Romeo and Juliet

by Shakespeare, William

  Mercutio. But I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery.

  (57-58)

  This pun is an analogue of the irony that is precisely in his “manly” vengeance for Mercutio’s death that Romeo most decisively loses control of his own fate and becomes, as he says, “fortune’s fool” (138). In a sense, as Mercutio’s elaboration of his pun suggests without his awareness, a commitment to proving manhood by violence makes one easily manipulated by whoever offers a challenge. “Marry, go before to field, he’ll be your follower! / Your worship in that sense may call him man” (59-60). In the larger sense, the code of violence that promises to make Romeo a man actually makes him its man—its pawn.

  If Romeo shares Mercutio’s belief in the manhood of violence, he also shares the Friar’s wish for reconciliation. But the Friar has his own version of gender polarization that also contributes to the disaster. He repeatedly uses “womanish” as a synonym for “weak” when speaking to both Juliet (4.1.119) and Romeo (3.3.110), and, more crucially for the plot, encourages Juliet to pretend obedience and death through his potion rather than helping her escape to Romeo (though she has expressed willingness to leap “From off the battlements of any tower, / Or walk in thievish ways”—4.1.78-79). His image of manhood (desirable as an ideal for both sexes) is emotional control: he chides Romeo for his fury and grief at banishment by calling him “Unseemly woman in a seeming man! / And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!” (3.3.112-13). The Friar distrusts passionate love, and, like much of the conventional imagery of the play, identifies passionate love with violence: “These violent delights have violent ends” (2.6.9). It is consistent that he should not encourage Juliet to elopement but rather hopes to stage their reunion in a context of family reconciliation.

  Juliet’s confidante, the Nurse, has a more positive attitude toward sexuality, but she too underestimates the lovers’ intense commitment to each other. Like the Friar, too, she keeps the love secret and encourages Juliet to appear docile to her parents, and finally to marry Paris, since Romeo, she says, “is dead—or ’twere as good he were / As living here and you no use of him” (3.5. 226-27). Thus she is counseling Juliet to a conventional acceptance of the husband chosen by her parents. While Juliet refuses this advice, she follows the counsel of pretense that she receives from nurse and friar. The controlled stichomythia of her dialogue with Paris is a sad contrast to her spontaneous participation in Romeo’s sonnet. Juliet’s acceptance of their advice of pretense and mock death is the point analogous to Romeo’s duel with Tybalt where failure to transcend the gender polarization of their society makes disaster inevitable.

  Yet before their deaths, Romeo and Juliet can transcend the aggressions and stereotypes of the outside in their secret world. Fulfilling the promise of the balcony scene, they rename each other “Love” in their aubade scene, and their imagery suggests the creation of a private world with a technique oddly similar to that of the crucial scene in The Taming of the Shrew. To keep Romeo with her longer, Juliet transforms the lark into the nightingale and then transforms the sun into “some meteor that the sun exhales / To be to thee this night a torchbearer” (3.5.13-14). Romeo, after initially contradicting her, showing the caution that was primarily hers in the balcony scene, goes along with the game and accepts her transformation, with awareness of the likely cost:Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death.

  I am content, so thou wilt have it so.

  I’ll say yon gray is not the morning’s eye.

  ’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow.

  (17-20)

  The scene in which Kate joins in Petruchio’s transformation of the sun into the moon and old Vincentio into a young girl is of course quite different in tone. Kate and Petruchio have been engaged in a farcical combat of wills; they are now returning to Kate’s father’s house, accompanied by Petruchio’s friend Hortensio, rather than in a romantic solitude, and they are under no sentence of death or banishment. But both scenes use a verbal transformation of the world—a creation of a private world through words—as a metaphor for a relationship. Such a private world is crucial to Shrew’s mediation between ideologies of patriarchy and companionship in marriage, as well as to the attempt that Romeo and Juliet make love to each other tenderly in a world of violence. The secrecy of their love heightens at once its purity and intensity and its vulnerability. When the private world is established it is already threatened. As soon as Romeo accepts the pretense “it is not day” (25), Juliet resumes her caution and returns them to the real world, where Romeo must flee. Nevertheless, they have an absolute trust in each other; on their departure there is no questioning of each other’s truths. . . . Presciently, they imagine death as the only possible obstacle to their reunion.

