SOURCE: Kaiser, Gerhard W. “Romeo and Juliet.” In The Substance of Greek and Shakespearean Tragedy under Special Consideration of Shakespeare's “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” “Othello” and “Romeo and Juliet,” pp. 179-208. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1977.

[In the following excerpt, Kaiser presents an overview of the plot, central characters, and themes of Romeo and Juliet, viewing the drama as not only a tragedy of misfortune and explosive passion, but also one of reconciliation.]

After having discussed three of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, we propose now to have a look at one of his earlier dramas, the lyric tragedy Romeo and Juliet. This is a play which brought the young dramatist his first great success, and although Shakespeare had not yet quite found the mature and balanced mastery of his later plays, critics generally agree that Romeo and Juliet deserves being praised as a great work of art¹ and is admired especially for its effectiveness as a drama. It is, in the words of a critic, “the first of Shakespeare's plays to excite and sustain any deep concern with humanity in the ills that befall it.”² However, as concerns the question of its tragic substance the play is usually considered as a failure. This view has been voiced by H. B. Charlton, for example, who writes, Shakespeare's “achievement (in Romeo and Juliet) is due to the magic of Shakespeare's poetic genius and to the intermittent force of his dramatic power rather than to his grasp of the foundations of tragedy”³

Certainly, if viewed from Shakespeare's “four giants”, Romeo and Juliet loses in tragic stature. But if—as John Dover Wilson has it—“an almost superhuman intensity is … the most striking feature” of Shakespeare's four “colossal plays”⁴—then this most striking feature can be found in Romeo and Juliet too; and it is by no means the only striking feature, nor is it the only characteristic that this drama has in common with the great tragedies.

When one enters on a discussion of this play it must, however, always be remembered that here one has a young dramatist at work, a poet who, great as he already is, has not yet achieved the final vision of his later tragedies.

More so than in the tragedies discussed above, we will have to interpret this play at great detail, and follow the action very closely, and thus watch the poet shape the tragic experience of the two young lovers, around whom the play centres.

1. INTERPRETATION OF THE PLAY.

A) THE PROLOGUE AND OPENING SCENES.

The play begins with a “prologue” which contains a kind of exposition of the contents of the play. The audience is prepared to follow “the fearful passage” of Romeo and Juliet's “death-mark'd love” through “the continuance of their parents' rage: which but their children's end nought could remove.”⁵ “Two households”, the Montagues and the Capulets, have for a long time lived in animosity and when it happens that their children fall in love with one another, these young lovers are, from the outset, “star-crossed”.

To begin with, this play seems to be about evil in human relationship, displayed by the example of the two feuding families and their unhappy children. And some critics, such as G. B. Harrison, do not hesitate to label the play as an “illustration of the folly of family feuds”.⁶ However, if one studies the play more closely, it becomes apparent that the opening prologue is somewhat misleading in the simplicity of its summing up of the “contents” of the play.

Very often in Shakespeare's plays the first scenes are significant for the action to follow: it is therefore of special interest to consider the dramatic importance of the opening scenes of Romeo and Juliet.

The first scene opens on a public square in Verona where friends meet and talk together, where wanton servants tease their fellow servants, where people also come across each other who do not really want to meet, and where even fights are not so uncommon. Thus, first of all, by showing the gay and yet warlike atmosphere of Verona's street, Shakespeare builds up the background and environment in which the tragic action is to take place, and in which the two figures, Romeo and Juliet are placed.

Although in the prologue we have been prepared to meet the “star-crossed lovers” the opening scene does not present them to us. Shakespeare begins his play with a clash of the two houses Montague and Capulet, but significantly enough, it is the servants who begin the quarrel, and not the masters. Sampson, the servant of the house of Capulet is moved even by “a dog of the house of Montague” (I.i.10), and moved to such an extent that he contrives a fight when servants of the Montagues pass by. It is the “ancient grudge”—of which the prologue speaks—that is so deeply rooted in “masters and men” that there is no need for a special cause to raise the blood; the mere presence of men of both houses in one place is enough to throw the spark into the powder barrel and cause an explosion. Purposefully the two servants insult the serving-men of the hated house of Montague and:

… set this ancient quarrel new abroach

(I.i.111)

Thus, in the very first scene the leading theme of the conflict between the two families is introduced by showing its actual manifestations. The ancient grudge breaks “to new mutiny” when the servants irresponsibly scuffle with one another, and then involve others too. For it happens that Benvolio, of the house of Montague and friend to Romeo, comes across the fighting men and intervenes in order to “keep the peace”. Unfortunately, at this moment, Tybalt, a hot-head of the house of Capulet, and cousin to Juliet, comes along too, and, drawing his sword against Benvolio, he cries furiously:

          … talk of peace! I hate the word,
As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee:

(I.i.77 f.)

and forces the fight on Benvolio, thus emphasizing the folly of the servants.⁷ It is not enough that these four men should be fighting: old Capulet and old Montague appear on the scene with their wives, and join in the cries of civil war.

It requires the presence of the Prince (Escales) and some sensible citizens—as the representatives of law and order—to part the infuriated fighters on either side. This hatred, then, is shown to affect more than just the two families, as a matter of fact, the whole state is involved.

          Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,
.....Will they not hear?

(I.i.88 f.)

the Prince exclaims and then calls the agitators to account.

          If ever you disturb our streets again,
Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace

(I.i.103 f.)

These words—implying the Elizabethan idea that death is the payment for civil war—are spoken before Romeo and Juliet have appeared at all, and yet they convey the feeling of foreboding future disaster.

So far the theme that underlies the love story of Romeo and Juliet and causes its tragic ending has been introduced—without, however, involving any of the main characters yet. When Romeo, and then Juliet, are presented on the stage it becomes clear immediately that they have no active part in these quarrels.

