Romeo & Juliet - W. Shakespeare, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Romeo & Juliet - W. Shakespeare e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! ROMEO AND JULIET – William Shakespeare (16 – 17 marzo) Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by Shakespeare between 1594-1595 and published in 1597. It’s a play about the conflict between the main characters’ love. The two teenaged lovers, Romeo and Juliet, fall in love the first time they see each other, but their families’ fight requires they remain enemies. Romeo and Juliet begin the play trapped by their social roles. Romeo is a young man who is expected to chase women, but he has chosen Rosaline, who has sworn to remain a virgin. The way Romeo speaks about Rosaline suggests he is playing a role rather than feeling a true emotion. Romeo is also expected to be excited by the fight with the Capulets, but he finds it as miserable as his love: “O brawling love, O loving hate” (1.1.). When we meet Juliet, she is in her bedroom, physically trapped between her Nurse and her mother. As a young woman, her role is to obediently wait for her parents to marry her to someone. When her mother announces that Paris will be Juliet’s future husband, Juliet’s response is obedient, but unenthusiastic: “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move.” (1.3). These early scenes reveal Romeo and Juliet’s characters and introduce the themes of love, sex, and marriage that dominate the play. The incident which sets the plot in motion is Romeo’s decision to attend the Capulets’ party. So, Romeo decides to free himself from the role that confines him. By going to the Capulets’ home, Romeo is also temporarily ignoring his social role as a Montague who must fight the Capulets. Unfortunately, Tybalt sees Romeo’s presence as an “intrusion” and swears revenge: “this intrusion shall, / Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall” (1.5.). Romeo and Juliet meet. Now Romeo has equally high stakes for staying at the party as for leaving. If he stays, he risks Tybalt’s further wrath, but if he leaves, he won’t get to spend more time with Juliet. He decides to risk his life for love. When Romeo and Juliet talk, they reinforce the extraordinariness of their new love by using the religious language of “pilgrims,” “saints,” and “prayers,” suggesting their love will escape earthly limitations. After the party, Romeo returns to find Juliet. Their love gives both lovers a sense of freedom. Romeo feels like he is flying with “love’s light wings” (2.2). Juliet feels that her love is “as boundless as the sea” (2.2). She believes that love can liberate them both from their families: “be but sworn my love / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet” (2.2.). In the next scene, we meet Friar Lawrence, who believes their love can end the Montague-Capulet feud, and he agrees to marry them. The next few scenes are more like a Shakespearean comedy than a tragedy. Mercutio and the Nurse make bawdy jokes (scherzi osceni). Romeo and Juliet have a plan to get married under their parents’ noses. It seems as if the feud between their families really might end. At the end of Act Two, the lovers marry. When the lovers are finally married, the play shifts from comedy to tragedy. Tybalt still seeks revenge for Romeo’s decision to attend the Capulets’ ball. Romeo, believing himself freed from the feud by his secret marriage to Juliet, refuses to fight Tybalt. But Romeo’s freedom is an illusion. Tybalt provokes Mercutio and Mercutio challenges him. They fight, and Mercutio dies. Now Romeo wants to avenge his friend’s death. Romeo kills Tybalt. It now seems unlikely that Romeo and Juliet will be able to live happily together. Romeo is banished from Verona. Before he leaves, he and Juliet Lady Montague She is Romeo’s mother, Montague’s wife. She dies of grief (dolore) after Romeo is exiled from Verona. Paris He is a suitor (corteggiatore) of Juliet; è il preferito dai Capuleti, ma nei confronti di Giulietta si comporta in modo presuntuoso, come se fossero già sposati.  Friar Lawrence A Franciscan friar (frate), friend to both Romeo and Juliet. He is kind and always ready with a plan, Friar Lawrence secretly marries Romeo and Juliet in hopes that the union might eventually bring peace to Verona.  Mercutio He is Romeo’s close friend. One of the most extraordinary characters in all of Shakespeare’s plays, Mercutio overflows with imagination and wit (verve, umorismo). Mercutio loves wordplay, especially sexual double entendre (doppi sensi). He finds Romeo’s ideas about love tiresome and tries to convince him to view love as a simple matter of sexual appetite. The Nurse Juliet’s nurse, the woman who breast-fed Juliet when she was a baby and has cared for Juliet her entire life. Tybalt A Capulet, Juliet’s cousin on her mother’s side. Benvolio Romeo’s cousin and friend. Prince Escalus The Prince of Verona. Balthasar Romeo’s dedicated servant, who brings Romeo the news of Juliet’s death, unaware that her death is a ruse (trappola, stratagemma).  Rosaline The woman who Romeo loves at the beginning of the play. Rosaline never appears on stage, but it is said by other characters that she is very beautiful and wants to live a life of chastity.  The Chorus The Chorus is the narrator who comments about the play’s plot and themes. THEMES: Love Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. Love is the play’s dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, love is a violent, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions. During the play, the young lovers are driven to defy (sfidare) their entire social world:  families (“Deny thy father and refuse thy name,” Juliet asks, “Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet”);  friends (Romeo abandons Mercutio and Benvolio after the feast in order to go to Juliet’s Garden);  ruler (Romeo returns to Verona for Juliet’s sake after being exiled by the prince on pain of death in 2.1.76–78). Love in Romeo and Juliet is a brutal, powerful emotion that captures individuals and catapults them against their world, and, at times, against themselves. At times love is described in the terms of religion, as in the fourteen lines when Romeo and Juliet first meet. At others, it is described as something magic: “Alike bewitchèd by the charm of looks” (2.Prologue.6). Juliet, perhaps, most perfectly describes her love for Romeo by refusing to describe it: “But my true love is grown to such excess / I cannot sum up some of half my wealth” (3.1.33–34). Love, in other words, resists any single metaphor because it is too powerful to be so easily contained or understood.  