romeo and juliet quotes

• Setting


  Context for Shakespeare's audience
• Italy


  • Exotic
  • Distant country
  • Romantic and classical associations
  • Well suited to a tale of love and violence
• setting 


  for shakespeare’s audience italy was an exotic, distant county with romantic and classical associations well suited to a tale of love and violence
• Catholicism was viewed with suspicion by many Elizabethans
• catholism 


  were viewed with suspicion by many elizabethan england and the catholic friar messing with herbs may have been untrustworthy and sinister
• audience


  an elizabethan audience often chatted and did business during plays so they needed plenty of action and drama to stop them losing focus
• masculinity


  Elizabethan england was generally patriarchal men tended to posses a greater share of political, economic, social and physical power
• “therefore women being the weaker vessels”


  comparative adjective ‘weaker’ mirrors the patriarchal nature of elizibethan england
• “ i will push montagues men from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall”


  the verb push suggests men’s violence

  ‘thrust’ to the wall-repitition

  suggests women are viewed as sexual objects by men, men are responsible
• “draw if you be men”


  the imperative verb is agnostic and the conditional clause suggest masculinity depends on willingness to fight
• “love is a smoke raised with the fumes of sighs”


  poetic language juxtaposes romeo to the aggressive and vulgar language of the men at the beginning of the play this contrast serves to effeminate him
• “being o’er my head, as is a wing messenger sent from heaven”


  simile likens Juliet to an angel and therefore refers to her as superior, symbolised also by her standing above him on the balcony
• “i am fortunes fool“- romeo 


  put onto a higher cause and higher power
• “heaven finds means to kill your joys with love”


  heaven is a metaphor of literal representation of god or a greater being

  ’joys’ means romeo and juliet. heaven has done this. possible element of having them dead creates a catharsis. implying deaths are consequences of ancient grudge
• “from forth the fatal loins of these two foes. a pair of star crossed lovers take their lives”


  the word fate has been conjugated or changed into an adj of fatal

  fatal loins, families montagues and capulats of these two foes, setting up that our protagonist is R + J will both die.
• “ i defy you stars”

  conveys how romeo feels as if he is bigger + more powerful than fate as he is willing to openly resist the future that the stars hold for him. ‘defy’ expresses his anger at fate also showing romeo’s compulsive character.