SOURCE: Goldstein, Martin. “The Tragedy of Old Capulet: A Patriarchal Reading of Romeo and Juliet.” English Studies 77, no. 3 (May 1996): 227-39.

[In the following essay, Goldstein suggests that the driving force of the play is not the ancient feud between the Capulets and Montagues, but rather a conflict internal to the Capulet family, specifically, the disagreement between Capulet and Lady Capulet over who and when Juliet should marry.]

‘I know not how Capulet and his Lady might agree, their ages were very disproportionate; he has been past masking for thirty years, and her age, as she tells Juliet … is but eight and twenty’.

Samuel Johnson, in Notes to the Plays

Romeo and Juliet provides the paradigm—or myth, in one sense of the word—of a love affair between members of rival houses caught up in the implacable hostility of a feud. Versions of this myth have appeared in such diverse works as Aida and Huckleberry Finn. There is however no critical consensus on the implacability of Shakespeare's feud. That it has burnt itself out, and the older Capulets and Montagues show no interest in continuing it, has been asserted by Granville-Barker, Charlton, Bryant, and Levin among others, though Kahn believes it to be the motivating force of the tragedy, and an expression of patriarchal society; a similar view has been expressed by Goddard.¹

I shall suggest in this essay that it is not the feud but a conflict within the Capulet household, specifically a disagreement between Capulet and Lady Capulet as to when and whom Juliet is to marry, that is the driving force of the play. The textual evidence for this conflict, though previously overlooked by most commentators, seems compelling, but the reasons why the Capulets disagree and why Capulet changes his mind in the middle of the play are less clear. I will therefore propose a number of hypotheses, both to account for the Capulets' behavior and that of the County Paris, for which the evidence is less compelling. The resulting reading of Romeo and Juliet, casting Old Capulet as a tragic figure to set beside the youthful doomed lovers, can be called a patriarchal version, one that an Elizabethan audience would have found less bizarre than an anti-imperialist Tempest, a feminist Shrew, or a philosemitic Merchant.

In the first scene, the brawl, started by the servants and exacerbated by Tybalt, leads Capulet and Montague to exchange threats (I, i, 73, 76).² These are the last words either will speak in the entire play that show anger at the other house. Note that the symmetrical behavior of the husbands is not shared by the wives. Lady Capulet tells hers:

A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?

(I, i, 74)

while Lady Montague cries out:

Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.

(I, i, 77)

To paraphrase: Lady Montague says, ‘I will not let thee fight!’ while Lady Capulet says, ‘You are too old to fight.’

Before this scene is over Montague is asking Benvolio querulously:

Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?

(I, i, 102)

and the next scene, between Capulet and Paris, begins with Capulet's:

                                        'tis not hard I think
For men so old as we to keep the peace.

(I, i, 2-3)

We learn quickly that Paris's importunate suit for Juliet's hand is not entirely welcome to Capulet:

My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years.
Let two more summers wither in their pride
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

(I, ii, 7-10)

though Paris's social position and desirability as a suitor require the father to be polite. Paris does not accept Capulet's reason for hesitancy:

Younger than she are happy mothers made.

(I, ii, 12)

The old man answers:

And too soon marr'd are those so early made.

(I, ii, 13)

and tells Paris that at the feast that night there will be a number of attractive alternatives to Juliet, hardly what one expects a father to say to a desired suitor (I, ii, 24-31).

In the next scene, Lady Capulet goes to Juliet's room to persuade her to marry Paris. The Nurse, whom she first asks to leave, is pointedly called back to hear the conversation. Lady Capulet, when Juliet tells her she has not even been dreaming about marriage, urges that she do so, saying that she herself gave birth to Juliet when she was Juliet's current age, making her, if she is to be believed, not yet thirty (I, iii, 71-73). She then praises Paris extravagantly, comparing him in a tediously prolonged conceit, to an almost perfect book needing only a cover—i.e., a bride (I, iii, 79-94).

There are a number of things to be noted in this encounter.

First, Lady Capulet echoes not her husband's view on Juliet's readiness for marriage, but Paris's:

                                        Younger than you
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers.

(I, iii, 69-71).

