Lit Criticism 2

Authority in Romeo and Juliet

Date: 2000

On Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Author: Arthur F. Kinney

From: Romeo and Juliet, New Edition, Bloom's Guides.

The first disturbing moment in Romeo and Juliet comes in the opening lines of the Chorus, which struggles to be evenhanded and sure in its outline of a play about "A pair of star-crossed lovers":

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.

The fearful passage of their death-marked love,

And the continuance of their parents' rage,

Which, but their children's end, naught could remove,

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. (prologue 1–14)¹.…

Unlike the choruses that appear in other Shakespeare plays to set the scenes and set forth the issues, this one gives away the whole plot. Why … might Shakespeare reveal the plot? To remind a preoccupied audience of a familiar story? To provide a kind of program guide for the uninitiated? Or, more likely, to give the plot an interpretation that seems always already there? If the last is true, what is that interpretation? Can we break open the closed sonnet form of this speech that like Shakespeare's other sonnets describes a situation and then sums it up in a couplet that seems to close off the ideas with the form? Such phrases as "fatal loins," "star-crossed lovers," "fearful passage," "death-marked love," and even "continuance of their parents' rage," we note, tell us not only what will happen but also what we should think about dramatic events.

The deliberate parallel of "Two households" and "both alike in dignity" is echoed in "ancient grudge" and "new mutiny." Moreover, the phrases "civil blood" and "civil hands" (ends and means) seem to insist on balancing the past and the present that gives the opening of this play a static quality, a frozen sense of events that undermines narrative progression and dramatic development. Having read the chorus, why should we read the play? The most we can get out of the play is the how of the what, the details that, however we read and interpret them, we know will lead us to "death-marked love, / And the continuance of their parents' rage." The attempt of the younger generation to oppose their elders will wind up defeated, and the static situation in Verona will continue.

Not many … would settle for such a conclusion despite the preponderance of supporting evidence in these fourteen opening lines. So the search is on to prove me wrong, or at least to prove that Shakespeare is also doing something else. The something else … is in line 14: "What here shall miss." It is possible that the narrative summary here is incomplete, and so the judgments of the Chorus may be contingent. Rather than shut down the story of Romeo and Juliet, the Chorus opens it up. Yet if the Chorus, speaking on behalf of the actors, will by "toil … strive to mend" what is omitted from this twelve-line program note, does this suggest that what is omitted will only fill in the details of the outline already presented, interpreted, and, in a sense, evaluated? Or might the judgments, and therefore the narrative, of the Chorus itself be suspect—in need not so much of refinement as of alteration? We return one more time to the earlier lines, this time to look for too-easy generalizations, leaps in logic, or even inconsistencies. There is the uncertainty, for instance, of the undefined "ancient grudge" and, further, of how such a grudge could be an efficient cause for generations of strife. The past is hazy, the time span indefinite. Verona seems hardly "fair" in the picture the Chorus paints here; is there any reason for such a judgment to be sustained? Do the deaths of Romeo and Juliet "bury their parents' strife" as line 8 unequivocally states, or is there "continuance of their parents' rage" as line 10 unhesitatingly pronounces? It may be that these first fourteen lines are less pronouncement than rationalization, that the Chorus displays a troubling hope for change, a hope that is here posited only in Romeo and Juliet, "star-crossed lovers" whose "misadventure[s]" are nevertheless "piteous." …

The second chorus also bears examination:

Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,

And young affection gapes to be his heir;

That fair for which love groaned for and would die,

With tender Juliet matched, is now not fair.

Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,

Alike bewitched by the charm of looks;

But to his foe supposed he must complain,

And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks.

Being held a foe, he may not have access

To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear,

And she as much in love, her means much less

To meet her new beloved anywhere;

But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,

Temp'ring extremities with extreme sweet. (1–14)

The question is, has anything changed? The form of this chorus is identical to that of the first—the closed Shakespearean sonnet, in which three quatrains are brought to completion by a rhymed couplet. But the whole substance has changed, from plot to process. The time scheme has changed, from the vast and distant overview to the involvement of in medias res: "Now." Judgments in the lines are open to question: "That fair … is now not fair." "[L]ove's sweet bait" is associated with "fearful hooks," and the implication is that Juliet should be aware of this, as should Romeo. What appears one-dimensional in the first chorus now seems rife with disturbing paradoxes.… In "Temp'ring extremities with extreme sweet" statements have now become propositions. The Chorus arguably stops speaking because it has run out of information and is waiting until more actions unfold. The Chorus has been transformed, perhaps by the power of passion, from program note to playhouse spectator and auditor. The Chorus is no longer telling us but rather mediating for us and becoming like us. We join forces with the Chorus to mediate (that is, interpret and anticipate).

