I started a new play this week: The Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet. Here’s my initial outline for the Covenantal Shakespeare e-course.
PLOT
1. The Montagues and Capulets are in a blood feud that has engulfed Verona.
2. In the middle of this feud, the respective heirs of each family–Romeo and Juliet–meet, fall in love, and secretly marry.
3. In a brawl, Romeo avenges his friend’s death by killing Juliet’s kinsman, Tybalt.
4. Romeo is banished from Verona and Juliet arranged to marry a local prince; to avoid the marriage, Juliet takes a poison that makes her appear dead.
5. Romeo comes back upon hearing of Juliet’s death, kills Juliet’s arranged fiancée, then commits suicide beside her body; Juliet awakens, finds Romeo dead, and commits suicide too. The dead youth are enough to get Montague and Capulet to end their feud.
THEME
The family and church battle against the state for the rights to be the dominant visible form of authority in the city. The play reveals that idolatrous love is just as tragic as idolatrous state.
CONTEXT
1. Shakespeare follows his sources by setting the play in Medieval Catholic Italy. Consequently, the play reveals particularly Protestant criticisms of the Catholic church.
2. Shakespeare’s chief source for the play is Arthur Brooke’s 1562 narrative poem, The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet. Brooke’s source was itself a 16th century Italian prose story. Brooke makes clear that he thinks that the story condemns Romeo and Juliet.
3. The play, dated around 1595, was only Shakespeare’s second known tragedy. During this period, he was much more likely to be writing comedies and history plays then tragedies. The play does break basic dramatic decorum by having as its subject two teenagers whose story is elevated to the level of tragedy not because of war but because of love. The play also features different kinds of lyrical verse, most famously a shared sonnet between Romeo and Juliet that they speak to one another when they first meet.
4. The play shows Shakespeare’s engagement with the effects of courtly love, a medieval conception of romantic love that prized spirits over bodies, unrequited affection over consummated passion, and adulterous pining over marital satisfaction. In literature, courtly love was typical of Arthurian romances and Petrarchan sonnets.
5. This is one of the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s legacy is massive. Its most likely the first play that American school children encounter.
SYMBOLS
HEAVEN: “So smile the heavens upon this holy act.” This is Friar Laurence praising Romeo’s marriage. “See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate, / That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.” This is the Prince using the Heavens as the force behind Romeo and Juliet’s deaths. “Heaven and yourself / Had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all.” This is the Friar again, declaring Heaven as the transcendent ruler over life and Juliet.
STARS: “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.” The stars astrologically condemn Romeo and Juliet. “What light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” Both Romeo and Juliet symbolize each other as stars to signify their authority over one another. They call each other “the god of my idolatry.”
STONES/GEMS: “The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb.” This tomb symbolizes the law, which brings death in this play. Tybalt, the Prince, Romeo, and Juliet all end up here. “I will raise her statue in pure gold.” This Capulet talking about the statue he’ll make of his daughter. This is the tomb’s counterpart, an idol to love which will signify human worth and futility. A golden statue can’t bear any children. The Capulet and Montague families are all bound for the tomb.
PLANTS/ANIMALS: “Within the infant rind of this small flower / Poison hath residence and medicine power.” The Friar knows that a plant contains both blessings (medicine) and cursings (poison). “I would I were thy bird.” Romeo tells Juliet he wants to be her prisoner. This is the ultimate blessing and cursing of this idolatrous love: punishment that is actually a reward.
ANGELS: “Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument, / And her immortal part with angels lives.” This play shows love as a force that threatens to separate body and soul. Romeo’s initial love is all soul and no body. Mercutio’s love is all body and no soul. Romeo and Juliet hope to unite both. The problem is that by making their own love the greatest manifestation of love, they have elevated their earthly love too much. They do not have children. Their body and spirit end up being split.
Experiments in Criticism 