Dusty: 

If it were not for the prologue, a reader of Act 1 might think Romeo and Juliet is going to be a comedy. Witty but quarrelsome servants; hot-headed Tybalt; a lovesick young man teased by his friend; proposals to “cure” Romeo of his lovesickness; a fancy party where young Romeo instantly falls in love with Juliet; and a father prepared to marry her off to a man of his choice instead.

But the prologue tells us quite bluntly about “civil blood” and “the fearful passage” of “death-mark’d love.” I’m not sure what to make of the pairing of “ancient grudge” and “new mutiny”: does this signify continuity or difference? In any case, 1.1 shows us that the “grudge” is so ancient that nobody seems to remember what it was originally about. There is no “reason” in their mutual hatred. The witty servants are at first careful enough to avoid violence but then draw their swords. Tybalt is all for blood and Benvolio is the peacemaker. And everybody is halted by Escalus.

In comes Romeo, displaying all the signs of a conventional lover, demonstrating that there is no “reason” in love either. Indeed his love is a kind of “madness.” The play, it seems, is going to be about “brawling love” and “loving hate.” Romeo and others speak in rhyme. Is that because this is early Shakespeare, or because some kind of heightening is thought desirable? Romeo is lovelorn because his beloved, later called Rosaline, has “forsworn” love and vowed to live chaste.

1.2 introduces Juliet’s father and the man he wants to set up as his daughter’s wife. It turns out that she is not yet 14, but both men think she is of marriageable age. (We don’t yet have the standard comic situation of a woman loved by one man but about to be married to another.) Benvolio, still trying to cure Romeo of his love of Rosaline, gets wind of Capulet’s party, and resolves to attend, along with Romeo — not because either man knows anything about Juliet but because Benvolio thinks Romeo will spot some other beauty at the party and forget all about Rosaline — which is what in fact happens.

In 1.3 the Capulets prepare Juliet to meet Paris, and to be prepared to marry him. Juliet’s mother, after all, was married and even gave birth at that age, so that makes her maybe 26, and not the middle-aged woman you might imagine and that I think most productions assume.

1.4 brings the famous “Queen Mab” speech by Mercutio (who is linked not to either of the feuding families but to County Paris). Mercutio mocks lovers (and others) as fools who have been visited by Queen Mab. But his speech describing her displays the imagination of a poet. Why, in this scene, does Romeo have “misgivings” about bitter consequence, fearful date, and “vile forfeit of untimely love.”

1.5 is the party scene. Capulet says he has not danced in25-30 years, and plans to go to bed early. This suggests that he is a good deal older than Mrs. Capulet. He also acts like a sensible older man when he tries to get Tybalt to calm down. It’s not clear to me why everybody speaks in rhyme. Romeo instantly finds that Juliet outshines Rosaline.Juliet’s dialogue with Romeo suggests that she is not as sheltered as we thought. She seems to bandy wit as well as Romeo. And she is already in love with him: “My only love sprung from my only hate!”

Michael:

I’ve sometimes thought the play has something of a comic structure, into which tragedy will be poured in. And there’s surely, except for the prologue, a lot of comedy-like material in the opening act, actually second act too.

The servants in the opening scene are amusing in their alternating aggressiveness and caution, very much dumb and quarrelsome adolescents, spoiling for fight but not sure whether they should, then the whole thing spilling into their betters with Tybalt’s feistiness.

Yes, Lady C. must be fairly young. Mercutio’s Queen Mab seems a wonderful comic set piece. I think we can remember the performance of John McEnery from Zefferelli’s film.

The exchange between Capulet and Tybalt lets us see the sense and authority of the old man and the foolish aggression of the young one. Perhaps it give some hope, even in the threat of the possible violence. And it rather frames the suddenly love-struck Romeo, who seems to break out in a more genuine poetry, not the Petrarchan cliches, in his first sight of Juliet, then approaches her in the sonnet the two of them fall into. I wonder if we can perceive the emerging sonnet they perform in the theatrical moment. It is nicely balanced, each speaking a quatrain, then back and forth in the third, and the shared couplet. Then an extra quatrain before the nurse interrupts. We know he has been struck, and what follows between the nurse and Juliet confirms her mutual state.