There is clearly a conflict of views between husband and wife regarding Juliet's marriage.³ Capulet's quotation of the proverb: ‘Too soon marr'd …’ suggests further the division between them.⁴ Lady Capulet's calling back the Nurse at the beginning of the scene may reflect her feeling that she needs an ally in the household.

Second, attention is drawn to Lady Capulet's age: is she as young as she claims to be? Brian Gibbons, the editor of the Arden edition, does not think so, noting that in the rather inconsistent speech prefixes for her in this scene, ‘Old Lady’ is used six times. Further, in the final scene of the play, confronted with the dead bodies in the tomb, she says:

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

(V, iii, 205-206)

Yet can one imagine the lines beginning ‘By my count …’ (I, iii, 71-73) spoken by an actress made up to look like a woman of fifty? A reasonable conclusion, given these words and the ‘crutch’ of I, i, 74, is that she is younger than her husband, young enough for the age difference to matter to her, and young enough to be vain about her attractiveness. Capulet's greater age is pointedly revealed in his conversation with his cousin at the ball (I, v, 30-40).

Third, there is the formal, stilted language of her praise of Paris. This is one of a number of speeches in Romeo and Juliet considered by many critics to be evidence of Shakespeare's artistic immaturity when he wrote it,⁵ the first being Romeo's extravagant paradoxes and oxymora in speaking of Rosaline to Benvolio in I, i, and the most egregious being the lamentations of the Capulets, Paris, and the Nurse at Juliet's supposed death in IV, v.

A different point of view is taken by Ewbank,⁶ who suggests that the ‘bad’ poetry is sometimes functional rather than parodic, and gives the Nurse's lamentation and a speech from Othello as examples. About the Nurse's speech she says that ‘The nurse's mock-Senecan fulminations … serve to set Juliet's mock-death here off from her real one in the last scene’. I suggest that one additional dramatic purpose served by the ‘bad’ poetry in this play is psychological: to reveal something about the inner thoughts or moods of the speaker, specifically to suggest that he or she is saying one thing while feeling another, or suffering from unacknowledged guilt. It must be hard for actors or actresses speaking such lines to sound as if they really mean what they are saying; maybe they should try sounding as if they don't. In this particular example, we can infer, as have many others, that Lady Capulet is a cold unfeeling mother, also suggested by the formal way Juliet addresses her: Madam, My lady—only once in the whole play as Mother.

Why does Lady Capulet want Juliet to marry Paris? And why doesn't Old Capulet? We cannot assume his statement to Paris that she is too young is necessarily his real reason: we know that a few days later he will order her to marry him. An alternative reason for his hesitation will be proposed shortly.

Lady Capulet's reason is difficult to discern. It could well be the material and social advantages of a marriage to a wealthy member of the nobility, but it is not obvious why such considerations should lead her to act contrary to her husband's wishes, and surreptitiously. Her urgency calls for a more plausible explanation, but the text fails to provide one. One may speculate that it is a wish to get out of her household a rapidly maturing and attractive daughter, who serves also as an indicator of her own age, but evidence is lacking.

However, even if the causes of the conflict between husband and wife are not known, recognition of it gives an added insight into much in the play. As an example of such added insight, I suggest that it explains why Shakespeare chose to make Juliet two years younger than Arthur Brooke's heroine.⁷ If she were sixteen, her father would not have given her age as an excuse to Paris, but she is not so young at fourteen that her mother could not credibly have urged her marriage.

In Act I, Scene V, we are at the Capulet's ball. Every significant character in the play is present at this scene with the exception of four who should not be there, and one who should. We would not expect the Prince, who would seem to be taking sides in the feud if he came, nor the ascetic Friar Laurence, and of course not the elder Montagues, but where is Paris, who was supposed to woo Juliet in this scene, but doesn't? It would not have slowed the action that much; if Romeo could win Juliet in eighteen lines of dialogue, Paris could have failed in ten. Nor can we assume the wooing took place off-stage, as Juliet informs us when her parents are forcing her to marry Paris:

I wonder at this haste, that I must wed
Ere he that should be husband comes to woo.

(III, v, 118-119)

This omitted wooing has been inserted in both the Zeffirelli and Cukor films⁸ by having Paris dancing with Juliet when Romeo first sees her; a reasonable bit of stage business, but in apparent conflict with the text.

