Understanding Romeo & Juliet, pt 1B

Understanding Romeo and Juliet, Part 1B This is a continuation of Understanding Romeo and Juliet 1A. We were talking about a central question of Act I: What is love, really? We're going to look at these characters: Benvolio, Lady Capulet, the Nurse, Romeo before meeting Juliet, and after, and Juliet before meeting Romeo, and after. Let's turn to Act 1, scene 1, line 233. Benvolio is trying to comfort Romeo who is broken hearted about some woman named Rosaline. Benvolio tells his cousin, "Be ruled by me," which means, follow my advice. "Forget to think of her." You know? Forget about her. Romeo replies, "O, teach me how I should to forget to think!" Benvolio says, "By giving liberty unto thine eyes. Examine other beauties." In other words, look around at other girls. Some other pretty face will distract you. Does that sound like good advice? There's a good chance you've told some heartbroken friend the same thing: "Look around you. There are plenty of fish in the sea." And it's true. There are a lot of options in the world. It's not very romantic; it suggests that one is as good as another. But it is practical advice. Is that what you think love is? You can just pick someone you like, who likes you back, as long as there aren't any real obstacles to being together? Benvolio doesn't talk about there being one perfect person. Do you think that there are probably several people that you'll meet in your life with whom you could live, love and be happy? Next, Lady Capulet, Juliet's mother. Look at Act I, scene 3, line 85. What does Juliet's mom think love is? "Can you love the gentleman?" she asks. In other words, can you love County Paris? And how should she go about deciding if she can love him? Look at him, she says. To start with, he's good looking. He was drawn with "beauty's pen." So, for her, that's one ingredient. She then begins a long analogy that compares County Paris with a book. "This precious book of love, this unbound lover," she calls him. These are unbound books that haven't been attached to leather covers. Lady Capulet is using an analogy that compares the man to the pages of a book, and the woman to the beautiful leather book cover. Right? So what is the the value of the man compared to the value of the woman, in her eyes? But then she says something even more revealing. Lady Capulet says, "So shall you share all that he doth possess by having him, making yourself no less." She's saying that Juliet, by marrying Paris, will share possession of all his stuff, and will not have to lower herself in any way. I believe she's pointing out that Paris is a high-ranking nobleman, just as Juliet is from a high-ranking family, so Juliet won't lose any social status by marrying him. She might even gain some social status. So what does that mean Lady Capulet thinks is the purpose of love? What does she think love is, exactly? And while Lady Capulet sees love in social terms, the Nurse sees its physical dimensions. Look at line 45, now, in that same scene, Act 1, scene 3. The nurse loves to make bawdy comments. (Bawdy means it's indecently pertaining to sex, but in a humorous, inoffensive sort of way. Here she talks about when Juliet was a little girl of 3 or 4 and fell down, and the Nurse's late husband had said, "Dost thou fall upon thy face? (Oh, did you fall on your face?) Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit," meaning, Well, when you become older, you'll fall on your back...for a man. But the real punchline is that little Juliet stood up and said, Aye, or Yes, I will. So, when the Nurse hears about Juliet maybe getting married, that's the story she thinks to tell. So for the Nurse, what is marriage about? What is love to the nurse? Further, when the Nurse finds out that the man Juliet is supposed to consider marrying is County Paris, she immediately points out how good-looking he is, "a man of wax," in other words, like a mannequin with perfectly sculpted features. I guess he's like a male model. And when Lady Capulet says Juliet will make herself "no less," the Nurse makes another bawdy joke, that women aren't made less by men, they're made bigger, as in pregnant. Lastly, when she urges Juliet to go check out this Paris guy, she tells her to seek "happy nights to happy days." She's telling Juliet to get a man who can make her happy at night. as well as during the days. And she has a point, It embarrasses some of us to talk about it, but intimacy is an important part of love. So, again, what is love to the Nurse? What does love mean to her? Now we come to Romeo, before he meets Juliet. Some people are surprised that Romeo starts out the play in love with someone other than Juliet. They shouldn't be. Most people when they meet the love of their life, that person has usually had boyfriends or girlfriends before. That's how we figure out what kind of person we want. We try out different people. Romeo, when talking about Rosaline, is incredibly irritating, in my opinion. I think Shakespeare was making fun of the love poetry of his day, like making fun of greeting card poetry. To me, a lot of it, though not all of it, seems cheesy and artificial. Look at the well-crafted contrasts in Act 1, scene 1, line 183. "O heavy lightness, serious vanity, misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health" and so on, ad nauseam. It's clever. Love can make you feel contradictory things, that's true. But do his lines contain any of the intimate and specific details that would come from actually experiencing love for another human being? An editor or teacher might point out that he's writing entirely in metaphors and abstract ideas without any concrete details to anchor them. Or to get right to the point, there's no heart in his words, no real feeling. Not only that, the whole thing is one-sided. Rosaline has rejected him. But at this point, that's what Romeo thinks love is. What do you call it when a person is in love with the idea of being in love? That's what's going on here. But in Act 1, scene 4, Romeo sees Juliet and is struck by the thunderbolt. He isn't play acting anymore. In this famous speech, love isn't a thing, a noun, like "sick health" or "loving hate," now it's a verb. It's something that happens. She teaches "the torches to burn bright." And there are contrasts here too, but they're original and imaginative. She is like a bright jewel standing out