“I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
Nurse! – What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.”
By using a language here that shows the contrast of hot and cold, the effect of the word ‘dismal’ and the accentuation on punctuation, Shakespeare makes us more aware of Juliet and her immediate feelings and fears. We feel the effect of her talking to us more directly and intensely.
This scene shows the contrasts between the fear that what she is about to do could be fatal, to a child’s need for her old nurse and her comfort, and finally, the fact that she is alone and must act alone if she is to take responsibility for the future of her relationship.
But the imaginative and anxious side of Juliet’s personality breaks through again and she questions the friar’s intentions this time, as she has questioned everything in her life since Romeo. She has many questions in her mind. And now she thinks of all those things that could go wrong with everything she is doing. She could really go mad or be buried alive. But her love for Romeo is such that it drives all other thoughts away, thus she quickly drinks from the vial and falls dramatically onto her bed to wait until she wakes up to see Romeo again.
In this scene we see all the different emotions that we are aware of throughout the play combined into one speech where she shows every part of her personality. Because she has acted behind her parents’ backs she has to do it. We are made aware of this through her fights with her family.
In the following scenes we can see how Juliet’s character changes.
We open with Act One, Scene Three, where Juliet is not looking to get married but open-minded. She knows what is expected of her. She is formal and polite to her mother. This is not a normal parent/child relationship as we know it today. It is time for marriage and her father and mother are arranging the perfect husband for her. Lady Capulet is asking her daughter to consider Paris and politely her daughter responds that she will like him as much as she is asked to. She is a well-behaved daughter and speaks only when asked to. This is a formal scene showing the times where marriage was arranged at a young age and children respected their parents’ wishes without knowing any other way.
Following this, in Act One, Scene Five, there is the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet. In this scene, we see Juliet’s flirtatious character but she is still proper. Romeo is more mature than he looks. He uses religious speech and Juliet picks up on it and imitates him. Juliet shows more maturity during their conversation and pretends to have more experience than she actually possesses.
She falls in love at first sight.
“My only love sprung from my only hate,
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.”
We wonder if this love is made stronger by the fact that he is a Montague, and she is a Capulet. The difficulty that they both come from fighting families affects them both but they are able to forget about it in their conversations.
In Act Two, Scene Two, the relationship is becoming very serious. Juliet believes he is the one for her and is saying already that she will marry him. However, she knows that if the Capulets see Romeo, he is dead. Juliet is very forward now and takes control over Romeo, which is very different from the girl at the start, obeying the wishes of her mother. She is very confident that she wants to marry Romeo now that she has met him but she is still very aware of the problems.
“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name..”
Throughout this scene they try to find a way that the names Montague and Capulet do not have any meaning that relate to them. However, they are both very aware that this is a love that is not meant to happen, which may strengthen their love even more because it will never be accepted by their families. They know that Romeo will be killed if he is found with her.
“And but thou love me, let them find me here.
My life were better ended by their hate,
Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.”
Act Two, Scene Five, is a scene between Juliet and her nurse. Her nurse has arrived, out of breath, but Juliet cannot wait. She is consumed by her love of Romeo and nothing else matters. She is impatient, wanting the news, and frustrated, because the nurse will not tell her. She knows the nurse is not well, but being selfish and with her own need, she tries to persuade her, begging her for news.
“I’faith I am sorry that thou art not well.
Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me what says my love?”
In her desperate need to know about Romeo, Juliet begs her nurse to help them, and she gets the news she wants. Juliet just tries to make it to Friar Lawrence’s cell to get married.
Act Two, Scene Six, continues this theme as Romeo and Juliet meet with the Friar. No words can describe their love; it is so strong. They try to describe their love by comparing it to money.
“They are but beggars that can count their worth,
But my true love is grown to such excess,
I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.”
In Act Three, Scene Two, Juliet has changed tremendously from the young girl at the beginning of the play. She is now both romantic and mature, waiting for her first night with Romeo. Juliet is now being very romantic whilst she waits for him.
“Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
However, just as their love appears to reach its highest point, she receives the worst news from the nurse. Romeo has killed Tybalt and he is gone. Only three hours after getting married he has killed her cousin, but despite her nurse’s concern, she cannot blame Romeo. Juliet is tormented by these events and feels that the news of his disappearance is worse than the deaths of all her family and everyone she loves.
Juliet’s distress becomes more obvious as her words become more exaggerated showing her strong feelings.
“O serpent heart, hid with a flow’ring face!
Did ever dragon keep sp fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove-feathered raven,
wolfish revening lamb..”
These imaginative words are used to remind us of her distress. Shakespeare uses this powerful imagery in order to intensify the scene.
In Act Three, Scene Five, Juliet shows she does not want to leave Romeo. She is deeply in love and very upset.
Later in this scene we see a very different Juliet. Now she is rebellious and disobedient towards her parents. They would like her to marry their choice but she is rude, and her father finds it difficult to understand what his wife is telling him.
“Soft, take me with you, take me with you wife.
How will she none? Does she not give us thanks?
Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blessed,
Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought
So worthy a gentleman to be her bride?”
Again, Shakespeare uses punctuation to intensify the effect of his speech. His use of the word ‘soft’ and then repeating his words to his wife make us feel how much he wants his wife to stop and explain to him exactly what she means about their daughter. Because he keeps asking questions we are made more aware of his need and what it is he wants. He feels he has done everything for her and does not begin to understand why she is so ungrateful. With the use of strong dialogue and shorter sentences Shakespeare creates more emphasis which gains our attention.
Juliet is distressed, begging her father to understand, but after this, he is very angry by her disobedience when he has tried so hard to understand her and now makes her a good offer in his view. As Juliet begs for a delay, now even her own mother is against her. And in despair Juliet feels that is the friar cannot help her when she is upset, then she will find a subtle way to die.
Act Four, Scene One, shows Juliet is determined in her mission. She now appears to accept her parents’ needs and her father is delighted to find her ready to be polite and please them.
In the final scene, Act Five, Scene Three, Juliet is devastated to find Romeo dead. She wants to kill herself, in fact, she longs for it. She wishes he had left her poison too so that she could kill herself.
“Poison I see hath been his timeless end.
Oh churl, drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips:
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them
To make me die with a restorative.”
Juliet’s need for drama is never more visible than in this final scene where she is looking for a drop of poison left on his lips and annoyed he did not leave any for her. This scene most reflects the scene we have been asked to study and compare, Act Four, Scene Three, because it illustrates Juliet as she really is, still a very imaginative child, unable to really cope with a sudden love against the background of a family feud.
