R&J sample paras and context

However, as the play progresses, Romeo is able to grasp the notion of true, requited love
with Juliet - a sentiment that allows them to transcend the conflicting barriers of the feud. The
first scene of the play - the crude impulses of sex and agression, the casual ruffainism, the
entwinement of lust and rage - is the quotidian reality of the streets of Verona; one that
Shakespeare presents as the wavering, unsteady, destructive and even diabolical setting for
the protagonists’ love. The feud is never awarded the same prestige of the great tragedies,
but, nonetheless, it is rooted in the very structure of the play - from the prologue’s ‘ancient
grudge break to new mutiny’ to the Prince’s final verdict that ‘all are punished’ - which,
combined with the peripeteia, pursues the lovers to their deaths. Indeed, such a sentiment is
similarly evoked when Shakespeare mentions (notably only once) the ‘infectious pestilence’ -
a physical plague, yes, but, also, one that can be perceived as a metaphor for the spiritual
feud that bedeviles the two prominent families in the city. Friar John is confined so as to stop
the spread of infection and kill the plague. His containment, however, results in the deaths of
Romeo and Juliet, and, by extension, in compliance with Aristotle’s notion that ‘drama comes
from reversal’, the killing of the spiritual plague afflicting the two families. It is important to
note, however, that within the strife of the play, there are instances of spiritual life, that
elevate joy and reveal the sincerity of the imagination: the youthful love exhibited by Romeo
and Juliet being the most prevalent; it is distilled to its simplest form through the repeated use
of monosyllabic exchanges between the two lovers: ‘dry sorrow drinks our blood’; ‘I am
content, so thou wilt have it so.’ Shakespeare is, to an extent, as subversive as Donne,
perhaps arguably even more so: his lovers are also ‘two souls therefore, which are one’; they
too are ‘inter-assured of the mind’. Romeo and Juliet are revolutionary symbols in that they
defy the rather Stoic quietism of love, that sex is the mere image; their love and desires for
this love - ‘come, Night, come, Romeo, come thou day in night’ - are purely erotic. As their
love progresses throughout the play, there is a steady heightening of light imagery - originally
a metaphor for spiritual beauty, but, later, a metaphor for knowledge and wisdom. In Romeo
and Juliet’s first meeting, there is a suggestion of the platonic as Romeo laments, ‘O, she
doth teach the torches to burn bright’; yet Shakespeare later argues that there is an instinct
of requited love through ‘feasting presence full of light’. It is worth noting that, through the
contrasting dignity of the first image and the increasingly sensuous light imagery at the end of
the play, Romeo and Juliet’s love is emphasised to be rejuvenating and sincere; they control
the light, in a Verona to whom light is peripheral. As the chorus proposes, ‘passion’ lends the
two lovers ‘power’ - a notion that enables them to survive in the dominating, restrictive world
of the feud.

Pointedly, Shakespeare’s exploration of Romeo and Juliet’s changing attitudes towards love
is not entirely positive, and the former argues that their excess and hubris causes the
dramatic elements of the play. To an extent, the two doomed lovers are victims of tragedy in
both the Aristotelian and Hegelian senses: in their beauty and courtship, they are elevated
above the other characters; however, they are still ultimately flawed, and Shakespeare
presents the pair as caught between competing principles — their deaths come as a bleak
warning on the dangers of excess and hubris to the audience. Similarly, this sentiment is
exemplified in Shakespeare’s Othello (1604); in response to Ludovico’s question, ‘where is
this rash and most unfortunate man?’, Othello so readily answers, ‘That’s he that was
Othello. Here I am’ — of course, this confidence, just like Romeo’s initial hubris, is quickly
overpowered by his hamartia of extreme jealousy and rashness. Both texts are united in their
examination of the loss of individuality: Othello and Romeo, driven by local, personal
impulses, are ultimately engulfed by the larger, social wave of desire — a pointed reminder
for the audience to abide by the Delphic Maxims of ‘nothing in excess’ and ‘know thyself’!
Tragedy, as Harold Barker proposes in Asides for a Tragic Theatre, ‘drags the unconscious
into the public place’, and, therefore, ‘after the tragedy, you are not certain who you are’; the
two fated lovers are, indeed, blinded by their lack of moderation — a sentiment that results in
their metamorphosis into tragic heroes. Perhaps the disastrous element of Romeo and Juliet
is ultimately revealed when Juliet laments, ‘O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?’
and ‘tis but thy name that is my enemy’; the rapid speed at which the two doomed lovers
renounce their family names and wed is, though endearing, ultimately the cause of their
deaths. This notion of excessive love and folly is exemplified in Act Two, Scene Six of the
play. The Friar encourages delay: he opines, ‘these violent delights have violent ends’ - note
the use of the fricative alliteration, emphasising the haste at which the two lovers love, wed
and succumb to their deaths. Indeed, Juliet and Romeo both infringe the Friar’s dictum of
‘wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast’, going so far to lament, ‘my true love is grown to
such excess’ - to an extent, we can read their intimacy as endearing and requited. However,
as Sir Frederick Beilby Watson proposes in Religious and Moral Sentences…, Shakespeare
‘lived and died as a true Protestant’; and, thus, for the former’s contemporary audience,
Romeo and Juliet’s intimacy would have been reminiscent of blasphemy, hubris and idolatry.
The two doomed lovers harbour, as Shakespeare proposes in Act One, Scene Four of
Hamlet, a ‘vicious mole of nature’, and ‘in the general censure take corruption from that
particular fault’ — despite Romeo and Juliet’s amelioration as characters, such flaws
ultimately result in the tragic elements of the play.