Romeo & Juliet Quotes + Analysis

What does this say about women in Shakespearean society? "…therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids tos the wall."

Women are viewed as commodities in Shakespearean society - love is rough and repulsive, and has been put down into the gutter.

"What, drawn and talk of peace? I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues and thee." - technique?

Repetition of hate, antithesis - equates his hate for peace with his hate for hell.

"What, drawn and talk of peace? I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues and thee." - analysis?

Reveals the ingrained hatred caused by the feud and Tybalt’s impulsive, hot-headed nature and his deep allegiance to family honour, foreshadows the violence to come.

Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace… you men, you beasts… - technique?

Accusatory tone, metaphor to depict the bestial nature of men

Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace… you men, you beasts… - analysis?

Conveys chaos caused by the feud, portraying the Montagues and Capulets as irrational and destructive in their obsession with conflict

O brawling love, O loving hate - technique?

oxymoron, paradox

O brawling love, O loving hate - analysis

The oxymoronic imagery reflects the complex and contradictory nature of love, as he feels both passion and pain.

 

• Love is full of conflict

• People love to hate

• He is tortured by it

"…Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold…" - what does this say about Romeo, and about love?

Romeo has a victim complex, and is very entitled. Why shouldn’t Juliet accept his riches? Love is therefore corrupt, and can be bought. The reader comes into the play thinking that Romeo will be unlike the others - romantic, gentlemanly - but really he is just another courtly lover. 

Take thou some new infection to thy eye, and the rank poison of the old will die. - technique and analysis?

Metaphor, imagery of contagion. Benvolio’s mocking tone suggests that love is like a disease or toxic substance, something harmful that needs to be cured. Love as something temporary and replaceable.

You have dancing shoes with nimble soles. I have a soul of lead. - technique?

Pun, double meaning.

If love be rough with you, be rough with love. - technique?

Syntax, parallelism.

True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain. - analysis

Dreams come when you are bored - they are meaningless and of no consequence. Reason as opposed to emotion or passion.

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars. - technique 

Cosmic/celestial imagery, foreshadowing, ominous

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars - analysis

• His destiny is in the hands of the Gods - he is not responsible

• Something bad is about to happen

• We have to own our free will

• Destiny/fate was in God's hands

• Are we just playthings of the Gods?

• Feudal/medieval world - no concept of the individual, rigid hierarchy, chain of being - your place in society is ordained by God

• Renaissance/Humanism - Shakespeare explores the notion of Fate vs Freewill, agency, autonomy

If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this.

Religious imagery

• Humility

• Puts her on a pedestal - courtly love

• You are the shrine I wish to worship

• He is the sinner and she is the saint

"For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss." - technique 

Religious imagery, sonnet 

"For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss." - analysis 

• Love is heavenly --> flips what we were introduced to at the start

• Rise up, we are now equal --> subverts courtly love

• Sonnet, ordinarily said by one person but said by two here - they are connected

• Juliet is transgressive (defies what is legally allowed in society) because she goes against courtly love

"But passion lend them power, time means, to meet, temp'ring extremities with extreme sweet"

Foreshadowing - passion drives them crazy

"It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief"

• Idealistic, wants to worship her

• Kill the goddess of virgins - the moon

• The sun is essential for survival

• The sun is the centre of the solar system

• Her love is dangerous

• Everyone else compared to Juliet is sick and dangerous

"That birds would sing and think it were not night"

• Unnatural - so powerful it will alter the natural world

 "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"

"'Tis but thy name that is my enemy"

• Why are you a Montague?

• Would forget her family name to love Romeo

• Juliet is worried about the conflict, Romeo is just swooning

 "Dost thou love me?...If thou dost love me, pronounce it faithfully; or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay"

• Juliet is breaking the mould, transgressive

• "pronounce it faithfully" - tell me properly that you love me --> goes against norms

• Mocking courtly love

• I don't want to be the sun, the moon, the birds, tell me for real --> I don't want it cloaked in poetry

"The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb; what is her burying grave, that is her womb."

• Fertile, life-giving force - nature is also deadly.  

• rhyme scheme

"Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, and vice sometime by action dignified."

• Slippery language - vice and virtue

• Rhyme

• Showing how slippery language - human nature - is

• Good things can turn bad

• Their good intentions could end up in destruction or heal the grudge

"wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast"

• You need to slow down

• Suggests the dangers of haste - foreshadows how impulsivity leads to tragedy

• foreshadowing motif

• You need to slow down

• Suggests the dangers of haste - foreshadows how impulsivity leads to tragedy

• intuition

• antithesis

• oxymoron

• paradox

"These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately, long love doth so; too swift arrives too tardy too slow.” - technique 

• Oxymoron

• Paradox

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Foreshadowing

• Aphorism

• Extended motif

"These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately, long love doth so; too swift arrives too tardy too slow.” - analysis

• Delights and ends - oxymoron --> paradoxical --> don't be so impetuous.

• Die like fire and powder - explosively

• Which as they kiss consume - they consume death

• Connotations of awfulness in 'loathsome'

• Too much of something on its own can turn sour - their love needs to spread

• 'confounds the appetite' - destroys - love is destructive

• 'too swift arrives as tardy as too slow' - motif to 'they stumble that run fast'

"For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring"

• It's dangerous, I can feel something in the air - intuition

• Tensions are rising

• pathetic fallacy

"O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!"

• Romeo is breaking all of the honour codes

• Mercutio is furious with Romeo because he wants him to fight --> to deny is to surrender --> Romeo is weak and afraid

"A plague a'both houses!" (x3)

• Cursed them - he's going to die

• Plague - utter and total wipe out.

• rule of three

“O, I am fortune’s fool.”

• Raging again - sees the magnitude of his actions, sees the calamity

• It's not fate, it's impulsive human nature - Romeo is hypocritical

• Or it could be fate? --> we don't know!

"That all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun"

• Dramatic irony - Romeo has been exiled!

• Celestial motif - birds will sing and think it is daytime

• oxymoron