After Juliet finishes dancing with another man, Romeo approaches her. He gently touches her hand and speaks with her:
ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this. For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do:
They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
(90-103)
The form of the sonnet (a poem of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter and having a fixed rhyme scheme) was always the first choice of poets when it came to writing about love. The sonnet is short, compact, and tightly structured. The form presented a challenge to great Renaissance poets, who delighted in expressing the wild and chaotic emotion of love in such a tame, precise, and orderly manner. And these great poets – like Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare – found a nearly infinite variety of ways to express the idea of love in the hundreds of sonnets that they created.
One of the goals of the Renaissance sonnet is to praise the virtue of the lady whom the speaker adores. In this poem Romeo suggests that Juliet is a holy and virtuous saint, and he is ready to fall down and worship her. Yet, at the same time, the poem contains clever and comic irony; for Romeo also is also quite physically attracted to Juliet and desires to kiss her.
Romeo describes Juliet’s hand as the shrine for the saint, as a holy place of worship. In touching the hand of this woman he never met before, he apologizes and declares that he is unworthy of such an honor. Yet, ironically, he really desires something much more: to kiss Juliet’s hand. But he describes his lips as holy pilgrims. Just as pilgrims might kiss the feet of a statue of a saint in honor of that saint, Romeo is asking for permission to kiss Juliet’s hand.
Juliet is as clever as Romeo, and his true intention is not lost on her. Yet, at the same time, she is a lady; and she preserves her maiden modesty, her virtue, by denying Romeo the privilege of kissing her hand. Juliet, however, also plays on the pilgrim metaphor that Romeo had initiated. She explains that when a pilgrim touches the hand of a saint, such a gesture is sufficient to show the strong devotion of the pilgrim towards the saint. In other words, she is telling Romeo that his touching her hand is sufficient: she is really telling him “no,” he may not kiss her.
Romeo, though, is persistent and argues that both saints and pilgrims have lips as well as hands. Juliet argues that lips should be used for praying (not kissing). But Romeo again cleverly turns the words to fit his purpose. Hands touch each other in prayer; so, Romeo argues, lips should also touch each other in prayer. Romeo, of course, means that his lips should touch Juliet’s lips: he is now asking if he can kiss her on her lips. Romeo also cleverly adds that prayers should be answered, for the worshipper might experience despair and ruin if his prayers remain unanswered. An unanswered prayer might cause the pilgrim to lose his faith in God. Similarly, if Romeo’s request to kiss Juliet is turned down, he will feel the despair of an unrequited lover.
Juliet responds that saints in shrines – which are statues – are incapable of movement. The statues represent the spirits of saints who are up in Heaven. Statues, of course, cannot move; and Juliet is declaring that she is also incapable of movement – especially a movement that will lead to a kiss.
Romeo again is ready to turn her words to
his advantage. If she is a statue, she must keep still. And although she cannot move to kiss him, he can move to kiss her. And, thus, the sonnet ends with a kiss.
Shakespeare’s sonnet is delightful because it works on three entirely different levels: (1) it is a poem of praise for the virtue of the lady; (2) it symbolically represents the internal struggle or conflict of the male lover who recognizes and admires the virtue of the lady but who also physically and even sexually desires that lady; and (3) it presents a clever and witty dialogue in which the male attempts to win the love of the lady while the lady resists all of his attempts.
There is also a fourth level. Hundreds of years later in America a form of drama developed known as the American Musical or Musical Comedy. A common convention that developed in these musicals was the song, the duet, sung between the male lead and the female lead at some point in the early or middle part of the performance. The song is symbolic. When the two leading characters sing together, that is the moment that they fall truly and deeply in love with one another. Shakespeare, some 400 years before the coming of the American Musical, prophetically anticipated the stage device. When Romeo and Juliet speak the sonnet together, that moment also symbolizes that the two young individuals have fallen deeply and truly in love with each other. Despite Juliet’s modest attempts to keep Romeo back, she actually enjoys his attentions. She is as much in love with him as he is with her.
Romeo gets a chance to kiss Juliet a second time before her Nurse arrives and informs the young lady that her mother wants to talk to her. When Juliet exits, Romeo asks the Nurse the name of the lady that he has just kissed twice. When the Nurse tells him, Romeo is shocked and exclaims, “My life is my foe’s debt” (115). Romeo means that he owes his life, his future, and his happiness to his foe or enemy, Capulet. And he fully realizes that his enemy will not grant him any such happiness.
Some moments later, the Nurse informs
Juliet that the man she is attracted to is Romeo Montague. Juliet’s response is similar to that of Romeo:
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me
That I must love a loathèd enemy. (135-38)
Juliet declares that the time is too late because she is already in love with Romeo. If she had known earlier, she could have avoided him. The coming of love or birth of love is prodigious. The word means
(1) great or enormous, (2) marvelous or extraordinary, or (3) portentous or ominous. All three meanings of the word apply here. Juliet’s love for Romeo is both great and marvelous, but it will also prove to be ominous. Being in love with a family enemy will not lead to anything wonderful.
Fate is against Juliet and Romeo.