  Shakespeare changed his source to reduce the age of the lovers, and historical evidence suggests that he also made them much younger than the typical age of marriage for Elizabethan aristocrats (twenty for women, twenty-one for men), who married still younger than other classes (median age twenty-four for women, twenty-six for men). However young the members of Shakespeare’s original audiences were—probably a high proportion were in their late teens or early twenties—Romeo and Juliet were still younger than almost all of them. The extreme youth of the lovers emphasizes their innocence and inexperience. Anyone who has lived longer than Romeo and Juliet—anyone who has given up a first love—has made more compromises than they have. It is their extreme purity that gives their love its special tragedy. The play expresses both the appeal and the danger of a love in which two people become the whole world to each other. This little world precariously remedies the defects of the larger one—its coldness, its hierarchies, its violence—but the lovers cannot negotiate recognition by the outer world except by their deaths because of their residual commitment to the outer world and its gender ideals.

  SYLVAN BARNET

  Romeo and Juliet on Stage and Screen

  In “To the Memorie of the deceased Author, Master W. Shakespeare,” a commendatory poem published in the first collection of Shakespeare’s works (1623), Leonard Digges wrote,Nor shall I e’re beleeue, or thinke thee dead

  (Though mist) untill our bankrout Stage be sped

  (Impossible) with some new strain t’ out-do

  Passions of Juliet, and her Romeo.

  When Digges published these lines, Romeo and Juliet had been on the stage for some twenty-five years. The first printed text of the play, issued in 1597, claims (probably truly) that it “hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely”; the second printed text, issued in 1599, says that Romeo and Juliet “hath been sundry times publiquely acted.” And yet, despite allusions to the play, such as Digges’s poem, we have no report of a specific production in England (there are some early references to German productions) until 1662, when William Davenant revived Romeo and Juliet.

  Despite the absence of early references to productions, we know at least a little about the Elizabethan staging of the play. Because the earliest text, a so-called Bad Quarto (see page 122), probably is based on the memories of actors who had performed in the play, it gives us some idea of what Romeo and Juliet was like when it was put on the stage. For instance, certain stage directions in Q1 surely report what the spectators saw. Here are a few of these directions, keyed to the lineation of the present text:“Enter Juliet somewhat fast, and embraceth Romeo”

  (2.6.15);

  “He offers to stab himselfe, and Nurse snatches the

  dagger away” (3.3.107);

  “Nurse offers to goe in and turnes again” (3.3.161);

  “She goeth down from the window” (3.5.68);

  “She fals upon her bed within the Curtaines” (4.3.58);

  “All at once cry out and wring their hands” (4.1.50);

  “She stabs herselfe and falles” (5.3.170).

  It is possible, too, that some of the omissions in the Bad Quarto (evident when it is compared to the Good Quarto, which was published two years later) may reflect an Elizabethan c
ut production of the play. True, most of the cuts in the 1597 text must be due to lapses of memory, but some may faithfully represent an abridged performance. For instance, Benvolio’s account (1.1) of the first brawl—ten lines in a later, better text—consists of only two lines in the 1597 version, perhaps because two lines were thought to be enough in production. Similarly, the servants who open 1.5 with talk abut preparing for the banquet are deleted—perhaps because the actors preparing the text did not recall the speech, but possibly because the material was not given in a stage performance. In any case, many later directors have similarly cut these speeches.

  One other point should be made about Romeo and Juliet on the Elizabethan stage: female parts were played by boys, which mean that Juliet, who is said to be almost fourteen, was in fact played by a performer of approximately that age. Elizabethan child actors were carefully trained, and judging from surviving comments about them, they were remarkably skillful performers. Later centuries have been less successful in their child actors, and attempts to use adolescents in the title roles of the play have usually been unimpressive. Even John Gielgud, when he first played Romeo at nineteen in 1924, was judged inadequate.

