Reading notes on Romeo and Juliet

1.1

rhymes; sonnet of prologue
rap talk; hip hop--bravado violence and sexual abuse

puns and rhymes
gang war
draw thy tool...my naked weapon is out; challenging each other
begin with a fight
old montague and wife--comedy; give me sword; energies of youth
inflammatory explosion--Luhrman
Prince as order and authority
transition to Romeo; language switch at 111 from violence to tenderness; adolescent melancholy
the lover boy --banter with Benvolio and then barrage of oxymora 170--lines start rhyming; praise of Rosaline; Petrarchan fashion
lovesickness

1.2

Old Cap. and Paris--Juliet's age at 14
Illiterate Peter interlude

party invitation; Romeo swears loyalty to Rosaline
Benvolio insists on comparisons

1.3

Juliet called by lady cap; Nurse's speech about earthquake and weaning and falling backward and wound and time passing
realtion of nurse of Juliet

mother wants her to marry; join the adults
love as obedience or independence; 99--loving the one forbidden by parents

1.4

Masquers enter; Romeo doesnt want to dance; Mercutio: prick love for pricking--Romeo wants to be old--25
Queen Mab--poetry, dreams, talk and nothing--Mercurial; manic; Protean--the mind the unconscious, language and feeling aand masquing

Romeo's dreamy premonition

1.5

the servingmen--upstanirs downstairs; setting stage for party
Capulet's nostalgia--cf. Nurse; passage of time NB

Romeo's sudden fall 40 and Tybalt's violent noticing--love and hate juxtaposed; oxymoron
Cap. battles Tybalt--staging of two things at once 80 while the dance goes on--three things

the holy sonnet: love and divinity; a dance of language--formal pattern
interruption--nurse and mother calls--coarse and refined

both find love/hate; love/death oxymoron

2.0

old desire; young affection

2.1

Mercutio mocking the language of love; conjuring by Rosaline
raising up and down; mistress' circle
Contrast to "soft what light throughyohnder window breaks?..."
Seeing her unobserved--audience actor
language and imagination; metaphor to reality through speech...entranced with her speech
Her speech itself a cry of woe, and then a tirade against language
love is nameless, yet she loves his name
either he or she should renounce their name=marriage
Montague is not body...what's in a name...doff thy name
Exchange name for her...all figurative dance of language and meaning
He pops out; audience turns to actor; comments on taking metaphor literally--cant identify himself by name--comedy
moving directly into danger and tragedy--death
his bravado and linguistic sense of protection
love is worth death
She reverses herself....fain would I dwell on form 130
I will take thy word
worried about falseness of words again--well taken, given Romeo's previous infatuation and the fact that love cools or is prorogued
problem of saying I love you--what does it mean or does it make meaning
then she reverses again...coyness, easiness
play of signifiers: not impute this y ielding to light love
He tries to swear she stops him--by what shall he swear; looking for the signified=God of my idolatry
all this talk is also cover for the actions of touch and tease
She keeps interrupting
Her caution--I have no joy of this contract tonight--too sudden/Too like the lightening which doeth cease to be /Ere one can say it lightens--ineffable feelings; lost when put into words
give and take; infinite bounty; satisfaction and desire grows with withdrawal
she leaves and returns--good night, good night
typical lovers good night
her pledge to him; her vows--also her distrust
schoolboy metaphor
leaves and comes back again
forgot why called you back
losing what's in mind; spacing out; he'll stay
wanton bird image--wants to be her bird; parting and sweet sorrow; kill thee with much cherishing

2.2

Friar Lawrence collecting natural herbs--he loves youth and desire; reflecting on paradox of virtue and vice; poison and medicine--Juliet's flower imagery
R's father figure--religion and love[medieval romance]

Difference between Rosaline and Juliet--J. shares it
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast 94

2.3

Mercutio and romeo bantering endlessly and sexually; meeting and mocking Nurse
cords sailing vessel imagery [comic interludes create tension; not lighthearted]

2.4

youth vs. age; Juliet waiting; slow vs. fast--17/18
nurse teasing her with good news; essence of impatience

Nurse teases her asking for massage; her earthiness; reveals the news

2.5

Romeo defies time and death--his desire so strong; haste, urgency, impatience
These violent delights have violent ends/and in their triumh die like fire and powder/which as they kiss consume

Love moderately
Juliet: my love's excess

3.1

now these hot days is the mad blood stirring
Mercutio's aggression--tension of wanting to fight--moodiness and volatilility--accuses Benvolio of being quarrelsome

Tybalt and Mercutio as hotheads--Benvolio tghe peacemaker
Romeo wants to love Tybalt; Mercutio sees it as vile submission; he and Benvolio try to stop the fight

