In Act 1 Scene 5, Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time. The first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward adulthood. Shakespeare demonstrates her many ways of growing up and maturing. Though profoundly in love with him, Juliet is able to see and criticize Romeo’s rash decisions and his tendency to romanticize things. She will also have to choose between Romeo, a Montague, and Paris which causes a lot of confusion and rebellion. Romeo and Juliet speak in a sonnet form, which is a 14 line love poem. She seems to act more grown up about the situation too, she is starting to be independent and think for herself.
Act 2 Scene 2 is the famous balcony scene. The beginning is a soliloquy, where Juliet thinks out loud to herself, declaring that she loves Romeo despite the fact that he is a Montague. She then starts to develop again, you see this because in this scene she is more practical and realistic, more grown up, because she is very anxious because Romeo had heard her state her love for him. Romeo is being very idealistic, “with love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls.” Showing how much he is in love with Juliet, willing to do anything just to see her and he does not care about the consequences, whereas Juliet is being more serious, every time he mentions his love to her she becomes very uneasy about the suddenness of their love and starts to care about his safety and their situation, for instance when she replies to Romeo “And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here.” Then Juliet wants to take things into her hands, she says to Romeo that if he really loves her so much then they should get married, “ If that thy bent of love be honourable, Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,” she is asking him to send her a message tomorrow to ask for her hand in marriage, making her character seem greatly developed already, showing that she wants to be the one to move the relationship forward. All together you can see that Juliet has grown up, as after just one evening she has changed in so many different ways; she has matured, become more of a woman and less of a girl, and practically fallen in love.
By Act 2 Scene 5 Juliet is presented as now love struck and impatient, but she is happier and more excited, for example when she wishes the nurse to give her news – “Nay, come, I pray thee, speak: good, good Nurse, speak.”In this scene you can see that the Nurse is more like Juliet’s mother figure because Juliet feels as though she can talk to her about anything and she can trust her. At the beginning of the scene you see how impatient Juliet is, “The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse.” This soliloquy shows how impatient and anxious Juliet is, and how eager she is to hear the news from the nurse. You also see Juliet’s emotions and feelings about Romeo, when she wonders how can the nurse take so long, has she never been in love? Does she not know what it feels like? By making her wait so long. She then carries on talking about the age difference, “but old folks, many feign as they were dead, Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead” wishing that the nurse wouldn’t be so slow and lifeless and could be more active like young people.
After Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished, Juliet does not follow him blindly. At first, when she hears of Tybalts death, she is completely distraught. At first, she had no idea that Romeo had committed the murder, but when she found out, she accused him of hiding wickedness behind a beautiful appearance, “O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!” As soon as the Nurse began to criticise Romeo, Juliet becomes angry and defends him, and she makes a logical and heartfelt decision that her loyalty and love for Romeo must be her guiding priorities – it overrides Tybalts death. Essentially, Juliet cuts herself loose from her prior social moorings—her nurse, her parents, and her social position in Verona—in order to try to reunite with Romeo.
Act 4 is a key scene to witness Juliet’s different emotional states, because she experiences many different changes In Act 1, Juliet goes to see the Friar, who is discussing the wedding with Paris, who begins to promote his love for Juliet, but she responds coldly to his words. “If I do so, it will be of more price, Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.” When Paris leaves, she begs for the Friar’s help and threatens to kill herself immediately if she is made to marry Paris , showing her complete devotion to Romeo– “And with this knife I’ll help it presently.” Juliet even lists the things that she would rather do that marry Paris, including jumping off a tower, spend I night in a charnel house and get chained to roaring bears. She tells the Friar that she will go along with any plan that he comes up with, which reflects her desperation to not be married to Paris. He gives her a potion to make her appear dead to everyone, so that she can be placed into the tomb and Romeo can come and collect her before she wakes up.
In Act 4 Scene 3 Juliet is left alone in her room, and she begins to become anxious about what might happen if the potion has its floors, she even makes the assumption that the Friar is trying to poison her, spoken here – “What if it be a poison which the Friar Subtly hath ministered to have me dead.” All of this confusion leads her to becoming very terrified about suffocating in the tomb, that Romeo will not come to get her in time, and about when she wakes up surrounded by bones. She then becomes very hysterical and, whilst imagining Tybalt’s ghost seeking out Romeo, she drinks the potion. “O look! – Methinks I see my cousins’ ghost, seeking out Romeo that did spit his body upon a rapier’s point. Stay, Tybalt! Stay! – Romeo! Romeo, Romeo! Here’s drink! - I drink to thee!”
When she wakes in the tomb to find Romeo dead, she does not kill herself out of feminine weakness, but rather out of an intensity of love, just as Romeo did. Juliet’s suicide actually requires more nerve than Romeo’s: while he swallows poison, she stabs herself through the heart with a dagger.
Juliet has grown in a vast amount during the past scenes; she is no longer the little girl she used to be, who wouldn’t know a thing about love nor care about it. She is now a mature young lady who has experienced love and knows what it feels like, and is facing problems like an adult, on her own, independently.
