Romeo and Juliet; Act 5

Act 5, Scene 1

Setting:

Street in Mantua

Romeo is walking down the street talking to himself about his dreams.  There is a dream motif (motif is a recurring theme or object or concept in a piece of literature) throughout the play. Earlier, in Act 1, Scene 4, when Romeo says that he has been having dreams,  Mercutio replies that dreams lie and are the product of an idle mind.  These dreams have given Romeo a sense of unease of what is coming in the near future, a sense of foreboding, of what might lie ahead.

Romeo is a superstitious, emotional fellow who believes in fate, and destiny, and dreams, and omens, and portents of evil. At the end of Act 1, Scene 4, before he enters the Capulet house and meets Juliet and the moment which will forever change his life, he says,"....for my mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date / With this night's revels and expire the term / Of a despised life, closed in my breast, / By some vile forfeit of untimely death."

 However, last night Romeo dreamt something joyful, that he would receive some wonderful news. He dreamt that he was dead and when Juliet kissed him he came to life.  This is an example of foreshadowing and  displays situational and dramatic irony.

Do the ensuing events support Romeo's beliefs about dreams, ("Some consequence yet hanging in the stars / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date / With this night's revels and expire the tern / Of a despised life, closed in my breast, / By some vile forfeit of untimely death",  or Mercutio's view of dreams ("Dreams lie...")

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A thought:

Do you believe that FATE rules one's life?
Do you agree with Romeo? That one's life is fated; that is,  your life is ruled by destiny? That your life is preordained, controlled by supernatural forces, by God,  by spirits, or by the stars?  Your life is not your own and that despite what ever it is you chose to do, your steps are being controlled by external forces.

If you believe that Fate rules one's life, then go through the play and list all the many references Romeo and Juliet make to the stars, to fortune, to fate,  and then analyze if it were the stars, fortune or fate that caused the event to happen or was it merely circumstance.

If You Believe in Free Will, Then You are the Captain of  Your Life

Do you believe in FREE WILL?
Free will is the belief that we control our lives and that our lives are determined by our choices, our decisions, our character, our strength, our intellect.  There is no destiny or fate - we make our own destiny; we make our own fate.

What were some of the decisions the two lovers made that led to disastrous results?  What better choices could they have made? Or were there any other options available to them that would have been better?

Create a chart detailing the significant decisions Romeo and Juliet made, and the consequences that occurred as a result of those decisions.

Create another chart detailing other possible decisions Romeo and Juliet could have made, and the possible consequences which could have occurred. Are the possible consequences better or worse?

Do you believe in DETERMINISM?
Determinism is the belief that our lives are determined by the social, political, economic, historical forces in effect in our lives.  These forces have been evolving before your birth and affect your family, your social class, your town, your country. The social, political, economic environment in which you were born not only profoundly impacts the person you are, and the choices you make but also whether you even have a choice in many of the things that happen to you.

Consider this: Romeo and Juliet were born into families engaged in a bitter gang feud. Juliet, as a young woman, was born at a time in which women and girls had no liberty to chart their own destinies or to make choices regarding their own lives.  The choices and decisions the two lovers made were constrained by who they were and the time and place they were born. How much freedom did the two lovers have to make their own choices?

Go through the play and analyze all the elements that were in place in Romeo and Juliet's lives: the types of families in which they were born; their ages: Romeo's personality; Juliet's lack of freedom; her parents' personalities; the Nurse as Juliet's surrogate mother. How did all these elements affect, bend and restrict the decisions they made? Think about this: The fact that, as a girl, Juliet could not go outside the family home without being closely monitored strongly affected some of the decisions she could and could not make.

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Assignment:

Write an essay defending your position and give evidence from the play which supports your thesis.

The Three Fates which Control People's Lives 

If  you believe that Romeo and Juliet had no voice in what happened to them, but were puppets of forces of destiny or fate far greater than they, then you might want to use the following thesis:

Thesis: Romeo and Juliet's were not active players in their own lives, their fates were not of their own choosing, but rather they were passive figures that fate, or destiny, or supernatural forces beyond their control, acted upon them.

If you believe in FREE WILL, that Romeo and Juliet alone were the agents of change in their own lives, then you might want to use the following thesis:

Thesis: Romeo and Juliet's lives were not the result of fate or destiny, but rather the result of a series of decisions they made in reaction to their circumstances.

If you believe in determinism, that Romeo and Juliet were imprisoned from birth by powerful socio-economic-political forces beyond their control, and their choices were limited by these forces, then you might want to use the following thesis:

Thesis: Romeo and Juliet had very little real choice in the decisions they made, bound as they were by the overpowering forces of history, politics, economics and sociology of their time.  Due to societal forces beyond their control, their lives and the decisions they could make were circumscribed, and a tragic or at the very least, an  unsatisfying conclusion was inevitable.

