romeo quotes

• "Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out / And makes himself an artificial night" - Montague (Act 1, Scene 1)

  • antithesis between "daylight" and "night" reflects on Romeo's conflicting emotions due to Rosaline
• "O brawling love! O loving hate!" - Romeo (Act 1, Scene 1)

  • "brawling" foreshadows future conflict to come
  • "loving hate" shows that Romeo hates the situation he is in with his unrequited love for Rosaline but contrastingly, he loves Rosaline which shows he is passionate
  • oxymora about love highlights the contradictions that Romeo faces with his unrequited love for Rosaline
  • part of a 13-line speech (imperfect sonnet) which shows Romeo's experience with love is incomplete and flawed
  • irregular rhyming couplets - unpredictable nature of love
• "underneath the grove of sycamore" - Benvolio (Act 1, Scene 1)

  • "sycamore" sounds like sick amore (amore is love in Italian) showing Romeo is lovesick due to Rosaline
  • Romeo was found walking underneath this tree which is associated with melancholy lovers
• "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars ... But He hath the steerage of my course" - Romeo (Act 1, Scene 4)

  • Romeo lacks control of his life; Shakespeare highlights belief of fate in Elizabethan times
• "Verona brags of him / to be a virtuous and well-governed youth" - Capulet (Act 1, Scene 5)

  • even Romeo's enemies know if him and he is repected
• "If I profane my unworthiest hand / This holy shrine" - Romeo (Act 1, Scene 5)

  • semantic field of religious imagery; suggests that Juliet is a deity
• "My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready to stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss" - Romeo (Act 1, Scene 5)

  • Romeo's name means pilgrim
  • extended metaphor of religion conveys their love as holy, pure and sacred. This contrasts with the love Romeo had for Rosaline where he wanted her to "ope her lap to saint-seducing gold"; Juliet's love isn't sexual/bawdy
  • this contrast is also shown through the iambic pentameter, rhyming couplets and shared sonnet used when Romeo meets Juliet CONTRASTING with the blank verse used for Rosaline
• "Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?" - Romeo (Act 1, Scene 5)

  • chaste and sweet flirtation tinged with intense desire
  • witty & humorous - sending puns back & forth
• "Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's sake" - Juliet

  "/ Then move not while my prayer's effect I take" - Romeo

  • Romeo finishes & responds to Juliet's sonnet rhyme scheme - compatibility & reciprocation of love
  • iambic pentameter which is mirrored off heartbeat showing that his emotions are heightened and their hearts are connecting too
• "He jests at scars that never felt a wound" - Romeo (Act 2, Scene 2)

  • "wound" suggests cynical metaphor for love
  • Mercutio is laughing but he hasn't been "wounded" by love
  • Mercutio's teasing is misdirected & unwarranted
  • however, disparaging comment about someone he's known a while - love changes him and is powerful
• "Juliet appears above at a window" - stage direction (Act 2, Scene 2)

  • Romeo is looking up to her - physically and metaphorically
  • he idolises her - similar to religious imagery in Act 1 Scene 5
• "Juliet is the sun" - Romeo (Act 2, Scene 2)

  • "sun" implies centre of universe and that she is a celestial being who is beyond the realms of reality
  • Romeo confesses his love using the BLASON (love poetry popular in Elizabethan times) which usually involves comparison of female body parts to nature
  • Romeo can't survive without her - foreshadows to end of play
  • suggests Juliet is hope brought into his dark world
  • semantic field of light - strength of affection
• "Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon" - Romeo (Act 2, Scene 2)

  • "envious moon" - light vs dark references again
  • Diana (moon personified) is goddess of virginity; Romeo implores Juliet not to be in Diana's service - i.e not a virgin
• "her vestal livery was sick and green" - Romeo (Act 2, Scene 2)

  • believed to be illness suffered by virgins (contextual factor)
• "fools do wear it; cast it off" - Romeo (Act 2, Scene 2)