Michael:

The prologue to Act 2 may be necessary to confirm what we’ve just seen. The exchange between Benvolio and Mercutio seems to suggest the sexual character of the love, especially Mercutio’s part. Or maybe there’s an element of contrast between that and Romeo’s high poetry. What’s striking about the love duet between the separated lovers, she above and he below, is the relative absence of rhyme. There are small scraps of rhyme in concluding couplets, as if they fall into it, but for the most part rhyme is absent. What does this mean? Is there a hint in what Mercutio says to “conjure” Romeo, “Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied. Cry but ‘Ay me! Pronounce but ‘love’ and ‘dove’.” Is rhyme too sweet, too tied to the Petrarchan world? Juliet’s counsels against swearing may go in the same direction. And she is the one who proposes marriage as the direction of their love, and her arrangements of their future meeting are similarly realistic. “Sorrow” and “morrow” rhyme, and so do Romeo’s final lines of the scene, but they seem less consequential, less “poetic.”

By contrast, Friar Laurence speaks entirely in couplets. And Romeo follows him in this. But his “sermon” on herbs and flowers seems relevant to the unfolding love between the lovers. In fact the stage direction “enter Romeo” comes just as Laurence speaks of poison and medicine power in the “infant rind of this weak flower.,” as if to identify flower and lover.  The rhymed couplets may give the speech a certain formality, different from the Petrarchan tradition.

Does Mercutio act out his characterization of Tybalt in 2.3? There’s a volley of wit between him and Romeo, some of which might be too obscure for a modern audience. But then the nurse sails into it and changes the register. The dialogue with Romeo further insists on his honorable intention of marriage, though his plan of a rope ladder to enter Juliet’s room seems a bit mad.

2.4 advances the contrast of youth and age in the exchange between Juliet and the nurse, but the whole thing can’t help but seem too quick and fragile. And this is reiterated in the following scene as Friar Laurence’s seeming warning to Romeo, “these violent delights have violent ends.” But as they exit toward the church and marriage, the comic vector of the play ends. Does the opening of 3.1 almost return us to the opening?

Dusty:

The Chorus to Act 2 is a perfect sonnet, as if to signal that we are still for the moment in a Petrarchan world. But the extravagant language seems to tease Romeo as a lover, whose “young affection” for Juliet “gapes” to inherit from his “old desire” for Rosaline, a desire for which he formerly had “groan’d” and “would die.” Romeo is “bewitched” and  has something new to “complain” about.

In 2.1. Benvolio and Mercutio keep us thinking in comic terms, as they ridicule Romeo for being a “blind” lover. But the “balcony scene” (2.2), as you suggest, tells us that we, or at least Romeo and Juliet, are in a different world. Shakespeare separates the two of them physically, so that we can see that Romeo can overhear Juliet. He and we now know that their love is  mutual, so she doesn’t have to play the conventional modest (or chilly) maidenly role. Even though the lovers are teenagers, and have only just met each other, I think most directors assume that this love is what Milton would call the sober certainty of waking bliss. It would be a different kind of play if it were played as teenage infatuation.

But in 2.3 Friar Lawrence seems to regard Romeo as an easily-infatuated boy, and in 2.4 Benvolio and Mercutio continue to tease him. Yes, a lot of the wit, much of it double-entendre, would probably pass over the heads of modern audiences, unless there were supertitles that included footnotes (horrible thought), but maybe body language could suggest the bawdy puns.

Yes, Act 2 continues to seem a comic world: young lovers manage to meet, despite the obstacles in their way; both Mercutio and the Nurse are basically comic figures. The act even ends with — or leads to — a marriage ceremony, though it is offstage. Interesting that old Capulet is at this point not simply a blocking figure — he embodies prudence and wisdom in calming furious young Tybalt. (This will change in Act 3.) The only black cloud in the sky is the foreseen challenge of Romeo by Tybalt.

Dusty:

Interesting that, as you suggest, 3.1 reprises the street quarrel in 1.1, but replays it this time as tragedy. In 1.1 no blood is spilled. In 3.1 two young men die on stage. But first Romeo, newly espoused, now calls Tybalt cousin, and tries to prevent the fight. It’s not clear to me why Mercutio, who is not a Montague or a Capulet and in fact is related to the Prince and connected to both families, intervenes and draws the sword that Romeo refused to draw. Is it just because he is Romeo’s friend, or because in his way he is as hot-tempered as Tybalt?

The Prince asks who started the fight, and Benvolio says it was Tybalt, but in fact Mercutio drew first. Does that make a difference? The Prince instantly pronounces sentence, as if to resolve the quarrel: each side must “pay,” with a fine or with banishment. It certainly seems “unfair” that Romeo is banished, because he tried to be the peacemaker, though he too then became a hothead. But in Shakespeare a banished man tends to return (Kent, Bolingbroke) — though not always. By the end of the scene I think we sense that the play is not over.