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Continuing the story:

Balthasar, Romeo's man or servant, tells Romeo that he saw Juliet’s body lying in the Capel monument - the Capulet family's mausoleum or burial chapel.

Romeo is devastated by this news and screams defiance at the stars, which he sees as controlling his fate.  (Those who believe in astrology - and many people did in the 1500 - 1600's, including well regarded astronomers -  believe that the stars' positions relative to the sun, the moon and the earth determine one's fate.) “Then I defy you stars!” He rallies himself to action and commands Balthasar to fetch pen and paper and hire horses for the journey back to Verona. 

Balthasar is frightened by the wild behavior of his master and begs him to control himself.

Romeo tries to convince Balthasar that he is wrong to think he is suicidal, and then
 asks if he has received any letters or news from the Friar as he had promised, but the servant replies no.

Romeo, in a suicidal state,  goes to an apothecary, or a modern day pharmacist to see about purchasing some poison. (Romeo can go from happy to suicidal in about  0.06 seconds!)

A Little Side Note About the Setting, Lights and Language in the Elizabethan Theatre: 

In Elizabethan theatre, there were no artificial lights - the theaters had partial openings at the ceiling to allow sunlight to illuminate the stage.  The plays were matinees, or daytime performances, and began at two in the afternoon. Sets were at a minimum,  so to create in the minds of the audience the time of day or night, the weather, the setting, Shakespeare used his magnificent words to create the magical environment of the scene.















Here is how Romeo describes the apothecary and his small store:

I do remember an apothecary,
And hereabouts he dwell, which late I noted
In tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows,    (tattered: torn, in shreds from overuse)
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,        (culling: gathering together) (simples: herbs)
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;

And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes, and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.
Noting this penury, to myself I said
'An if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it me.
O, this same thought did forerun my need;
And this same needy man must sell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house."

Penury: poverty
Caitiff: cowardly base villain or more charitably, an unfortunate slave.

Note the strangeness of the shop, where there are strange, unsettling objects: a hanging tortoise, a stuffed alligator, ill-shaped (strange) fish, and bladders (animal skins used as bellows, which are devices to blow wind to light fires).

Note the sense of abandonment, of being forgotten: musty seeds (dusty from disuse), remnants (pieces) of thread, old cakes of rose (rose scented soaps) scattered about to make the shelves seem less barren.

Grammar:
Adverbial Clause; If a man did need a poison now,
Relative Pronoun: Whose
Adjective Clause: sale is present death in Mantua, ("whose" links poison with sale. The poison's sale means immediate death to the seller in Mantua if caught.)

If a man needed poison, this wretched impoverished apothecary would sell it.  But if he sold the poison and got caught, then he would be executed.

Romeo greets the apothecary and tells him immediately what he needs:

Come hither, man. I see that thou are poor:
Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have             (Hold: wait) (ducats: pieces of gold)
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear      (dram: a unit of liquid)
As will disperse itself through all the veins       (disperse: to spread)
That the life-weary taker may fall dead
And that the trunk may be discharged of breath (trunk: body)
As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

Imagery:
Romeo wants a dram of poison that will cause his breath to be expelled from his body as violently, powerfully and quickly as fast ignited powder explodes from a lethal cannon's mouth. 

The above line vividly and violently creates for the reader and the audience the physical force Romeo is seeking in the poison he is buying. 

Figurative Language:
Simile: Comparing two unlike things (the breath from the body and the powder from the cannon).

Paradox:
Fatal cannon's womb. The womb is associated with giving life, not death.

The apothecary doesn’t want to sell it to him for fear of being caught and executed. 

Apothecary:

Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law   (mortal: causing death)
Is death to any he that utters them.  (utters: says or speaks)

Romeo tells him that the world is not his friend; the world treats him with contempt.  He is living in need and oppression by the world. So why live in poverty? Flout the world’s laws, which oppress you and keep you in poverty! Sell me the drug and live in wealth!

Romeo:

"Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,   (famine: starvation)
Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;
The world is not thy friend nor the world's law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this."  (Here, Romeo is offering him money.)

The apothecary reluctantly agrees when he says "my poverty, not my will accepts."

Figurative Language:

Personification: "my poverty, not my will accepts." Poverty is a state of being, not a person, but in this line poverty is being described as accepting money.

Romeo responds with, "I pay thy poverty, and not thy will."

