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What does "feather of lead" mean in Romeo and Juliet?
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In "Romeo and Juliet," "feather of lead" is an oxymoron used by Romeo to express his confusion and frustration over unrequited love and the conflicting emotions it brings. This phrase combines two opposite concepts—lightness and heaviness—to illustrate how love, which should be uplifting, feels burdensome to him. Romeo uses this oxymoron along with others to convey the contradictory nature of his feelings, emphasizing how love and hate coexist in his life.
Lovelorn Romeo—is there any other kind of Romeo?—makes his first appearance in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet towards the end of the first scene of the play, after all the excitement has died down from a brawl in the streets between the feuding families of Capulet and Montague.
Just prior to Romeo's entrance, his cousin and best friend, Benvolio, and Romeo's parents, Lord and Lady Montague, are discussing Romeo's recent troubling behavior. Benvolio says that he saw Romeo earlier this morning, even before the sun came up, wandering in a grove of sycamore trees, but when Benvolio approached him, Romeo ran away into the woods.
Lord Montague tells Benvolio that he's seen Romeo sighing and crying early in the morning, and when the sun comes up, Romeo locks himself in his room, pulls all the curtains, and sits alone in the dark.
As Romeo enters, Benvolio tells the...
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Montagues that he'll do whatever he can to learn the reason for Romeo's behavior.
It doesn't take very long for Benvolio to learn that Romeo is in love, and out of favor, with "a woman." (We learn in the next scene that her name is Rosaline.)
Romeo notices that there's been some kind of disturbance in the street, but remembers that he was told about the brawl.
ROMEO: 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. (1.1.171-173)
The "fray" prompts Romeo to vent his frustrations against love in six short oxymoron-packed lines. (The oxymorons are numbered in context.)
ROMEO: Why then, (1) O brawling love! (2) O loving hate!
(3) O any thing, of nothing first create!
(4) O heavy lightness! (5) serious vanity!
(6) Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
(7) Feather of lead, (8) bright smoke, (9) cold fire, (10) sick health!
(11) Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! (1.1.174-179)
"Feather of lead," is one in the many oxymorons that Romeo uses to say that the unrequited love he feels is nothing like what love is supposed to feel like.
ROMEO: This love feel I, that feel no love in this. (1.1.180)
Ironically, after suffering these "pangs of despised love" (Hamlet, 3.1.79) and wallowing in the deepest depths of despair, Romeo will be meeting Juliet in just a few scenes, and he'll instantaneously forget about Rosaline and how she broke his heart.
As Romeo says to Friar Laurence:
ROMEO: I have forgot that name, and that name's woe. (2.3.47)
The oxymoron "feather of lead" (I.i.173) is spoken by Romeo when he discovers that his cousin, Benvolio, has just been in a fight with some Capulets. He's frustrated with the Montagues and Capulets fighting, and he's upset that Rosaline recently rejected him to join a convent. Romeo is surrounded by love and hate! As a result, he spits out a few oxymorons to express his frustrations, but also as a way to tell his cousin how futile all the fighting is. The full passage reads as follows:
"Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything of nothing first create;
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this" (I.i.168-175).
Oxymorons are created by combining two opposing words together that create verbal irony when placed together. The unexpected combination asks the audience to stop and think about how two opposites can exist together. It's as if Romeo is asking how love and hate can exist together. If so, love and hate can be paired like "feather" and "lead." One is light and can tickle like a laugh, but the other is heavy like a burden. Therefore, life and love can be happy and fun one minute, but tremendous burdens the next.
Another way to look at the oxymoron "feather of lead" is to recognize that nothing is as it seems. One minute Romeo thinks he is in love with the love of his life, but then reality hits him with disappointment. The love he felt for Rosaline made his life light and happy like a feather, but losing her is like the weight of lead upon his shoulders.