The setting for the scene is in Friar Lawrence’s cell. Paris is making wedding arrangements with the Friar for his impending marriage to Juliet tomorrow. (imagine what the Friar is thinking as he learns of the developing news from Paris - the young girl he just married to Romeo is now being married off to Paris! ) The Friar asks why is Capulet insisting on such a quick wedding? Paris responds that it is Capulet's will, and he is in agreement with his new father-in-law. Paris also mentions that Juliet is crying a great deal, and Capulet feels that her wedding will take her mind off her unhappiness and stop her excessive crying.
Juliet arrives to speak to the Friar for advise on how to get out of her predicament. Imagine her surprise when she sees Paris! Paris, feeling as if he already "owns" her - although he's never really spoken to her - is quite forward in insisting that she is in love with him
Look at lines 20 through 40 and see if you can see the same strategy Juliet used on her mother in the last scene as she is using on Paris. How can the lines be interpreted differently than how Paris understands them?
Line 18:When Juliet says she will be happy when she is a wife, Paris thinks she means when she is a wife to him, but she means when she is a wife to Romeo.
Lines 23: Paris thinks that the“he” refers to him, (Juliet, “I love him….”) Paris, and not Romeo.
Juliet very cleverly gets rid of Paris by saying that she must make confession to the Friar, which is always done in privacy with the priest.
What is Juliet threatening to do after Paris leaves?
This is foreshadowing; Juliet threatens to stab herself with a dagger, which echoes what Romeo threatened to do in front of the Friar, and (Spoiler Alert!) how she really does die a few days later.
What would Juliet rather do than marry Paris? There are five things she’d rather do. What are they?
She'd rather:
jump off a building
walk with a gang of thieves
chain herself up with wild animals
hide herself in a charnel house
bury herself with a dead man in his death shroud
A shroud is a burial cloth in which a corpse is buried.
A charnel house is a structure with walls but no roof where bodies are thrown. The house is open to the sky which allows vultures to come and prey on the bodies. This was used and is still used in some countries as a method of disposal of the dead.
Reeky: smelly
Chapless: without the lower jaw. When the body decomposes, the ligaments rot away allowing the bones to disconnect - for example, the ligaments which attach the jaw to the skull will rot away over time, allowing the jaw to separate.
do What does the Friar suggest Juliet do?
She
Sh w Go home and pretend she is happy to go along with her father’s plan to marry Paris. That night she is to sleep alone, without the Nurse.
He tells her to take the poison, which will make her seem dead. She will have pale skin, no pulse, no warmth and no breath.
She will seem to be in a death-like state for forty-two hours.
How long, according to the Friar, will she be asleep? 42 hours
Is he confident that it will work? Yes!
What is the Friar going to do next?
The Friar is going to send a letter with a brother telling Romeo the plan. Romeo is to sneak back into Verona, to the underground crypt where Juliet is “buried” and wait with the Friar for Juliet to wake up. The two lovers will then leave for Mantua where they will live until the Friar is able to tell the parents what really happened and then they will be able to come home with great fanfare and forgiveness.
Read Act 4; Scene 2:
Juliet returns from her meeting with the Friar with a sudden change of attitude. She apologizes to her father for her behavior and tells him she is willing to be married to Paris.
Very important plot point! Lord Capulet is so pleased with Juliet's change of attitude that he hits on the brilliant idea of moving the wedding up one day to Wednesday morning. Again, this is very sudden and very rash (which is not the first time he has done something like this). Lady Capulet, rather weakly, offers some protest to his decision (there's not enough time to prepare food, etc) but as usual, he doesn't listen to her and brushes her thoughts aside. Perhaps Capulet wishes to rush the marriage to make sure Paris cannot back out.
Act 4, Scene 3:
Lady Capulet seems unusually subdued and perhaps solicitous (showing concern) to her soon-to-be married daughter when she volunteers to help her prepare for the morning's nuptials (wedding), which are only a few hours away.
But Juliet says she is fine and can prepare by herself. When she bids her mother and the nurse good night, she is perhaps thinking that this might be the last time she will ever see them.
What are the things Juliet is afraid of?
That it’s not going to work and that she will wake up and forced to marry Paris.
What if she wakes up in the tomb before Romeo shows up?
She is afraid that the Friar might have given her real poison.
She is afraid she might see Tybalt’s ghost.
She might wake up early and smell rotting bodies.
She is afraid that the smell might suffocate her.
She is afraid that the fear will drive her insane and that she will pluck Tybalt’s bones from the grave, and beat her brains out with the bone from her dead grandfather’s leg bone. She is afraid that she will hear the mandrake’s scream and that will drive her crazy.
The heightened fear Juliet feels is intensified by Shakespeare's very rich language which he has filled with explicit imagery:
"Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no health some air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?"
The words "stifled", "Foul mouth", no "health some air breathes in" and "strangled" all convey the feeling of being suffocated, which is one of Juliet's fears.
And
"Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud...."
The words "blood" and "green" (which in this case means newly) appeal to the sense of sight and the word "festering, which means rotting, conjures up the sight and odor of rot.