Capulet learns from the furious Tybalt that Romeo is present, and tries to calm him as follows:

Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone,
A bears him like a portly gentleman;
And, to say truth, Verona brags of him
To be a virtuous and well-governed youth.
I would not for the wealth of all this town
Here in my house do him disparagement.

(I, v, 64-69)

This is amazingly strong language from Capulet, to whom wealth matters. Tybalt is not appeased, so the old patriarch shows what a temper tantrum he can have when someone who owes him fealty tries to contradict him (I, v, 75-87), apparently going so far as to threaten to cut Tybalt out of his will. This is surely an exaggerated response if Capulet has his heart in the feud and only wants Tybalt to show a cooler judgement about when to pursue it.

Capulet's praise of Romeo is the most striking evidence offered for the waning of the feud. Charlton puts it as follows:

… [O]ld Capulet is unwilling to let the feud interrupt a dance; and a quarrel which is of less moment than a galliard is being appeased at an extravagant price, if the price is the death of two such delightful creatures as Romeo and Juliet … Nor, indeed, is [the feud] coherent and impressive enough as part of the plot to propel the sweep of necessity in the sequence of events.

To paraphrase Charlton, Capulet feels that it is better to endure an unwelcome guest at a party than make a scene. But does not Capulet's good opinion of Romeo say more than this? As the maskers, who to Capulet's knowledge include at least one Montague, are leaving the party, Capulet urges them to stay for ‘a trifling foolish banquet’ (I, v, 120-121). Is this the customary way to treat unwelcome guests?

A more reasonable reaction to this speech is given in a book by Asimov addressed to a popular rather than a scholarly audience:⁹

Surely the feud is as good as dead when the leader of one side can speak so of the son and heir of the leader of the other side. Capulet speaks so highly of Romeo, in fact, that one could almost imagine that a prospective match between Montague's son and Capulet's daughter would be a capital way of ending the feud.

Let us turn back to the moment when Tybalt realizes that a masked Montague is present; he recognizes the voice as a Montague's (not really plausible, of course), and tells Capulet, who has noticed his perturbation. Capulet's answer is remarkable:

Young Romeo, is it?

(I, v, 63)

Without seeing the face or hearing the voice, he knows which Montague it is. He must have had Romeo on his mind, even expecting him to appear at the ball. Why? The hypothesis I offer in answer is as follows: Capulet, grown weary of the feud, and embarrassed by its most recent outbreak, has been thinking of a marriage between his daughter and Romeo as a means of ending it. It is possible, though not necessary, that he expected Romeo to appear at the ball because he knew of the young man's infatuation with his frigid niece Rosaline, one of the guests (I, ii, 70). Possible stage business: (Capulet watches the passage between Romeo and Juliet at the ball with grave interest. When later he invites the maskers to stay for the banquet, he places his hand on Romeo's arm. Romeo turns as though to speak to him but his companions hurry him along).

When Romeo has told Friar Laurence of his new love, the Friar, like Capulet, sees a marriage between Romeo and Juliet as a means of ending the feud (II, iv, 87-88), and performs the clandestine wedding happily; presumably he means to call Montague and Capulet together to inform them of it after the marriage has been consummated. However, before either he or Capulet can make whatever moves they have been contemplating, events take matters out of their control: Romeo has slain Tybalt, the citizens of Verona are outraged at the renewed feud, and Enter Prince, Old Montague, Capulet, their wives, and all.

The Prince asks:

Where are the vile beginners of this fray?

(III, i, 143)

Benvolio starts to give a somewhat biased summary of the events, but is interrupted by Lady Capulet's cry of shock and anguish:

Tybalt, my cousin, O my brother's child!
O Prince, O husband, O, the blood is spill'd
Of my dear kinsman.

(III, i, 148-150)

After Benvolio completes his account, she again appeals for justice and revenge:

I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give.
Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.

(III, i, 182-183)

but the Prince, previously forceful in dealing with the feud, seems undecided:

Romeo slew Tybalt, he slew Mercutio.
Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?

