Character Analysis in Romeo and Juliet

This is a metaphor that references Romeo's eyes. "Scales" implies judgement based on evidence while Shakespeare used "crystal" and eye interchangeably. Benvolio is asking Romeo to use his eyes for judgement since they are currently blind from his love. This metaphor positions Benvolio as Romeo's more rational friend.

Here Capulet asserts that he cannot order his daughter to consent to marriage and tells Paris that he must first try to woo her. While this suggests that Capulet and his daughter have a good relationship in which Juliet is allowed to determine her own future, this benevolent behavior will be reversed when Juliet denies his wishes. This instead operates as the illusion of choice: if Paris woos her, Juliet will believe that she was able to choose her own husband. Notice that Juliet's feelings and consent are never considered by either man.

By this the Nurse means that women become pregnant by men and then grow large with the baby. While Lady Capulet uses an elaborate metaphor to speak to Juliet's romantic notions, the Nurse's comments are grounded in a physical and biological understanding of marriage.

Lady Capulet echoes what Paris said to Juliet's father in the previous scene and uses herself as an example of a young marriage. Notice that both Lady Capulet and Paris use the example of unnamed "other women" as models of behavior in order to convince Juliet that she should get married. Only the Nurse appeals to Juliet's feelings rather than offering other women's experiences to shape her decisions.

Here the Nurse tells a story from Juliet's childhood. She begins by displacing Lady and Lord Capulet to Mantua and placing Juliet in a homey space with her and her husband. The Nurse narrates Juliet's childhood as if Juliet were her child. This speech could be read as a sweet way in which the Nurse shows her long history with Juliet or the way she asserts her motherly claim to Juliet over Lady Capulet.

It is never explained who Susan is, though the context suggests that she was the Nurse's daughter. Often, rich women would hire wet nurses to nurse their babies so that they did not have to breast feed. If the Nurse were Juliet's wet nurse then it would make sense that she had a daughter at the same time Juliet was born. If the Nurse did lose her daughter, it would explain why acting like Juliet's mother was so important to her.

The Nurse asserts her knowledge of and close relationship with Juliet. Most wealthy women would give birth then give their child to a nurse or governess to raise. The Nurse has acted as Juliet more than Juliet's mother; however, as her mother, Lady Capulet still has power and control over Juliet's life. Notice how the Nurse asserts her importance and closeness with Juliet throughout this scene.

In this context "pretty age" means marrying age. This view of Juliet's age directly contradicts what her father said in the previous scene. Juliet's mother seems to think that Juliet is ready for marriage. However, this assertion occurs in lines in which Lady Capulet cannot even talk to her daughter without the presence of the nurse. This suggests that Lady Capulet does not actually know her daughter or her daughter's wishes.

This phrase means to act without restraint. From this exchange we see that Capulet acknowledges Tybalt's hotheadedness. Despite the feud, Capulet seems to understand the rules of social decorum while Tybalt cares only about the feud. This foreshadows Tybalt's part in bringing about the play's tragic resolution.

It is interesting that in this first speech, Romeo emphasizes Juliet's purity and ethereal nature. He speaks of her the way sonneteers and poets speak of their unrequited loves, and situates his love outside of the real world. Since we know that Romeo and Juliet do not have a chaste love, this could be understood as a mentality that Romeo will grow out of over the course of the play.

To "have a bout" is to dance with you. Capulet here directly addresses the gentlemen in the room entreating them to dance. This demonstrates Capulet's misogynistic view of both relationships between the sexes and courtship and foreshadows his negative reaction to Juliet defying his wishes.

There is a comedic element to this line because Juliet's "thousand times goodnight" is not actually good night, she will return to the stage to make sure that Romeo will meet her in the morning. For all of her stoic instruction and rational contemplation of the meaning of names, her inability to say good night once demonstrates Juliet's simultaneous excitement about her love and worry that her love is not genuine. This first farewell has become one of the most famous lines of this play.

In Elizabethan pronunciation, an "R" would have sounded like a dog's growl. The Nurse continues to suggest that R begins another word, such as "arse," but then stops herself realizing that she has spelled the word wrong. This playing with Romeo's name could suggest that the Nurse does not like him, or it could show the Nurse trying to play with words the way Romeo and his friends were playing with words earlier in the scene.

This is a colloquial saying that means to lay a claim to. The Nurse could mention Paris here for one of two reasons. First, to show Romeo that if he does not keep his word his lady will go to another. Second, to assert her importance in Juliet's decision making. She says "sometimes" as if she and Juliet have been discussing her two suitors for an extended period of time, though we know that Juliet met Romeo and heard about Paris only the day before.

