What’s love got to do with it?!
Erudite scholars and critics and specialized commentators on William
Shakespeare’s tragicomedy Romeo and Juliet have already written volumes
of magnificent articles analyzing the play. And yet, please allow me to
appreciate the play so that young students encountering Shakespeare for
the first time could gather some information as I understood it.
R n J is an early play of Shakespeare – a tragedy which is widely
different from the later tragedies. There are no fundamental
questionings into the mystery of human life, no “‘short, quicker probing
at the heart of reality”. Nor is there any sense of the mystery of the
relations between character and destiny.
In fact, the play is not a tragedy of fate. There is no evil in the
play, as in Macbeth or King Lear.
The chief characters are free from any ‘tragic flaw” or inherent
weakness of character which partly contributes to their own tragedy as
in Hamlet or King Lear.
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An 1870 oil painting by Ford Madox
Brown depicting Romeo and Juliet's famous balcony scene |
The total effect of the play is not any better or touching
experience, although there is enough scope for sorrow.It is thus
described as a youthful play. But the reservations are really beside the
point.
These may be appropriate description from a certain point of view
from the total evaluation of Shakespeare’s plays. But we are mainly
concerned with Shakespeare’s achievement in this particular play: what
is the kind of experience which S was trying to communicate in this play
and whether he has suceeded in what he set out to do.
Shakespeare concentrates on one theme – the theme of romantic love
and to that he has given perfect expression through the best lyrical
poetry - an appropriate embodiment of romantic love or passion.
The measure of his achievement can be seen in that perfect
correspondence between the style and the content of his play between the
lyrical poetry and the lyrical emotion of love.
“Romantic Love” is too generalized a description of the theme of R &
J. The play deals with the sudden growth to maturity and resourcefulness
of R & J through the love experience. That is what the play is about.
Shakespeare takes great pains to define the love of R & J and this he
does partly through what they say themselves- that is by letting love
speak for itself- and he ads it also by the method of contras by letting
us know what others think of this subject. In other words, what is
intended by others by this term ‘love’.
Their reading of love is quite different from that of the chief
characters. Mercutio does not believe in love, but he believes in sex,
the sordid trafficking of the flesh. Mercutio tilts at love with a wit.
It remains at a cynical and coarse level.
The Capulets have another view of love. They believe in good
marriages and sensible choices. The Nurse is vulgar and indecent
reminiscing over he pat with evident relish: “My husband –God be with
his soul “The Nurse was advising Juliet after Romeo has been exiled. She
says “I think it is best you married with the County.”
So it is not surprising that in a play which abound with such
contrary views on love the lovers in their first dialogue should talk of
palmers, saints and prayers.
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fire is this
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, heady stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss
Good pilgrims, 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 him
In other words the love of Romeo & Juliet is set apart from other
conception of love for it is a love pure and sincere and though intense
and passionate.
Shakespeare’s play is not merely definition of romantic love. It
really traces the development of these characters, the growth to
maturity through love. They have been transferred through the love
experience.
When Romeo’s love has changed from his early infatuation for
Rosaline, from setimental and an affected sort of love, his language too
has changed. From the conventional romantic lover of the Elizabethan
stage full of paradoxes and artificial conceits, he speaks after meeting
with Juliet in a language that is hyperbolic, no doubt but is vivid and
intense.
“O, she doth teach the torches to turn bright
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in a Ethiopians’ ear
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it sight
For I never saw true beauty till this night “
Need I say more on this.
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