(III, i, 185-186)

Indeed he is in a difficult position: members of his family are involved on both sides. He can't afford to be lenient with Romeo as he presumes it would anger the Capulets and compromise Paris's suit to Juliet, but it would be equally hard to condemn Romeo to death, as Romeo acted to avenge the death of his own kinsman Mercutio.

Here there is a textual crux. The next speech, answering the Prince's question, is given to Capulet in the Second Quarto and First Folio, but most modern editors give it to Montague. It is as follows:

Not Romeo, Prince, he was Mercutio's friend:
His fault concludes but what the law should end,
The life of Tybalt.

(III, i, 187-189)

The Arden edition calls the Second Quarto speech prefix ‘an obvious error’. In the New Cambridge Edition, the assisting editor, G. I. Duthie, thought it should be Capulet's, referring to his good opinion of Romeo in (I, v), but deferred to the editor, J. Dover Wilson, who felt Capulet would not publicly contradict his wife at such a moment.¹⁰ However, there is a strong argument for giving the speech to Montague: if it were Capulet who made it, both the feud and the play would have ended at this scene, with Montague embracing his old enemy who has just saved his son's life. So the usually garrulous Capulet is, after all, silent in this scene, silent in spite of the situation, silent in spite of his wife's appeal to her husband (III, i, 149) to speak out. Knowing Tybalt's capacity for violence, and knowing Romeo's reputation as a ‘well-govern'd youth’, he cannot cry out for vengeance. It is an eloquent silence.

The Prince's next words decree the banishment of Romeo:

                                        And for that offence
Immediately do we exile him hence …
I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;
Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses.
Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste,
Else when he is found, that hour is his last.

(III, i, 188-189, 194-196)

Though the words are harsh the decision is a lenient one, as is clearly recognized by Friar Laurence, who in (III, iii) tells the depressed Romeo three times how fortunate he is, first describing the Prince's ‘doom’ as ‘a gentler judgement’ (line 10), then saying:

                                                                                          the kind Prince,
Taking thy part, has rush'd aside the law
And turn'd that black word ‘death’ to banishment.
This is dear mercy and thou seest it not.

(III, iii, 25-28)

and later:

The law that threaten'd death becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile. There art thou happy.

(III, iii, 139-140)

Could the Prince so easily have passed this judgement unless Capulet's silence was seen by him as assent?

But that same silence must also have widened the division between Capulet and his Lady into a breach, indeed a breach between him and her side of the family. Evidence for that breach is provided in (III, v), when Lady Capulet tells Juliet of her plan to poison the banished Romeo:

                                        I'll send to one in Mantua,
Where that same banish'd runagate doth live,
Shall give him such an unaccustom'd dram
That he shall soon keep Tybalt company …

(III, v, 88-91)

‘I'll send’, not ‘We'll send’. Note that she is the only member of the older generation who expresses the eye-for-an-eye ethic of a feud.

The following stage business is suggested for this scene: (When the Prince asks his question, ‘Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?’ he looks at Capulet for a response, so also does Lady Capulet. Capulet however does not meet the Prince's eye, and stands silent. After a brief pause. Montague speaks. After the Prince pronounces his judgement, he leaves the stage. Montague and Capulet exchange glances, troubled, not angry. If this were a film, we would hear a voice-over of Montague's ‘Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?’ and Capulet's ‘'tis not hard I think / For men so old as we to keep the peace’. Then all leave the stage except Capulet and his Lady. He makes a shrugging gesture as though to ask, ‘What could I do?’ at which Lady Capulet gives him a furious look and exits, leaving him standing alone).

In (III, iv) the long day for the Capulets has just about ended. Paris is still pressing his suit, and Old Capulet continues to put him off, even with some irritation:

Things have fallen out, sir, so unluckily
That we have had no time to move our daughter.
Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly,
And so did I. Well, we were born to die.
'Tis very late. She'll not come down tonight.
I promise you, but for your company,
I would have been abed an hour ago.

(III, iv, 1-7)

Note the absence of rancor toward Romeo and the Montagues for Tybalt's death, contrasting with that of his Lady.

Paris takes his leave with:

These times of woe afford no times to woo.
Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.

(III, iv, 8-9)

and Lady Capulet answers:

I will, and know her mind early tomorrow.
Tonight she's mew'd up to her heaviness.

