Romeo and Juliet Characters Flashcards
Romeo
Romeo is the young son of the affluent Montague family. He lusts after the unavailable, but oh-so gorgeous Rosaline until he sets eyes on Juliet Capulet (the only daughter of his family’s arch enemies) and falls in love at first sight.
Juliet
Juliet is the beautiful (and only) daughter of the Capulets. In the play, she falls in love with Romeo Montague, the son of her family’s mortal enemies.
Juliet matures over the course of the play. She begins as a naïve girl who’s dependent on her family and ends up a woman willing to desert that family to be with the man she loves. Where does this maturation takes place? We see something going on when Juliet meets Romeo. Every time Juliet comes onstage after this transformative scene, her love continues to change and deepen. Let’s look at the balcony scene. The Juliet who sighs at the beginning of the balcony scene that Romeo would be perfect if only he weren’t a Montague (2.2.2) is not the same Juliet who tells Romeo, wonderingly, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea / My love as deep. The more I give to you / the more I have, for both are infinite” (2.2.16).
It’s also important to realize that Juliet’s path to suicide is different than Romeo’s. Romeo has been banished from his home city, but he still has contact with his family and friends. Juliet, on the other hand, has been systematically stripped of the support of everyone around her. She has to undergo a brutal series of scenes that take her from saying good-bye to Romeo after their wedding night, to the news that she is supposed to marry Paris, to her father’s rage when she refuses, to a meeting with Paris himself. Some might claim that Juliet has little choice other than suicide. Her father threatens to throw her out of the house onto the streets if she doesn’t marry Paris. Her mother nearly disowns her. Even the Nurse turns against her. Juliet, for all the emotional maturity she gained throughout the play, is still incredibly sheltered. As far as we can tell, she hasn’t really been anywhere besides her home and Friar Laurence’s. She has no idea how to survive in the outside world, especially in the Elizabethan world where women couldn’t really function without husbands and fathers, unless they were prostitutes. AND, in case you forgot, she’s thirteen years old.
Rosaline
The girl that Romeo is in love with before he meets Juliet
Count Paris
As scholar Marjorie Garber points out, all you have to do to see why Paris (the guy who wears down Juliet’s dad until he agrees to let him marry Juliet) is such a good foil for Romeo – and why Juliet chose Romeo over him – is to contrast what Paris and Romeo each say outside Juliet’s grave.\
Paris’s language says: “I’m a stiff and lacking in passion.” There’s no way that Paris would die for Juliet. He’ll probably make other marriage plans as soon as the appropriate mourning time has passed.
ROMEO
The time and my intents are savage-wild
More fierce and more inexorable far
Than empty tigers or the roaring sea. (5.3.1)
Romeo, in contrast, is furious over Juliet’s death, and eloquent in his fury. He won’t drip a few tears on Juliet’s grave and then go home to bed. Unlike Paris, this guy is a passionate lover.
Mercutio
Mercutio (whose name is derived from the word “mercurial,” meaning “volatile”) is Romeo’s sword-fight loving BFF. He never backs down from a duel and, although he’s neither a Montague nor a Capulet, he gets involved in the long-standing family feud on the side of the Montagues and is killed by Tybalt in Act 3, Scene 1.
Benvolio
Benvolio, whose name literally means “good will,” is a classic nice guy. Benvolio often gets stuck playing the straight man to Romeo and Mercutio, but he occasionally manages to stick in his own funny lines. Despite the fact that he is constantly telling everyone else to chill and stop fighting, duels always seem to happen around him. Sometimes he gets drawn in. Benvolio is regarded as the trusted go-to guy. Romeo’s parents turn to him when their son is acting weird (1.1) and the Prince always asks him to explain what went down in the most recent street fight.
Tybalt
ybalt is Juliet’s cousin, which makes him a Capulet. After he kills Romeo’s BFF, Mercutio, in a street brawl, Romeo mortally stabs him, which causes Romeo to be banished from Verona.
Tybalt is a captivating, testosterone-driven character and almost always completely over-the-top. He’s not particularly deep, but he’s a lot of fun for the actor who gets to deliver his snappy one-liners and show off some impressive sword fighting skills. Mercutio, who hates Tybalt, gives him the “catty” nickname the “Prince of Cats” and it totally suits Tybalt. While Romeo can sometimes remind you of a bouncy and overeager puppy, Tybalt tends to stalk around proudly looking for fights. When his uncle Capulet prevents him from beating up Romeo for crashing the Capulet’s masked ball, he’s not too pleased and promises to bash in Romeo’s skull at a later date: “I will withdraw but this intrusion shall / Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall” (1.5.6). Clearly, Tybalt, likes to speak in rhymed couplets (“shall” and “gall” rhyme here), which makes him sound kind of ridiculous. Plus, he doesn’t speak a single line that can’t be delivered in a snarl.
Nurse
The Nurse is one of the funniest characters in the play and one of the most disturbing. She and Juliet have what seems to be a gossiping, pillow-fighting sort of relationship at the beginning of the play. The Nurse, along with Friar Laurence, is one of the facilitators of Juliet’s relationship with Romeo. She plays the role of messenger and it is her idea to bring Romeo to Juliet even after he has been banished. But when Juliet needs her most – after her parents order her to marry Paris – the Nurse betrays her. Romeo is as good as dead, the Nurse tells Juliet, and she had better forget him and marry Paris. Is the nurse as responsible for Juliet’s death? Maybe. Or, as one oh-so-subtle production suggested, definitely: in this production, at the final scene, when the Prince says that some will be punished, a noose dropped from the ceiling and swung in front of the Nurse.