against an Ethiopian's black skin, a simile that rightfully makes us uncomfortable in a racially diverse world. This was written 400 years ago in a European society with very little racial diversity. But you have to admit, it creates a concrete and vivid image, just like the "snowy dove, trooping with crows." Even if it's racist, which it is, you can see that sharp contrast in your mind's eye, right? And then he acknowledges what we're thinking, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, for I ne'er saw true beauty till this night." What he felt for Rosaline was fake, and now he knows it because he has experienced something more personal, more powerful and more real. And then when he talks to Juliet, he isn't just clever, he's charming and seductive. She's charming too, but we'll get to her in a minute. When they talk about people pressing their hands together in prayer, and touching the hands of the statue of a saint, he says, "Have not saints lips and holy palmers too?" Palmers are people carrying palm leaves brought from the Holy Land, like Catholics on Palm Sunday, but it's also a pun on the palms of their hands. He says, "Let lips do what hands do. They pray." He's pretty smooth. Juliet definitely likes him back but she isn't about to kiss some boy she just met 30 seconds ago. She says that lips are for prayer. So he says, OK, you don't have to kiss me, but just stand still while I kiss you. So he does, saying that like a worshipping pilgrim, he's cleansing himself of his sins by touching the saint's statue. She's playing too. She says, oh, then you put your sin on my lips! And Romeo says, oh, I'm sorry, let me take it back, and kisses her again. These lines recreate the crackling electricity that happens between people when they're in love. And let me tell you, there's nothing better. Now, Juliet has undergone a transformation too. Remember the scene with her mother? Before meeting Romeo, she'd had no experience with love. But she's smart enough to know that she doesn't know anything yet. Look at Act I, scene 3, line 71. Lady Capulet asks if she'd be interested in getting married. Juliet responds, "It is an honor that I dream not of." That means she recognizes that marriage is an honor, but that she hasn't thought much about it. Remember, she's less than 3 weeks from her 14th birthday, which was a marriageable age 400 years ago, but even then, as her father tells Paris, 14 was still pretty young. So Juliet says, basically, I know I should be happy about the idea, but I didn't expect it to happen yet. But it sounds like she's willing to be married if her parents think that's best, don't you think? And then when her mom asks Juliet if she can love County Paris, she says, like the dutiful daughter she is, "I'll look to like if looking liking move. But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly." Again, the dutiful daughter. "Consent" is a key word here. She says, I'll take a look at Paris if looking can make me like him. But I won't try to like him any more than you want me to. For Juliet in Act I, scene 3, what is love? What does it mean to her at this point? Of course, two scenes later, everything changes for her. Juliet meets Romeo and the two of them experience love at first sight. Now, I don't know if you believe in love at first sight, and I don't know if I believe in it either, but I see on TV news -- you know how at the end of the broadcast they like to add in a feel-good story? More than once, I've seen some old guy saying, I saw her across the room and I knew she was the one for me. I told my buddy, Jim, that's the girl I'm going to marry. And here they are 50 years later, still very much in love. So, even if it's just random chance, it must happen sometimes, right? More often, the person thinks that, says that, and it turns out not to be true. But some small percentage of the time, that must actually happen, right? Love at first sight must actually exist, even if it's very rare. And that's what happens with Romeo and Juliet. They meet and instantly know that they will love each other until their dying day. So as we saw in that scene at the feast, or dance, or ball, that Juliet was totally into it. She was engaged and playful. And you probably didn't notice -- I didn't at first -- but in that famous scene we looked at a minute ago, they're rhyming. Look at scene 5, lines 104 to 117. Look at the rhyme scheme: hand, this, stand, kiss. Much, this, touch, kiss. Too, prayer, do, despair. Sake, take. Recognize that? That's a sonnet. It's like they're singing a duet. They trade lines back and forth, speaking a single sonnet with two voices. It's one of the most beautiful things you will ever read. But to see what Juliet thinks about love now, you have to look at the final lines of Act I. A lot of students say they like the way Juliet is depicted here. She's no dummy. She doesn't say to the Nurse, "hey, who's the guy there" with an obvious, dreamy look in her eyes. She's cleverer than that. First, it's who's that random guy? Oh, OK, who's that guy? Oh, Petruchio. Then she points at Romeo and says, "What's he that follows here, that would not dance?" And when the Nurse goes to find out, Juliet says to herself something that's shocking in its suddenness: "If he be married, my grave is like to be my wedding bed." On the basis of a few minutes with him, Juliet is committing herself to marry him and no one else. If she can't marry Romeo, there is no other, and she will never marry. And then, when she finds out he's a Montague and a mortal enemy, she speaks four powerful lines: "My only love spring from my only hate!" Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me that I must love a loathed enemy." She isn't happy; she's horrified. Today, "prodigious" means very large, but back then, it meant monstrous. She feels like she has given birth to a monstrous child, but she does not say she doesn't love him anymore. She's in it now, for better or for worse. She doesn't want to love Romeo, but she does love him and that can't be changed. Juliet doesn't have a choice. For her, love is an absolute. It's like gravity or time. It exists whether you want it to or not. She couldn't be more different than she was two scenes ago. What does love mean to Juliet now? All right, here's an index of the topics we discussed in this video. Don't miss the thrilling conclusion in Understanding Romeo & Juliet part 1C.