(III, iv, 10-11)

The words are much the same as Capulet's, and the First Quarto stage direction at this point reads:

Paris offers to go in and Capulet calls him again.

Something at this point has pushed Capulet to an impulsive decision:

Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender
Of my child's love.

(III, iv, 12-13)

and he proposes a wedding in a few days.

Is it Lady Capulet's tone, rather than her specific words to Paris, suggestive of her eagerness to promote a marriage between him and Juliet, that remind her husband of the breach between them, and does it occur to Capulet that he can heal it by acceding to the marriage that he is aware she desires? Certainly any hope Capulet may have had for a marriage between Juliet and Romeo would have been rendered impossible, to his mind, by the exacerbation of the feud and the need to placate his wife's side of the family. Lady Capulet and Paris later attribute Capulet's sudden decision to a desire to cheer Juliet, whom they all believe to be saddened by her cousin's death, but this need not be the real reason. Juliet has given her parents little cause to believe she has been overwhelmed by grief for Tybalt; in III, ii, awaiting her husband, she rejects the Nurse's suggestion that she join her parents in mourning her cousin's death (128-131).

(When the scene begins, Capulet makes some attempts to catch his wife's eye, but she refuses to look at him. Her tone when she speaks to Paris is strained. After Capulet proposes the marriage, she brightens up, and smiles at him, for the first time in the play).

Lady Capulet, sent to inform Juliet of her father's decision, is quickly followed by the father. His unhappiness with what he is doing is made manifest in a number of ways in this scene, not least in his apoplectic fury with a daughter he loves and claims to be hoping to make happy. He begins, before he knows Juliet is refusing to co-operate, with a speech of ‘bad’ poetry—a long conceit comparing Juliet's tears to a water-pipe, a sea, a storm-tossed craft (III, v, 126-138). Then he makes a patently false claim of having gone to considerable trouble to select a suitable marriage partner for her:

                                                                      Day, night, work, play,
Alone, in company, still my care hath been
To have her match'd.

(III, v, 176-178)

One has only to re-read his words to Paris in Act 1, Scene 2 to recognize the dishonesty. The most revealing of all are his words mocking Juliet's excuses, presumably spoken in a mincing falsetto:

And then to have a wretched puling fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,
To answer ‘I'll not wed, I cannot love,
I am too young, I pray you pardon me!’

(183-186)

The fact is that Juliet, in this scene, has never given her youth as a reason for objecting to the marriage. In the difficult circumstances fate has placed her, she has found it necessary to equivocate, at times to lie, but for the wife of Romeo to say she is too young to marry is more than she could do. It is of course Old Capulet who is the only one ever to have raised the issue. (After saying these words, he hesitates, turns redder than ever, if possible, and breaks out louder and more furious than before.)

Lady Capulet's degree of love for her daughter is amply demonstrated by the proleptic irony of her answer to Capulet when he asks what Juliet's response is to the planned marriage:

Ay, sir, but she will none, she gives you thanks.
I would the fool were married to her grave.

(III, v, 139-140)

and her response when Juliet appeals to her, calling her ‘mother’ for the only time in the play:

O sweet my mother, cast me not away,
Delay this marriage …

(III, v, 198-199)

Her answer is:

Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word.
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.

(III, v, 202-203)

The contrast with Brooke's mother in the same situation is striking:

Whilst ruthfully stood by the maydens mother mylde

(line 1947)

After her abandonment by her parents and the Nurse's betrayal, Juliet goes to Friar Laurence's cell and makes the fatal plan with the Friar. It is here that she has her only conversation with Paris in the entire play. It is odd that two characters whose interaction will be fatal for both of them should have so little to say to each other, and odd that Paris, who could not find the time to woo his intended bride in Act I, should appear as her devoted mourner in Act V. Much hangs on this, their only and brief scene together. Is it that Juliet has suddenly changed in Paris's eyes; she is no longer the child he would marry for material advantage, but has become in some way mysterious to him a woman, and lovable?

(Paris begins his conversation with Juliet in a shallow and courtly tone, obviously taking his possession of her for granted. Juliet's distancing responses change the mood, and he turns more serious and intent, until the Friar terminates a dialogue Paris would have preferred to continue. As Juliet and Friar Laurence depart the stage he stands still and stares after her, his face suggesting the change in his feeling for her).

