1. Goldman’s essay on RJ–from Sh. And the Energies of Drama
1. Everything is intense, impatient, threatening, explosive
1. Repeated images of quick change–street brawls, crowds gathering, swords flashing, torches running on and off
2. Upper stage used; many opportunities for leaping, scrambling, stretching
3. Oppressive heat, sexual desire, whiz-bang exhilarating kiesthesia of speed and clash
4. Keeping down and spearation of highly charged bodies….pressure toward release, suden discharge determine the rhythm of the play
2. Tragic heros pass from isolation to isolation–they’re transformed as their package ruptures–tragedy of the unsounded self becoming sounded
3. This pattern unites plot, spectacle and wordplay
1. Share business, suddeness and violence
1. Violent delights have violent ends
2. Why so many obscene puns?
2. Romeo’s name
1. Others wonder what he should be called–humors madman passion lunatic, coward boy
3. A tragedy of naming
1. 3.3.102-8–deadly name
2. name her denotes his history, past, responsibility
3. finitude
4. names have substantiality–can murder die, etc.
5. words take on attributes of names–"banished"
6. naming is associated with separation–nightingale not lark
1. pass from night of sex to day of exile
2. night is free assoication; day makes stricter demands
3. lovers relinquish right to rename things
4. Punning
1. Rampant psychic energy that rises to break the meanings of words down 164
2. Suddenness and violence part of all punning–exchange and uniting of forbidden words–like R and J
3. Fury of pun is fury of submerged innocence–freedom of language; violation of rules
4. Disastrous punning of opening
5. Play as tissue of precipitous mistakes–near misses; horrible ironies: Confident claims all mistaken [Oedipus]
1. With a kiss I die; rest here; marriage is my funeral
2. False confidences–easy to keep peace, Romeo will be true to Rosaline, Friar’s confidence
3. Characters contradict themselves after their confident claims
4. False sense of courage and cowardice at end
5. Friar partially represents naming, but lovers and fate changes and break down names.
6. Confusions of youth and of love
6. R and J are isolated from each other; always separated–parting as sweet sorrow; reaching upward and for one another; hands
7. Last scene as sexual union–crowbar, barrier and bloodshed–wedding bed of tomb
1. Before fighting was coded as sex; later in play love/sex is coded as death 168
2. Death of lovers is feast and wedding banquet too
8. Juliet as only one who fears the outcome–her death is messy violent and only one not caused by misunderstanding 170
9. Touched by adult desire, the unsounded self bursts out with the explosive, subversive energy
10. Self-immolating surge with which adolescence is left behind