The apothecary gives him instructions on how to administer the dosage:

Put this in any liquid thing you will,
And drink it off;"

The apothecary also informs  him about the strength of the poison:

" and, if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight."  (dispatch: kill) 

Romeo says that he is the one giving the poison, not the apothecary. What is the poison?  Money.

"There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
That these poor compound that thou mayst not sell. (compounds: chemical make-up of poison)
I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.
Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh. (Get thyself in flesh: Eat and gain weight.)

Romeo, taking the poison, calls it a cordial (pronounced like cordj el), which is a sweet, after-dinner wine used as a dessert.  Irony: the unexpected use of the word "cordial" to describe a deadly poison gives that line a bitter and ironic twist and reveals just how much Romeo despises his life and wants to be rid of it.

"Come, cordial and not poison, go with me
To Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee."

Notice that poison is a recurring motif in many of Shakespeare's plays. Poisoning was the most "popular" and effective way of murdering someone in Elizabethan England, far more reliable, less dangerous to the killer and more effective than guns. Yes, there were guns in the 1600's but they were rudimentary, liable to misfire - exploding in the hand of the killer - and therefore more dangerous to the killer than to the intended victim. (Another drawback to the gun in the late 1500's to the early 1600's was that the aim was poor and might take out an innocent bystander rather than the intended victim.)

A handgun from the 1600's

Scene 2

Setting: Thursday in Friar Laurence's cell in Verona.

Although this is a very short scene, like Act 3, Scene 4 (in which Capulet offers Juliet's hand to Paris) and Act 4, Scene 2 (in which Capulet moves the wedding from Thursday to Wednesday) this scene also has a VERY important plot complication. There is a horrible plague going on in Verona which results in Brother Joseph being quarantined (isolated).  He cannot leave Verona to give Romeo the message that Juliet is not dead.  The friar is upset for the message is not “nice” or unimportant but very, very urgent!

This may seem like a "Deus ex Machina" - or a "machine of the gods",  an improbable plot contrivance to extricate the characters from a badly constructed plot complication, but this plot twist would sound VERY plausible to Elizabethan audiences.  Europe was roiled by a series of devastating plagues which decimated or wiped out millions of people from the 1300's to the 1600's.  No one knew about microbes or that the fleas found on rats were the carriers of the black plague.  However, they did have an inkling that it was infectious and so when the plague, the bubonic or the black death, was discovered in a home, the house and its occupants, were quarantined or sealed off for a few days until the people had died or had not developed the disease.

If the people had died, a heavy draft wagon, filled with corpses, would come around, with a coachman ringing a bell, chanting, "Bring out your dead!" And the survivors, if there were any, would carry out the bodies, which were then transported by the coachman to an open grave, where they were sprinkled with lime, and buried.  The terrified survivors covered their mouths with cloth, and carried religious icons as protection against this pestilence.  There was no cure.

The final plague, in 1665, ironically, was wiped out by the Great Fire of London in 1666, when a great conflagration roared through the wooden and straw buildings of the heavy populated city, killing all the rats and their plague-bearing fleas.  The fire effectively dried up a tributary of the River Thames called the Fleet, which was nothing more than an open sewer associated with rats, disease and poverty. People still suffered miserably from other health concerns - sanitation, disease, accidents, complications from childbirth, atrocious medical care (which, in many cases, not being treated by a doctor was better than being treated) - but dying a horrible gruesome death from the plague was no longer a major heath concern. 

The Friar greets Friar John warmly and wants to know what Romeo said to him when he visited him in Mantua to tell him the plans regarding Juliet.

But Friar John, or in some editions, Brother John, has some devastating news for the Friar - he was unable to leave Verono!

Friar John says:

Going to find a bare-foot brother out
One of our order, to associate me,    (associate: to accompany)
Here in this city visiting the sick,
And finding him, the searchers of the town, (searchers: health inspectors)
Suspecting that we both were in a house
Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
Sealed up the doors, and would not let us forth; (sealed up: quarantined)
So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed.

Bare-foot brother: the priests took a vow of poverty, which meant that many of them were bare-footed.

Friar John sought out a fellow friar who was visiting the sick, but the health inspectors, suspecting that they had been in a house with plague-infected people, forced them to be quarantined indoors.

The letter was never delivered. And Romeo does not know of the plan!  He thinks Balthazar is right - that Juliet is dead!

The Friar is quite upset and tells Brother John that the letter was not "nice" or unimportant but held grave importance. He tells the brother to get an "iron crow" or crowbar so that he can force open the doors of Juliet's burial chambers.

The Friar frets:

"Now must I to the monument alone;
Within three hours will fair Juliet wake:
She will beshrew me much that Romeo   (Beshrew: curse)
Hath had no notice of these accidents;
But I will write again to Mantua,
And keep her at my cell till Romeo come;
Poor living corse, closed in a dead man's tomb!"

