When the Montagues see the melancholy Romeo walking toward them, Benvolio tells them that he will talk to Romeo privately to see if he can figure out why Romeo is so downcast and moody. After the Montagues exit, Benvolio asks his cousin Romeo if he is in love. Romeo, who is also clever at wordplay, tells Benvolio that he is not in love, but “out” (159). Romeo then explains that he is out of favor and out of the thoughts of the woman he loves: he is admitting that his love is unrequited.
Benvolio responds with a generalized condemnation of love:
Alas that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.
(162-63)
Benvolio is referring to the depiction of love as the god Cupid in Roman mythology. Cupid was depicted as a gentle child, but many people over the centuries have suffered from love’s wounds (unrequited love, lost love, and so on). The childlike god is thus a tyrant to the people whom he rules – people who are ruled or controlled by their feelings of love.
Despite his glum feelings, Romeo readily perceives the mythological allusion (or reference) and responds with one of his own:
Alas that love, whose view is muffled still, Should without eyes see pathways to his will.
(163-64)
The god Cupid was also often depicted as being blindfolded to symbolize the concept that love is blind. Generally, this idea implies that people who are in love are oblivious or blind to the faults of the people with whom they are in love. But in the lines spoken by Romeo, the young lover is complaining that blind Cupid is still able to shoot people with his golden arrows and make them fall hopelessly in love with someone who does not return that love. Cupid is thus able to achieve his will or desire (to cause unrequited or foolish love), but hapless Romeo is unable to achieve his will or desire (to have the woman that he loves to love him in return).
Looking down at the ground, Romeo sees blood stains from the recent fighting between the two warring families, and he correctly guesses the cause of the quarrel. Romeo perceives that hate is the cause of the quarrel, but the thought of hate motivates him to speak of emotions more generally and comment that all strong emotions – including hate and love – are mixed and related. Romeo then launches into listing numerous oxymora (the plural of oxymoron):
O brawling love, O loving hate (169)
Bright smoke, cold fire, sick health (173)
An oxymoron is a figure of speech used in poetry in which a word is described by its opposite. The oxymoron is an appropriate way of depicting the unrequited lover, who is full of conflicting emotions. The unrequited lover is full of love for the woman he adores, but he is also full of despair because his love is not returned. Powerful emotions, both good and bad, are thus related and can exist simultaneously. Thus, no one should be surprised that a consequence of hate (the bloodstains) should remind Romeo of his love. Romeo is overwhelmed and obsessed by his love, and everything reminds him of it.
What exactly is love? How does one define it? Even though love is a common emotion, describing it accurately is not an easy task. Such a task is thus best left to the greatest of love poets; and in this play Shakespeare, through his character of Romeo, defines love:
Love is a smoke made with fume of sighs,
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes,
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet. (183-87)
Romeo begins by suggesting that love is like smoke and fumes. It seems to be insubstantial. It seems to be almost nothing. Yet, when love is achieved or satisfied (when the smoke and fumes are purged or cleared away), then love is a powerful force (like fire) that emboldens the lover and gives him a strength and vitality that burns at the very core of his being. However, if that love is thwarted or unrequited (vexed), the lover wastes away in his own tears. The reader should note how Shakespeare cleverly uses contrasting fire and water metaphors to describe the differences between requited love and unrequited love. Fire and water are opposites, and that leads once again to further oxymora. Describing love as a discreet madness is oxymoronic, for in madness one acts wildly and irrationally. But if one is discreet, he is acting prudently and cautiously and logically. A lover may act madly at one moment, but discreetly at another. His emotions and his actions are often inconsistent. The words gall and sweet in Romeo’s definition are also opposites. The word gall here suggests something bitter to eat or swallow. Love may taste terrible, or love may taste delicious. Love can nearly choke or kill the lover (if his love is unrequited), but love can also preserve or sustain the lover. Love gives a man the motivation, the power, to persevere and to accomplish great deeds.
After revealing his problem to Benvolio, Romeo adds that the woman he loves has “Dian’s wit” (202). Romeo means that the woman he loves is like the goddess Diana. In Roman mythology Diana is the goddess of hunting (and sometimes also the goddess of the moon). But, more to Romeo’s point, Diana is also a goddess of chastity. She is the virgin goddess who has sworn never to delight in the company of men. The woman that Romeo loves has, likewise, taken a vow to shun the company of men. Romeo’s love is not only unrequited, but he also realizes that he never stands a chance with this woman. No matter how hard he tries or how long he waits, she will never return his love. Romeo’s love is hopeless.