Romeo's first appearance is skilfully prepared—from the dramatic point of view—by Lady Montague's asking Benvolio after her son. Benvolio answers that he had seen his friend Romeo in the early morning, but had found him in a very pensive and depressed mood seeking the solitude of a nearby wood.⁸ Romeo's father describes other, similar symptoms: his son weeps and sighs, he locks himself up in his room during the daytime making an artificial night for himself.

Black and portentous must this humour prove.

(I.i.147)

is old Montague's feeling, and his words—it is felt—seem to forcecast that something terrible is going to happen.

It is by this description that Shakespeare depicts young Romeo to the audience even before he is seen himself. After Montague's and Benvolio's talk about Romeo, the latter himself appears. Romeo's character which had so skilfully been introduced indirectly through his companion's account, is now put before us and developed, deliberately—it seems to us—before the main action has been started.

Romeo when talking to his friend Benvolio is found melancholy, grieved, moody, lovesick! He starts by enjoying the self-dramatizing melancholy of being desperately in love, and, absorbed in his hopeless fancy for Rosaline, he is quite indifferent to the family feud:

          … O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love

(I.i.179 ff.)

The Romeo of these first scenes is the typical romantic lover: woefully sad, desperate to madness, and using the typical conventional, highly artificial language of the love poetry of the 1590s! He rails against the torments of love, as proud Rosaline will not give in to his “assailing eyes”.

          She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

(I.i.229 f.)⁹

Yet one feels that a good deal of Romeo's self-pity is a pose. Romeo is “more in love with love than with Rosaline” H. Granville-Barker writes about the weeping Romeo of the first scene. However, we are presented with a very clear-cut picture of Romeo who, half boy, half man, is floating in a stream of romantic emotions.

His character having been put before us, we are now—in the following scene—prepared to meet Juliet. Her father, old Capulet, and Paris, a young nobleman, are “matchmaking”, Paris having asked for Juliet's hand. We learn that Juliet “hath not seen the change of fourteen years” yet, and are prepared to find her not much more than a child. And so she is. She appears for the first time in I.iii., and her pure figure is contrasted to her gross, foursquare, earthy nurse, who enjoys making more or less indecent remarks, which, however, are either ignored or stopped by Juliet, for whom anything connected with physical love is of no importance yet. Still, the nurse tries to arouse young Juliet's appetite for such matters and helps Lady Capulet in her endeavour to persuade her daughter to marry Paris. (“Go girl, seek happy nights to happy days!” I.iii.106) Juliet at last agrees to have a look at Paris on the occasion of a banquet arranged in her father's house solely for that purpose.

In the next scene Romeo and his friends are on their way to the banquet in the palace of the Capulets, where Romeo, who has learnt of this feast coincidentally, hopes to be able at least to see his adored Rosaline from the distance.

On their way to Capulet's house Romeo proves a spoil-sport as fits his mood, and not even his friend Mercutio's remarks¹⁰ and talks of dreams (“which are the children of an idle brain”) can cheer him up. And when Mercutio tries to hurry him on a little for fear of coming too late to the banquet, Romeo replies:

          I fear, too early: 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.

(I.iv.106 ff.)

In these words Romeo “shows the peculiar clarity which gives quality to a man, marks him off from the happy-go-lucky crowd, and will at a crisis compel him to face his fate.”;¹¹ it is as though his mind is anticipating something of the “fearful passage” which he is about to enter.

In the fifth and last scene of the first act, then, the deciding encounter between Romeo and Juliet takes place.

At the banquet Romeo beholds Juliet for the first time. He is rapt:

          What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?

(I.v.43)

he asks—and at this very minute Rosaline disappears out of his mind entirely.

Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night

(I.v.54 f.)

Then he comes closer, speaks to her, touches her hand, and falls deeply in love with her.

With lightning swiftness Romeo has changed. He experiences real passion for the first time, and this experience transforms his whole being, indeed turns him from the caricature of a romantic lover into a true human being.¹² And Juliet, she is such a child! Shakespeare insists on the youth of the two; he wants to show a real girl and a real boy.

We will not endeavour to spoil the unspeakably tender scene of the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet by discussing it. For minutes nothing seems to exist but the boy and the girl, and moved one follows the touching play of words between the two. Juliet is moved to earnestness by his fervour, but breaks into fun at last, remarking roguishly: “You kiss by the book”. They are so in love, both of them! Their kiss proves it, and at the same time seals their fate.

Secluded they stand, for seconds only, then Juliet is called away. Then Romeo hears who Juliet is, and Juliet learns Romeo's origin. They must realize that outwardly they stand on different sides of a strong dividing line! However, Romeo faces his fate and it is only now that he breaks through to desperate reality. And so does Juliet; when she hears that Romeo is the only son of her family's “great enemy” and realizes that:

my only love sprung from my only hate,
Too early seen, unknown, and known too late,
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.

(I.v.140 ff.)¹³

—she is no more a child.

Similarly to Othello, at the end of the opening scenes the action of this play has been set in motion and put clearly before us. The poet has introduced lovers from two houses between which there is a ferocious feud, and though the lovers themselves are free of hate and unaffected by enmity they will have to be prepared to fight for their love against the impediments of civil war. However, the importance of the first act goes further than they. Shakespeare, in this first act, makes skilful use of the opportunity to depict Romeo's and Juliet's character.

Romeo, at first, is shown as a moody person, full of the conventional lovers' complaints, emotional, unmanly. When he sees Juliet, however, an abrupt change takes place, a change, we feel, that comes too suddenly, too unprepared, too rashly, as not to make us wonder at Romeo's instability of character. While he had dedicated the whole of his heart to “fair Rosaline” before (“I have lost myself, I am not here, / This is not Romeo, he's some other where.” I.i.203) when he confronts Juliet it is with the same absolute whole heartedness that he dedicates himself to her. This indicates quite unobtrusively a significant trait of Romeo's, his rashness and arbitrariness of judgement. His intemperance is stressed further when he first converses with Juliet. He cannot wait, he must kiss her instantly. And Juliet, she is just the same. Fascinated by Romeo's trembling passion she herself is inflamed and the fire of love is kindled in her.

