Romeo and Juliet

Where to find it: From Romeo's “If I profane with my unworthiest hand”, which follows Tybalt's angry exit from the feast, to Juliet's “You kiss by the book.”, just before the Nurse calls Juliet away to her mother.

ROMEO [To Juliet.] If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine¹, the gentle sin is this, My lips, two blushing pilgrims², ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. JULIET Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much³, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss⁴. ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do: They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. JULIET Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake⁵. ROMEO Then move not while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg'd⁶. [Kissing her.] JULIET Then have my lips the sin that they have took. ROMEO Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg'd! Give me my sin again. JULIET You kiss by the book⁷.

1. 1“This holy shrine” Romeo treats Juliet's hand as a saint's shrine and his own as unworthy to touch it. Desire is dressed in the language of worship, which flatters her and makes a bold touch sound like devotion.
2. 2“two blushing pilgrims” His lips become pilgrims, red and shy, ready to smooth away the rough touch of his hand with a kiss. The personification makes the request playful and humble at the same time.
3. 3“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much” Juliet answers in the same form and even on the same rhymes, this and kiss, so she is his equal from her first words. Rather than be flattered off balance, she corrects his conceit.
4. 4“palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss” A pun: palmers were pilgrims, and pressed palms are already a kind of kiss. Juliet turns his religious image back on him to keep him at a hand's distance, witty and in control.
5. 5“Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake” A saint's statue stays still but answers prayers. Juliet consents to the kiss while seeming only to allow it, a graceful way of saying yes that keeps her modesty intact.
6. 6“by thine my sin is purg'd” The sonnet's closing couplet ends as Romeo takes “my prayer's effect”, the kiss (this edition prints the stage direction one line later), and this line starts a new quatrain. The kiss is a sin and her lips absolve it, so religion, the language of the Friar who will marry them, is already the language of their love.
7. 7“You kiss by the book” This can be heard as praise, that he kisses expertly, or as teasing, that he kisses by the rules just as he talks by them. Either way the second sonnet is cut off unfinished, as their love will be.

The question: Starting with this extract, how does Shakespeare present the love between Romeo and Juliet? Write about how Shakespeare presents their love in this extract and in the play as a whole.

Where to find it: From Mercutio's “I am hurt.”, straight after Tybalt wounds him and runs off with his followers, to Romeo's “And in my temper soften'd valour's steel.”, just before Benvolio returns to report that Mercutio is dead.

MERCUTIO I am hurt. A plague o' both your houses¹. I am sped. Is he gone, and hath nothing? BENVOLIO What, art thou hurt? MERCUTIO Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch². Marry, 'tis enough. Where is my page? Go villain, fetch a surgeon. [Exit Page.] ROMEO Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much. MERCUTIO No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man³. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o' both your houses. Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death. A braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!—Why the devil came you between us?⁴ I was hurt under your arm. ROMEO I thought all for the best.⁵ MERCUTIO Help me into some house, Benvolio, Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses. They have made worms' meat of me. I have it, and soundly too. Your houses! [Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio.] ROMEO This gentleman, the Prince's near ally, My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt In my behalf; my reputation stain'd With Tybalt's slander,—Tybalt, that an hour Hath been my cousin. O sweet Juliet, Thy beauty hath made me effeminate⁶ And in my temper soften'd valour's steel⁷.