"So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad;"
The words "loathsome smell" obviously refer to the rancid smell of the catacombs (the underground tombs where bodies were buried).
The "shrieks of mandrakes" are the deranged and frightening screams of the mandrakes as they are "torn out of the earth", which echoes the feeling of something being torn or ripped. The line, "What with loathsome smells, / And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth..." create a sympathetic, visceral (physical) sensation of sound (shrieks) and (torn out of the earth) pain in the reader. Juliet's soliloquy is a beautiful example of imagery.
The mandrake is a plant which looks eerily like a little man. It is featured in the film, "Pan's Labyrinth" and in the Harry Potter series. It is a plant of myth and legend. One legend is that it grows under the gallows where murderers are hanged, and at midnight, if it is torn from the earth it will scream. Another legend is that a mortal will be driven insane by the shrieks of the mandrake.
A mandrake root:
Juliet works herself into such a state of fear and panic that she thinks she sees her cousin's ghost, Tybalt, searching for Romeo, and in terror, she downs the Friar's potion in an instant.
Read and discuss Act 4, Scene 4
What is Lord Capulet doing?
He is making the food for the wedding feast.
What time of day or night is it?
It’s three in the morning, before the dawn of Juliet's wedding day.
What is the tone of the scene?
Joyous. Ebullient. Teasing. Joking.
What does Lady Capulet tease her husband about?
She teases him about being a womanizer.
"Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time..."
The Nurse teases Capulet by calling him a "cot-quean" or an old woman for being in the kitchen cooking.
Apparently, Capulet is in a good mood because he has gotten his way and doesn't take offense at the teasing.
What is the Nurse’s name?
Angelica
The three seem to have forgotten their earlier disagreements and are joking with each other.
Read and discuss Act 4, Scene 5:
It is early the next morning, the day of Juliet's wedding to Paris, and the Nurse enters to wake her. Remember, the Nurse is not privy to the plot Juliet and the Friar have created. True to form, the Nurse starts joking as she enters the room, and the jokes are a little naughty and alludes to Juliet's wedding night with Paris. When she draws the curtain on Juliet's bed, she notices that Juliet is still dressed in her clothes from the night before - the Friar's vial is as good as his word - she will not wake up and looks to all appearances as if she is dead. The Nurse, thinking Juliet has died, panics and her cries of anguish wake the household and send the parents running into Juliet's room.
What type of irony is shown in this scene?
Is it verbal, situational or dramatic?
Dramatic:
Why is it dramatic?
The parents don’t know that Juliet is alive, but we do.
What are the symptoms Lord Capulet sees on Juliet’s body?
"She's cold;
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated;
Death lies on her like an untimely frost,
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field."
The above are examples of imagery (for we can feel and see the frost of Death and see and smell Juliet as the sweetest flower in all the field) and of simile (Death is lying on her LIKE an early frost, which kills the first young buds of spring.)
At moments of extreme emotion, Capulet becomes incapable of expressing his feelings. At the street brawl, it was Lady Capulet who was very vocal in condemning Tybalt's death; Capulet, who was Tybalt's uncle by blood, remained speechless. At the realization that his only child is dead, he says:
"Death, that hath taken her hence to make me wail,
Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak."
The above is an example of personification for Death is referred to as having the ability to tie up Capulet's tongue, rendering him speechless in the face of such overwhelming grief.
The above are examples of imagery (for we can feel and see the frost of Death and see and smell Juliet as the sweetest flower in all the field) and of simile (Death is lying on her LIKE an early frost, which kills the first young buds of spring.
She is cold, her blood is settled and her joints are stiff and she has no breath.
(This is an example of imagery)
What do you think the Friar is thinking when he enters Capulet’s house?
My plan worked!
According to Lord Capulet who has married Juliet?
Death has married Juliet. This is personification.
Death has laid on her like a frost This is also imagery.
What is the Nurse’s line (Line 49) an example of?
O woeful, woeful, woeful death! Alliteration
Do you think this is an entirely sad scene?
It's a strange scene because we know Juliet is not dead (dramatic irony) but we're watching her parents and the Nurse carrying on as if she is.
What parts of it do you think might be humorous?
The Friar and Paris arrive, expecting this to be his wedding day, not a day of mourning for a dead bride. What do you suppose the Friar might be thinking? Do you think he may have second thoughts about this plot or concerns that the potion might not work and she is awake, ready, tragically to be wed - or worse, that it works too well and she is dead?
The Friar plays his role well:
"Come, is the bride ready to go to Church?"
Lord Capulet answers:
"Ready to go, but never to return.
O son! the night before thy wedding day
Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,
Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;
My daughter he hath wedded; I will die,
And leave him all; live, living, all is Death's."
The above are bereaved lines spoken by a distraught father. He is saying Death, and not Paris, is his son-in-law. Capulet compares Juliet to a flower and continues the metaphor by saying Death has lain with her and taken Juliet's virginity (deflowered her), and like earth, which has swallowed all his life's hopes but her, Death will be his heir who will inherit all of his earthly possessions.
