Discussion of Shakespeare(TM)s use of Language

acquaint itself with her innermost thoughts and feelings.  This is something even Romeo himself is not privy to and it gives the audience the opportunity to understand her character and to empathise with her.  The overall effect of the scene is one of anticipation and impatience and Shakespeare sets the pace and mood by providing us with powerful imagery, using alliteration, metaphors and oxymoron’s.   Juliet is impatient for the night to come and bring Romeo to her.  She wants the darkness to come quickly.   Her very first words are “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, towards Phoebus' lodging. Such a wagoner as Phaethon would whip you to the west, and bring in cloudy night immediately”.  In the myth, the sun-chariot, with Phaëthon at the reins, races wildly across the sky.  Juliet's blood is racing just as wildly, and she wants night and Romeo to come to her.   She feels like a child on the night before an important day that has all her new clothes lined up but isn’t allowed to wear them until morning, "So tedious is this day as is the night before some festival to an impatient child that hath new robes and may not wear them."  Her impatience is demonstrative of her youth but she understands she is on the verge of womanhood.  She longs to give the purity of her body to Romeo, “spread thy close curtain”, a metaphor to her virginity.  Calling on the night to cover her shyness and hide her blushes. She seeks to overcome her maidenly modesty and enjoy the legitimate pleasures of marital sex, “hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks”.  The words "hood," "unmanned," and "bating" are all references to the untamed falcon.  The head of an untrained falcon was covered with a hood until it grew used to it’s owner, or man, just as Juliet is untrained and inexperienced in the way of lovemaking.  When the nurse arrives, she begins to ramble incoherently and says repeatedly, "He is dead," not revealing the identity of the deceased. Juliet concludes that she is speaking of her husband. With Romeo dead, Juliet believes she will be unable to live.  The Nurse then mentions Tybalt`s dead body, a statement which leads Juliet to believe that both her husband and cousin are dead.  Finally, the nurse explains that it is Tybalt who is dead and that Romeo has been banished from Verona as a result of his murder.  The realization of what Romeo has done brings a contrast of language and mood to the scene.  Shakespeare presents this with the use of oxymorons.   Juliet’s emotions are out of control and she denounces Romeo as an evil spirit in the form of an angel, “ fiend angelical”, and his handsome looks disguised a serpent’s heart, “O, serpent heart, hid with a flowery face”.  Juliet’s loyalty to Romeo is displayed when the nurse tells her that there is no trust, no faith, and no honesty in men.  Juliet is quick to defend Romeo, in spite of her previous criticisms, “Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit”, “O, what a beast was I to chide at him”. The Nurse asks her how she could praise the man who has killed her cousin. Juliet replies that she will never speak ill of her poor husband.  The scene is one of tragic irony.  When it opens, the audience is aware that what should be Juliet’s magical wedding night will actually be a lovers farewell.  Juliet goes through many mood changes in the scene and the audience can feel sympathy for her.  Her torment, emotional turmoil and confusion can be felt.  She speaks metaphorically “What storm is this that blows so contrary?  Is Romeo slaughter'd, and is Tybalt dead?  My dear-loved cousin, and my dearer lord?  Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom!  For who is living, if those two are gone?   This scene is relevant to the rest of the play because it is a turning point.  It begins with a theme of love and passion but ends in death.  Death is essentially what occurs in the scenes that follow.  Juliet speaks metaphorically of Romeo outshining the sun, “Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, 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”.  In imagining such a fate for Romeo could she have unwittingly foreshadowed his imminent end?  Juliet would be prepared to die a “maiden”.  She tells the nurse that her ropes are now "beguil'd," and she now seeks death: "Come, cords; come, nurse; I'll to my wedding bed; and death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!”  At the beginning of the play Juliet is modest and subdued.  When her Mother suggests that Paris might make a good husband, she simply replies, “I'll look to like if looking liking move, but no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly”.   She will not let herself fall for him any more than her Mothers permission allows.  Her meeting with Romeo is an awakening to the fact that love is more than filial obedience.  We see her undergo changes through the scene and emerge a much stronger and wiser personality.  It is Juliet who sees the futility of the “ancient grudge”,” What’s in a name?” She asks. The play has a constant theme of love and hate, passion and violence.  An example of this can be seen in the prologue, when Romeo and Juliet are described as, ‘a pair of star-crossed lovers who take their lives’. The prologue includes an oxymoron: ‘death-marked love’. The audience does not expect death to be associated with love.  Both Romeo and Juliet do pay the penalty of the fierce hatreds around them, but their love and misfortune heal the enmities of which they were the victims.  The feud of the Montague’s and Capulet’s is brought to an end when the families reconcile over the dead bodies of the lovers.