Juliet

Question 1

In Act 1 scene 5, when R and J have a shared sonnet, what does “God” show?

Answer 1

• Shared sonnet- In using religious imagery to describe their feelings for each other, R and J tiptoe on the edge of blasphemy
• Romeo compares Juliet to the image of a saint that should be admired, a role that Juliet is willing to play
• Juliet commits an even more profound blasphemy in the next scene when she calls Romeo the “god of her idolatry” effectively installing Romeo in God’s place in her personal religion

Question 2

What does the shared sonnet suggest and what are they used for?

Answer 2

• These 14 lines make up a shared sonnet
• The use of the sonnet, however, also serves a second, darker purpose
• The play’s prologue also is a single sonnet of the same rhyme scheme
• The prologue introduces the play, and the eventual deaths of the protagonists
• The shared sonnet between R and J creates a link between their love and their destiny
• With a sonnet, Shakespeare finds a mean of expressing love and linking it to tragic fate

Question 3

How does Juliet further show blasphemy in Act 3 Scene 2?

Answer 3

• “Can heaven be so envious”
• She wonders if even the gods are jealous of their love
• Connotations of it being so rare and beyond the realms of other relationships

Question 4

In Act 1 Scene 5, “If ______

My grave is like to be ______” what does this present?

Answer 4

” If he be married
My grave is like to be my wedding bed”
- Before Juliet even knows Romeo’s name, she’s head over heels in love and worries he may already be married to someone else, in which case, she says (rather dramatically” that she’ll die
- Shakespeare is foreshadowing the way Juliet will die shortly after her marriage
- Links to Lady Capulet, “fool were married to her grave”

Question 5

What happens in Act 2 Scene 2?

Answer 5

• The scene takes place at night time, illustrating the way Romeo and Juliet’s love exists in a world quite distinct from the violence of the feud
• Throughout the play, their love flourishes at night- an allusion to the forbidden nature of their relationship
• As night ends and dawn breaks, the two are forced to part to avoid being discovered by the Capulet kinsmen

Question 6

“I am _____
And therefore thou mayst think ______
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those ___________” - Act 2 Scene 2, what does this present?

Answer 6

• “I am too fond;
  And therefore thou mayst think my ‘haviour light:
  But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
  Than those that have more cunning to be strange”
• Juliet is concerned that her private thoughts (overheard by Romeo) make her seem too eager- too quickly won.
• She assures Romeo that she will prove more faithful than other women who appear chaste

Question 7

“too ___, too _____, too _____” What does this suggest?

Answer 7

• “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden”
• Juliet is certain that she loves Romeo but she’s also a bit cautious because her love seems “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden”
• So, while Juliet is clearly a very passionate girl, she’s also pretty smart and realises that head-over-heels passion can be dangerous

Question 8

How is Juliet’s idea of love presented in Act 2 Scene 2?

Answer 8

• Juliet stops Romeo from swearing his love on the moon as it is too “inconstant” and “variable”
• She stops him from using traditional, colloquial poetic forms in expressing his affection
• She encourages him to be genuine and to invest himself in a less traditional, mre spiritual concept of love
• “O gentle Romeo/ If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully”

Question 9

What happens in Act 2 Scene 5 relating to Juliet?

Answer 9

• Hours appear to lengthen for Juliet as she waits for news
• The emphasis on the passing of time links to Juliet’s parting lines to Romeo from Act 2 Scene 2, when he promised to send word to her the next day: “Tis twenty years till then”
• Juliet is presented as an impatient child- reminding the audience of her ages
• “is they news good, or bad”
• She is growing apart from the Nurse- becoming a woman

Question 10

How is Juliet presented in Act 3 Scene 2?

Answer 10

• Juliet displays significant progress in her development from the simple, innocent girl of the first act to the brave, mature and loyal woman of the play’s conclusion
• After criticising Romeo for his role in Tybalt’s death, Juliet regains control of herself and realises that her loyalty must be to her husband rather than to Tybalt, her cousin
• “But, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain would have killed my husband”
• Rational, thinking carefully about the situation, mature responses
• She is wise enough to make her own choices
• She is desperate for night to arrive, darkness has offered sanctuary to the couple. They met at night, have sex at night and die at night

Question 11

How does Act 3 Scene 2 present Juliet?

Answer 11

• The Nurse’s report transforms Juliet from an anxious young bride into a bereft widow
• Even when Juliet understands that Romeo is not dead, his banishment is equivalent to death in her eyes: “I’ll to my wedding bed/ And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead”, the association between Juliet and death as her bridegroom once again pairs the themes of love and death and emphasises that her young life is constantly overshadowed by death
• Juliet feels conflicted because her love for Romeo clashes with her love and sense of duty to Tybalt, her cousin
• Juliet expresses her conflicting emotions for Romeo using oxymorons “Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical” whirlwind of emotions for Juliet
• The Nurse’s curse, “Shame come to Romeo” acts as a catalyst for Juliet, helping to clarify her feelings

Question 12

What does “true knight” suggest?

Answer 12

• Example of courtly love
• The adjective “true” literally means honest, genuine
• The origin of the word comes from loyal
• “knight” has connotations of a knight in shining armour saving a damsel in distress
• “true”- links to Romeo “true beauty til this knight”

Question 13

How is Juliet presented in Act 3 Scene 5?

Answer 13

• Juliet experiences a frightening vision of Romeo “as one dead in the bottom of a tomb”
• This prophetic image will prove true in the final scene when Juliet awakens from her to find Romeo dead on the floor of the Capulet tomb

Question 14

How is Juliet’s relationship between her parents presented i Act 3 Scene 5?

Answer 14

• In the confrontation with her parents, Juliet shows her full maturity
• She dominates the conversation with her mother, who cannot keep up with Juliet’s intelligence and therefore has no idea that Juliet is proclaiming her love for Romeo under the guise of saying just the opposite. “let me weep for such a feeling loss”
• Her decision to break from the counsel of her disloyal nurse is another step in her development
• Having a nurse is a mark of childhood; by abandoning her nurse and upholding her loyalty toward her husband, Juliet steps fully out of girlhood into womanhood