Romeo further complains that a beautiful woman who does not pass on her beauty to her children is wasting her beauty:
When she dies, with beauty dies her store. (209)
For beauty starved with her severity
Cuts beauty off from all posterity. (212-13)
Of course, Romeo is complaining specifically that the woman he loves will not marry him and bear his children. However, these lines also introduce a theme that Shakespeare expresses in other works of his. In his Sonnets, for example, the speaker of the poems advises a beautiful young man to marry so that he can pass on his beauty to his children. Such beauty is a special gift, the speaker declares, that should not be wasted. The young man owes his fellow man and future generations the opportunity to witness such remarkable beauty. Nature had been overly kind and generous to the young man, and the young man should thus be kind and generous to others. Romeo’s comments about the beauty of the young woman are implying exactly the same sentiment. For her to die childless, Romeo is declaring, would be a great waste for mankind. Benvolio, seeing that Romeo is affected in a serious manner, advises Romeo to forget about this woman. Benvolio thus invites Romeo to come with him and look upon other attractive women, “other beauties” (221). But Romeo firmly believes that no other woman can match the beauty of the woman he loves and that no other woman can ever take her place in his heart. Benvolio does not give up, however. He vows that he will find a way to make Romeo forget the woman he loves.
On the streets of Verona, Capulet (Juliet’s father) is walking with a young man named Paris. Paris is also referred to as County Paris (or Count Paris) for he is a nobleman of wealth and property. Moreover, he is also the cousin of the Prince of Verona.
According to custom, Paris is asking
Capulet for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Paris wants to marry Juliet. Capulet is, of course, delighted that such a high-ranking aristocrat would be interested in marrying his daughter. Nevertheless, Capulet loves his daughter and has concern because Juliet is not quite fourteen years old. Capulet thus thinks that Paris should wait at least two more years before considering marriage.
CAP: Let two more summers wither in their pride Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
PAR: Younger than she are happy mothers made.
CAP: And too soon marred are those so early made.
(10-13)
The reader should note that the poetic style changes in the play here to rhyming couplets (and the rhymes continue to line 31). The listening audience will also easily detect the change in tone at this juncture. Paris and Capulet’s conversation has turned from talk of hate (the feud) to talk of love, and the poetry becomes lighter and more like a song. Love is an enchanting topic after all, and so a chant-like quality to the language is appropriate.
Paris, like any young lover, wants to satisfy his love now. The thought of waiting for two years is agony. So, Paris reminds Capulet many women (at that time in history) become wives and mothers before reaching fourteen years of age. The modern reader should keep in mind that during the Middle Ages the role and purpose of women was to be, according to custom, wives and mothers. Moreover, on the average, many women did not live beyond their mid-thirties. An extremely high percentage of the population died during childhood. Women who lived on into adulthood could not really expect to live many years past age 42 or 43. Life ended earlier back then, and so it was natural and even necessary for life to begin earlier as well. Paris is correct in acknowledging that girls of twelve or thirteen years did get married back then and did become mothers.
However, Capulet is also correct in asserting that women who get married too young will mar or ruin their lives. Life was not easy for women, and most entered marriages that were loveless and disappointing. Of course, another contributing factor to the disappointing marriages is that often the women (especially aristocratic young women) could not choose their husbands themselves. They were the property of their fathers and had to abide by his decisions and his choices. Fathers did not always think about love and happiness in selecting the husbands for their daughters. Rather they thought that wealth and social status (aristocratic titles) were far more important considerations.
Although Capulet is aware that early marriage could spell disaster for his daughter, he does not wish to lose Paris as his future son-in-law. When Capulet had told Paris that he should wait for two more years, the disappointment would be highly evident both on Paris’ facial expression and in his tone of voice. So, Capulet quickly appears to change his mind. He tells Paris that if Juliet agrees to the match, then he will give his consent (lines 1517). Pride and greed are also emotions and temptations (pride and greed are two of the Seven Deadly Sins); and in this instance Capulet’s pride and greed seem to overcome his better judgment and his concern for Juliet’s welfare.
Capulet plans to hold a large celebration and feast at his house that night, and he invites Paris to come and meet with Juliet and the other single young ladies who will be present. That way Paris can be sure if Juliet is truly the right woman for him.
Capulet then hands a piece of paper to his servant Peter and instructs the servant to find all of the people whose names appear on the paper and be sure to invite them to the feast. After Capulet and Paris exit, Peter is somewhat perplexed because he cannot read. He comments that a shoemaker would be interfering or meddling if he attempted to do the work of a tailor (symbolized by the yardstick, a measuring device common to tailors) just as a tailor would be interfering or meddling if he attempted to do the work of a shoemaker (lines 36-39). Peter is cleverly asserting that a man should do the work that he is qualified to do, and not the work for which he is not qualified. And Peter is definitely not qualified to do the work of a messenger who must know how to read. Although Peter lacks an education and does not know how to read, he is indirectly pointing out that his educated master had made a mistake in judgment. The passage could be social criticism. Sometimes servants and other members of the lower social classes are better judges than their masters.
A reader will quickly notice that Peter’s speech is in prose, whereas Capulet and Paris speak in poetic meter. Here poetry designates the language of the upper classes, and prose the language of the lower classes. But Shakespeare is not making this language change as a way to criticize the servant. Rather, Shakespeare subtly makes the shift to make his audience aware of the differences of social classes.