Lady Capulet laments (mourns):
"Accursed, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!"
And she calls this day:
"Most miserable hour that e'er time saw/
In lasting labour of his pilgrimage."
In this dark reversal of the pilgrim metaphor, first used so flirtatiously by Romeo and Juliet, with so much excitement of youth discovering love for the first time, the reference to "Pilgrimage" now conveys a grinding, eternal trudge of Time and this hour of young Juliet's death is the worst hour of all eternity.
Capulet, Lady Capulet, the Nurse, and Paris form a chorus of four wailing their grief over the death of Juliet, but their words do not soar with the usual beauty and brilliance of other Shakespeare characters singing the songs of tragedy and loss. The cries of the Capulets, of the Nurse and of Paris are ponderous, ordinary, flat. The lack of rarified beauty in their expression of profound grief seems to suggest either a shallowness of feeling or a lack of intellect, wit and refinement of character.
The Friar steps in and cuts their caterwauling short:
"Peace, ho, for shame! confusion's cure lives not
In these confusions. Heaven and yourself
Had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all,
And all the better is it for the maid:
Your part in her you could not keep from death,
But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.
The most you sought was her promotion;
For 'twas your heaven she should be advanced;
And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
The Friar is saying that you and Heaven had a part in creating her; however, Heaven now has all of Juliet and Juliet is the better for it. The parents' part in creating Juliet was mortal and could not keep her from death, but Heaven now has the eternal part of Juliet, her soul, which is what you want for your daughter - her soul to reside for all eternity in Heaven. Since that is what you ultimately want for your daughter, then why are you crying?
"O, in this love, you love your child so ill,
That you run mad, seeing that she is well;
She's not well married that lives married long;
But she's best married that dies married young."
The Friar tells them that they are not loving their daughter well by showing wild grief when she is better off in Heaven. She is not best married who lives a long married life, but she is best married who dies an early death.
The Friar then offers some concrete orders to the parents: dry your tears, sprinkle rosemary, which is an herb symbolizing remembrance but is also sweet smelling and will disguise the odor of the body in the stifling July heat, on Juliet's corse - an archaic word for corpse, or dead body. Dress the body in her finest array (clothes) and bear her body to the church.
Capulet gives the directive that the wedding festivities should then be changed to one of funereal solemnity:
"All things that we ordained festival,
Turn from their office to black funeral;
Our instruments to melancholy bells,
Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
And all things change them to the contrary."
Vocabulary:
Ordained: ordered
Festival: festive; happy, appropriate to a great and happy celebration like a wedding
Instruments: musical instruments
Melancholy: deeply sorrowful
Sullen: moody, dark,
Dirges: dark funeral marches, or musical pieces played to accompany a coffin to a grave
Corse: archaic word for corpse or dead body
Contrary: the opposite
What type of irony is Capulet’s lines on page 890, lines 84 – 90. Explain.
Why is there a comic scene with musicians at the end of Act 4?
At that time professional musicians were little thought of and held the same status as servants, but like today, many musicians were underpaid and foregoing money - and a free meal - would be painful.
Before the Nurse leaves (which marks her last appearance in the play) she makes a little joke, which is quite in keeping with her usual jovial self. She bids the players:
"Honest goodfellows, ah, put up, put up;
For well you know, this is a pitiful case."
Peter, the Nurse's "man" or reluctant "boyfriend", floats in and with great fanfare and claiming to be of heavy heart, implores them to play for him some "merry dump". The musicians respond that now is not the right time to play music, which annoys Peter so much that he threatens to beat them. There ensues a lot of musical puns:
"I'll re you. I'll fa you; do you note me?
Peter asks Simon Catling, "Why music with her silver sound?" The word "catling" was cat gut which was used at the time for violin strings.
The word "rebeck" from the musician's name Hugh Rebeck was the Elizabethan word for a three stringed instrument.
The word "soundpost" was a dowel inside a string instrument, which controlled the quality of sound.
The very bad pun that Peter belabors is that musicians do not receive gold (money) for their playing.
This annoys the musicians and they call Peter a "pestilent knave" - a plague-riddled fool - as they pack up their instruments to leave.
The Second Musician hits upon a brilliant idea that they will "tarry" - or linger or wait or loiter - for the mourners and in that way they will get a free dinner.
Did you get all the puns at the end with the musicians? What are they?
What are crotchets?
Crotchets are quarter notes and the term is still used today in England.
Modern audiences might not find this comic scene to be that funny, but remember that in Elizabethan England, the groundlings, those audience members who paid their ha' penny to stand in front of the stage, were illiterate and probably enjoyed watching physical scenes about people like themselves. The humor wasn't sophisticated but it was probably loud, big, physical and very naughty - and probably got a large share of the belly laughs from the aristocrats sitting up in their expensive box seats.
The above is a shot of the Globe Theatre as it might have looked in Elizabethan England. The crowd standing in front of the stage would be the groundings, poor illiterate people who paid their ha'penny to see the plays. The aristocrats sat above in their private boxes.
