Quotes by Theme Romeo and Juliet

Quotes by theme
Love
Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,

Should without eyes see pathways to his will (1.1.)
Romeo begins the play in love with Rosaline, but his language in these opening scenes
shows us that his first love is less mature than the love he will develop for Juliet. This couplet
combines two ideas that were already clichés in Shakespeare’s day: “love is blind” and “love
will find a way.” The clichéd expressions and obvious rhymes which Romeo uses to express
his love for Rosaline would have been ridiculous to a contemporary audience, and Benvolio
and Mercutio repeatedly make fun of them.
My only love sprung from my only hate,

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love is it to me
That I must love a loathed enemy. (1.5.)
Juliet speaks these lines after learning that Romeo is a Montague. The language
of Romeo and Juliet insists that opposites can never be entirely separated: the lovers
will never be allowed to forget that they are also enemies. Significanly, that Juliet
blames herself for seeing Romeo “too early.” Everything in this play happens too
early: we learn what will happen at the end in the opening lines, Juliet is married too
young, and Romeo kills himself moments before Juliet wakes. In Romeo and Juliet,
love is a force which can—and does—move too fast.
With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,

For stony limits cannot hold love out (2.2.)
Juliet wants to know how Romeo got into the walled garden of the Capulet house:
these lines are his response. For Romeo, true love is a liberating force. Love gives
him not just wings, but “light wings” and the power to overcome all “stony limits.”
Romeo answers Juliet’s serious and practical question with a flight of romantic
fantasy. Throughout the play, Juliet is more grounded in the real world than Romeo.
For her, the freedom that love brings is the freedom to leave her parents’ house and
to have sex.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite. (2.2.)
Here Juliet describes her feelings for Romeo. Like Romeo, Juliet experiences love
as a kind of freedom: her love is “boundless” and “infinite.” Her experience of love is
more openly erotic than Romeo’s: her imagery has sexual undertones. Juliet is
always more in touch with the practicalities of love—sex and marriage—than Romeo,
who is less realistic. Where Romeo draws on the conventional imagery of
Elizabethan love poetry, Juliet’s language in these lines is original and striking, which
reflects her inexperience, and makes her seem very sincere.
SEX
I will push Montague’s men from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall (1.1.)
Samson’s boast introduces the theme of sex in explicitly violent terms. He imagines
attacking Montague men and assaulting Montague women. Sex is paired with
violence throughout Romeo and Juliet. Even the sexual union of the lovers themselves
is shadowed by the violence between their families: on the same night that Romeo
comes to consummate his marriage to Juliet, he kills her cousin Tybalt.
now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature, for this drivelling love is like a
great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole. (2.4.)
Mercutio is pleased that Romeo is exchanging jokes with him instead of moping for
his love. He dismisses love as foolish: a “natural” is a fool, and a “bauble” is the stick
a professional fool carries. The image of the fool trying to “hide his bauble in a hole”
also implies sexual intercourse. Mercutio’s point is that at its root, love is really just
sexual desire. As far as Mercutio is concerned, all of Romeo’s romantic longing is
just “drivelling” and “lolling” brought on by sexual frustration. Mercutio’s cynical point
of view challenges the idealistic romance of the two lovers.

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Come, gentle night, come, loving black-browed night,
Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars (3.2.)
Juliet yearns for her wedding night. The repetition of the word “come” shows us the
strength of her desire. There’s no ambiguity about what Juliet is yearning for. “Die”
was Elizabethan slang for “orgasm.” The image that follows, of Romeo “cut…out in
little stars,” is a subtle metaphor for the sexual ecstasy Juliet anticipates. At the
same time, the image suggests childhood play, reminding us again that Juliet is very
young. The words “die” and “cut” also have violent undertones. In this play, sex and
violence are never far apart.
Viloence
My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back thee. (1.1.)