Old Capulet, involved at home with arrangements for the wedding, knows she has gone to Friar Laurence, and says to the Nurse:

Well, he may chance to do some good on her.
A peevish self-willed harlotry it is.

(IV, ii, 13-14)

It is an odd tone for a father whose last words to his daughter were

An you be not, hang! Beg! Starve! Die in the streets!
For by my soul I'll ne'er acknowledge thee,
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.
Trust to't, bethink you. I'll not be forsworn.

(III, v, 192-195)

Even odder is his greeting to her when she appears:

How now, my headstrong: where have you been gadding?

(IV, ii, 16)

One might have expected something stern, along the lines of ‘Have you repented of your willful disobedience yet?’¹¹ Instead he talks like a parent conscious of having been overbearing to a beloved child, but who doesn't know how to apologize. If only Juliet at this point had burst into tears and blurted out the truth! Alas, she is not a child anymore, and she will die for it.

When Lady Capulet comes to Juliet's room on the eve of the wedding and asks if her help is needed, Juliet, addressing her as ‘Madam’, asks to be left alone, and Lady Capulet answers:

                                                                                                                                                      Good night.
Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need.

(IV, iii, 12-13)

Lukewarm as these words are, they are the only kind words addressed to Juliet by her mother in the whole play. A little later, after Juliet has drunk Friar Laurence's potion, Capulet, his lady and the Nurse are busy and excited, preparing late at night for the wedding feast. The Nurse urges Capulet to go to bed and rest, but he answers:

                                                  What, I have watch'd ere now
All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick.

(IV, iv, 9-10)

His lady answers:

Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;
But I will watch you from such watching now.

(IV, iv, 11-12)

The old man is tickled pink by his wife's bantering pretense at jealousy:

A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!

(IV, iv, 13)

This tone of affection and intimacy between husband and wife is absent elsewhere in the play. On the surface at least, reconciliation within the Capulet household has been achieved.

The four speeches of lamentation, by Capulet, his lady, the Nurse, and Paris (IV, v, 43-64) over the apparently dead Juliet, are considered one of the worst examples in this play of ‘bad poetry’. They have been thought by many to be meant as burlesque, in particular a burlesque of the style of Seneca. Granted the audience knows that Juliet is not really dead, did the dramatist really want it to burst out laughing at this point? If, however, the speeches are to be taken as evidence of false or split feelings on the part of the speakers, what actually are those feelings? Here it helps to visualize the scene—or better still use the auditory imagination. (Capulet sends the Nurse to wake Juliet when he hears in the distance the merry wedding music played by the musicians accompanying Paris. During the attempts first by the Nurse and then by the mother to wake Juliet the music grows gradually louder. When Capulet himself enters and learns that Juliet is dead, it is at its loudest, with the musicians and Paris just outside the bedroom door. Paris enters, is told the dreadful fact by Capulet, says:

Have I thought long to see this morning's face,
And doth it give me such a sight as this?

(IV, v, 41-42)

and steps through the door to silence the musicians with an abrupt gesture.

There is a jangling discord as they stop, and then quiet. The four people standing around Juliet's bed are silent a few moments as the sounds die away, while their faces reveal the terrible thought that has crossed the minds of each: Juliet's death is somehow connected to the marriage each of them knew was distasteful to her, and each of them was willing to force on her. Capulet looks at his wife, and seems to intend to speak, but remains silent. All of them exchange glances, but each knows that this is a thought they cannot share with anyone else. Then the false lamentations begin with Lady Capulet's

Accurs'd, unhappy, wretched, hateful day

(IV, v, 43).

We arrive at the final scene at the Capulet family tomb, the full significance of which, in particular the lengthy summary by Friar Laurence of what is already known to the audience and which has troubled many critics, has been clarified in a remarkable essay by Bertrand Evans.¹² Evans interprets the play, in accord with its prologue, as a tragedy of Fate, but in which the manner in which Fate operates is made specific:

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy of unawareness. Fate … working out its purposes without either a human villain or a supernatural agent … operates through the common condition of not knowing. Participants in the action … contribute one by one the indispensable stitches which make the pattern, and contribute them without knowing; that is to say, they act when they do not know the truth of the situation in which they act.

