Language of Extremes in Romeo and Juliet

Language of Extremes in Romeo and Juliet

"I have no joy of this contract tonight.

It is too rash, too sudden,

Too like the lightning which doth cease to be

Ere one can say it lightens." (2.1.159-162)

Juliet prophesies her own doom from her balcony, an acknowledgment that does nothing to curb the rashness she identifies in their twenty-four hour meeting, engagement, and marriage. It is of course impossible to gauge Shakespeare’s personal interpretations of his characters’ actions, and since the action of the story comes directly from a long narrative poem by Arthur Broke, and Broke got his material from a French story, which was adapted from an Italian work by Bandello, who was working from earlier texts, Shakespeare cannot exactly be looked to as the final authority for the moral worth of Romeo and Juliet’s actions anyway.

Since Shakespeare’s feeling cannot be evaluated, theories about Romeo and Juliet’s actions can be weighed without worrying about original intent. One argument is that Romeo and Juliet were actually quite misled in their actions, that instead of a celebration of uncontrollable passion, the play should be seen as a condemnation of rashness. Toward this, Juliet’s admission on the balcony is very important.

The line betrays not only a rational apprehension of the impetuousness of their acts, but a supernatural misgiving, a portent of impending doom, which Romeo also betrays before the Capulet party:

"...My mind misgives

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars

Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night’s revels, and expire the term

Of a despised life, closed in my breast,

By some vile forfeit of untimely death." (1.4.106-111)

The idea of fate is hard to pin down in this play. Fate as a fact of life or a deity is not found in the Italian context like it would be in Greek tragedy or Greek and ancient Roman settings, but these lines from the two young heroes show that fate is there, undefined, but present and deadly still.

Friar Laurence, at once both a religious icon and a humanistic one, seems to dispute the supernatural power of fate:

"These violent delights have violent ends,

And in their triumph die like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,

And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Therefore, love moderately. Long love doth so." (2.5.9-14)

His speech throws the responsibility of moderation on the lovers, not to fate or heaven (as the Prince will in the final scene of the play).