Romeo and Juliet

Part 7

The scene opens in the Capulet household, where Lord Capulet has just been informed that his daughter refuses his choice of husband. Lady Capulet confirms it coolly: “She will none, she gives you thanks. I would the fool were married to her grave.” Capulet can scarcely credit it. Has he not labored day and night to secure for his only child “a gentleman of noble parentage, of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly allied, stuff’d, as they say, with honourable parts”? And now this “wretched puling fool, a whining mammet” throws it back in his face?

Juliet kneels and begs patience for a single word. She will not be granted it. Capulet’s rage erupts: she is “chopp’d logic,” a “mistress minion,” a “green-sickness carrion,” a “tallow-face,” a “young baggage, disobedient wretch.” His fingers itch to strike her. He reminds her of all he has done for her, calls her a curse, an “hilding.” When Lady Capulet interjects, “Fie, fie! What, are you mad?” he turns on her too: “God’s bread, it makes me mad!” When the Nurse attempts to defend the girl — “God in heaven bless her. You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so” — she is silenced with contempt: “And why, my lady wisdom? Hold your tongue, Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.” Her further protestations are cut off with “Peace, you mumbling fool!”

Capulet’s final threat is brutal: marry Paris on Thursday, or be cast out forever. “Graze where you will, you shall not house with me. Look to’t, think on’t, I do not use to jest. Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise. And you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, For by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee.” He storms out.

Juliet turns to heaven: “Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the bottom of my grief?” She begs her mother for a single week, a month, a single delay — or, failing that, “make the bridal bed In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.” Lady Capulet’s answer is ice: “Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word. Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.” She too departs.

Alone now, Juliet appeals to the only other woman who has ever mothered her: “O God! O Nurse, how shall this be prevented? My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven.” But the Nurse, who has raised her from infancy, delivers a blow more wounding than her father’s. “Romeo is banished,” she says, “and all the world to nothing That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you.” Better marry Paris — “he’s a lovely gentleman. Romeo’s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye As Paris hath.” Better that Romeo were dead, or that he were “as good he were, As living here and you no use of him.”

Juliet asks coldly: “Speakest thou from thy heart?” “And from my soul too, Or else beshrew them both.” Juliet responds with a single, devastating word: “Amen.” She tells the Nurse to inform her mother she has gone to Friar Lawrence’s cell to make her confession. The Nurse approves — “Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.”

Once the Nurse has gone, Juliet drops the mask. “Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!” she cries. “Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn, Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue Which she hath prais’d him with above compare So many thousand times?” She cuts the tie at last: “Go, counsellor. Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.” If the Friar has no remedy, then “myself have power to die.”

Act IV opens in Friar Lawrence’s cell, where the County Paris is pressing the holy man. “On Thursday, sir? The time is very short,” the Friar observes. Paris explains that Capulet fears his daughter will drown in grief and so has urged haste. “Venus smiles not in a house of tears.” The Friar, muttering that he would he knew not why it should be slowed, sees Juliet approaching.

Paris greets her with unseasonable brightness: “Happily met, my lady and my wife!” Juliet parries every warm word with cold ones. What must be shall be, she says. When Paris tries to make her confess she loves him, she turns it: “I will confess to you that I love him.” When he presses, she answers: “If I do so, it will be of more price, Being spoke behind your back than to your face.” She bids him farewell with a kiss that means nothing, and he withdraws.

Then the door shuts, and Juliet, “past hope, past cure, past help,” falls weeping into the Friar’s arms. “Tell me not, Friar, that thou hear’st of this, Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it.” She draws a knife. “God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands; And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo’s seal’d, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Turn to another, this shall slay them both.”

The Friar sees a desperate hope. If she has the will to kill herself, she has the will to play dead. He reveals the plan: a distilled liquor that will freeze her veins and steal the roses from her lips for two and forty hours. She will be laid in the Capulet vault. He will send word to Romeo by letter. Romeo will come, and “that very night Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.”

Juliet accepts without a tremor. “O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk Where serpents are.” Hide her in a charnel-house with rattling bones and chapless skulls. Bury her with a corpse in his shroud. “Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble, And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love.” She takes the vial. “Love give me strength, and strength shall help afford.”

In the hall, Capulet has already set the household buzzing. Twenty cunning cooks must be hired; spices, dates, and quinces are wanted in the pastry. The second cock has crowed, the curfew bell has rung, it is three o’clock. He will not sleep — he has watched all night for lesser cause and never been sick. The wedding will go forward at dawn.

Then Juliet returns from shrift, all penitence. “Where I have learnt me to repent the sin Of disobedient opposition To you and your behests; and am enjoin’d By holy Lawrence to fall prostrate here, To beg your pardon.” Capulet melts. “Send for the County, go tell him of this. I’ll have this knot knit up tomorrow morning.” Even Lady Capulet is won round, blessing the holy Friar who has worked such a change.

Juliet draws the Nurse aside to help her sort ornaments for the morrow. She will need the chamber to herself that night, she says, “for I have need of many orisons To move the heavens to smile upon my state, Which, well thou know’st, is cross and full of sin.” Lady Capulet agrees. Let the Nurse sit up with her. Good night, and God knows when they shall meet again.

The door closes. Juliet lays down her dagger and lifts the vial. A faint cold fear thrills through her veins. What if the draught is poison, brewed by the Friar to hide his earlier sin of marrying her to Romeo? What if she wakes before Romeo reaches her, alone in the vault with Tybalt’s festering shroud and the bones of her ancestors, in a place where spirits resort, where shrieks like mandrakes torn from earth drive mortals mad? Will she pluck the mangled Tybalt from his winding sheet, dash out her brains with a kinsman’s bone, run mad amid the dead? She looks once more upon the cup. “Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, here’s drink! I drink to thee.” She throws herself upon the bed.