But why does the Nurse betray Juliet? There are two basic arguments. The first is that the Nurse really believes everything that she says when she tells Juliet:
Romeo is banish’d; and all the world to nothing,
That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you;
Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,
I think it best you married with the county.
O, he’s a lovely gentleman!
Romeo’s a dishclout to him: an eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first: or if it did not,
Your first is dead; or ‘twere as good he were,
As living here and you no use of him. (3.5.5)
As this argument goes, the Nurse simply does not understand that Juliet’s love for Romeo is the real thing, and not some childish infatuation. She thinks Juliet can easily move on. If you’re feeling a little judgmental, you could say this attitude is both callous and unperceptive. Her dirty-minded way of looking at love cannot comprehend a love like Juliet’s. There’s also the possibility that the Nurse doesn’t want to lose Juliet to an uncertain future with Romeo in Mantua. Selfishness might play a role in wanting her beloved Juliet to stay in Verona and marry Paris – and doubtlessly bring the Nurse with her when she moves to Paris’s house. Regardless, the Nurse’s comic character becomes almost monstrous in the way she treats Juliet’s love. Telling Juliet that Romeo is as good as dead is pretty mean.
Friar Lauernce
A mentor to both Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence constantly advises them to act with more caution and moderation. But Friar Laurence’s own plans to help Romeo and Juliet end in tragedy. He’s the guy, after all, who gives Juliet the concoction that puts her in a deep, deep, slumber that fools her family (and Romeo) into thinking she’s dead. This makes Friar Laurence one of the most complex and interesting characters in the play: we don’t know if he should be blamed or not. The1968 Zeffirelli film version of Romeo and Juliet highlights the irony of the Friar’s role in the play. When the Friar tells Romeo, “Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast,” it is the Friar, not Romeo, who trips over his feet immediately afterwards (2.3.10). Zeffirelli also makes the Friar look like a coward when he runs out of the Capulet tomb in 5.3, leaving Juliet alone with Romeo’s corpse. We also think the Friar is running a little too fast in his haste to use these kids (that would be Romeo and Juliet) as tools to patch up a hopeless family feud (2.2.9).
Lord Capulet
Lord Capulet (a.k.a. Capulet) is the father of Juliet. At first, he seems like a pretty good dad. When Paris comes sniffing around for thirteen-year-old Juliet’s hand in marriage, Capulet puts him of, citing Juliet’s young age and even suggesting that he’d like his daughter to marry for “love” (1.2.2-3). This, by the way, is pretty uncommon in Shakespeare’s plays. Most fathers (like Baptista Minola in The Taming of the Shrew) broker marriages like business deals, without ever consulting their daughters.
But Lord Capulet doesn’t play the good father for long. Paris eventually wears him down and convinces him that he and Juliet should wed (3.4.2). (By this point, Juliet is already be secretly married to Romeo.) The thing is, Juliet’s not exactly down with marrying Paris and things get ugly when she tells her father as much.
Lord Capulet’s response to Juliet’s “disobedience” is so violently harsh that we begin to see him as a bit of a tyrant. We see the physical aggression most prominently in the big, confrontational scene with Juliet over whether or not she will marry Paris. When Juliet refuses, Capulet screams, “Out you baggage, / you tallow face” (3.5.3) and says, “My fingers itch” when Juliet stands up, which may suggest that he’s prone to physical violence (3.5.4). He also lashes out against the Nurse and his wife.
Lord Capulet’s relationship with his wife is also up for debate. Lady Capulet is probably much younger than he, since she was married to him when she was about twelve years old. Needless to say, this age difference seems to have caused some tension in their marriage. “Too soon marred are those so early made [wives],” he tells Paris, clearly referencing his own wife (1.2.
Lady Capulet
Like many other mothers of teens, Lady Capulet and her daughter clearly have a troubled relationship. The interactions between Lady Capulet and Juliet are strained and distant. Lady Capulet does make an effort to reach out to her daughter now that she’s of an age to be married. But it’s obvious that Juliet’s closest bond is with the Nurse; Lady Capulet never even comes close to challenging that.
As a result, Lady Capulet doesn’t come across as a particularly great mom. The big question with her character is why. Why isn’t she close to her daughter? Why isn’t she supportive when Juliet needs her most? Just when Juliet needs her mom’s support, Lady Capulet coldly ignore her daughter’s pleas to help her avoid marrying Paris. After Lord Capulet storms out, Juliet turns to her mother to soften her father’s punishment. Juliet begs her even to delay the marriage. Lady Capulet responds, “Talk not to me, for I’ll not say a word / Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee” (3.5.15). That’s pretty cold. What’s up with that?
There could be a few different things going on here. It seems very likely that Lady Capulet herself had an arranged marriage with Juliet’s father, and it seems she went along with it obediently. When Juliet rebels against the planned marriage with Paris, she is rebelling against her mother’s way of life, and against the kind of marriage that Lady Capulet learned to suffer through. If Lord Capulet is an abusive husband, that gives Lady Capulet further reason to refuse to defy his wishes, even for the sake of her daughter. Also, in Shakespeare’s day, women were expected to be “obedient” to their husbands. We should also mention that some rather edgy modern interpretations of the play go so far as to say that Lady Capulet is having an affair; or at least actively pursuing one. We’re guessing these productions of the play are picking up on Lady Capulet’s over-the-top praise of Paris’s manly virtues (1.3.9) and her excessive grief over Tybalt’s death (3.5.7).
Prince of Verona
The Prince of Verona does the best he can to keep the peace, but he can’t restrain the violence between the Montagues and the Capulets. If the Prince can’t do anything about the feud, it means that the law (which the Prince embodies) is powerless against the passions of hate and of love.
