Friday, January 18, 2013

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, how does Romeo react to the news that Juliet is a Capulet, and how does Juliet react to the news that Romeo is a...

When Romeo discovers, via the Nurse, that Juliet is a Capulet, he says that his "life is my foe's debt." He means, basically, that his bitter enemy has given him his sole reason to live. He is absolutely smitten with Juliet, and in this line, he acknowledges the complexities that will result from this fact. A few lines later, Juliet asks the Nurse to identify Romeo, saying that "if he be married, my grave is...

When Romeo discovers, via the Nurse, that Juliet is a Capulet, he says that his "life is my foe's debt." He means, basically, that his bitter enemy has given him his sole reason to live. He is absolutely smitten with Juliet, and in this line, he acknowledges the complexities that will result from this fact. A few lines later, Juliet asks the Nurse to identify Romeo, saying that "if he be married, my grave is like to be my wedding bed." In other words, she says she will die unmarried if she cannot marry Romeo. When the Nurse reveals that Romeo is in fact a Montague, Juliet bemoans the fact that her "only love" is "sprung from [her] only hate!" Later, she reflects on the tragedy of this fact, asking rhetorically "What's in a name?" She says that if Romeo's name were any different, he would still be the same person--"a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"--and begs, in her soliloquy, for Romeo to "doff" his family name. She, like Romeo, realizes the implications of her love for a man who is denied to her by her birth. 

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