RJ–Page (numbers refer to page in signet edition)

  1. Language–self conscious and playful and fertile
    1. Varieties and extremes
      1. Coarse vs. refined 1.1
      2. Servants prose 5
      3. prince blank verse 8
      4. Benvolio and Montague lyric and rhyme 9
      5. Romeo rhetorical and conceited–the petrarchan poet 11–13
      6. Romeo and Juliet–composing sonnet together–merging hands and minds–"making beautiful music"
  2. Theme
    1. Youth and age Capulet14-15–lyrical; scheme of time 28
      1. Nurse–coarse
      2. Mercutio–why be coarse: prick love for pricking
      3. If thou wert st young as I 75
      4. Stained the childhood of our joy 76
    2. Religion of love; conventions of Gottfried von Strassburg 30-31
    3. love and death 32; ecstasy and loss–revelation and departure
    4. Paradoxes–conceits–Friar 43
      1. Age-youth
    5. Slow-fast: 46
      1. Juliet’s urgency 55
      2. Romeo’s sense of the moment 58
      3. Violent delights; violent ends vs. moderation 58
      4. Hot days 60
    6. Beyond words 59
    7. Sacrifice and saints
      1. opening sonnet and closing
      2. lovers’ language
    8. Simulacrum–false thing; real thing
    9. Error–misconception and illusion–misprision–drama gone wrong
  3. Structure
    1. Shift from comic to tragic
      1. End of act 2–intensity of joy; forboding–happy ending?
        1. Comedy to tragedy; good intention/innocence corrupted–Romeo /Tybalt I love thee 62
        2. Death enters
        3. Irony–Juliet’s urgency at beginning of 3.2–most intense lyricism–fate already condemned her…
        4. Death take my maidenhead 72
      2. Aubade–last meeting: wedding night’s morning; the marriage is over
        1. 3.5–about Time; loss of virginity…82 in a minute there are many days
      3. Juliet’s loss of innocence 88-9–deception on 95
    2. Doubled action–false death 98 real death at end; false love and real love
      1. Friar’s false–playing death vs. real death 102–false religion vs. real
        1. We die in earnest [cf. Shakespeare in love]
      2. Dream as another simulacrum
    3. Framing: Final return to reality; sacrificial justification–retelling of story as true; release from chaos and confusion; social order restored