However, Juliet, in comparison, does not have to withdraw her love from anyone else; she has never loved before, and cannot be moved by her parents to love Paris, her suitor. It is only when she confronts Romeo that her whole heart opens in all purity to “her only love”, and she can yield the whole unbroken, constant strength of first love, in genuine, as yet hidden violence and passion.

B) THE MAIN ACTION.

In the second act the events are hurried on with great swiftness. After Romeo and his friends have left the banquet, Romeo hides from Benvolio and Mercutio who jest “at scars that never felt a wound” when they conjure him by Rosaline's diverse assets. When they have given up seeking for him, Romeo approaches Juliet's balcony and overhears her sighs and professions of love.

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

(II.ii.33)

she sighs, and then argues innocently with herself:

          What's in a name? That which we' call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet,
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes.

(II.ii.43 ff.)

and when she bursts out passionately

          … Romeo, doff thy name,
And for thy name which is no part of thee,
Take all my self.

(II.ii.47 ff.)

Romeo cannot retain himself any longer, stepping forward from where he was hidden, he exclaims, with all the violence of youthful passion:

          I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo

(II.ii.49 ff.)

Without hesitation, without a split-second's reflection Romeo is ready to discard his name, and, surely, it is felt, he would have promised her anything at this minute, rapt as he is in his passion. The duet of love which follows is rightly considered as one of the loveliest passages ever written by Shakespeare.

Although—as Juliet herself says—their “ears have not yet drunk a hundred words” of their “tongue's utterance” (II.ii.58) they are so passionately in love already, that they simply cannot waste any time on “form” and “compliments”, but come to the point right away. Thus Juliet says:

          Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny
What I have spoke: but farewell compliment!
Dost thou love me? …

(II.ii.88 ff.)

Romeo's love, and his sincere profession of it, is Juliet's only present concern. In all her fervour, she is yet thoughtful enough to warn him of too quick, too ill-considered, an answer:

          … I know, thou wilt say ‘ay’,
          And I will take thy word: yet, if thou swear'st,
          Thou mayst prove false. …
                                                                      … O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully …

(II.ii.90 ff.)

Romeo, kindled in his love to Juliet to the extreme, swears his love “by yonder blessed moon”, but is rebuked by Juliet, not to swear by

          … the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb

(II.ii.109 f.)

and when he, somewhat at a loss,—great boy that he is—asks her!

What shall I swear by?

(II.ii.112)

Juliet answers:

          Do not swear at all:
Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.

(II.ii.113 ff.)

The god of her idolatry is Romeo to Juliet, after they have known each other not more than an hour, or two!

To an Elizabethan audience this vehemence of passion after such a rash development must certainly have foreboded disastrous consequences.

And in her next words Juliet herself confesses:

          I have no joy of this contract tonight:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden:
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say ‘It lightens.’ Sweet, good night!

(II.ii.117 ff.)

However, these thoughts are quickly followed by others expressing Juliet's desire to become Romeo's wife as soon as possible.

          If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow
.....Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the world.

(II.ii.143 ff.)

Surely, this breathtaking swiftness of decision and this rapidity of development is not coincidental. Shakespeare has insisted on the youth of the protagonists of this play, and now he stresses their precipitance. Every word Romeo and Juliet speak is steeped in a sensuous-spiritual ecstasy, everything they say, and do is meant to hasten the events on.¹⁴ Things cannot happen quickly enough for them.

That very same night, or rather morning, for it has become light in the meantime and the “grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night”, Romeo goes to see Friar Laurence to “crave his help”. Friar Laurence is very wise, very understanding, and patiently listens to Romeo's fervent account of his meeting Juliet, who “on a sudden” wounded Romeo's heart.

Again and again this suddenness is stressed. No sooner has Romeo informed the Friar of the essentials than he implores him:

          … this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us to-day.

(II.iii.64 f.)

Friar Laurence is taken aback by Romeo's haste;

Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken?

(II.III.65 ff.)

He is, at first, distressed by Romeo's sudden change, but when young Romeo makes it clear to him that this time his heart has been seized by genuine and true love, the Friar sees in this unexpected turn a chance of ending the ancient feud between the houses of Montague and Capulet.¹⁵ However, when with trembling impatience Romeo begs him:

O let us hence, I stand on sudden haste.

(II.iii.93)

Friar Laurence's answer

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

(II.iii.94)

is full of meaning.

However, Romeo does not listen to the Friar's council, he does run fast. And Juliet is beset by exactly the same impatience; as the old Nurse has not returned as quickly as Juliet's heart would have wished her to, the girl pours forth restlessly:

          O, she is lame! love's heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams

(II.v.4 f.)

and scolds the Nurse:

Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.

(II.v.17)

But when eventually the old woman arrives, Juliet runs up to her and cannot wait to hear the news:

… come, I pray thee, speak; good, good nurse, speak.

(II.v.28)

and the Nurse reproaches her:

Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile?

(II.v.29)

Of course, Juliet cannot. The longer the Nurse withholds her news, the more irrepressibly impatient Juliet grows; holding on to the Nurse, she implores her:

Sweet, sweet, sweet Nurse, tell me what says my love?

until finally the good old soul yields her message, and tells Juliet:

          Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence' cell;
There stays a husband to make you a wife

(II.v.70)

and this hastening “hie you” is repeated twice:

          Hie you to church; I must another way,
To fetch a ladder, by the which your love
Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark:
.....                    … hie you to the cell.

(II.v.74 ff.)

Juliet gladly follows the Nurse's words: with a

Hie to high fortune!

(II.v.80)

and a farewell to the Nurse she hurries away.

