Further into Romeo and Juliet

(Concluding last week’s piece on R & J)

As we saw lat week on this page Romeo and Juliet is a tragic-comedy. But to establish this aspect we must go further into the play.

As with Romeo, so with Juliet too there is always a transition from the innocence of childhood to the curious mixture of modesty and boldness of character- this mixture of innocence and frankness is beautifully rendered later when Juliet is impatiently waiting for Romeo.

“Come night, come, Romeo, come thou day and night

O have bought the mansion of love,

But not possess if it, and though I am sold

Not yet enjoyed”

The parting scene is the climax of the love scenes and is one of the greatest in the play where Shakespeare transform through his poetic power what is a conventional situation in romantic literature into a genuine and real one.

Greater maturity is indicated in the scenes which follow. If earlier Juliet had grown from innocence and to boldness and has been awakened o love, now the tragedy of her situation and her suffering fully transform her to real maturity of courage. And the conversation between Juliet and Paris in Friar Lawrence’s cell, Juliet is self assured and resourceful.

“Come you to make confession to this father

To answer that, I should confess to you

Do not deny t him that you love one

I will confer to you that I love him”

So too with Romeo. The emotional maturity of Romeo is suggested when Romeo hers of Juliet’s death.

“Is it even so? Than I defy you star

Thou knowest my lodging: get me ink and paper

And hire post horse, I will hence tonight”

There is no lamentation. It is a simple decision.

And later desperateness of his situation gives a keen edge to what Romeo tells the apothecary. In far there is a greater awareness:

“But then so bare ad full of wretchedness”

“Then be not poor, but break it and take this”

There remains to be considered the form of the play. After all Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy.

Romantic comedy is a convenient description because it helps to focus our attention on the love thee and the form of the play-it’s tragic form. It is customary to describe it as tragedy of fate. Support for this view is derived from the prologue to the play – the reference to the star-crossed lovers. This reading of the play as one of irresistible destiny or fate warring against the lovers is not true.

The play is really about two young lovers whose love is frustrated by their parents’ strife and a variety of other circumstances quite natural and plausible. We have to consider the ending of the play too.

The view is sometimes held that the play could have had happy ending. But for that unforeseen incident at the end of the play when the messenger from Friar Lawrence is prevented from communicating with Romeo everything would have ended happily.

A simple answer to that is that the blundering of the messenger is not the only circumstance that contributes to the tragedy.

There is the impetuosity and insolence of Tybalt which precipitates the real crisis in the love of Romeo and Juliet, there is the anxiety of the Couplets to Juliet well married and using the death of Tybalt to hasten the marriage.

The real answer to those who say that the play could have had happy ending is that the play could not have ended otherwise for more valid reasons.

The tragic outcome is in the poetry of the play itself. It is the poetry that from the beginning prepares us for the tragic end.

The premonitions of the catastrophic end are there in the poetry from the beginning. Romeo is filled with forebodings as he enters the house of Capulets.

“I fear two early, for my mind misgives…By some vile forfeit of untimely death.”

Juliet as she sees Romeo descending from her chamber exclaims:

“God, I have an ill -driving soul’ …’Enter my eyesight fails or those lookst pale”

The imagery of the play – the contrast between light and darkness also anticipate the tragic ending. The vision of defeated love transmits itself unconsciously to as through the repeated contrast between light and darkness.

Besides the poetry, the chief characters are so presented tht the tragedy is made to appear inevitable.

The impatience of the lovers has to be answered by the brevity of their love and the solemn figure of the Friar points to the same conclusion.

The tragic outcome appears inevitable when we consider the concentrated force of the organization. Speed is the very essence of the play. Everything takes place so swiftly.

No sooner Romeo and Juliet felt the impact of love than the flow falls with the death of Tybalt. Then it is one of swift downward rush to the inevitable tragedy.

If the tragedy is in poetry, in the forebodings of gloom that hangs about the play, and the rapidity of the action, it is futile to discuss whether the tragedy is a tragedy of fate.

And in the total scheme of t he play, in the total organization of characters, incidents and poetry, the accidental circumstance of the messenger all appear natural and plausible.

(I am indebted to my innovative teacher at St Joseph’s College, Colombo in my University Entrance form, the late M I Kuruvila, for guiding me to understand this Shakespearean play in the late 1950s.)

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