Inside Shakespeare's Mind :

Juliet, his most celebrated character

Continuing the series of Shakespeare's women characters, it is Juliet the Capulet who takes the bow today. She happens to be the most celebrated character who needs no introduction not only to Shakespeare's followers but even to those readers who seldom or not have read him. She dominates the scene before Romeo's arrival at the Capulet's ball and then get bonded to him and the greatest tragedy bares its pathos, henceforth.

Shakespeare did not confine himself to the originality in a striking study of passionate tragedy in which the splendour foreshadowed Juliet but was liberal with his ardour for the young Romeo. He placed them on the same platform where the public could not tear them apart.

Therefore, it is not surprising that he accorded praise upon her.

He revealed himself to the contemporaries of his time who sniffed at his academics that applause of the scholars, can be earned not only through learning but from the audiences as well. Thus emerged the largeness of Juliet for the day.

The excessive flow of words dialogued made his learned contemporaries whine who were unable to grasp his new diction, outside Cambridge and Oxford. He baffled them with his genius that he snapped off from his primary education.

His knowledge of Latin, history (some of which were not right) made them sit up and wonder as to how he acquired. In the meantime, Shakespeare was projecting his genius in the plays such as Romeo and Juliet.

Juliet's anguish before parting, a poignant moment from the ballet Romeo and Juliet, mounted by the Royal Ballet, London

We meet Juliet for the first time in the Capulet's home:-

Lady Cap – Nurse, where's my daughter? Call her forth to me.

Nurse – Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old, I bade her come.

What lamb, what ladybird, God forbid? Where's girl? Juliet

Juliet – How now, Who calls?

N – Your mother

J – Madam, I am here. What is your will,

LC – This is the matter, give leave awhile... Thou knowst’ my daughter's of a pretty age.

N – Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour

LC – She's not fourteen...

Act I Sce. IV

After a whirlwind of incidents, Romeo is by the balcony below,

Juliet – Art thou gone so; Love, lord; husband, friend. I must hear from thee every day in the hour, for a minute, there are many days.

O’ by this count I shall be much in years. Ere’ again behold my Romeo...

Act. III Sce. V

When Juliet's father insists that she marries young Nobleman, Paris, she panics and runs to Friar Lawrence for his help. He gives her an opiate with instructions that she should drink the following night, the day she is scheduled to marry Paris. She will be laid in the Capulet vault in her death-like trance. Romeo will be there to wake her up. However, Romeo doth not receive the message and when he hears about her death, he comes rushing to be confronted by Paris whom he kills. Romeo drinks the poison he had bought from a Mantuan apothecary and dies by Juliet's side. (laying Paris in the monument).

Romeo – How oft, when men are at point of death, have they been merry which their keepers ‘Call this is their lightning. O’ my love, my wife; death that had suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power upon thy beauty.

Act. V, Sce. III

With Romeo dead, Juliet wakes up from her ‘death’ when Friar Lawrence enter the churchyard to take her away. He goes to the vault when Juliet confronts him.

Juliet – O’ comfortable Friar; where is my lord. I do remember well where I should be, and there I am... Where is my Romeo? (noise within).

Friar – I hear some noise, lady, come from thy nest of death, contagion and unnatural death...

Juliet – Go, get thee hence, for I will not away (Friar departs) What's here, a cup of clos'd in my true love's hand. Poison. I see, hath been his timeless end... (kisses him as Paris’ page enters). Thy lips are warm. Yea, noise, then I shall be brief. O'happy dagger (snatch Romeo's dagger). This is thy sheath (stabs herself) there rust and let me die'... Act V, Sce III

The Prince who enters the death scene, demands from the Watch as to what happened. Confronts the Friar who reveal the sad episode.

Watch – Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain... And Romeo's dead, and Juliet dead before. Warm and new killed...

Capulet – As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie. Poor sacrifices of our enmity.

Prince – A gloomy peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more to talk of these sad things.

Some shall be pardon'd and some punished.

For never was a story of more woe.

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. Act V, Sce III

Thus ends the world's greatest love story with Juliet as the central figure.

Synopsis

The famous scene at the balcony where Romeo meets Juliet, after the Capulet's ball

Written in 1595-6, Romeo and Juliet is one of the most read of the Bard.

It became so popular from the beginning, that the two principal characters were immortalized but then, after having done an episode on true love, Shakespeare had to spoil its virgin essence by bringing in a character of Rosaline with no purpose at all.

The story is sited in Verona and Mantua with noble strapping upon the houses of Capuleta and Montagues, with war at each other.

Romeo who gets infatuated with Juliet and leads her to commit suicide after him after a love affair they were too young to handle and misdirected by Friar Lawrence. The families are reconciled over the bodies of their children.

The Prince close the play.

Prologue

Do with their deaths bury their parent's strife

The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love

And the continuance of their parents’ rage

Which but their children's end, nought could remove

Is now the hours’ traffic of our stage,

The which of you with patient ears attend

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

In performance

One of the most soughted after for stage, film, dialogue, etc. the role of the tragic lovers have enhanced the histrionics even of the established Thespians. Never was a role such as that of Romeo being fought over.

There is a clear image of Rudolf Nureyev still fresh in the minds of all ballet lovers around the world. From 1679 to date, the same vigour among theatre goers prevail. World's leading directors and choreographers have chopped, added to resurrect these lovers in their plays, films and ballets.

They have all strived to maintain the youth that Shakespeare projected, the essence of innocent love in the face of parental objections and the final sacrifice. Acted, danced, dialogued over centuries, no one dare change its course and Shakespeare aura will remain forever.