In 3.2 Juliet certainly thinks the play is not over: she is picking up where Act 2 left off, and having been officially wed by Friar Lawrence she is eager for the wedding night. So the audience experiences a potent bit of “dramatic irony” — they know what she doesn’t know — but is also, moments after watching two men die, invited to respond to her bold language and share her rapture. It seems surprising that 13-year-old Juliet can know such desire and lust. Do you play it as mature passion or as first love? Her whipsaw reactions — denouncing Romeo when she hears that he has killed her cousin and then catching and berating herself for the “chiding” — makes her seem young and impetuous.

The Nurse knows that Romeo has fled to Friar Lawrence’s cell and that he will return to Juliet’s bed before leaving town. Presumably Romeo found time to do this, and to give the  Nurse the rope ladder, while Juliet began the scene, or maybe 3.2 is set a short time after 3.1. Juliet takes the news of Romeo’s banishment very hard. “Banished” turns out to be a more fearful word than “death.” Her riff on “banished” reminds us that the play focuses on several fearful or threatening words: villain, die/death, and “Romeo” itself. Is there perhaps a link between this focus on individual words and Mercutio’s bawdy punning?

3.3 seems to foresee a potential comic conclusion. Friar Lawrence again chides Romeo for being “unreasonable” — reprising an earlier scene — but suggests that in time Romeo will be recalled and pardoned. So maybe it will all turn out well. 3.4, in which Capulet offers Juliet to Paris, presents another problem, but it’s not a problem that comedy cannot traditionally overcome.

3.5 temporarily sustains the comedy. It begins after the marriage has been consummated. Shakespeare skips over the marriage bed, just as he skipped over the marriage ceremony. Maybe you don’t present marital sex on stage in Elizabethan England, but it’s important, in law, that the marriage be consummated — that means it has been completed and cannot be easily undone. The married lovers reluctantly part, with a lovely exchange in which first one hears the nightingale and the other the lark, and then vice-versa. Romeo assures Juliet that they will meet again, but she has an “ill-divining soul,” and they talk of death — “let me be put to death . . . Come, death, and welcome! . . . I see thee as one dead.” (Was Keats thinking of this scene when he wrote in the “Ode to a Nightingale” that “now more than ever seems it rich to die”?) Later in the scene other characters pick up  the talk of death – Capulet says that Juliet will be “married to her grave” and the Nurse says that Romeo is as good as dead. And the scene and act end with Juliet saying that if all else fails, “myself have power to die.” So she thinks, and this will only be too true.

Technically, we have a potentially comic situation: a young girl is being to compelled to marry a man of her father’s choosing, and there is some hope that she will end up with the man she loves. But all sense of comedy has drained away, cued by  old Capulet, who is transformed from sensible adult to angry tyrannical father. This on top of the fact that Romeo and Juliet are already married, Romeo is banished, and two men lie dead.

Michael:

If Act 3 seems to return to the opening — hot day, thin tempers, quarrelsome young men — it quickly becomes something tragic with the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt. But the one “comic” character, comic in that he’s the participant in the successful love plot, is caught up in the ensuing tragedy and in fact is instrumental in causing Mercutio’s death, then killing Tybalt. In the generic turn from comedy to tragedy, Mercutio speaks a grim comedy as he dies. His wounds aren’t great, “a scratch, a scratch,” but they’re sufficient for death. Ask for him tomorrow and you’ll find him a “grave” man. “A plague o’ both your houses.” And it’s all very quick: Tybalt returns and is killed immediately in the duel with Romeo. The Prince’s settlement actually seems quite just, and even merciful to Romeo.

The turn of grim comedy may even continue in the Nurse’s report to Juliet, causing Juliet initially to think it was Romeo who was killed. But it finally comes down to a terrible dilemma: she must mourn her cousin Tybalt while her new husband suffers banishment.

Friar Laurence’s long speech sorts out the rights and wrongs of the whole matter, making him an apparent moral center.

On the other hand, Capulet’s idea of Paris marrying Juliet throws a complication, again maybe a darkly “comic” complication, into the situation. Capulet seems an opposing figure to Friar Laurence. And the compression of time, next Thursday for the marriage to Paris, hastens the oncoming tragedy.

The play doesn’t speak explicitly of this, but it does seem we’re to understand the consummation of the marriage of the lovers as just prior to the dialogue of 3.5. But the “quarrel” of the lovers, which isn’t really that, about whether it’s the nightingale or the lark they’ve heard may be another piece of comic banter, banter that’s sweet and only grimly comic when we consider their situation. And maybe Juliet’s feigned anger at Romeo in her ensuing dialogue with her mother is something similar. In any case Juliet’s determined opposition to the marriage that Capulet is imposing becomes another potentially comic situation, as you note. I agree that the comic tenor has been drained away by the tragedy we’ve seen and can anticipate.

