Romeo & Juliet - Act 3 Scene 5
Capulet's house.
Enter ROMEO and JULIET above, at the window
Despite all the setup of the rope ladder and the wedding night, we only catch up with the lovers on the morning after.
JULIET
Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day;
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
ROMEO
It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale; look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Juliet’s denial of the imminent danger can come across as insensitive or self-absorbed, but the need to prolong this last happy moment together is understandable, and touching.
JULIET
Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I.
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua.
Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone.
ROMEO
Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye;
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.
I have more care to stay than will to go.
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is't, my soul? Let's talk; it is not day.
This scene both echoes and reverses the balcony scene of 2.2; here, Romeo and Juliet are no longer separated by distance, but no longer hidden by night, and the danger that was once romantic is now concrete and deadly serious.
JULIET
It is, it is! Hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us;
Some say the lark and loathèd toad change eyes,
O, now I would they had changed voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt’s up to the day,
O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.
ROMEO
More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!
The Nurse's interruption of the lovers' parting is another echo of the balcony scene. In a reversal of earlier scenes and of conventional imagery, night has become safe and welcome, while daylight is full of danger.
Enter Nurse, to the chamber
Nurse
Madam!
JULIET
Nurse?
Nurse
Your lady mother is coming to your chamber;
The day is broke; be wary, look about.
Exit
JULIET
Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
ROMEO
Farewell, farewell! One kiss, and I'll descend.
He goeth down
JULIET
Art thou gone so? Love, lord, ay, husband, friend!
I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
For in a minute there are many days;
O, by this count I shall be much in years
Ere I again behold my Romeo!
ROMEO
Farewell!
I will omit no opportunity
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
The fiction of the stage-space shifts during this scene. When Romeo descends, the stage-floor represents the outside, the same courtyard he stood in during 2.2. Once he leaves, the stage-floor becomes the interior, where Juliet descends (presumably through the backstage) to speak with her mother.
JULIET
O think'st thou we shall ever meet again?
ROMEO
I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve
For sweet discourses in our time to come.
JULIET
O God, I have an ill-divining soul!
Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.
Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale.
ROMEO
And trust me, love, in my eye so do you.
Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu!
Exit
Fortune, in the Renaissance, refers to blind chance; she is often depicted with a blindfold (signifying her indifference) and a wheel (signifying continuous motion—when you’re at the top, there’s nowhere to go but down). Fortune is often set against Providence, the working-out of events according to higher design, wherein the good are rewarded and the bad are punished.
JULIET
O fortune, fortune! All men call thee fickle;
If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him
That is renowned for faith? Be fickle, fortune;
For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long,
But send him back.
LADY CAPULET
[Within]
Ho, daughter! Are you up?
JULIET
Who is't that calls? Is it my lady mother?
Is she not down so late, or up so early?
What unaccustomed cause procures her hither?
[Enter LADY CAPULET]
LADY CAPULET
Why, how now, Juliet!
JULIET
Madam, I am not well.
LADY CAPULET
Evermore weeping for your cousin's death?
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;
Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love,
But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
JULIET
Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
LADY CAPULET
So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend
Which you weep for.
Juliet treads a delicate line in this scene, sometimes giving vent to her true feelings, sometimes concealing them in order to placate her mother.
JULIET
Feeling so the loss,
Cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
LADY CAPULET
Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for his death,
As that the villain lives which slaughtered him.
JULIET
What villain madam?
LADY CAPULET
That same villain, Romeo.
JULIET
[Aside] Villain and he be many miles asunder.
God Pardon him! I do, with all my heart;
And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
LADY CAPULET
That is, because the traitor murderer lives.
JULIET
Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands.
Would none but I might venge my cousin's death!
The play’s time-frame becomes compressed here as well: though Romeo exited not two minutes earlier, Lady Capulet refers to him as now living in Mantua.
LADY CAPULET
We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not;
Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,
Where that same banished runagate doth live,
Shall give him such an unaccustomed dram,
That he shall soon keep Tybalt company.
And then, I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.
Lady Capulet’s attempts to cheer up Juliet take a bizarre turn when she offers to have Romeo poisoned. Does she actually have the connections to pull it off? What does the offer say about her character?
JULIET
Indeed, I never shall be satisfied
With Romeo, till I behold him–dead–
Is my poor heart for a kinsman vexed.
Madam, if you could find out but a man
To bear a poison, I would temper it;
That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,
Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors
To hear him named, and cannot come to him,
To wreak the love I bore my cousin
Upon his body that slaughtered him!
LADY CAPULET
Find thou the means, and I'll find such a man.
But now I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
The sudden shift in conversation from murder to marriage may also reveal some surprising aspects of Lady Capulet’s personality.
JULIET
And joy comes well in such a needy time.
What are they, I beseech your ladyship?
LADY CAPULET
Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;
One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,
Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy,
That thou expect'st not nor I looked not for.
JULIET
Madam, in happy time, what day is that?
LADY CAPULET
Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn,
The gallant, young and noble gentleman,
The County Paris, at Saint Peter's Church,
Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.
Juliet is in the unfortunate position of having to extricate herself from the arranged marriage without revealing any of her legitimate reasons for doing so. Lady Capulet may or may not be disposed to sympathy, but it's understandable that she'd find this approach alienating, or even insulting.