This extreme hurrying on of events is further intensified in the following scene, (II.vi.). Romeo, in the Friar's cell, is waiting for Juliet to come to be married to her. The Friar is in serious thought, and the sense of gloom which was hinted at three times in the opening act, can be felt behind his words when—somewhat solemnly—he says:

          So smile the heavens upon this holy act,
That after hours with sorrow chide us not!

(II.vi.1 f.)

However Romeo, who lives completely for the present moment, does not think of “after hours”, fierily he bursts out:

          Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
          Then love-devouring death do what he dare;
It is enough I may but call her mine.

(II.vi.8 ff.)

Friar Laurence's words, wisely calling him to moderation, are not heeded seriously by Romeo, whose heart is too full of violent passion. He defies fate, and the impetuosity of his words further intensifies this trait of his character. It is no coincidence that the Friar, once again, speaks a word of warning:

          These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
.....Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

(II.vi.9 ff.)

What dramatic irony that just at this moment, when the Friar calls Romeo to moderation and warns him of too great swiftness, Juliet enters the cell like a whirlwind (the stage direction runs: “Enter Juliet somewhat fast”), thus emphasizing the pernicious haste which the Friar reproaches!

When Friar Laurence realizes how deeply impassioned the two lovers are, and how little influence his good council can have on them at this hour, he himself consents to the pact and “will make short work” of marrying the two.

Only one night has passed between Romeo's and Juliet's first encounter and their marriage, and the poet has made apparent by many touches and comments the extraordinary rashness and precipitance with which the lovers hurry their fate on.¹⁶ No sooner have the lovers been united in matrimony by the Friar than they want to hurry to the consummation of their love. The Nurse has provided a ladder, so that Romeo can climb into Capulet's house under the cover of darkness without being discovered. Once again Juliet is depicted in her eager impatience, her passionate yearning for Romeo:

          Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a waggoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.

(III.ii.1 ff.)

In the meantime, however, the situation of the lovers has become more complicated and hopeless than ever, as Romeo has intervened in an unhappy quarrel between the impulsive Mercutio and the hot-headed Tybalt in order to make them “forbear this outrage” and to pacify them, as

          … the prince expressly hath
Forbidden bandying in Verona streets.

(III.i.91 f.)

But in the course of this fight Tybalt, most cunningly and brutally “under Romeo's arm thrusts Mercutio in”.¹⁷ When Tybalt who had fled at first comes back, Romeo is flung into a temper. “Quite unjustly fearing that love has made him ‘effeminate’, he opens the attack, now passionately rejecting the manly forbearance with which he had answered his wife's cousin.”¹⁸ His sudden change of attitude breaks through in his violent words:

          Away to heaven, respective lenity,
And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now.

(III.i.128 f.)

Blindly furious and rejecting all reason he fights Tybalt and kills him. It is only when Tybalt lies dead at his feet that Romeo's rage ebbs down and he realizes the consequences of his inconsiderate deed. Too late he remembers the Prince's words, and all he can utter now is “O, I am fortune's fool.”

The Nurse brings the news to Juliet whilst the latter is eagerly waiting for her lover to come to her. After the first shock at hearing the bad news, she realizes that she loves him nonetheless,

Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?

(III.ii.97)

However, his banishment makes her ill at heart. In most daring and passionate words (III.ii.112 ff.) she wails at this cruel blow, and her only wish is to see Romeo once more before he has to leave Verona. Romeo in the meantime, has found refuge with Friar Laurence, and there, in the eremite's cell, Romeo's attitude has changed again. He wails and cries like a child, because he is banished and thus forced to leave Juliet.

With his own tears made drunk

(III.iii.83)

he is the spectacle of a man wanting in resolution and vigour, so that even the Nurse on entering the Friar's cell, calls out

Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man:

(III.iii.88)

She tells the Friar that Juliet is in exactly the same state of mind:

          … Even so lies she,
Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering.

(III.iii.86 f.)

Romeo, on hearing of Juliet's despair, draws his sword to kill himself, but is restrained by the Friar's words. Friar Laurence, “the consistent voice of moderation and wisdom”¹⁹ warns him that he is truly unfortunate only in giving way to uncontrolled grief.

          Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art:
          Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote
          The unreasonable fury of a beast:
.....I thought thy disposition better tempered.
          But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
          Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love:
          Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.

(III.iii.109 ff.)

After this admonition Romeo pulls himself together and “makes haste” (III.iii.164) to visit his young bride secretly.

The exquisite lyrical beauty of the lovers' parting is again underlain and intensified by the absoluteness of their passion.

          … so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow.
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay than will to go:

(III.v.18)

They have to tear themselves away from each other, so violent is the passion that binds them together.

Romeo, then, leaves Verona for Mantua, obeying the Prince's order. Friar Laurence has promised his help, and when Juliet is forced by her parents to consent to a marriage with Paris, a nobleman, the poor newly-wed girl turns to Friar Laurence and craves his help

          Give me some present counsel …
.....Be not so long to speak; I long to die,
If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy

(IV.i.61 ff.)

Things must happen in the heat, she cannot bear any delays. Gladly Juliet accepts the Friar's suggestion of taking a sleeping-potion so strong that for forty-two hours she would lie as if dead, so that Romeo could meet her at the bier in the family vault of the Capulets, and at her awakening from apparent death, flee with her to Mantua.

As the Friar's letter which was to inform Romeo in Mantua of this plan, is miscarried, Romeo has no idea other than that his love is dead when his man, Balthasar, brings the terrible news. “He knows in a flash what he means to do.”²⁰ Balthasar is worried at Romeo's reaction and asks his master to have patience:

          I do beseech you, sir, have patience:
Your looks are pale and wild, and do import
Some misadventure.

(V.i.27 ff.)

However, Romeo does not know patience. In the following soliloquy he muses:

          … O mischief, thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!

(V.i.35 f.)

Without hesitation he rouses a poor apothecary and asks him for a strong and effective poison

          … that the trunk may be discharged of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

(V.i.63 ff.)