  Between 1642 and 1660 the London theaters were closed, but with the restoration of Charles II to the throne the theaters reopened. Of Davenant’s revival of Romeo and Juliet in 1662, the self-assured theater-enthusiast and diarist Samuel Pepys wrote, “To the Opera, and there saw Romeo and Juliet, the first time it was ever acted, but it is a play of itself the worst that ever I heard, and the worst acted that ever I saw these people do, and I am resolved to go no more to see the first time of acting.” As Pepys’s comments on other productions of Shakespeare’s plays show, his taste did not run to Elizabethan drama (except when it was heavily adapted to Restoration taste); his comments on the ineptitude of the performers are more surprising, since Thomas Betterton (a leading actor of the period) played Mercutio, and the much-acclaimed Mary Saunderson, later to be Betterton’s wife, played Juliet.

  A little later—the exact date is not known—James Howard transformed the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet into a tragicomedy, keeping the lovers alive at the end. One report says that versions were alternated, “tragical one day and tragicomical another.” Howard’s adaptation, however, as well as Shakespeare’s original, was driven from the stage by an even freer adaptation, Thomas Otway’s Caius Marius (1679). In this work, set in Republican Rome, Romeo is changed to Caius Marius and Juliet to Lavinia. Otway restored Shakespeare’s tragic ending, but Juliet revives briefly before Romeo’s death, and in an effort to increase the pathos the lovers exchange dying speeches. Caius Marius, virtually an original play, was staged regularly until 1727, utterly displacing Shakespeare’s play during these years.

  In 1744 Romeo and Juliet—somewhat cut, and still with some added passages from Otway, and still with Juliet awakening before Romeo dies—first reappeared on the stage, in a version by Theophilus Cibber, with Cibber playing Romeo, and his daughter Jenny playing Juliet. This version, however, was halted after only nine performances because it was given in an unlicensed theater. In 1748 David Garrick, manager of the theater in Drury Lane, put on his own adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and this adaptation held the stage for the rest of the eighteenth century. During this period, in fact, it was the most frequently performed Shakespeare play on the stage. Its life continued well into the first half of the nineteenth century, for John Philip Kemble’s modified version (1803) of Garrick’s version was performed until 1845, thus in effect giving Garrick’s Romeo a run of ninety-seven years. Although Garrick’s version marked a significant step in the direction of restoring Shakespeare’s texts to the stage, by modern standards Garrick treated the text very badly. Although at first he restored Romeo’s early love for Rosaline, when he published his text in 1753 he bowed to critical opinion and, following Otway and Cibber, omitted all reference to Romeo’s love for Rosaline. Moreover, again taking a cue from Otway, he restored Juliet to life before Romeo died so that the lovers could exchange words Garrick invented for them. Further, he cut almost half of the play, including the bawdry, and he touched up a good many lines—for instance simplifying some lines for his hearers. In deference to the eighteenth-century opinion that puns do not belong in tragedy, most of the puns are cut—even Mercutio’s line that he is “a grave man.” After 1750 Garrick added to the beginning of the fifth act a funeral dirge for Juliet. And of course there is added dialogue (about sixty-five lines) between the lovers at the end of the play. Here is a sample from the addition:Romeo. I thought thee dead! distracted at the sight (Fatal

  speed) drank poison, kiss’d thy cold lips And found within

  thy arms a precious grave—But in that moment—O—

  Juliet. And did I wake for this!

  Romeo. My powers are blasted, Twixt death and love I’m

  torn—I am distracted! But death’s strongest, and I must

  leave thee, Juliet! O cruel, cursed fate!—in sight of

  heav’n—

  Juliet. Thou rav’st—lean on my breast—

  Romeo. Fathers have flinty hearts, no tears can melt ’em

  Nature pleads in vain—children must be wretched.

  Juliet. O my breaking heart—

  Romeo. She is my wife—our hearts are twined together;

  Capulet forbear; Paris, loose your hold—Pull not our

  heartstrings thus—they crack—they break—O Juliet! Juliet!

  Juliet. Stay, stay for me, Romeo; a moment stay; Fate mar

  ries us in death, and we are one. No pow’r shall part us.

  [Faints on Romeo’s body.]