1. 1“A plague o' both your houses” Mercutio, neither a Montague nor a Capulet, curses both families, not only Tybalt's, three times in this passage and once more in a broken “Your houses!” He names the feud itself as his killer. The word plague also looks ahead to the outbreak of disease that stops Friar John's letter in Act 5, Scene 2.
2. 2“Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch” Understatement, and a last joke about cats: the man who mocked Tybalt as the “Prince of cats” is killed by what he calls a scratch. Wit is Mercutio's armour to the very end.
3. 3“grave man” The dying pun: ask for him tomorrow, he says, and you will find him a grave man, serious for once, and in his grave. His comedy survives into his death, and with his death the play stops being able to laugh.
4. 4“Why the devil came you between us?” The blunt question, and the complaint that he was hurt under Romeo's arm, put the responsibility on Romeo. His attempt to make peace is what gave Tybalt his opening, so the play makes us ask whether good intentions can be to blame.
5. 5“I thought all for the best.” Six plain words against Mercutio's torrent of insults and jokes. It could be the Friar's motto too: in this play, doing what seems best keeps making things worse.
6. 6“Thy beauty hath made me effeminate” Romeo blames love, and Juliet, for making him soft. In Verona a man proves himself by fighting, and this is the moment Romeo accepts that code again, a few minutes after refusing it.
7. 7“soften'd valour's steel” A metaphor from metalwork: his temper, meaning both his character and the hardness of a blade, has been softened. Moments later he asks for “fire-ey'd fury” to guide him and kills Tybalt.

The question: Starting with this extract, explore how Shakespeare presents ideas about violence and masculinity in Romeo and Juliet. Write about how these ideas are presented in this extract and in the play as a whole.

Where to find it: From Capulet's “Soft. Take me with you, take me with you, wife.” to the Nurse's “You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.”, straight after Lady Capulet tells him that Juliet will not marry Paris.

CAPULET Soft. Take me with you, take me with you, wife. How, will she none? Doth she not give us thanks? Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest, Unworthy as she is¹, that we have wrought So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom? JULIET Not proud you have, but thankful that you have. Proud can I never be of what I hate; But thankful even for hate that is meant love. CAPULET How now, how now, chopp'd logic²? What is this? Proud, and, I thank you, and I thank you not; And yet not proud. Mistress minion you, Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds³, But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church, Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither⁴. Out, you green-sickness carrion!⁵ Out, you baggage! You tallow-face! LADY CAPULET Fie, fie! What, are you mad? JULIET Good father, I beseech you on my knees⁶, Hear me with patience but to speak a word. CAPULET Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch! I tell thee what,—get thee to church a Thursday, Or never after look me in the face. Speak not, reply not, do not answer me. My fingers itch.⁷ Wife, we scarce thought us blest That God had lent us but this only child; But now I see this one is one too much⁸, And that we have a curse in having her. Out on her, hilding. NURSE God in heaven bless her. You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.⁹

1. 1“Unworthy as she is” Capulet presents the match as a gift his daughter has not earned. Marriage is something fathers and suitors arrange between them, and her part in it is gratitude.
2. 2“chopp'd logic” He dismisses Juliet's careful distinction between being proud and being thankful as hair-splitting. He will not argue with her, only overrule her.
3. 3“Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds” He turns her own words into mocking verbs and nouns. The wordplay is contemptuous rather than witty: it throws her language back at her instead of answering it.
4. 4“drag thee on a hurdle thither” A hurdle was the sledge on which criminals were dragged to execution. Capulet speaks of his daughter's refusal as a crime, and of her wedding as the punishment for it.
5. 5“Out, you green-sickness carrion!” Green-sickness was an illness of young women that left them pale; carrion is rotting flesh. The insults attack her body, and carrion is grimly prophetic of the tomb she will lie in.
6. 6“Good father, I beseech you on my knees” Juliet kneels, the posture of the obedient daughter he wants, and asks only to be heard. His answer includes “Speak not, reply not, do not answer me.”
7. 7“My fingers itch.” Three words that suggest he wants to strike her. Whether he does is a choice for each production, but the threat alone shows how close his anger has come to force.
8. 8“this one is one too much” A cruel reversal of Act 1, Scene 2, where he told Paris his daughter was the only hope he had left: “The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she.” The only child is now a curse.
9. 9“You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.” To rate is to scold. Lady Capulet objects only to her husband's temper (“Fie, fie! What, are you mad?”); the Nurse is the one who blesses and defends Juliet, and Capulet silences her; within minutes she will be advising Juliet to marry Paris.

The question: Starting with this extract, how does Shakespeare present the relationship between Juliet and her father? Write about how Shakespeare presents it in this extract and in the play as a whole.