Prologue: "Two households, both alike in dignity"
- structural principle of mirrored opposition
- hyper-formalism (sonnet)
- "fatal loins" / oxymoron

Act One, Scene One (1.1)
- (s)wordplay / bawdy
- con-fusion of sexuality & aggression

1.1.168-175 ("Here's much to do with hate ...")
- oxymorons

1.3 Juliet as sexualized object
- see also 1.5.38-44 ("What lady's that ...") , & 5.3.297-303 ("But I can give ...")

J.M.W. Turner, Queen Mab's Cave (1846, Tate Museum)

1.4.49-114 ("I dreamt a dream ...")
Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech
- affective trajectory from fantasy to terror
- disgust with women & procreation
- Question: What are Mercutio's feelings about Romeo?

Nurse & Mercutio as realistic, reductive foils to idealized fictions of R&J

Nurse & Friar Laurence as fantasy permissive parents to R&J

1.5.90-108 ("If I profane ...") R&J initial conversation
- poetic convention / mutuality / implications of metaphors

2.1.74-103 ("O Romeo, Romeo ..." / "What's in a name?") (Study Question #2)
- philosophical question of relation between word & thing
- issue of family name
- individual desire vs. social structure

Tragedy of R&J
= doomed effort to create (individual) private relationship outside of (patriarchal) social frame
= effort to create idealized love outside of family bonds

Fate vs. Feud (Study Question #3)

2.2 ("The grey-eyed morn ...") Friar Laurence's botanical speech
- oxymoronic elements in nature, both external & internal
- note timing of R's entrance

3.2.135-137 ("Come cords ...")
4.4.52-56 ("Ha, let me see her ...")
5.3.102-105 ("Shall I believe ...")
- Death as character in play (Study Question #9)
see Death&Maiden link
see Woman+Death link

3.5.160-195 ("Hang thee, young baggage...")
- patriarchal violence
- flipside of "What's in a name?"

4.1.77ff ("O, bid me leap ...")
4.3.14-57 ("Farewell ...")
- Juliet's mature melancholy

5.3 Graveyard Scene
- Paris's Petrarchan clichés v. Romeo's desperate action
- Freudian symbolism (5.3.140-143, 168-169)
- Juliet's final line: "There rust [rest], and let me die."
-- What's in a word?

Page last updated: August 25, 2004
Send comments to: Professor David Willbern