- Goldman’s essay on RJ–from Sh. And the Energies of Drama
- Everything is intense, impatient, threatening, explosive
- Repeated images of quick change–street brawls, crowds gathering, swords flashing, torches running on and off
- Upper stage used; many opportunities for leaping, scrambling, stretching
- Oppressive heat, sexual desire, whiz-bang exhilarating kiesthesia of speed and clash
- Keeping down and spearation of highly charged bodies….pressure toward release, suden discharge determine the rhythm of the play
- Tragic heros pass from isolation to isolation–they’re transformed as their package ruptures–tragedy of the unsounded self becoming sounded
- This pattern unites plot, spectacle and wordplay
- Share business, suddeness and violence
- Violent delights have violent ends
- Why so many obscene puns?
- Romeo’s name
- Others wonder what he should be called–humors madman passion lunatic, coward boy
- A tragedy of naming
- 3.3.102-8–deadly name
- name her denotes his history, past, responsibility
- finitude
- names have substantiality–can murder die, etc.
- words take on attributes of names–"banished"
- naming is associated with separation–nightingale not lark
- pass from night of sex to day of exile
- night is free assoication; day makes stricter demands
- lovers relinquish right to rename things
- Punning
- Rampant psychic energy that rises to break the meanings of words down 164
- Suddenness and violence part of all punning–exchange and uniting of forbidden words–like R and J
- Fury of pun is fury of submerged innocence–freedom of language; violation of rules
- Disastrous punning of opening
- Play as tissue of precipitous mistakes–near misses; horrible ironies: Confident claims all mistaken [Oedipus]
- With a kiss I die; rest here; marriage is my funeral
- False confidences–easy to keep peace, Romeo will be true to Rosaline, Friar’s confidence
- Characters contradict themselves after their confident claims
- False sense of courage and cowardice at end
- Friar partially represents naming, but lovers and fate changes and break down names.
- Confusions of youth and of love
- R and J are isolated from each other; always separated–parting as sweet sorrow; reaching upward and for one another; hands
- Last scene as sexual union–crowbar, barrier and bloodshed–wedding bed of tomb
- Before fighting was coded as sex; later in play love/sex is coded as death 168
- Death of lovers is feast and wedding banquet too
- Juliet as only one who fears the outcome–her death is messy violent and only one not caused by misunderstanding 170
- Touched by adult desire, the unsounded self bursts out with the explosive, subversive energy
- Self-immolating surge with which adolescence is left behind