Juliet will awaken in three hours (the potion's effect will last for forty-two hours).  She drank the potion  at about ten on Tuesday night and it is now about five p.m. Thursday afternoon.  But as it now stands, Romeo will not be there when she wakes.

The Friar will write Romeo another letter detailing the plan, and until Romeo arrives, the Friar will keep Juliet in his cell.  Or at least, that's the plan!

Paradox and Oxymoron:
Living corse: corse means corpse.

This is also (spoiler alert!) foreshadowing!

Act Five, Scene 3

The setting: Thursday night in the churchyard in front of Juliet's tomb.

Unlike Zeffirelli's and  Baz Luhrman's versions of ROMEO and JULIET,  the character of Paris shows up at Juliet's tomb, bearing flowers, a torch, and accompanied by his servant. Paris instructs his page, or servant, to stand apart, stretch-out with his ear to the ground to listen for footsteps, and to whistle if he hears anyone coming. After the page departs, Paris begins his obsequies, or funeral rituals to grieve Juliet's death, which are to strew flowers on her "bridal bed" each night and to water them, or wanting that (lacking that) to water them with his tears. But his obsequies are interrupted by the sharp whistle of the page, which indicates that someone is coming.  Paris withdraws into the darkness to see who has interrupted his mourning.

Enter Romeo! Bear in mind that the Friar's letter never reached him in Mantua and he does not know about the plot.  He only knows what Balthasar has told him - that he saw Juliet lying dead in the burial chambers.

Romeo issues a few short orders to Balthasar: To give him a mattock, similar to a pickaxe,  and a crowbar-like tool to wrench open the door to Juliet's tomb. He hands him a letter to deliver to his father early the next morning.  He warns Balthasar to "stand aloof", to stand at a distance, and regardless of what  he sees or hears, he is not to interrupt Romeo!  He explains part of the reason he is breaking into Juliet's tomb is to behold her face one last time, but the main reason is to take from her finger a ring for some important business.  Romeo warns him to go away, but if he is "jealous" or curious and tries to pry into his  business, Romeo threatens that:

"By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint
And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs:
The time and my intents are savage-wild,
More fierce and more inexorable far
Than empty tigers or the roaring sea."

Personification:
"And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs:"
A churchyard cannot be hungry, but the image is violent - that the churchyard will be fed with his body.

Romeo compares the time and his intentions to be "savage-wild", fiercer and more implacable than hungry tigers or a raging sea.

When he has convinced the young boy that he's serious, Romeo softens, gives the boy money, wishes him life and prosperity and calls him a "good fellow".

Balthasar says in an aside that he will hide himself and watch for he fears Romeo's manner and his intentions.

Romeo, now alone in front of the burial chamber's door, addresses it in an apostrophe as he forces the door open:

"Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, (Maw: throat)
Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,  (Gorged: fully sated, over filled)
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food!"

Apostrophe: Addressing an object as if it were human, or addressing an absent person.

Irony: Womb of death.  The womb is associated with life and birth, not death. In this case, Romeo is addressing the door to Juliet's tomb as if it were a hungry mouth of death, crammed with the body of Juliet ("the dearest morsel of the earth").  He is threatening to cram the mouth of death with one more body - his own.

This is also an extended metaphor, comparing the tomb with a hungry mouth of death.

But as we know, Romeo is not alone for Paris is hiding in the shadows watching.  When he sees Romeo opening the door, Paris recognizes him as the "banished haughty (arrogant) Montague, / That murdered my love's cousin..." and he blames him for being the cause of Juliet's death from grief. He makes the assumption that Romeo is there to vandalize and desecrate the family burial chambers.

Paris comes forward and tries to do a citizen's arrest on Romeo, saying, "Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee; / Obey, and go with me; for thou must die.

Strangely, Romeo is conciliatory, and with gentle compassionate words, urges Paris to save himself by leaving; otherwise, Romeo, the madman, will be forced to kill him and he does not want to take that sin upon his head. He takes the same tone with Paris as he did with Tybalt before the fight in which Mercutio was killed.

Romeo:

"I must indeed; and therefore came I hither. (He is answering Paris's "For thou must die!")
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man;
Fly hence, and leave me; think upon these gone;
Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth, (Affright: to frighten; allow the dead to frighten you.)
Put not another sin upon my head,
By urging me to fury: O, be gone!
By heaven, I love thee better than myself:
For I come hither armed against myself;
Stay not; be gone; live, and hereafter say,
A madman's mercy bade thee run away!"

But Paris refuses to leave and insists on arresting Romeo. Romeo is forced to draw his sword, and  quickly dispatches him in a  duel.

