The balcony scene review - Romeo and Juliet.

Authors Avatar

English Literary Heritage – Shakespeare / Pre 1914 Drama Coursework

The balcony scene is a key part in Romeo and Juliet as it shows there love for each other for the first time. The balcony scene is after the masked ball in that Romeo and Juliet first meet and through the scene they declare their love and promise marriage.

The love between Romeo and Juliet is quite sudden as they meet in one night and in that same night they declare their love to each other and decide to get married. The first time Romeo sets eyes on Juliet it seems he is in love as he is keen to ask as much as he can about her. He starts his elaborate descriptions of her before he has even spoken to her, like when he says ‘a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear,’ which is comparing her to something extremely beautiful.

Romeo straight away tells Juliet he wants to kiss her but in a descriptive language as he says, ‘my lips, two blushing pilgrim, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.’ Juliet replies very cleverly showing her maturity and that she is actually very clever as she says, ‘palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss.’ Here she is playing with words and saying by touching hands is a pilgrims way of kissing, which teases Romeo. Together they play with words until Romeo finally does kiss her. They talk about the same thing but in different ways and play with the words. Romeo is in mid-paragraph when he kisses her and after he finishes his paragraph. Juliet tells Romeo ‘you kiss by the book’ which she is joking with him about as she is suggesting he has been reading a book on how to be a perfect kisser.

Through their conversation we see a real chemistry between the two and they seem already to be connected in some way as they manage to pick up on each others words and twist them around and adapt them, like the conversation about pilgrims and saints. They also seem to agree as when Juliet says, ‘saints do not move, though grant for prayers sake,’ which is showing that she is accepting his offer to kiss her as they have been talking about how pilgrims use their hands to kiss and Romeo is saying that they have lips as well. You can tell that they are very fond of each other because they are friendly and flirty towards each other, shown predominantly by the teasing by Juliet and how Romeo twists her words so that it sounds like she wants to kiss him; which she does not object to. Juliet especially flirts with Romeo with her playing with words, whilst he is so open with her but goes along with her ‘game.’

Juliet then goes away to talk to her mother and Romeo talks to the nurse and finds out she is a Capulet. He is devastated when he finds out as he says, ‘O dear account! My life is my foe’s debt.’ Juliet then returns and talks to her nurse and finds out that Romeo is Montague, which she seems to actually be more upset about than Romeo as she says, ‘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 have a loathed enemy.’ She has exclamation marks after the first two sentences and she uses more dramatic words than Romeo as she says that she loves her enemy and that the only family she hates she loves one of their children. This shows clearly that she feels incredibly strongly already for Romeo.

Join now!

The next time they meet is in the balcony scene when we find out that they love each other and they promise that they will marry each other. This is only a few hours after they first meet. At the beginning of the scene Romeo and Juliet both have soliloquies describing their love for each other. Juliet is the first to declare her love which she does quite openly, not using elaborate descriptions which is very believable and shows her maturity, as she states it clearly. Romeo, however, is extreme in his choice of elaborate words such as, ‘angel’ ...

This is a preview of the whole essay