  • Romeo wants to rid her off the illness
  • irony that he feels he is knight in shining armour saving her from this illness but this relationship is ultimately what kills Juliet
• "With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls" - Romeo (Act 2, Scene 2)

  • antithesis between abstract noun "love" and concrete noun "walls" - love transcends borders
  • blinded by love - delusional
• "I have forgot that name" - Romeo (Act 2, Scene 3)

  • forgotten Rosaline's name - which he never mentions
  • impulsive & immature
• "Young men's love then lies / Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes" - Friar Lawrence (Act 2, Scene 3)

  • shining light on superficial nature of love
  • highlights Romeo's fickle & lustful nature
• "Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell" - Friar Lawrence (Act 2, Scene 3)

  • Romeo doesn't understand what love means what love means, yet he knows how to act like he's in love
  • Romeo is in love with the idea of love
• "there she shall at Friar Lawrence' cell / Be shrived and married" - Romeo to Nurse (Act 2, Scene 4)

  • impulsive & impetuous - known Juliet for little time
• "love-devouring Death do what he dare" - Romeo (Act 2, Scene 6)

  • their love is bound by death as they're about to be bounded in marriage
  • foreshadows the death of the lovers
• "Tybalt, the reason I have to love thee / Doth much excuse the appertaining rage / To such a greeting" - Romeo (Act 3, Scene 1)

  • contrast with Tybalt "thou art a villain" previous line
  • love transcends societal conventions & expectations
• "... O sweet Juliet, / Thy beauty hath made me effeminate / And in my temper soften'd valour's steel!" - Romeo (Act 3, Scene 1)

  • "effeminate" links to his death as it is believed his death was effeminate as he killed himself rather than being killed while fighting
  • Romeo presented as blunt sword - emasculation
  • inability to conform to violent behaviour considered feminine showing how Juliet has caused him to change
  • "effeminate" & "temper" - alliterative t heightens tension
• "away to heaven, respective lenity / And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now" - Romeo (Act 3, Scene 1)

  • juxtaposes heaven with hellish imagery - conflict between mercy & revenge
  • fricatives ("fire-eyed fury") accentuate harshness of dialogue
• "O, I am fortune's fool" - Romeo (Act 3, Scene 1)

  • believes in fate/fortune - common in Elizabethan era
  • Boethius' notion of wheel - everyone's fate changes (context)
  • recalls sense of fate hanging over play
• "There is no world without Verona's walls / But purgatory torture hell itself" - Romeo (Act 3, Scene 3)

  • Romeo's hyperbolic manner of thought
  • Auxesis - where words' intensity ascend ("purgatory, torture, hell")
• "Thy tears are womanish" - Friar Lawrence (Act 3, Scene 3)

  • patriarchal society in which the text is set & written
  • his actions are wild - implying a level of dehumanisation
• "I must be gone and live, or stay and die" - Romeo (Act 3, Scene 5)

  • monosyllabic phrasing - unusual for Romeo
  • character development - new level of maturity
  • internal rhyme "I" and "die" foreshadows Romeo's death
• "come, death, and welcome!" - Romeo (Act 3, Scene 5)

  • foreshadows his death
• "Is it e'en so? Then I defy you, stars" - Romeo (Act 5, Scene 1)

  • conflict between Romeo and fate
  • Romeo is hubristic - which leads to his destruction
  • broken syntax & caesura elucidates his internal turmoil
• "I do beseech you, sir, have patience" - Balthasar (act 5, scene 1)

  • Romeo is hasty and makes impulsive, rash decision
• "the lean abhorrèd monster keeps / Thee here in dark to be his paramour" - Romeo (Act 5, Scene 3)

  • death is in love with Juliet, keeping her a mistress
• "crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks / And Death's pale flag is not advancèd there" - Romeo (Act 5, Scene 3)

  • Juliet's beauty is outliving death; Juliet is beyond realms of reality
• "too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, too like the lightning" - Juliet (Act 2, Scene 2)

  • asyndetic listing - builds to simile
  • shows that Romeo is impulsive, reckless & has a tendency to make decisions too quickly