As they fight, Paris' page watches in the shadows, and becoming  frightened,  runs to call the "watch" - the town's security guards.

With Paris' last breath, he asks that his dying wish be honored - that  Romeo places his body next to Juliet's.

Romeo, magnanimous and compassionate in his grief, agrees to honor the dying youth's last wish.

O, give me thy hand,
One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave;
A grave? O no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth,
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light.
Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred.

Again, Romeo makes a reference to fortune: "One writ (written) with me in sour misfortune's book!" 
Both he and Romeo's names were written in the book of bitter misfortune. 

He then spies Juliet and again makes a reference to light - that even in death her beauty makes the death chamber a feasting presence full of light. 

Using irony, personification, and another apostrophe, Romeo addresses Death: "Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred."

The dead man is Romeo who soon will be dead.  

Interred: to be buried

Laying PARIS in the tomb

How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death: O, how may I
Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet  (Ensign: sign, flag)
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
To sunder his that was thine enemy? (Sunder: to cut in half; to cleave in half)
Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous, (Unsubstantial: bodiless) (Amorous: lustful)
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour? (Paramour: lover)
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again: here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars (Inauspicious: Unlucky, unfortunate)
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! (Bark: ship)
Here's to my love!

Drinks

O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

Dies

Romeo enters the chambers, spies  his beautiful bride, and unaware that she is not dead, marvels that her face has not been ravaged by death.  He reflects that jailers have noted that condemned men, on the brink of their execution, have a flash of happiness ("a lightning before death").  He is, like the condemned man, happy. He has been flirting with death from the very beginning and perhaps death is his true love, and now that he is but moments away from death's embrace, he is finally in a place of peace and fulfillment.

 Romeo speaks to Juliet directly, in an apostrophe: "O, my love! My wife!" And he personifies death as a lover who has sucked the honey of her breath yet he has had no power over her beauty. "Thou are not conquered; beauty's ensign (sign) is still crimson (red) upon thy lips and cheeks, and death's pale flag is not advanced there."  Her lips and cheeks are blushed with beauty for death has not conquered her and plunged his sign, his ensign of white pallor upon her face.

Then Romeo spies Tybalt lying in his bloodied burial sheets.  (In the 1500's - 1600's, bodies were buried in a shroud or a sheet.) He offers an apology to Tybalt, by asking what greater gift can be given to him than by cutting in half the life of one who cut his (Tybalt's) youth, his life in twain? He begs Tybalt's forgiveness; then turns his attention back to Juliet, where he asks "Why art thou so fair?" The audience is filled with tremendous pathos, watching Romeo in the throes of grief, listening to his confused questioning, not comprehending how her beauty can wield such tremendous power across the great divide of death, for the audience knows the answer - she is not dead and if he can stave off the desire to commit suicide for just a little, she will awaken, and his grief and confusion will be replaced with joy and understanding.  He asks "Is bodiless Death amorous (lustful) and that the skeletal, hated monster that is death keeping her here in the dark to be his lover?"

 Romeo proclaims that he will stay with her for eternity in this dim place and remain with the worms which are (in a bit of morbid humor and whimsy) Juliet's chamber-maids.  He will set up his everlasting rest here, and shake off the yoke, the chains, which has joined his body, exhausted from the earth's travails, to his fate which has been ordained by his unlucky stars.

He addresses his eyes - "Eyes, look your last!" - at Juliet, his beloved.  He addresses his arms - "Arms, take your last embrace!" - as he holds her for the last time in his arms.  He addresses his lips -
"Lips, O you / The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss / A dateless (eternal) bargain (contract) to engrossing (all destroying) death!" He kisses her, and now begins to seal the eternal contract with all destroying death by turning his attention to drink or kiss the deadly vial.

Romeo then takes out the vial of poison, and echoing the storm-tossed ship metaphor Capulet used to describe Juliet, calls the poison a "conduct, an unsavory guide, a pilot" which will drive his life-weary body (his ship of life) onto the rocky shoals of death. He toasts Juliet with his lethal cordial, opens his "doors of breath", his lips to "kiss" the poison, and drinks (kisses it).  Shocked by how accurate the apothecary's information was on its power and speed, he says, "O true apothecary, thy drugs are quick! Thus with a kiss, I die!"

Romeo has died.