The unawareness includes not only the obvious unawareness of everyone except Friar Laurence of the love between Romeo and Juliet, but an unawareness on the part of each and every character (including Friar Laurence) that at each moment of decisive action leads to an intensification of the rush towards doom. Examples given by Evans include the unawareness of Capulet's illiterate servant in Act I, scene ii that it is Romeo Montague whose help he asks, the initial unawareness of both Romeo and Juliet that the person each is attracted to at the ball is a member of the enemy family (I, v), the unawareness of both Tybalt and Mercutio of the clandestine marriage (III, i), Capulet's unawareness of the real reason for Juliet's submission in IV, ii, Paris's unawareness of Romeo's reason for being at the tomb (V, iii), and of special significance, Friar Laurence's unawareness that Romeo's servant Balthasar has informed his master of Juliet's apparent death, an unawareness that causes the Friar to arrive at the tomb too late to prevent Romeo's suicide.

In the scene between the tearful Juliet and her angry father, the unawareness of each of the thoughts and situation of the other are further indispensable stitches. Capulet is of course unaware of Juliet's marriage; Juliet in turn is unaware of her father's hope for a reconciling marriage with Romeo and unaware, as is Capulet also, of the divided state of mind that fuels his fury.

Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

(III, v, 159)

she begs, but she is cowed by that fury, and the word is unspoken.

In the end, the clouds of unawareness are lifted when Friar Laurence, Balthasar, and Paris's page tell their stories. Does Capulet recognize the irony that the marriage he once hoped would end the feud has, in fact, ended it? Even so, he is still man enough to speak first:

O brother Montague, give me thy hand.

(V, iii, 295)

and to make his sad little joke:

This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand.

(V, iii, 296-297)

After this, who needs those gilded statues?

Notes

1. Hartley Granville-Barker, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, in Prefaces to Shakespeare, Vol II, pp 300-349 (Princeton, N.J., 1951); H. B. Charlton, Shakespearean Tragedy (Cambridge, 1971); J. A. Bryant, Jr., Introduction to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, Sylvan Barnet, Editor, pp. 479-484 (San Diego, CA, 1963); Richard Levin, ‘Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean Tragedy’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 103, March, 1988, pp. 125-138. Coppelia Kahn, ‘Coming of Age in Verona’, Modern Language Studies 8 (Winter 1977-78), pp. 5-22; Harold C. Goddard, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in The Meaning of Shakespeare, Vol I, pp 117-139 (Chicago, 1960).

2. Text references are to The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. Brian Gibbons, Editor. London, 1980.

3. Noted by Alfred Harbage in Shakespeare: A Reader's Guide, New York, 1963.

4. In the Zeffirelli film (Romeo and Juliet, Paramount, 1968, Franco Zeffirelli, Director), Capulet, as he says these words, glances at his wife, who is in view but is not a party to his conversation with Paris.

5. See for example, S. T. Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, T. M. Raysor, Editor, 2nd Edition, New York, 1960. Vol.I, pp 4-11. See also Granville-Barker, op. cit.; Kenneth Muir, Chapter, ‘Apprenticeship’ in Shakespeare's Tragic Sequence, New York, 1979, pp 20-41; Norman Rabkin, ‘Eros and Death’, in Shakespeare and the Common Understanding, Chicago, 1984, pp 150-191.

6. Inga-Stina Ewbank, ‘Shakespeare's Poetry’ in A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies, Kenneth Muir and S. Schoenbaum, Editors. Cambridge, 1971, pp. 99-115.

7. Arthur Brooke's ‘Romeus and Juliet’ is reprinted in Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Geoffrey Bullough, Editor. Volume I. London, 1957-1975.

8. Romeo and Juliet, MGM, 1936, George Cukor, Director. See also reference 4.

9. Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, New York, 1993, page 485.

10. The New Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet. Edited by John Dover Wilson, assisted in this volume by George Ian Duthie. Cambridge, 1955.

11. Granville-Barker has noted the incongruity of his tone here with his earlier speech.

12. Bertrand Evans, ‘The Brevity of Friar Laurence’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 65, No. 2, March, 1950, pp. 841-865.