Romeo & Juliet:
A Cultural Ideal
I get the feeling that he’s never read Romeo and Juliet
I’m getting tired of these one night stands,
But if you wanna make a real romance, I’m that kind of girl.
–Patti Lovelace
The Experience of
Falling in Love
Inspires us to move beyond the
family/familiar (outside ourselves)
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy _____ and refuse thy ____!
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a _____. (2.2.33-37)
Love at First Sight:
Truth or Fiction?
Juliet:
I’ll look to ______, if looking liking move,
But no more deep will I endart mine _______
Than your consent gives strength to make it _____
(1.3.98-100)
Friar Lawrence:
Young men’s love then lies
Not truly in their hearts but in their _____
(2.3.67-68)
The History of Romantic Love:
Plato (428-327 B.C.E.)
• People were once quadrupeds, male and
female joined in one animal.
• Angry gods separated us,
each from his other self.
• Forever, we search
and long for the lost part
of ourselves.
» From the Symposium
More History of Romantic Love:
The Troubadours of France (1100-1300)
• New concept: Fin amour (true
love)
• Idealization of the woman
• Debasement of the man
• Deliberate cultivation of desire
• Enhancement of desire through
obstacles such as distance
(anticipation heightens desire)
More History of Romantic Love:
Francesco Petrarch
(1304-1374)
• Love enters at the eyes.
“Love found me all disarmed and saw the way
Was clear to reach my heart down through the eyes
Which have become the halls and doors of tears.”
– Petrarch’s canzone.
• The beloved is unattainable.
• She is cold and unresponsive.
Love at First Sight:
Powerful Fantasy with Centuries
of Cultural Conditioning
•Response to an ongoing search for a
soul mate
•Product of psychological conditioning
through literature and media
•Involves an unconscious surrender to
the fantasy of the soul mate or dream
lover.
Romeo & Rosaline:
The Miserable Petrarchan Lover
I have a soul of lead
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move . . .
I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light featurers, and so bound
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.
Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.
(1.4.15-22)
The Petrarchan lover is
melancholy,
frustrated,
obsessed and depressed
“Alas poor Romeo! He is already dead, stabbed with a white
wench’s black ______” (2.4.13-14)
His lovesick poetry is melodramatic
Petrarch, Pleasure, and Pain
• Woman is placed on a pedestal—but immobilized and depersonalized: an ideal, not a real woman
• Melancholy lover wallows in self-absorbed torment, taking
pleasure in the image of himself as romantic victim.
Romeo: In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman (1.1.191)
Benvolio: Why, Romeo, art thou mad?
Romeo: Not mad, but bound more than
a madman is;
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipped and tormented . . . (1.2.53-55)
Romeo & Juliet: Reciprocal Relationship
• Palmer’s Sonnet --Equal dialogue
ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest ______
This holy shrine, the gentle _____ is this:
My lips, two blushing _______, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender ______.
JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do _____ your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For ______ have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And ____ to ____ is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO: Have not saints _____, and holy palmers too?
JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in _____.
ROMEO: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They ______, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO: Then move not, while my ______ effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged. (1.5.90-103)
Juliet’s Development
• Infancy to Independence
• Achieves “agency”
– Speaks her feelings
– Initiates marriage
• Topples Petrarchan ideal
of silent, unapproachable
woman on a distant pedestal
Marriage in Elizabethan England:
A Hot Topic
#1 Arranged Marriage
– Legal documentation of property and cash transactions
between the 2 families
Paris: What say you to my suit?
Capulet: But saying o’er what I have said before:
My child is yet a _________ in the world;
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years.
Let two more ________ wither in their pride
Ere we may think her ripe to be a _______. (I.2.6-11)
– “Dowry” or “Portion”: property, jewels,
pewterware, etc. from bride’s family to couple
– “Jointure” = settlement (usually land) groom’s
family agrees to award to bride if she is widowed
– Dowry : Jointure = 5 : 1
O brother Montague, give me thy hand.
This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more
Can I demand.
But I can give thee more,
For I will raise her statue in pure gold
(5.3.296-99)
#2. Enforced Marriage
How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this?
'Proud,' and 'I thank you,' and 'I thank you not;'
And yet 'not proud,' mistress minion, you,
Thank me no _______, nor, proud me no ________,
But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's _________,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage!
You tallow-face!(3.5.149-157)
#3. “Free Marriage”
Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.
If that thy bent of love be ________,
Thy purpose _______, send me word to-morrow,
By one that I'll procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the _______.
(2.2.142-49)
Tools Make the Man:
The Role of Violence in Romeo and Juliet
Draw thy tool . . . My naked weapon is out . . . Draw, if you be men. (1.1.26-27;50)
The Broadsword
Capulet: What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!
(1.1.62)
The Rapier
• Newly available in Elizabethan England
• Lightweight and portable
• Fashionable for gentlemanly attire
• Violence preserves clan/kinship groups
• Violence preserves male dominance of women
SAMPSON: A dog of that house shall move me to stand: I will
take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's.
GREGORY: That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes
to the wall.
SAMPSON: True; and therefore women, being the weaker
vessels, are ever thrust to the _____: therefore I will push
Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall.
(1.1.10-21)
•Verbal Abuse of Women
Preserves Male Dominance
An old hare hoar,
And an old hare hoar,
Is very good meat in Lent.
But a hare that is hoar
Is too much for a score,
When it hoars ere it be spent
(2.4.108-13)
Romeo and Mercutio:
Male-Male vs. Male-Female Bonding
“You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night” (2.4.38)
If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
Romeo, that she were, O, that she were
An open et caetera, thou a poperin pear!
Romeo, good night: I'll to my truckle-bed;
This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep:
(2.1.34-41)
Romeo’s Development:
Rejecting the World of Men & Boys in Verona
Thy beauty hath made me effeminate
And in my temper softened valor’s steel! (3.1.101-102)
Mercutio dies because
Romeo marries and
declines to accept
Tybalt’s challenge.
The Religion of Love
Romeo: What shall I swear by?
Juliet: Do not swear at all;
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.
Compare: Language of Palmer’s Sonnet
Shakespeare’s Asks His Audience . . .
• Is there such a thing as love at first sight?
• Is it compatible with reciprocal relationships?
• Can love between a man and a woman characterized
by equality, passion, and honorable commitment last
in this world?
• Do prevailing notions of manhood require aggressive
displays and the verbal abuse of women?
• Can young men reconcile the need for male bonding
and the requirements of heterosexual love?
• Does the journey toward independence for young
women cause an emotional rift with parents?
Bibliography
• Callaghan, Dympna. Introduction and “Between Men” in William
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Dympna
Callaghan. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.
• Richards, Stanley. “The Troubadors and Courtly Love.” Archetypal
Psychology. <http://www.hermes.gen.nz/troubadors.htm>
• Stoner, Kay. “The Enduring Popularity of Courtly Love.”
<http://www.millersv.edu/~resound/court.html>
Pictures:
• 1968’s Romeo & Juliet. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana/Champagne.
<http://www.students.ed.uiuc.edu/bach/ rnj24/rj1968.html>
• Shakespeare in Love: It’s a Mystery. Scotland a la carte.
<www.cinetropic.com/shakespeare/ page2.html>
• William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Twentieth Century Fox.
<www.foxhome.com/ rj/pic.html>
• Moviecostumes.com (Dressmaker’s site with Shakespeare in Love
images) <www.moviecostumes.com/ Shakespeare.htm>