Brief Analysis: At key moments, Romeo becomes reckless, and relinquishes (gives up) control of his life to the Fates; for example,  when he decides to enter the Capulet's party, he says, "But He, that hath the steerage of my course, / Direct my sail!" And at the moment of suicide, he says, "Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on / The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!" He is a strange combination of the active, the passive and the reckless - but then again, he is probably all of fifteen.  He is aggressive and reckless in his pursuit of Juliet, in his vengeance of Mercutio's death, and in his pursuit of the poison, but in other moments, he seems to - strangely -  throw his life away: to crash the Capulets' masked party despite his deep misgivings, to seek refuge in the Friar's cell, to follow the Friar's scheme, to too easily succumb to the idea of suicide - an idea he seems to be too much in love with from the very beginning of the play.

Which leads us to the next analysis of Romeo's personality: he seems to be in love with Death! Notice all of Romeo's references to Death as a lover:
"...That unsubstantial death is amorous, / And that the lean abhorred monster keeps / Thee here in dark to be his paramour?" And that when he holds the vial of poison, he is addressing it with words of love as if it is his lover, "...and lips, O you / The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss / A dateless bargain to engrossing death!" The words he uses to express his love for Juliet become merged with his love for the poison and the death it promises.

Back to story:

Enter the Friar - just a few seconds too late. Had he been just a few moments earlier, ROMEO and Juliet would have had a happier ending.  But he, like the Nurse, is old, and the graves  in the churchyard have made the ground uneven and his "old feet" stumbled at graves". Balthasar approaches  him and identifies himself.  The Friar sees Romeo's torch and inquires of Balthasar whose torch is that which lends its light to grubs (worms) and eyeless skulls.

The Friar:
"Tell me, good my friend,
What torch is yond, that vainly lends his light (Yond: over there; at a distance)
To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern, (Grubs: worms) (Discern: to perceive)
It burneth in the Capel's monument." (Capel: Capulets)

Figurative Language:
The Friar's question juxtaposes the image of the uselessness (vanity, futility) of light against the image of blind death - eyeless skulls - creating tension with the paradoxical and grisly imagery.

Balthasar tells him that it is Romeo who is in the vault. When the Friar asks him to accompany him, Balthasar swiftly declines, telling him that his master threatened him if he interfered. This information makes the Friar fearful that something terrible has happened.  Balthasar cagily tells him that "As I did sleep under this yew-tree here, / I dreamt my master and another fought, / And that my master slew him." The  page does not wish to implicate his young master - nor himself - by stating factually what he saw - that he saw Romeo killing Paris - but rather hedges the information by saying he "dreamed" his master got in a fight and killed someone, alerting the Friar that Romeo is homicidal.

As the Friar enters the vault alone, he sees blood staining the entrance to the tomb (sepulcher) and wonders as to the meaning of the two "masterless and gory" (gory means bloody) swords to lie discolored by this place of peace?  Swords are weapons of violence and have no place in a place of peace. He looks closer and recognizes the bodies of Romeo and Paris, pale and covered (steeped) in blood.

Figurative Language:
Personification: "Ah, what an unkind hour / Is guilty of this lamentable chance!"
The hour is guilty of this sorrowful coincidence that both Romeo and Paris are dead.

Vocabulary:
Lamentable: sorrowful

And then Juliet, unaware of the tragedy surrounding her, awakens.  As in Act 3, Scene 2, when Juliet is in her chambers, waiting impatiently for the night and her new husband to come to her,  unaware that her life's course has been  reversed by Romeo's killing of Tybalt, so it is in Act 5, Scene 3, when she awakens from her forty-two hour sleep, unaware another reversal has just taken place - her husband is dead.

The Friar, frightened by noise he hears outside, tells her to leave  "... that nest / Of death, contagion and unnatural sleep: A greater power than we can contradict / Hath thwarted our intents." The Friar states that some force  - God or fate - has thwarted or stopped their plans. He tells her that Romeo (her husband in her bosom or heart) is dead, as is Paris.  He urges her to come away with him and he will place her in a convent with nuns. He bids her not to question him for the watch or security is coming.  But Juliet, strong-willed, refuses to leave. And as the noise grows louder, the Friar becomes more frightened and abandons Juliet, alone with Romeo's dead body,  the empty cup of poison and a dagger.

Juliet spies the cup, emptied of its poison, and affectionately calling Romeo "churl" or annoying, playfully chides him for not leaving any drops of poison for her to drink.  She then kisses his lips, hoping ironically that there remains some poison that will act as a restorative - or restore her to him.
Restorative usually refers to a potion which brings one back to health or vigor; here, she means the poison will restore her to her Romeo. But there is no poison on his lips.

She notices that his lips are yet warm. And then she hears the First Watchman outside the monument's doors.  "Lead, boy. Which way?" Juliet realizes that there is very little time left - "Yea, noise? Then I'll be brief."  She spies Romeo's dagger, and ironically calling it "O happy dagger!" - for it will transport her to Romeo's side - she snatches it. Referring to her body, she says, "This is thy sheath!" She stabs herself with Romeo's blade.  Juliet's last dying words are, "There rust, and let me die."