Michael:

In 4.1 Juliet enters sharply into the conversation of the Friar and Paris. And when she draws a knife, she repeats what had been Romeo’s possible solution to the tragic situation. And again the Friar stops the suicide and begins to meditate to Juliet his rather desperate solution. Then he gives her the vial.

In 4.2 Capulet believes he has one his point in Juliet’s marriage to Paris and seems to advance the marriage by a day. It will be the next day. The compression of time seems to hasten on the tragic end. They will go to church the next day, but Capulet will soon learn why.

In 4.3 Juliet anticipates the horrors and complications in the Friar’s plan. She’s perfectly right, of course, but we’re not really expected to see the craziness in it all; we know the Friar’s drug will work as expected. Her toast to Romeo will be recapitulated of course.

4.4 sets the discovery of Juliet’s feigned death into seemingly mundane preparations for the wedding. But it does become a seeming tragedy as the Capulets and Nurse respond. Everyone in fact is responding to the apparent tragedy. Once again Friar Laurence becomes the mediator, but he is the only one with knowledge of what it all is.

What do we make of the ending of 4.4, Peter’s interaction with the musicians? It seems unnecessary and somewhat silly. Can you see any point to it?

Dusty:

Juliet’s threat to kill herself in 4.1, as you say, recalls Romeo’s similar threat, and anticipates her actual suicide in 5.3. She “longs to die.” They both are more than half in love with death. In some sense it’s what they have wanted all along.

Juliet’s conduct here and elsewhere is impulsive. She speaks boldly and fiercely. This suggests that a director should instruct the actress not to be conventionally modest and obedient (although Juliet knows how to pretend to be modest and obedient) but to be an impetuous and impassioned teenager. Her father says she is “headstrong” and “wayward,” and he is apparently right. It’s not clear to me that over the course of the play Juliet grows into “maturity.”

In 4.3 Juliet fears that she will wake from the sleeping potion too soon, but does not consider the possibility that she will wake too late — which is what happens.

4.4 seems necessary in order to account for the passing of time, between midnight in 4.3 and daybreak at the end of 4.4

4.5 combines two quite different moods — the extreme expressions of grief from Capulet, Lady Capulet, and the Nurse; and the silly business with Peter and the musicians, which you rightly question. It would appear to undermine the grief. But maybe Shakespeare is suggesting that there is something false about the grief — the expressions are operatic, over the top, stylized, almost comic (black comedy). The scene with Peter also serves to signal a change in mood, as we move on to what is supposed to be the successful workings of the sleeping-potion plot.

Dusty:

In 5.1 Romeo is in Mantua, Juliet now sleeping in the vault in Verona. He dreams of being waked from death by Juliet’s kiss. This is grim irony: as we will see, he himself dies as he kisses her. In comes Balthasar with news of Juliet’s death. The audience will wonder why Romeo does not seem to know of Friar Lawrence’s plot — not learning until later that Friar Lawrence relied on sending word by letter, and the letter was not delivered.

Romeo’s reaction to the news is not to express any grief — it is as understated as the wailings of the Capulets and Nurse are overstated. But why does he show so little emotion? He is said to look “pale and wild,” “desperate,” and “life-weary.” He has apparently resolved on dying — another indication that that’s what he has wanted all along, though for him death and love are almost the same: “Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.” And later: “Thus with a kiss I die.” (This is echoed by Othello: “killing myself, to die upon a kiss.”)

Romeo instantly thinks of an apothecary who gathers herbs and can supply poison. This seems an odd doubling: the apothecary is the dark double of Friar Lawrence, who also gathers herbs but makes them into sleeping potions. Romeo cannot ask Friar Lawrence for the poison if only because F. L. is back in Verona, and he (Romeo) is in Mantua.

In 5.2 we hear that the letter was not delivered, so Lawrence must get to the Capulet monument before Romeo gets there (he apparently concludes that Romeo will somehow get word of Juliet’s “death”), and must get there as soon as Juliet wakes, so that she is not left alone in the vault, where she might be frightened to death.

