to be a simple thing that he could hold up in front of him and tear. Once torn, he could easily live without it. Now, with a better understanding of how difficult it is to escape the responsibilities and claims of family loyalty; of being a Montague. Romeo modifies his metaphor. No longer does he conceive of himself as able to tear his name. Instead, now he must rip it from his body, and, in the process, die.
To combat the coming of the light, Shakespeare has Juliet attempt once more to modify the world through language: she claims the lark is truly a nightingale (“…it was the nightingale, and not the lark…”). Where in the balcony scene Romeo saw Juliet as transforming the night into day, here she is able to transform the day into the night. But just as their vows to throw off their names did not succeed in overcoming the social institutions that have plagued them, they cannot change time. As fits their characters, it is the more pragmatic Juliet who realizes that Romeo must leave; he is willing to die simply to remain by her side.
In a moment reminiscent of the balcony scene, once outside, Romeo bids farewell to Juliet as she stands at her window. Here, the lovers experience visions that blatantly foreshadow the end of the play. This is to be the last moment they spend alive in each other's company. When Juliet next sees Romeo he will be dead, and as she looks out of her window she seems to see him dead already: (“…O God, I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale…”)
In the confrontation with her parents after Romeo's departure, Juliet shows her full maturity. She dominates the conversation with her mother, who cannot keep up with Juliet's intelligence and therefore has no idea that Juliet is proclaiming her love for Romeo under the guise of saying just the opposite (“…it shall be Romeo…”). Her decision to break from the counsel of her disloyal Nurse—and in fact to exclude her Nurse from any part in her future actions—is another step in her development. Having a Nurse is a mark of childhood; by abandoning her Nurse and upholding her loyalty toward her husband, Juliet steps fully out of girlhood and into womanhood.
Shakespeare situates this maturation directly after Juliet's wedding night, linking the idea of development from childhood to adulthood with sexual experience. Indeed, Juliet feels so strong that she defies her father, but in that action she learns the limit of her power. Strong as she might be, Juliet is still a woman in a male-dominated world. One might think that Juliet should just take her father up on his offer to disown her and go to live with Romeo in Mantua. That is not an option. Juliet, as a woman, cannot leave society; and her father has the right to make her do as he wishes. Though defeated by her father, Juliet does not revert to being a little girl. She recognizes the limits of her power and, if another way cannot be found, determines to use it: for a woman in Verona who cannot control the direction of her life, suicide, the brute ability to live or not live that life, can represent the only means of asserting authority over the self.