In deepest distress he rushes to Juliet's tomb under the cover of darkness. There he is held up by Paris whom he requests not to provoke him, but, provoked, he kills him in an outburst of fury.²¹

Then in his tragic misjudgement of the situation he takes poison by Juliet's side, just before the Friar, who could have explained everything to him, arrives. Romeo's last words:

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

(V.iii.119 f.)

end on the note of quickness and passion. And Friar Laurence's words when he enters immediately after this are

Saint Francis be my speed …

(V.iii.120)

However, he is out-sped by Romeo, and then by Juliet, too, when with a quick thrust of Romeo's dagger she follows her beloved one into the beyond. The play is concluded by the Friar's account of the tragic happenings, and in a perfunctory end, old Montague and Capulet bury their enmity, after the Prince has pointed out to them:

          See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love

(V.iii.92 f.)

There is a “glooming peace” at the end, bearing out what the prologue had hinted at in the beginning. “The stress, at the last, is on the value and effectiveness of love's sacrifice: it has ended ‘the ancient grudge’.” as one critic²² puts it, voicing the general opinion.

However, the stress of Shakespeare's “first deep analysis of tragedy”²³ is certainly not on this perfunctory reunion of the Montagues and the Capulets. Romeo and Juliet is not just “a lesson for fathers” as G. B. Harrison has it.²⁴ The effect of this early Shakespearean tragedy—more than of any other of his tragedies—rests on the interplay of character and situation.

2. SITUATION AND CHARACTER IN ROMEO AND JULIET.

The characters of the protagonists are carefully presented and our interpretation has been concentrated on their development in the play.

However, the outward situation and circumstances also play a very important part in Romeo and Juliet. This is already apparent in the Prologue, which speaks of the pernicious influence of “the stars”. (Stars, Fate and Fortune are nearly synonymous in Shakespeare.)²⁵ One must note, however, as F. M. Dickey does,²⁶ that in none of Shakespeare's early plays except for “Romeo and Juliet” have the stars any influence on the plots; and in his later plays Shakespeare either satirizes the attempt to explain conduct and character by astrology, or else he uses astrological predictions mainly for ironic effects.²⁷ “In none of the plots, unless Romeo and Juliet is an exception, do the stars determine the action even though some of the characters think they do.”²⁸ Blind fate, then, is never seen to work in Shakespeare's dramas. (The well-known line from Shakespeare's Hamlet comes to mind: “There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” (V.ii.230).) The question, therefore, which is of importance to a reader of Romeo and Juliet is whether the lovers are indeed depicted as caught up only in outward fatal circumstances, as “star-crossed” and “fortune's fools”, and their fate as “misadventured”, which would mean that in this play, for once, Shakespeare has written what could be called a “tragedy of situation”, or whether, already in this early “lyric tragedy”—as in his more mature works—Shakespeare has deepened the tragic effect by rooting the core of the tragedy in the character of the protagonists.

Before one can venture to answer this question, one must examine the outward circumstances and accidents that determine the progression of the action.

The first accident that plays a role occurs when Romeo and his friends run into the clown—who cannot read—and thus hear of the banquet and consequently go there (Romeo with the intention of meeting fair Rosaline).²⁹

The next accident of importance happens when Romeo comes across the fighting men, Mercutio and Tybalt, tries to intervene, and finally slays Tybalt. The third, and most influential accident must be seen in Friar John's detention from delivering Friar Laurence's letter to Romeo.

Finally it can be considered an accident that Romeo arrives just a little too early at Juliet’s tomb, or that Juliet awakens just a little too late, or, respectively, that Friar Laurence reaches the vault a couple of minutes too late.

These fatal accidents, as well as the outward circumstances of the family feud, are meant to be considered as the bad fortune which makes the lovers appear “star-crossed”.

This view seems to be confirmed by a few remarks of Romeo's, and one or two of Friar Laurence's. Both Romeo and Juliet have in the beginning a sombre feeling of “some consequence yet hanging in the stars” (I.iv.107), and the same feeling presses on Romeo again after Mercutio's death:

          This day's black fate, on more days doth depend;
This but begins the woe others must end.

(III.i.124 f.)

and soon after this he calls himself “fortune's fool” (III.i.141), Friar Laurence on hearing of Romeo's fatal encounter with Tybalt, says to Romeo:

          Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts:
And thou art wedded to calamity.

(III.iii.2. f.)

and Juliet proclaims, when Romeo has left her for his banishment:

          O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle:
If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him …

(III.60 f.)

Later on, when Romeo's man brings the news of Juliet's death, Romeo's first reaction is to curse the stars for his misfortune:

Then I deny you, stars.

(V.i.24)

Friar Laurence, realizing that his letter has been miscarried, speaks of “unhappy fortune” (V.ii.17).

In the end, after Romeo's killing the Count Paris in the churchyard he calls Paris,

One writ with me in sour misfortune's book

(V.iii.82)

and then Romeo, just before drinking his poison, speaks of shaking

          … the yoke of inauspicious stars,
From this world-wearied flesh …

(V.iii.111 f.)

Friar Laurence, arriving immediately after Romeo has sunk dead, moans:

          … Ah, what an unkind hour
Is guilty of this lamentable chance!

(V.iii.145 f.)

and to Juliet,—who just then wakes from her trance—he says

          A greater power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents …

(V.iii.153 f.)

