Romeo and Juliet –
the lighter side
The comedic elements in
Shakespeare’s lyrical tragedy
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What was the C word?
• Romeo and Juliet is a play about contrasts.
These contrasts include
• Light and dark
• Night and day
• Young and old
• Love and hate
• And…
• Tragedy and comedy!
• Think also about the contrasts between
illusion and reality
• And the characters:
• Romeo and Mercutio
• The nurse and Lady Capulet
• The nurse and Mercutio
Why include comedy in a
tragedy?
• It heightens the contrast
• It gives the audience an emotional break
• It diminishes the tension evoked in the tragic
scenes
• It delights the audience
• It adds variety
• When integrated with the plot, it can counterpoint
& enhance the serious significance
Does it have a formal name?
• YES! Comic relief!
• “the introduction of comic characters,
speeches, or scenes in a serious or tragic
work, especially in dramas. Comic relief
was universal in Elizabethan tragedies.”
M.H. Abrams
Where’s the comedy?
• Two renowned comic characters in Romeo
and Juliet are
• Mercutio
• The nurse
What makes us laugh?
• Aside
• Contrasts
• exaggeration
• Poking fun
• Puns
• Word play
Bawdy jokes to settle the folks…
• Gregory: The quarrel is between our masters and
us their men.
• Sampson: ‘Tis all one. I will show myself a
tyrant. When I have fought with men, I will be
civil with the maids—I will cut off their heads.
• Gregory: The heads of the maids?
• Sampson: Ay, the heads of the maids or their
maidenheads. Take it in what sense thou wilt.
1.1.19 - 26
And soon after…
• Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.
• Abram: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
• Sampson: (aside to Gregory) Is the law of
our side if I say ay?
• Gregory: (aside to Sampson) No.
• Sampson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at
you, sir; but I bite my thumb, sir.
1.1.44 – 51
Or look at the nurse…
• She begins with “Even or odd, of all days in
the year” (l. 16) and ends with “And, pretty
fool, it stinted and said, “Ay.” (l. 57)
• How many lines? 41!
1.3.16 - 57
• What makes us laugh?
Romeo’s wit
“Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling.
Being but heavy, I will bear the light.”
1.4.11-12
How pun-ny!
• Romeo: The game was ne’er so fair, and I’m
done*.
*exhausted
• Mercutio: Tut! Dun’s the mouse, the constable’s
own word! If thou art Dun*, we’ll draw thee from
the mire of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou
stickest upon to the ears. Come, we burn daylight,
ho!
* horse’s name in “Dun’s the mire”
1.4.39 - 43
“come, instance, instance”
• Friar: Our Romeo hath not been in bed
tonight.
• Romeo: The last was true. The sweeter rest
was mine.
• Friar: God pardon sin! Wast thou with
Rosaline?
2.3. 41 - 43
How does Tybalt trigger comedy?
• Benvolio: Nay, he will answer the letter’s master
[Tybalt], how he dares, being dared.
• Mercutio: Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead:
stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; run
through the ear with a love song; the very pin
[center] of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s
butt-shaft…
2.4.11 - 15
What about Romeo’s entrance?
• Benvolio: Here comes Romeo! Here
comes Romeo!
• Mercutio: Without his roe, like a dried
herring.
2.4.37 - 38
And then..
Mercutio: …follow me this jest now till
thou hast worn out thy pump, that, when the
single soul of it is worn, the jest may
remain, after the wearing, solely singular.
Romeo: O single-soled jest, solely singular
for the singleness*! 2.4.63 - 69
*pun on silliness
What about getting the goose?
• Mercutio: I will bite thee by the ear for that
jest.
• Romeo: Nay, good goose, bite not!
• Mercutio: Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting;
it is a most sharp sauce.
2.4.79 – 82
Upon the nurse’s arrival…
• Nurse: My fan, Peter
• Mercutio: Good Peter, to hide her face; for her
fan’s the fairer face.
• Nurse: God ye good morrow, gentlemen.
• Mercutio: God ye good-den, fair gentlewoman.
• Nurse: Is it good-den?
• Meructio: ‘Tis no less…for the bawdy hand of the
dial is now upon the prick of noon. 2.4. 107 - 115
Juliet hath her turn, too
• Juliet: I’ faith, I am sorry that thou art not
well. Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me
what says my love?
• Nurse: Your love says, like an honest
gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and
a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous–
Where is your mother?…
• Juliet: Where is my mother? Why she is
within. Where should she be? How oddly
thou repliest! “Your love says, like an
honest gentleman, ‘Where is your
mother?’”
2.5.53 - 61
What about the nurse?
• Once things turn serious and deadly, she
reveals how flat, how static she is.
• When Juliet begs for help in the situation
where she’s supposed to wed Paris, and
she’s already married, the nurse suggests
bigamy: “I think it best you married with
the county.” 3.5.219
To which spunky Juliet replies, “Well, Thou
hast comforted me marvelous much.”
3.5.2
The nurse loses her magic and Juliet’s
confidence and never regains either.
Even when danger may be
imminent
• Tybalt: What wouldst thou have with me?
• Mercutio: Good King of Cats, nothing but
one of your nine lives.”
3.1.77 - 79
Where is most of the comedy?
• Acts 1 and 2.
• Why?
• Shakespeare gives us lots of opportunities
to mix fun and seriousness – the opening
banter; the big party at the Capulets’ home;
Mercutio’s banter with other characters; the
joy of falling in love (R and J), but…
• Always remember that there is a dark
overtone –
• The families are feuding
• Sword fights (resulting in death) are fairly
common
• The prince is so worried that he declares the
death sentence on those who break the
peace
• Mercutio, our most complex and amusing
character, dies in 3.1.
• Look at his final speeches: ‘tis [his wound]
not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church door, but ‘tis enough, ‘twill
serve…Help me to some house, Benvolio,
or I shall faint. A plague a’ both your
houses! 3.1.97 - 108
• With the death of Mercutio, Verona loses its
only hope for a peaceful resolution of the
conflict. Remember that he is a relative of
Prince Escalus, a devoted friend of Romeo,
and one who has much wit, sensitivity, and
complexity.
• Mercutio’s death ends the lightness – what
follows is dark.
Thematically?
“Laugh as we may, Romeo clearly lives in a
world where folly can have serious
consequences; and we are no longer
confident that the conventions of comedy
will save him from those consequences or
spare us the pain of seeing him destroyed.”
Sylvan Barnet