Juliet is now dead.

The Page and the Watchman enter the mausoleum and see the dead bodies of Juliet, Romeo and Paris.
The Watchman makes a curious observation, that "Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead, / Who here hath lain these two days buried." Dead bodies don't bleed, and they are not warm two days after death and burial.  The Watchman makes the pun that they see the physical ground, bloodied where these "woes" or dead are lying, but the true grounds or reason for these "woes" or death they cannot without evidence know.

The Second Watchman finds Balthasar and the Third Watchman finds the old Friar "...that trembles, sighs and weeps".  The First Watchman tells his men to hold them both. The Prince arrives and ask what early misadventure has raised us so early from our beds?  Hard on his heels, Lord and Lady Capulet arrive,  along with many of Verona's citizenry, in confused states.   Lord Capulet, "What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?" and Lady Capulet, "The people in the street cry Romeo, / Some Juliet, and some Paris; and all run, / With open outcry toward our monument."

Juliet's parents know nothing of their daughter's marriage to Romeo; they are not even aware that she knew him!  And they think she has been dead for two days.

The First Watchman speaks to the Prince and shows him the dead bodies of Count Paris, Romeo, and Juliet, whom he mentions is "...dead before, / Warm and new killed." This, of course, raises a troubling question - she was "dead before" two days ago, yet still "warm and new killed" which implies she wasn't dead when she was buried two days ago, but was recently killed.

The Prince demands that the First Watchman, a sort of Elizabethan detective, seek out how the deaths occur.  The First Watchman produces the Friar and Balthasar, with instruments on them to open the tombs.

Capulet examines his daughter's corpse and notices that she is bleeding from a dagger wound and angrily comments that it should have been sheathed, not in Juliet's bosom but in the back of Romeo.

Capulet says,

O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!
This dagger hath mistaken - for, lo, his house
Is empty on the back of Montague, -
And it mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom!

When Lady Capulet, sees her daughter's body, she says that the sight is an omen, like a death knell, warning her of old age and the grave.

"O me! This sight of death is as a bell,
That warns my old age to a sepulcher."

When Lord Montague arrives, the Prince greets him with a ironic pun:

"Come, Montague; for thou art early up,
To see thy son and heir more early down."

You are up early to see your son and heir too young (too early) to be dead.

Montague is haggard from his own night's grief, for during the night, his wife has died from a broken heart. "Grief of my son's exile hath stopped her breath..." In some productions her death is interpreted as a suicide - one area of the stage is lighted with Lady Montague, in a state of despair, taking pills or drinking poison or some other form of suicide.  Perhaps Shakespeare intended her death to be interpreted as a heart attack.  ROMEO and JULIET is meant to be interpreted and performed on stage and so each production will be unique, and reflecting the vision of each director and her/his actors.

Lord Montague asks,

"What further woe conspires against mine age?"

The Prince responds, apparently referring to the dead body of his son, Romeo,

"Look and thou shalt see."

Montague cries out in anguish,

"O thou untaught! What manners is in this?
To press before thy father to a grave?

He is calling Romeo rude, untaught, unschooled in manners,  for dying and going to his grave before his father. It is the worst grief any parent can experience, the death of a child, for the common course of nature is that the parent dies before the child and it is a violence against nature for the child to die first. Many parents who have experienced this terrible tragedy say that this is not how it's supposed to be - "I was supposed to die first, not my child!"

The Prince counsels him to calm down for now, be patient while we try to clear up this mystery and know how this all came about - the perpetrators, and the cause - and then he will lead them all in their grief and pain, even to the point of death. In the meantime, let bad luck be the slave to patience. He then commands the officers to bring forth the men under suspicion: the Friar, Balthasar and Paris' page.

"Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
Till we can clear these ambiguities, (Ambiguities: mysterious, confusing things)
And know their spring, their head, their
true descent;
And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death; meantime forbear
And let mischance be slave to patience.
Bring forth the parties of suspicion."

The Friar stands before the Prince and says:

"I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me of this direful murder;
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excused."

The Friar says that he is the one most guilty and yet the one least able to do anything; he is the one most suspicious for being here at this time and place of murder, and here he stands, ready to accuse himself and to excuse himself, condemned and exonerated.

Here the Friar reveals the great secret of their children, Romeo and Juliet, to their parents, who neither knew that their children knew each other or that they were in love and married.

What reactions and feelings do you think the parents must have in hearing:
"Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife...."