The action of Romeo and Juliet opens with Samson boasting that he is a violent man. When
some Montague servants appear, he draws his sword and asks his companion Gregory to start
a quarrel that might lead to a fight. This opening establishes that Verona is a place where
violence can break out over nothing. Samson and Gregory and their Montague opponents are
all afraid of breaking the law, which reminds us that the punishment for fighting is every bit
as violent as the fighting itself. From the beginning of the play, all the young men involved in
the feud are trapped between two threats of violence: the violence of their enemies and the
violence of the Prince, who has threatened to execute anyone who continues the feud. This
helps create the play’s sense of confinement.
He rests his minim rests, one, two and the third in your bosom; the very butcher of a silk
button, a duellist, a duellist (2.4)
Mercutio makes fun of Tybalt’s fighting style. At the time Shakespeare was writing, a new
style of fencing (swordfighting) had recently been imported from Italy. Tybalt fences in this
style, which allows Shakespeare to add a bit of local Italian color to his Verona. At the same
time, in these lines of Mercutio’s, Shakespeare pokes fun at the new trend in England. Even
though Mercutio is mocking Tybalt, we sense an underlying admiration for Tybalt’s ability as
a fighter. It does not come as a surprise when Mercutio is tempted to test his own skill against
Tybalt’s, with fatal results.

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They have made worms’ meat of me. (3.1.)

Mercutio fights Tybalt and receives a fatal wound. As he dies, he continues to talk with his
usual cynical wit. He imagines himself after his death in strictly physical and very
unromantic terms: as meat for worms. This marks a turning point in play. Up until now,
violence has only been threatened, and for the characters and the audience alike it’s been
more a source of excitement than grief. Now, one of the play’s most appealing characters is
dying. From this point forward, the play’s violence will be brutal and unrelenting. Tybalt will
die, then Paris, and finally Romeo and Juliet.
Youth
My child is yet a stranger in the world;

She hath not seen the change of fourteen years. (1,2.)
Capulet begins the play by denying Paris’s request to marry Juliet, on the grounds
that she is too young. Juliet is thirteen, but the word “thirteen” never appears
in Romeo and Juliet. Instead we are repeatedly told that she is not yet fourteen. The
fact that Juliet’s father is looking forward to a birthday she will never reach
emphasizes that Juliet’s life is cut very short. Capulet’s description of Juliet as “a
stranger in the world” introduces us to an important aspect of her character. Her
father means that she is inexperienced, which she is, but Juliet is also a “stranger in
the world” because she prefers the transcendent experience she shares with Romeo
to the compromises and practicalities of everyday life, even to the extent of choosing
to die rather than live in a world without Romeo.
Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she, God rest all Christian souls
Were of an age (1.3.)
The Nurse recalls that her own daughter, Susan, was the same age as Juliet, as she
reminds us that Juliet is not yet fourteen. Susan died as a baby, and the Nurse’s
grief foreshadows the grief Capulet and Lady Capulet will feel at the end of the play,
when they too lose their young daughter. The Nurse identifies Juliet’s birthday as
Lammas Eve. Lammas Eve was celebrated at the beginning of August, and we know
that the play takes place in summer, so Juliet is a month or two from her birthday.
This creates a dramatic irony: the Nurse and the Capulets are counting down to
Juliet’s fourteenth birthday, while the audience is counting down to her death.
So tedious is this day

As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them (3.2.)
Here Juliet expresses her impatience for her wedding night. By comparing herself to
a child, Juliet reminds us that she is almost a child herself. Her metaphor also points
to an important aspect of Juliet’s character. Throughout the play, Juliet is impatient to
grow up. As soon as she meets Romeo she wants to marry him. She gets married
even though her father thinks she is at least two years too young, and she can hardly
contain her impatience for her wedding night. To the audience, Juliet’s hurry to grow
up is tragic, because we know she will die only a few days after her marriage.
Fate
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life (Prologue)
The play’s opening lines tell us that Romeo and Juliet will die, and that their tragic
end is fated. “Star-crossed” means “opposed by the stars.” In Shakespeare’s day as
in ours, some people believed that the course of your life was determined by the
motion and position of the stars. “Take their life” is a pun: it means that the lovers
were born from the “fatal loins” of their parents, and it also means that the lovers will
kill themselves. Their births and deaths are described in the same short phrase,
which again suggests that their deaths were fated from the moment they were born.

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Quotes by theme

Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,

My only love sprung from my only hate,

With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back thee. (1.1.)

They have made worms’ meat of me. (3.1.)

My child is yet a stranger in the world;

So tedious is this day

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

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