Taken out of their context these remarks do, indeed, all point at “the inauspicious stars” or at “fickle fortune”, or “a greater power than we can contradict” as determining force behind the lovers' fate. And on superficial reading of the play one could in fact come to a conclusion like that of E. K. Chambers: “Juliet and her Romeo become the shuttlecocks of fate, which, as ever, finds battledores ready to hand in meaningless accident and human stupidity.”³⁰; or, like the one G. B. Harrison arrives at, that “if only Romeo had not been a Montague, if Tybalt had not met Mercutio at the wrong moment, if old Capulet had kept his temper with Juliet, if Friar Laurence had reached the tomb five minutes earlier, then all would have been well. As it is, at every critical moment something goes wrong by unlucky accident.”³¹ In other words: if there had not been so many unfortunate accidents, if the lovers' stars had not been crossed, the play could have ended happily. “The disaster in the play is caused not so much by some moral issue, but by sheer bad luck.”³²

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is, of course, in the end a tragedy of misfortune. However, as our discussion of the play has shown, the play does not turn on “sheer bad luck” only, but there is, we think, “some moral issue” that contributes to the disaster at the end of the play. Shakespeare has taken great pains—as was seen—in the depiction of his characters; and has presented them in their freedom of will, and their freedom of choice. It has been shown that from the beginning the rashness, precipitance and violence of passion is stressed in Romeo as well as in Juliet.³³ Rashness and haste in Shakespeare, however, are always connected with an element of “unripeness” and this has disastrous consequences. “Ripeness is all”, but “violent delights have violent ends”, and “they stumble that run fast”! Shakespeare, we think, drives this point home with undisguised force. Clearly, then, one must consider this violent haste, this passionately storming forward, this hideous rashness and absoluteness of mind as a fatal flaw in the lovers' character. In addition, Romeo's immaturity especially is intensified by showing him in many different states of mind, each of which filled with great intensity. (First, he is the typical conventional lover, then a sudden change to true love for Juliet, then peaceloving arbiter, then headstrong, bloodthirsty fighter, afterwards self-pitying weak adolescent, and so on.) Romeo is full of changes, and this, too, implying as it does, a lack of self-knowledge, is part of his fatal flaw.³⁴ But it is this lack of self-knowledge, this impetuous rashness of temper, combined with an element of unripeness that makes Romeo, and to a lesser degree Juliet, too, passion's slave and, consequently, incurs their wrong choice. Having the fundamental choice between reasonable and passionate action, the lovers follow their passions and thus incur the tragic consequences; and some of the “ifs” which critics so readily put forward, now lose in importance. It is no good arguing “all could have been well, if Romeo had not slain Tybalt”, because it is significant that Romeo in his impetuosity did slay Tybalt, in a violent outburst which is typical of his character. Likewise it is no good saying, “if Romeo had arrived at Juliet's tomb some minutes later …”, for, again, it is typical and significant that Romeo should arrive as fast as he can, and take the quickly-effective poison without hesitation.³⁵

As concerns the downright “accidents” in the play,—above all Friar Laurence's miscarried letter—one should bear in mind that accidents very often do play an important role in tragedy, and are part of the total design. Although accidents can, as Johannes Volkelt writes, “with some justification be called irreconcilable with tragedy”, and “special skill in representation is required if a fatal accident which is absolutely necessary for a certain tragic action, shall not weaken the tragic sense”,³⁶ Shakespeare in his tragedies quite often incorporates portentous (consequential) accidents.³⁷ “It is important” Volkelt continues, for the poet “to show that the particular accident … is full of (tragic) sense.”³⁸ This, however, in our opinion, holds true for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare could easily have avoided the fatal accident (of Friar John's detention), but as it occurs this particular coincidence acquires a special meaning; and H. S. Wilson is quite right when he notes: “We are meant to reflect upon this chain of seeming accidents, for they are prominently displayed.”³⁹

If one reflects on these accidents, however, it becomes apparent that there is more to them than mere ill-luck; one feels that this which looks like pure chance conveys the impression that some universal order is visible in the event.⁴⁰ And when Una Ellis-Fermor states that “a play in which death or destruction comes by accident will fail, however finely imagined, because the catastrophe is not integral to the play and to its underlying thought”,⁴¹ we must assure that in Romeo and Juliet the catastrophe does arise naturally from the action and does form an integral part of it. H. Granville-Barker has the right feeling when he writes that “by the time he (Shakespeare) has brought Romeo and Juliet to their full dramatic stature we cannot—accidents or no—imagine a happy ending, or a Romeo and Juliet married and settled as anything but a burlesque.”⁴² Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is not poor melodrama but a carefully wrought tragedy, in which circumstance plays an important role, but in which it is the protagonists' character that bears the decisive stress. Thus, this early tragedy is not much different from the poet's later tragedies in which fate is always inseparably bound up with human conduct.⁴³ This fact however, that Romeo and Juliet is the first strong link in the chain of Shakespeare's tragedies has not been credited for by most critics. An outstanding exception is F. M. Dickey who has realized that “the play is an exceptionally powerful tragedy” in which “the immediate cause of (the lovers') unhappy deaths is Romeo's headlong fury and blind despair.”⁴⁴ “Romeo therefore is a tragic hero like Othello in that he is responsible for his own chain of passionate actions.”⁴⁵ Dickey very justifiably stresses the point that in our play “Shakespeare is careful to make Romeo guilty of sinful action under the influence of passion while at the same time making us sympathize with Romeo's agonies of despair”,⁴⁶ and he concludes: “The patterns of moral reponsibility are necessary to give the action its perspective, and it is these patterns of the destructive as well as the creative force of love and the dependence of fate upon the passionate will which most contemporary criticism neglects or denies.”⁴⁷ Romeo and Juliet, then, are like King Lear, Othello or Macbeth, characters of fundamental virtue, but diseased by one essential fatal trait. Their passion drives them on headlong, they cannot see because they do not listen to the voice of advice and moderation.⁴⁸ Like Shakespeare's other tragic heroes Romeo and Juliet have—to apply A. C. Bradley's famous words—“a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind”,⁴⁹ and thus hasten towards the catastrophe. They cannot “love moderately” and thus “stumble” because they “run too fast”. This trait of their character,—their impetuosity—helps to bring about their tragic ending. It is painful to watch the fatal precipitance with which the lovers “stumble” into their graves, and yet one feels their death to be inevitable.