  Garrick went on, after Juliet kills herself, to reduce Friar Lawrence’s long summary (5.3.229-69) by half, and to reduce lines 270-94 (by the Prince, Balthasar, and the Boy) to three lines spoken by the Prince. Capulet’s and Montague’s speeches of reconciliation are retained, and the play ends with a speech Garrick composed (drawing on Shakespeare) for the Prince:A gloomy peace this morning with it brings,

  Let Romeo’s man and let the boy attend us.

  We’ll hence and farther scan these sad disasters.

  Well may you mourn, my lords, now wise too late,

  These tragic issues of your mutual hate.

  From private feuds what dire misfortunes flow;

  Whate’er the cause, the sure effect is woe.

  It is easy to laugh at Garrick’s verse, and to become indignant with his cuts and revisions, but acted by Spranger Barry and Mrs. Cibber (Cibber’s estranged second wife), this version was the talk of the age. When Barry and Mrs. Cibber abandoned Garrick and Drury Lane, and went over to the rival theater, Covent Garden, they continued to perform something close to this version of Romeo and Juliet. The ensuing War of the Theaters aroused both interest and irritation, for if it allowed theater buffs to compare performers (Garrick and Miss George Anne Bellamy now took the title roles at Drury Lane), it also narrowed the choice of plays that one could see. A theatergoer expressed what must have been a widespread feeling:“Well, what’s tonight?” says angry Ned,

  As up from bed he rouses;

  “Romeo again!” and shakes his head;

  “Ah, pox on both your houses.”

  But there was also a good deal of excited commentary about the relative merits of the performers. Perhaps the most engaging judgment was that of the actress Hannah Pritchard, who said that if she were playing Juliet to Garrick’s Romeo, his words were so hot and passionate in the garden scene that she would have expected him at any moment to climb up to the window—but if she were playing to Barry’s Romeo, his words were so sweet and seductive that she would have gone down to him. One other point should be made about the eighteenth-century productions of Romeo and Juliet: they were done in fashionable contemporary dress, not in the Italian Renaissance costumes used in most nineteenth- and twentieth-century productions. Details about Juliet’s costume are not known, but Romeo wore a knee-length coat, knee breeches, and a wig with the hair gathered toget
her behind and tied with a knot of ribbon.

  Although Garrick’s text, in Kemble’s adaptation, held the stage during the first four decades of the nineteenth century—even the great William Charles Macready in 1838 used the Garrick version—in 1845 Charlotte Cushman, an American actress in London, returning to Shakespeare’s ending, abandoned the added dialogue of the dying lovers in the fifth act. Cushman played Romeo, and her sister, Susan, played Juliet. Since Ellen Tree had played Romeo as early as 1829, and Priscilla Horton had played him in 1834, the novelty was not that a woman played Romeo, but that Shakespeare’s text was restored to the stage. On the whole the reviews of Cushman’s production were favorable, and the play had a substantial run—substantial enough for Samuel Phelps in 1846 to use Shakespeare’s text in his revival of the play.

  To say that Shakespeare’s text displaced Garrick’s is not to say, of course, that Shakespeare’s text was faithfully followed down to the last word. Few productions added speeches, but almost all made substantial cuts. Take, for example, Henry Irving’s production of 1882, with Irving as Romeo and Ellen Terry as Juliet. Irving, in his usual manner, employed illusionistic sets, for example an elaborate marketplace (fountain, donkeys, and all) for the opening scene, a great hall for the masked ball, and an impressive marble balcony for Juliet. He therefore had to delete or rearrange some scenes, so that the cumbersome sets would not have to be struck, set up again, struck again, and set up again. Moreover Irving, in the tradition of the Victorian actor-managers, cut much in order to emphasize the roles of the star actors. Thus the final scene in the tomb, after the death of the lovers, was completely cut except for the Prince’s final four lines, ending the play with a tableau that Ellen Terry described as “magnificent.” Henry James, however, wryly commented that the play was not “acted” but was “obstructed, interrupted.” Irving, by the way, was forty-three when he played Romeo, and Ellen Terry was thirty-five—ages that are not especially remarkable when one recalls that Garrick played Romeo until he was forty-four, and within living memory Olivia de Havilland was thirty-five, and Katharine Cornell was thirty-six, when they played Juliet.