Tybalt gets Mercutio under R's arm
Mercutio's gallows humor; and curse--Mercurial shifts between humor and violence

Romeo's enraged because of conflicts; shame at having been friendly to Capulets; kills tybalt
Capulet's wife demands revenge for Tybalt; Romeo banished by Prince

3.2
Juliet waiting for Romeo--her excitement and impatience; desire; urgency

theme: horses, night, heavens, secrecies, rhetorical energy created by desire
paradoxes: win by surrendering; concentration of language here again
modesty and desire; innocence and ardency
come, come, come--calling her lover to enter her and exploding in orgasm and stars
not yet occupied as a house; not enjoyed as a house to live in
impatient child
Contrast to our knowledge of what just happened; love and death
Juliet disoriented by words and sounds and names
suicidal
rejects romeo and then rejects tybalt; recognizes the changes she's gone through in response to nurse condemnation of Romeo--blistered be thy tongue
time falling over itself; remembers Romeo's banishement

Romeo sees banishement sorse than death; he has to pass his own impatience; no distinciton between death and delay
philosophy vs. emotion
stand up be a man 85--nurse and friar are sympathetic parent figures; reinforcing audience's sympathy
Romeo back to his name
accused of being womanish; Friar takes over plot

3.4

contrast to machinations of Capulet father, trying to marry Juliet to Paris--old figures say"well we were born to die" 5
marriage on Thursday--old man's haste to deny the suffering and loss; get on with it--very short scene compared to previous long one; we want to see R and J together

3.5
- departure after their night together--lark and nightingale music--two birds; now wanting to slow down time
- their feelings after first lovemaking--effort to stop time; time passing as they do so
- terrible departure--we know and they have premonition its their last time together
- mother's misunderstanding--grief for Tybalt; our intimate participation--she puts down Romeo; Juliet's need to disguise herself as later in scene with nurse
- this is the fall; the loss of innocence
- equivocation; as if she plots with mother to kill Rome
- father freaks out at her disobedience; she has to face terrible violence and impetuousity in age
- tragedy: she prefers husband to father and is cast out by him--banished from the garden--cast out
- pathetic search for comfort--some comfort--irony: Romeo's a dishclout
- ancient damnation; 0 wicked fiend--cast out by nurse as well

4.1

according to Paris, father thinks he's doing it for her benefit
she disses Paris--she and Laurence conspire excluding Paris

threatens her own suicide
death engulfing all of them in desperation--the poison drug

her total commitment to Romeo
Friar tells a romantic story of sleeping beauty awakened; he's caught up in the fairy tale, instead of sending her directly to Mantua; all in love with death

4.2

Capulet throwing another party
Juliet gone from excess honesty to dissimulation with father; even enjoying the deception--he is so happy--irony

4.3

More dissimulation from Juliet--with mom and nurse; also mock religion; the friar himself as machiavellian and slightly satanic
Her soliloquy--mad fantasy--paranoia and gothic visions of the horror of the grave, before she takes the potion

4.4

mother and father cheerfully concerned again with the party; their ignorance, thinking they know best
trying to wke Juliet; sex jokes

ritualistic keening about the death of youth--a false death draws as much emotion as a real one; like the false love of Rosaline--displaying the love for Juliet despite previous aggression
Friar gives religious [false] comfort

Party over; dirges sung--tragic atmosphere
Musicians and servants goof around; couldnt care less--irony

5.1

Romeo's dream--like one of Queen Mab's--a premonition--happy and sad; irony
Balthasar brings misinformation

Apothecary to get poisons--the opposite of Friars gathering herbs in 2.2
Romeo losing innocence; dealing with criminals; shop is demonic parody of green fields
death images; exploitation of poverty; breaking law

5.2

Friar John prevented by plague quarantine from delivering Laurances letter
Hasty pace of last two short scenes; L. plans to rescue Juliet early

5.3

Paris bringing flowers; nighttime, graveyard and tomb--another garden--death and love; he's mourning
wrenching iron of Romeo and crowbar of Laurance

Romeo violently threatening Balthasar
prying open the jaws of death--tragic atmosphere

Paris' misprision; fights and killed by R.
Romeo's compassion

His painfully ironic and wordplay ending--Tybalt also there; double irony of thinking Juliet looks alive
drinks poison to his love...with a kiss I die

timing and dramatic structure--Juliet's actually awake;
Friar Lawrence entering--discovers "lamentable chance."
- he knows and we know she's awake
J. awakens--tragedy upon tragedy
Friar cant deal with the situation and runs away
kissing lips to get poison; still warm
interruption again--like in garden--the watch; order
dagger in sheath "die"
order restored--catching the accessories; prince comes back
death of ms. montague announced
everything explained; end with a "glooming peace"