In 5.3 just about everybody turns up at the Capulet vault, beginning with Paris. (Why does he not want to be seen strewing flowers?) Next comes Romeo and Balthasar, though they soon separate. Balthasar hides on stage. Stage directions say he “retires.” Maybe he has to  go some distance, because he does not witness or hear the sword fight between Romeo and Paris. This might be difficult to stage. And we get a rapid series of entrances: Friar Lawrence, then the Boy and Watch, then Balthasar again, then Lawrence again, then the Prince, then the Capulets, and finally the Mongagues. Has Shakespeare daringly borrowed this string of entrances from the world of comedy?

The corpses start to pile up too. Tybalt’s body is already there, and we soon get that of Paris, and then Romeo, and finally Juliet, who was “dead” and then alive and then dead again. All the dead except Mercutio. Why isn’t he mentioned by name? — the Prince only says he lost “a brace of kinsmen: (i.e., Paris and Mercutio). We hear that Lady Montague has also died. The only other one not on stage is Benvolio. Has Shakespeare forgotten about him? (In the bad quarto, maybe a memorial reconstruction, Benvolio is also said to be “deceased.”)

We then get two long speeches explaining to the Capulets and Montagues what has happened. Maybe Shakespeare felt this was also necessary because the complexity of the sleeping-potion plot might leave the audience a little confused. The Prince concludes by saying that some will be punished, and some pardoned. But who are they? It would appear that the Capulets and Montagues, now reconciled, have suffered enough. Maybe Lawrence will be pardoned, and maybe the apothecary will be punished.

It’s a painful ending, as the young lovers are dead — along with three (and maybe four) other young men, wiping out an entire generation. We’re only left with the older generation, whose ancient quarrel was the cause of all the trouble.

Questions have been raised about whether the play is a “tragedy” in the same sense as the great later tragedies. It doesn’t seem to be about “character” or about choices that characters make. Romeo did not at first intend that anybody die in the fight in Act 1 — he was trying to make peace. Mercutio did not set out to fight Tybalt, but was drawn into it. Capulet only wanted, in his domineering way, to marry off his daughter safely and securely, not to cause her death. Friar Lawrence meant to save both Romeo and Juliet and ended up causing both their deaths. The sleeping-potion plot miscarries only because a letter was not delivered in timely fashion. If Friar Lawrence had arrived at the vault a little earlier, R and J would have escaped, and all would have been well. This may be a play about being in the wrong place and the wrong time. The lovers are “star-crossed,” unlucky.

Is there a connection between the ancient quarrel, about which nobody remembers the cause, and the fact that the tragedy results from a series of mistakes, not deliberate and intentional acts? But then again maybe tragedy deals often with “purposes mistook, fall’n on th’inventors’ heads.”

Michael:

Romeo’s happy anticipation is short-lived, but his dream of being wakened from death by Juliet is ominous. The shock and grief at news of Juliet’s death is left to the actor rather than expressed in the language. But the speed of R’s resolution is threatening. I like the idea of the apothecary as the dark double of Friar Laurence.

5.2 is a plausible account of the undoing of FL’s plot and indicates its fragility.

5.3 is the long ending scene that begins with Paris bringing flowers to Juliet. Romeo’s suicide note is entrusted to Balthasar, but it’s not clear why Romeo wants to take the ring from Juliet’s finger, what his “dear employment” is. The tomb must be the discovery space, which is usually curtained, not the trap door that is the usual tomb. Romeo and Paris duel in front of it, and Romeo must drag Paris into the now opened tomb space. Its power as image will brood over the ending, four of the five young bodies, absent only Mercutio.

If the rapid entrances and exits seem drawn from comedy, perhaps the tragic acts are similarly suggestive of a transposed comedy, Romeo’s kiss of Juliet, then his toast to her in the apothecary’s poison, even Juliet’s mild chiding of Romeo for having drunk all the poison, then her kiss, perhaps the dagger as well (“this is thy sheath”).

Yes, the stage quickly fills with watchmen, prince, the Capulets, Montegue, and Friar Laurence, everyone but the nurse and Benvolio. The long speech of FL might be seen as awkward in other theatrical contexts, but here it seems necessary to untangle the plot complications. Importantly, he attests to the “comic” reunification, in marriage, of the lovers, but now in their deaths.

The plays does seem to carry out the thumbnail description of tragedy, later expressed in Hamlet (“purposes mistook” etc.), but its poignancy lies in all the young people dead and the older generation left to mourn. But has Shakespeare experimented with pouring tragedy into apparent comedy structures?

Dusty:

I like  your way of putting it — Shakespeare pours tragic content into comic structures. Or, if you think about the restoration of order at the end of Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, or the reunion (in death) of the lovers in Antony and Cleopatra, maybe Shakespeare is suggesting that the arc of comedy and tragedy are really the same.