3) TRAGIC RECONCILIATION IN ROMEO AND JULIET.

It is at the end of the tragedy that Romeo in spite of his precipitancy achieves a sense of greatness, when at the side of Juliet's tomb he prepares for death. Looking around Romeo notices Tybalt lying in his “bloody sheet”, and with a sudden warm heart full of fellow-feeling and love, he is ready to atone for his rash killing of Tybalt, and asks the dead “cousin” forgiveness:

          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?
Forgive me, cousin!

(V.iii.98 ff.)

Truly spoken and heartfelt are these words and for a moment it seems as though Romeo through this feeling of pity and repentance is led to a final realization of his true character. But in Romeo's following words, after his last embrace to Juliet, this hint at a self-realization is washed away by the thoughts of his “dateless bargain with engrossing death”. In his last words:

          Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!

(V.iii.116 ff.)

one may at best surmise at something like a self-realization,⁵⁰ but this is not at all forcibly presented.

However, if this hinted at self-realization has not been presented with the same force as in Shakespeare's other tragedies (especially in King Lear), this lack is outweighed by the shining beauty and greatness of Romeo's and Juliet's love which presents its last great manifestation in the mutual following of the the tragic ending, and just as J. Dover Wilson writes⁵¹ that the universe in which a Lear is possible cannot be evil as he is part of it and Cordelia is part of it, one may say with even greater justification that certainly the universe in which an all-overwhelming love such as Romeo's and Juliet's is possible can only be understood as good,—in spite of all the mischances and flaws of character to which man is subject. The quality of the lover's pure feeling emerges triumphant—even in their tragic death—and thus saves the cosmos for us. Significantly enough the drama ends on a harmonious note with the restoration of order in the streets of Verona, and peace between the rivalling houses

The tragic catastrophe, then, is not rooted in a tragic constitution of the universe, but is entirely due to the explosiveness and rashness of the lovers' passion and to the fatal violence with which Romeo and Juliet yield up all reasonable and thoughtful action. Their guilt is not love, but their violent storming forward. The quality of love, on the contrary, presents in this drama the great reconciliation which at the end of the drama does not leave the audience crushed at the lovers' tragic lot, but elated by the superb greatness and unanimity of human love, of which they have watched an outstanding representation.

Notes

1. “Romeo and Juliet at its first performance was by far the best tragedy for the stage that had yet been produced in the English language.” G. B. Harrison, [Shakespeare's Tragedies. London 1956], p. 47.

2. John Lawlor, Romeo and Juliet, in Early Shakespeare. Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies 3, Lond. 1961, p. 123.

3. H. B. Charlton [Shakespearean Tragedy. Cambridge 1952] (p. 62): Romeo and Juliet “is indeed rich in spells of its own. But as a pattern of the idea of tragedy, it is a failure.” “Even Shakespeare appears to have felt that as an experiment, it had disappointed him.” (op.cit., p. 61 f.) cf. also H. B. Charlton, Romeo and Juliet as an Experimental Tragedy. British Academy Shakespeare Lecture, 1939.

4. J. Dover Wilson, The Essential Shakespeare, [Cambr. U.P. 1932] p. 112.

5. This kind of prologue proclaiming an external moral was an accepted feature of Elizabethan stage technique. H. S. Wilson, however, sees more in the prologue than this. He writes: “The Greek tragedians, and their imitator Seneca whom Shakespeare knew better, could count on their audience's familiarity with the story of the play. Shakespeare uses his opening prologue in Romeo and Juliet to establish the same condition.” (On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, Toronto 1957 p. 19)

6. G. B. Harrison writes: “Romeo and Juliet is thus intended to illustrate rather the folly of family feuds than the sad story of two young lovers: and to the original title. ‘The most excellent and lamentable tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.’ might well have been added in the eighteenth-century manner the moral sub-title ‘Or a Lesson for Fathers’.” (op.cit., p. 48)

7. “Shakespeare has made Tybalt not simply a man who acts rashly in sudden rage, but the symbol of the will diseased with hatred, of fixed anger without limit. ‘Wilful choler’ implies that Tybalt is kin to the true villains, the mortal sinners like Iago. Not anger but the more terrible extreme marks him …” Franklin M. Dickey, ‘Not Wisely But Too Well’, Shakespeare's Love Tragedies, San Marino, California, 1957, p. 97.

8. It is interesting to watch the change of tone in Benvolio's language when he begins to speak about Romeo: and Montague, too, answers in the same smooth, lyric language.

9. H. Granville-Barker. Prefaces to Shakespeare. II, Romeo and Juliet, London 1928, p. 53.

10. It is interesting to note the nearly symmetrical construction that Shakespeare applies in this play.—As in Juliet's environment love is spoken of in its basest connotations, so it is in Romeo's. Mercutio has more or less the function which the Nurse has with Juliet. This is part of Shakespeare's dramatic technique to achieve an emphatic contrast between that sort of “love” at which Juliet's loquacious nurse and Romeo's merry friend Mercutio are continually hinting, and the genuine, pure and true love that is to enter the hearts of Romeo and Juliet.

11. H. Granville-Barker, op.cit., p. 53.

12. This inner change in Romeo is externally marked by the change of his speech, usually a significant indication in Shakespeare's characters.

              Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
    It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
    Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
    Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

    (I.v.46 ff.)

    Although there is still a large amount of conceit in this description of Juliet, this artifice is no longer cold or perfunctory as it has been with Rosaline. It is a lyrical fervour that flames from deep and genuine love or, to borrow Coleridge's distinction (as E. K. Chambers [Shakespeare, A Survey. London, 1925] does, p. 72), Romeo has passed from the sphere of fancy to the sphere of imagination.