In some productions of this play, the Friar's long monologue, the exposition which explains to the parents what we, the audience, already knows, is cut.  Shakespeare probably wanted to wrap this up fairly quickly - the audience has already witnessed these events during the past two hours - so the language is straight forward, to the point, concrete with little or no figurative language.

The Friar concludes with:

"And, if aught in this   (Aught: anything)
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigor of severest law."

If anything in this is my fault, then let my old life be sacrificed, before my natural death, according to the severest law.

The Prince replies that he has always been known as a good and holy man, and then he turns his attention to Romeo's man, Balthazar to offer additional, corroborating evidence.

Balthasar recounts what happened in  Act 5, Scene 1 and the beginning of Scene 3: Balthasar told him of Juliet's death, and that Romeo immediately left Mantua for Verona by horse to arrive at this monument.  Earlier, Romeo had given Balthasar a letter to give to his father, Lord Montague, and threatened him with death if he stayed and  tried to intervene in anything he might see at the monument.

Balthasar hands the Prince the letter, which he says he will look at, and then he asks for Count Paris' page to tell him what made his master come to Juliet's grave.

The Page tells the Prince that the Count arrived with flowers to strew upon her grave, and made him stand apart while he grieved. Then, someone else arrived with a torch to open the tomb, and the Count drew his sword on him.  At that point, the Page ran away to call the Watch.

The Prince is reading over Romeo's letter to his father and concludes that the letter corroborates what the Friar said. There is additional information that no one knew - not the Friar nor Balthasar -  that Romeo bought  poison from a poor apothecary to come to Juliet's grave to die. (It's ironic that they will probably arrest and execute the apothecary for selling Romeo the poison.  The very thing the apothecary did not want to do, but was prevailed upon by Romeo who told  him, "The world is not your friend!" Flaunt the world's laws, take my money - the true poison, not the poison you sell me - and be rich!  For taking the money and daring to flaunt the world's unfair laws that victimized him, the apothecary will probably be hunted down and executed.)

The Prince then explodes in anger and calls forth Montague and Capulet:

"Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate, (Scourge: Curse)
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punished."

He admonishes them to see the curse that their hatred has brought upon them and that Heaven has found a way to kill  their joys (their children) through the love their children had for each other, or it could also be interpreted that Heaven punished them by ordaining that their love for fighting would destroy their joys - their children.   The Prince also says that he too has been punished by losing a great number of his kinsmen, by not punishing, but condoning their fighting. Because of this, everyone has been punished.

Capulet, overcome with grief, and perhaps, finally understanding the stupidity and immaturity of his actions, asks for Montague's hand, pledging his hand as Juliet's dowry (jointure), for he can ask for no more.

"O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand."

Montague responds with,

"But I can give thee more:
For I will raise her statue in pure gold;
That while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set
As that of true and faithful Juliet."

Montague replies that he can offer more - that he will commission a statue of Juliet made up of pure gold, and while Verona is known by the name of Verona, there shall be no better statue erected as that of honest and faithful Juliet.

Capulet counters with another offer:

"As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie;
Poor sacrifices of our enmity!"

He pledges that a golden statue of Romeo as rich as Juliet's shall be by her side, and then he laments that their children were the sacrifices the parents each paid for their feuds.

The Prince concludes with:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings; (Glooming: gloomy)
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence,  to have more talk of these sad things; (Hence: forward; away from here)
Some shall be pardoned, and some punished:

The Prince says that the morning has brought a peaceful gloom and the sun does not show its head out of sorrow. He commands everyone to leave, that there will be more discussion of these sad events, and that some shall be pardoned (probably the Friar) and some shall be  punished. Although the Prince (and Juliet earlier in the play) says that the Friar has always been known as a holy man, we really don't know if he will be punished or not; the other likely person who might suffer some sort of punishment is the Nurse, but there is no way of knowing that either.  The one who is the most likely to be punished - and severely - is the luckless Apothecary, but all of this is conjecture.

Personification:
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head.
The sun is given human characteristics; it does not have a head and it cannot show sorrow.

The Prince concludes with a couplet, two rhyming lines in iambic pentameter which end a sonnet, a scene, an act or a play.

"For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Your name

Period

Date

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Please write a neatly written, two page paper about yourself.  Please write in standard, paragraph format. Please include:

 Your name

Which middle school did you attend?

Why did you choose to come to Hollywood High?

Which performing arts are you interested in pursuing?  Dance, acting, music, technical theatre?

Tell me a little something about your family, your parents, your siblings.

How many brothers and sisters do you have? Where are you in the birth order?

What do you enjoy doing?  Why?

What do you hate to do?  Why?

What are you really good at? 

What are some of the things you find challenging?

Where do you see yourself in ten years?