JULIET
Now, by Saint Peter's Church and Peter too,
He shall not make me there a joyful bride!
I wonder at this haste; that I must wed
Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo.
I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam,
I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I swear,
It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,
Rather than Paris. These are news indeed!
LADY CAPULET
Here comes your father; tell him so yourself,
And see how he will take it at your hands.
Enter CAPULET and Nurse
Capulet misconstrues Juliet’s tears, assuming that she is distraught over Tybalt’s death. His poetic teasing seems to be a gentle attempt to cheer her up, simultaneously approving of her grief and playfully chiding her for it.
CAPULET
When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;
But for the sunset of my brother's son
It rains downright.
How now! A conduit, girl? what, still in tears?
Evermore showering? In one little body
Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind:
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs,
Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,
Without a sudden calm, will overset
Thy tempest-tossèd body. How now, Wife!
Have you delivered to her our decree?
LADY CAPULET
Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.
I would the fool were married to her grave!
CAPULET
Soft! Take me with you, take me with you, Wife.
How! Will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?
Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest,
Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought
So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?
Juliet’s reply to her father is carefully politic, refusing his offer in the most polite and diplomatic terms. Lord Capulet’s earlier insistence on the importance of his daughter’s approval seems no longer applicable, as her disobedience here sends him into a rage.
JULIET
Not proud you have, but thankful that you have.
Proud can I never be of what I hate;
But thankful even for hate, that is meant love.
CAPULET
How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this?
'Proud,' and 'I thank you,' and 'I thank you not;'
And yet 'not proud?' Mistress minion, you,
Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,
But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage!
You tallow-face!
LADY CAPULET
Fie, fie! What, are you mad?
JULIET
Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
CAPULET
Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wretch!
I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face.
Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;
My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest
That God had lent us but this only child;
But now I see this one is one too much,
And that we have a curse in having her.
Out on her, hilding!
Nurse
God in heaven bless her!
You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.
As Lord Capulet rages, the scene splits along gender lines, with Lady Capulet and the Nurse defending Juliet from her father.
CAPULET
And why, my lady wisdom? Hold your tongue,
Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.
Nurse
I speak no treason.
CAPULET
O, God ye god-den.
Nurse
May not one speak?
CAPULET
Peace, you mumbling fool!
Utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl,
For here we need it not.
LADY CAPULET
You are too hot.
Capulet’s speech here allows the audience to sympathize with him somewhat, as it contextualizes his anger as coming not from a need for control or a predisposition to violence, but from his constant efforts on Juliet’s behalf. He perceives her rejection of those efforts as a betrayal, which is made all the worse when his wife and the Nurse turn against him as well.
CAPULET
God's bread! It makes me mad.
Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play,
Alone, in company, still my care hath been
To have her matched; and having now provided
A gentleman of noble parentage,
Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly trained,
Stuffed, as they say, with honourable parts,
Proportioned as one's thought would wish a man;
And then to have a wretched puling fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,
To answer 'I'll not wed; I cannot love,
I am too young; I pray you, pardon me.'
But, as you will not wed, I'll pardon you.
Graze where you will you shall not house with me.
Look to't, think on't, I do not use to jest.
Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:
An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend;
And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,
For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee,
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.
Trust to't, bethink you; I'll not be forsworn.
Exit
JULIET
Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
Lady Capulet's reaction here may stem from her own disapproval of Juliet's actions, or from a new-found sympathy for her husband.
LADY CAPULET
Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word.
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.
Exit
JULIET
O God! O Nurse, how shall this be prevented?
My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven;
How shall that faith return again to earth,
Unless that husband send it me from heaven
By leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me.
Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems
Upon so soft a subject as myself!
What say'st thou? Hast thou not a word of joy?
Some comfort, Nurse.
The Nurse's advice, for the first time, is pragmatic. She may be offering it because she truly has switched her allegiance to Paris, or because she feels this is what Juliet needs to hear in this moment.
Nurse
Faith, here it is:
Romeo is banished; and all the world to nothing,
That he dares ne'er come back to challenge you;
Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,
I think it best you married with the County.
O, he's a lovely gentleman!
Romeo's a dishclout to him; an eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first; or if it did not,
Your first is dead; or 'twere as good he were,
As living here and you no use of him.
JULIET
Speakest thou from thy heart?
Nurse
And from my soul too;
Or else beshrew them both.
JULIET
Amen!
Juliet's "Amen!" delivered as an aside or under her breath, marks her break from the Nurse, as it concludes and supports the Nurse's wish that her heart and soul be "beshrewed."
Nurse
What?
JULIET
Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.
Go in, and tell my lady I am gone,
Having displeased my father, to Laurence' cell,
To make confession and to be absolved.
Unlike Romeo, Juliet is a skilled liar, and is apparently able to mask her true feelings even from her former confidante.
Juliet has now been separated from her husband, rejected by both parents, and betrayed by the Nurse, leaving her almost totally isolated. Where Romeo is exiled to an unfamiliar city, Juliet is an exile in her own life and home.
Nurse
Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.
Exit
JULIET
Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!
Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,
Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue
Which she hath praised him with above compare
So many thousand times? Go, counsellor;
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.
I'll to the Friar, to know his remedy.
If all else fail, myself have power to die.
Exit