13. It should be noted, however, that it is by the irresponsible servants, who like quarrelling and fighting, and by the fiery hot-head Tybalt, that the feud is freshly kindled. Montague and Capulet themselves, the masters who long ago originated the feud feel rather, tired and ashamed of these endless quarrels, and Capulet admits: “… 'tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace.” (I.ii.2) So, after all, and this is the implicit idea conveyed by Shakespeare, if it were not for the servants and the “Tybalts” who seize on any pretext to fight, the feud could already be at an end.

14. Note how often hours and time are mentioned. For instance

    JULIET:

    At what o' clock tomorrow / Shall I send to thee?

    ROMEO:

    By the hour of nine.

    JULIET:

    I will not fail, 'tis twenty years till then.

    (II.ii.168 ff.)

    And later, in II.v. Juliet says:

              The clock struck nine when I did send the Nurse,
    In half an hour she promised to return …
    O, she is lame! love's heralds should be thoughts,
    Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,

    And in III.iii:

    Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds …

15. The Friar, from this point onwards, is the controlling figure in the play. The outward action is from now on controlled by him, until the events prove stronger than his hold.

16. Franklin M. Dickey, in his noteworthy study in ‘Not Wisely But Too Well’, Shakespeare's Love Tragedies, San Marino, 1957, maintains that tragic themes occur in the first two acts but “carefully muted; as a result we have two full acts of almost pure comedy, often uproarious comedy at that” (p. 87). According to Dickey the play consists of two halves, the first one representing “Mozartian comedy, amusing and wistful” (p. 85), using “time-honoured comic techniques and characters” (p. 87), and the second tragedy. Dickey, we think, stresses the comic elements of the first two acts too much, and thus overlooks Shakespeare's skilful presentation of his characters and development of the lovers' tragic fate.

17. Stage direction (III.i.94). There is a profoundly pathetic and tragic touch about this scene; Romeo who “had thought all for the best” (III.i.109) wanting to establish peace between the combatants becomes the direct cause of Mercutio's, and then Tybalt's death, thus achieving exactly what he had meant to prevent.

18. F. M. Dickey, op.cit., p. 98.

19. F. M. Dickey, op.cit., p. 115.

20. H. Granville-Baker's very apt words; op.cit., p. 56.

21. This scene has sense only if it is interpreted as a further demonstration of Romeo's rashness of temper. It seems very significant that Romeo understands whom he has put to death only after he has in fury killed Paris. Certainly this stresses further Romeo's passionate will and thoughtlessness.

22. John Vyvyan, [The Shakespearean Ethics. London 1959] op.cit., p. 143.

23. ibid.

24. G.B.Harrison, op.cit., p. 48.

25. J.W.Draper believes literally that the lovers are “star-crossed”, in the sense of astrological determinism! cf.J.W.Draper, Shakespeare's ‘Starcrossed Lovers', in RES, [Review of English Studies] 1939.

26. F. M. Dickey, op.cit., p. 90 f.

27. Thus in “King Lear” for example, Gloucester's belief in the stars makes him an easy victim of Edmund's villainy.

28. F. M. Dickey, op.cit., p. 90.

29. H. S. Wilson goes as far as to suggest: “They (Romeo and Juliet) fell in love by accident.” (op.cit., p. 28). [On the Design of Shakespeare's Tragedy. Toronto 1957]

30. E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare, A Survey, p. 72.

31. G. B. Harrison, op.cit., p. 48.

32. ibid.

33. John Vyvyan: “Our first feeling is that the tragedy of these lovers is like a ferment of new wine which bursts the old wine-skins …” Shakespeare and The Rose of Love, London 1960, p. 141.

34. T. R. Henn's comments: “The flaw in Romeo is a malady rather than a defect of character.” (op.cit., p. 101) [The Harvest of Tragedy. London 1956] is an inappropriate defence of Romeo's character.

35. cf. H. Granville-Barker, “It is by pure ill-luck that Friar John's speed to Mantua is stayed while Balthazar reaches Romeo with the news of Juliet's death; but it is Romeo's headlong recklessness that leaves Friar Laurence no time to retrieve the mistake.” (op.cit., p. 17)

36. Johannes Volkelt, Aesthetik des Tragischen, München 1897, p. 88.

37. For example, Desdemona's loss of her handkerchief, in Othello.

38. Volkelt, Aesthetik des Tragischen, München 1897, p. 88.

39. H. S. Wilson, op.cit., p. 28. After this statement, however, Wilson does not draw the consequences which one would expect. Instead he suggests that the play lacks “a larger unity” (p. 30)

40. One may think of Schiller' words:

              Und was uns blindes Ohngefähr nur dünkt,
    Gerade das steigt aus den tiefsten Quellen.

    (Wallensteins Tod, II.iii.)

    or also of Aristotle's remarks (Poetics, IX, ii):

    again Tragedy is an imitation … of events inspiring pity and fear. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect. The tragic wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design.

    (quoted by F. R. Henn, The Harvest of Tragedy, London 1956, p. 3)

41. Una Ellis-Fermor, The Frontiers of Drama, New York, Oxf. Univ. Press, 1946, p. 128.

42. H.Granville-Barker, op.cit., p. 18.

43. cf. the famous lines in Hamlet, (III.ii.73 ff.):

                        blest are those
    Whose blood and judgement are so well commingled
    That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
    To sound what stop she pleases …

44. F. M. Dickey, op.cit., p. 102.

45. ibid., p. 114.

46. ibid., p. 115.

47. ibid., p. 117.

48. Dickey writes: “Shakespeare does not let us forget that disregard of the Friar's reasonable counsel rather than the turning of fortune's wheel dooms Romeo's love.” (op.cit., p. 111).

49. A. C. Bradley, [Shakespearean Tragedy. repr. London 1957] p. 15.

50. Dickey goes somewhat far in suggesting: “In his last breath he (Romeo) assumes the responsibility for the wreck of his hopes.” (op.cit., p. 114).

51. J. D. Wilson, The Essential Shakespeare, Cambridge 1932, p. 126.