Quotes by Theme Romeo and Juliet
Quotes by Theme Romeo and Juliet
Quotes by Theme Romeo and Juliet
Love
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.
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.
X
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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
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Youth
Fate