Romeo and Juliet portrays the chaos and passion of being in love, combining images of love, violence, death, religion, and family in an impressionistic rush leading to the play’s tragic conclusion. Love, in   Romeo and Juliet ,   is a grand passion, and as such, it is blinding; it can overwhelm a person as powerfully and completely as hate can. Romeo and Juliet are plagued with thoughts of suicide, and a willingness to experience it: in Act 3, scene 3, Romeo brandishes a knife in Friar Lawrence’s cell and threatens to kill himself after he has been banished from Verona and his love. Juliet also pulls a knife in order to take her own life in Friar Lawrence’s presence just three scenes later. After Capulet decides that Juliet will marry Paris, Juliet says, “If all else fail, myself have power to die” (3.5.242). Finally, each imagine that the other looks dead the morning after their first, and only, sexual experience (“Methinks I see thee,” Juliet says, “. . . as one dead in the bottom of a tomb” (3.5.55–56). The theme of love as act of violence continues until its inevitable conclusion: double suicide. This tragic choice is the highest, most potent expression of love that Romeo and Juliet can make. It is only through death that they can preserve their love, and their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense. also amplifies the sense of tragedy at the play’s conclusion. For instance, when Romeo cries out, “I defy you, stars!” (V.i.), the audience knows that Romeo is not going to win fate and this impotence only makes Romeo’s agony much more painful. In the end, then, mentioning Romeo and Juliet’s fate at the beginning of the play doesn’t spoil the ending. Instead, it locks the audience into a sense of tense anticipation of inescapable tragedy. Another obstacle in   Romeo and Juliet   is time —or, more precisely, timing. Everything related to love in this play moves too quickly. The theme of accelerated love first appears early in the play, regarding the question of whether Juliet is old enough for marriage. Whereas Lady Capulet contends that Juliet is of a “pretty age” and hence eligible for marriage, Lord Capulet maintains that it’s too soon for her to marry. When Lord Capulet changes his mind later in the play, he accelerates the timeline for Juliet’s marriage to Paris. Forced to act quickly in response, Juliet fakes her own death. Everything about Romeo and Juliet’s relationship is sped up as well. Not only do they fall in love at first sight, but they also get married the next day. Sex The themes of love and sex are closely linked in   Romeo and Juliet . As an example, in act III Mercutio insists that Romeo has confused his love for Juliet with mere sexual desire: “this driveling love is like a great natural that runs / lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole” (II.iv.84–85). Mercutio’s use of the phrases “lolling up and down” and “hide his bauble in a hole” also strongly imply sexual imagery (“bauble” and “hole” are slang for penis and vagina, respectively). In Mercutio’s view, love is ultimately reducible to sexual desire. Juliet, by contrast, implies that the concepts are distinct and that they exist in a hierarchical relationship, with love standing above sex. This view accords with Catholic doctrine, which privileges the spiritual union of marriage, but also indicates that this union must be legally consummated through sexual intercourse. The speech Juliet delivers in Act III, scene ii, nicely demonstrates her view of the proper relationship between love and sex. Violence Due to the ongoing feud between the Capulets and the Montagues, violence permeates the world of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare demonstrates how intrinsic violence is to the play’s environment in the first scene. Youth Romeo and Juliet are both very young, and Shakespeare uses the two lovers to spotlight the theme of youth in several ways. Romeo, for instance, is closely linked to the young men with whom he goes around the streets of Verona (Romeo as a gangster). These young men are short- tempered and quick to violence, and their rivalries with opposing groups of young men indicate a phenomenon not unlike modern gang culture Romeo is also immature. Romeo’s speech about Rosaline in the play’s first scene is full of clichéd phrases from love poetry. He’s still young, and he should therefore take his time and explore relations with other women: “Compare [Rosaline’s] face with some that I shall show, / And I will make thee think thy swan a crow” (I.ii.87–88). Whereas we never learn Romeo’s precise age, we know that Juliet is 13. Her age comes up early in the play, during conversations about whether she’s too young to get married. Juliet’s mother insists that she’s reached “a pretty age” (I.iii.11), but her father describes her as “yet a stranger in the world” (I.ii.8) and hence not yet ready to marry. Although Juliet does not want to marry Paris, she certainly believes herself old enough for marriage. In fact, she often uses explicitly erotic language that indicates a maturity beyond her actual years. Yet despite this apparent maturity, Juliet also knows that she is young. In fact, when she is about to marry Romeo, she compares herself to “an impatient child” (III.ii.30).