juliet Flashcards
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”
Juliet is saying here that when Pilgrims travel to the Holy land all the
pilgrims need to do is touch the statues of the saints and that is
enough for them. It can be suggested that Juliet is trying to follow the
courtly lover rules of a woman as she tries to play ‘hard to get’ as it is
what any self-respecting woman at the time would do.
“My grave is
like to be my
wedding bed
Shakespeare showcases a meta-theatrical foreshadowing of the
play’s events. Freudian ideas of eros and thanatos can be identified
in this quote; love and sex lead to death.
Shakespeare allegorically links the “wedding bed”, a symbol of
intimacy, sex and love, to a grave which is associated with death
and decay. Demonstrates how oppositions are intertwined in the
play.
“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?/ Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Juliet reveals the futile and trivial nature of the feud that separates
them by acknowledging that is only due to a name. This
demonstrates her wisdom and shows a more spiritual and wise
understanding of the cogs of Veronian society.
“Deny”, and “…refuse” are imperatives, which suggests a conflict
with fate: she wants Romeo to take action. When she asks Romeo to
“refuse [his] name”, it indicates a youthful sense of idealism and
naivety. This highlights two sides of her character, her wisdom and
her youthfulness; she is intelligent but naive.
If they do see
thee, they will
murder thee.”
Shakespeare establishes Juliet’s character as a reasoned and
realistic person.
Her transition to simple one-liners emphasises her cautious thinking.
The use of the dominant monosyllabic wording adds realism and
steadfast nature to her character.
“Murder” is the only word that is not monosyllabic, indicating it’s
importance in the line. The presence of violence drives this line and
unlike love, it is not poetic, but real and definite like the simple syntax
of the line
“O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon.../ Do not swear at all/ Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self”
Shakespeare presents Juliet as favouring actions as she rejects the
ideas of traditional fake love and encourages Romeo to follow a love
more spontaneous and unrehearsed.
Juliet’s half-line imperative riposte “Do not swear…” emphasises
her decisive nature.
Shakespeare’s monosyllabic phrases highlight how assertive she is;
this is antithetical to Romeo’s lyrical language.
The caesura in line 13, puts more weight in the imperative command
of Juliet’s. This means she is not a passive participant in this even
“Can heaven
be so envious?”
Shakespeare in this rhetorical question conveys the dichotomy
between fate and the individual.
This shows how physical matters have no effect on love, but only
spiritual alluded to by “heaven”. Echoes the idea of how the
macrocosm affects and impacts the microcosm. The heavens
dictate the events on earth.
“What storm is this that blows so contrary/ Is Romeo slaughter’d? and is Tybalt dead? My dearest cousin, and my dearer lord?/ Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom…
Syntactical patterning “Is Romeo…”, “…is Tybalt”, sets up the two
characters as oppositions.The Low-frequency lexis used to refer to
Romeo, indicates that Romeo is more significant to Juliet.The
superlative “dearest cousin”, is negated by the comparative
“dearer lord”, highlighting Romeo means more to Juliet.
Shakespeare uses the apocalyptic images to describe the death of
Tybalt of Romeo.Their supposed deaths signal the end of her two
worlds - the romantic and the familial.The two characters referred to,
allude to the dichotomy between familial and romantic love.
Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical!/ Dove-feather’d raven, wolvish-ravening lamb!/ Despised substance of divinest show!”
The sequential use of oxymorons for example “Beautiful tyrant”,
“fiend angelical”, conveys the conflict that plagues Juliet. Echoes
Romeo’s Petrarchan suffering; in this instance Juliet laments thee
opposing familial and romantic love.
Revolutionary for the Elizabethan era- Juliet is a complex character
like Romeo. She is able to use oxymorons attributed to Romeo, and is
able to use language to invert Romeo’s imagery, “Dove-feather’d
raven”.
This shows her proficiency in language that educated men had. In
order to purportedly hurt Romeo, she uses his language against him.
Broken syntax evokes the violence of this turmoil- makes the
dialogue more potent, and expresses her anger.