Mercutio seems to be looking for a fight. He understands Tybalt's letter to Romeo as a challenge to his on life. Benvolio quickly corrects him by saying that Romeo will answer the challenge, not Mercutio. This hot headed response foreshadows Mercutio's later actions with Tybalt.

With this line Romeo marks the turning point in the play and within himself. Thus far, the audience has seen Romeo melancholic and in love. This marks the point at which Romeo enters the feud. Ironically, Romeo acknowledges that this turn in events will end in woe, foreshadowing his tragic end.

Mercutio is taunting Tybalt to fight him. He is enacting the same behavior that he assigned to Benvolio earlier in this scene. Mercutio marks himself as the hot-headed fighter.

It is ironic that Mercutio tells Benvolio that he is a hot-head when Mercutio has been the most outspoken and offensive character in the play so far. Mercutio describes himself more in his anecdote about the tavern brawler than Benvolio.

During Shakespeare's time, a woman's duty was to marry and produce children. A daughter's primary duty was to her father until marriage at which point it transferred to her husband. Juliet, a radical female character for her time who chooses to marry outside of her father's consent, uses this speech to weigh her choices. She does not automatically decide that her duty is to Romeo simply because he is her husband; she comes to that decision through reason.

Juliet foreshadows her reaction to Romeo's eventual death. Without him, she cannot be herself or anyone else. Juliet's identity has become inextricably linked to Romeo's identity. Here, Juliet inadvertently offers the audience an explanation for her coming suicide.

The Friar uses this speech to highlight a major part of Romeo's identity. Romeo is an intensely emotional person with overdramatic reactions and feelings. When he threatens to kill himself over his banishment, the Friar yells at him and tells him to remember his duty as a husband and a man. He cannot retreat into his feelings and self hatred, he must live for his wife.

This marks a separation between Juliet and her Nurse's counsel. Symbolically, in deciding that she will no longer mind her Nurse's advice, Juliet marks her departure from childhood and entrance into adulthood.

"Rate" means to scold someone. Notice that the Nurse is the only person who comes to Juliet's defense. Unlike Juliet's mother who points Capulet's wrath at her daughter, the Nurse tries to deflect Capulet's anger onto herself.

Capulet is talking about Tybalt, his brother's son. The sunset is a metaphor for death, while the rain is a symbol for the tears cried over Tybalt's death. Capulet speaks about death in playful metaphors that discredit the seriousness of Tybalt's death. These short lines paint Capulet as an uncaring man.

A "conduit" is a pipe. This is a teasing metaphor for Juliet's tears. Notice again that the Capulets do not take sorrow seriously; they continuously mock and chide Juliet for feeling her cousin's death.

Lady Capulet once again shows that the Capulets do not take death seriously. Lady Capulet here claims that there is an appropriate amount of grief to show for death and anything beyond that demonstrates that someone is not intelligent. Since it has been less than a day, this "appropriate time" seems unreasonable.

"Unstained" in this context means pure. We know that Juliet has already lost her virginity in this play, thus "purity" no longer means virginal but faithful. As long as no one else possesses her, she remains "unstained." However, this understanding of purity ironically makes Juliet into an object: in order to remain pure, she must remain Romeo's possession.

Juliet threatens to kill herself if the Friar cannot fix her situation. This threat is ominous because the audience knows that by the end of the play Juliet will have killed herself. Her repeated assertion that she is going to kill herself over her grief and loss demonstrates Juliet's anguish and melancholy.

Romeo's ability to quickly recall this apothecary in detail indicates that he has been thinking about suicide while being banished. Like This is an effective rhetorical device that shows that audience that Romeo is in the same mental state as Juliet, who has repeatedly threatened to kill herself.

The Friar is a controversial character within this play. On one hand, he is a man of the cloth who allows the lovers to be together and keeps their secret until they die. However, he is also the catalyst for the tragedy that ensues in this play. His actions can be seen as a form of cowardice: he gives Juliet the vial so that no one finds out he married the lovers, and he runs in the tomb rather than staying with Juliet and preventing her from killing herself. Even this final speech, in which he tells the prince that he should be prosecuted for his actions, is full of blame for everyone's involvement in the young lovers's deaths. In this way the Friar can either be read as a selfish character who acts and speaks out of self interest, or as the moral center who reminds everyone of their hand in the tragedy.

Notice that the Friar blames chance, the "unkind hour," for the tragedy of Romeo and Paris's deaths. Even though it was the Friar's plan that set up these two deaths, he focuses on the random, uncontrollable forces that made his plan go so awry.

The Friar here speaks to his own inability to control the events of the story. His plan was thwarted by a series of unlikely and unfortunate events that led to the death that he was trying to prevent. The friar says this in order to recognize his own inability to control fate and death.