The next question … is … if the Chorus moves from telling us to guiding us, what does it do next? The answer is that it disappears—a disappearance as startling as that in The Taming of a Shrew of Christopher Sly. Why … would Shakespeare dismiss the Chorus?

The answer … is that the role of the Chorus is subsumed by other characters in the play. Since that role is one of authority, a suitable candidate appears only three scenes later when Friar Lawrence, in the soliloquy at his first appearance, adopts the same knowing, oracular role the Chorus had.…

But a closer look at Friar Lawrence, even in his opening speech, also raises questions about knowledge and self-knowledge. "Within the infant rind of this weak flower," he notes, "Poison hath residence and medicine power" (23–24). He concludes:

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will;

And where the worser is predominant,

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. (27–30)

The Friar's sense of paradox here, however, is no greater than that of the maturing Juliet, who has just told Romeo that "I should kill thee with much cherishing" (2.2.183) if given the chance. The Friar, moreover, seems confused, for in claiming to exercise grace in dealing with the young lovers he in fact imposes his own rude will without hesitation or modesty. What begins in 2.3 as a chastisement of Romeo for his swift dismissal of Rosaline for Juliet only anticipates the swift way in which the Friar takes upon himself the task of ending the generations-old feud. He does not at first attempt to enter the civil realm of Prince Escalus, whose division of Verona by separating the Capulets from the Montagues only prolongs the feud (1.1.84–106), but in fact he usurps that realm by attempting singlehandedly to end the ancient grudge himself:

But come, young waverer, come go with me.

In one respect I'll thy assistant be;

For this alliance may so happy prove

To turn your households' rancor to pure love. (2.3.89–92)

Having stressed to himself (and to Romeo) the paradoxes in nature, the Friar now forgets all possibilities of paradox when, paradoxically, he volunteers for the duty of the Prince. But this unholy matrimony of church and state—which dissolves in the play's final scene, when the Friar inversely confesses to the Prince and the Prince absolves him—is not the worst of the Friar's disregard for the law. Hearing the confessions of Romeo and Juliet as might a priest (but not a friar), Friar Lawrence marries them secretly, without the traditional banns, thus violating the sacrament of his church.

This act itself hangs on a nice paradox.… On the one hand, Catholic practices may be sacrificed here—the Elizabethan Shakespeare, writing for a Protestant England after the Reformation, sets evil practices in Catholic Verona. But, on the other hand, in Elizabethan England an alternative to the practice of pronouncing banns three times before the church service of matrimony was the practice known as sponsalia de praesenti, whereby vows were exchanged in the presence of a witness (and what better witness to such a pledge than a man of the church?). The vows, though subject to consecration at a later time, were held to constitute full marriage. The problem, of course, is that this premarital contract—on which the action of Measure for Measure also turns—is a Protestant ritual, not a Catholic one.… However we leave this discussion—which may be impossible to resolve fully, since knowledge in this play is always potentially paradoxical rather than parabolic—we note that in due course the Friar will attempt to master life and death by helping Romeo to a secret exile and by giving Juliet a potion that (as she makes clear in her soliloquy in 4.3) may literally be a matter of life and death. The Friar would not only be priest but also Prince and God.

Who then has the necessary authority in this play? Not the elder Montagues, for all their concern for their son, or the Capulets, for all their disregard for the opinions and desires of their daughter. Like the Friar, the two families are limited—the Montagues by hoping for a rosier world in the future, the Capulets by using force to achieve their way. Not the Nurse, whose earthiness is finally both too worldly and too banal. Not Benvolio, whose optimistic attitude, like that of Romeo's father, knows little doubt and naively concentrates on wishing Romeo well. Not in Mercutio, for all his wisdom about the dangers of dreaming (a pointed lesson for Romeo); when driven to accidental death, he would set an epidemic free indiscriminately: "A plague a'both your houses! … Your houses!" (3.1.108–10; cf. 92). Mercutio's condemnation is at best a throwback to the equivocation of the first Chorus. Not in Tybalt initially or in Paris finally, the latter of whom would forsake justice and mercy for vengeance.

Instead, authority rests—if it rests anywhere—in the tragic heroes themselves. Juliet's choice and dismissal of aid from her parents, then her confessor, and finally her nurse show that Juliet is driven back to her own best judgments as, holding the vial in her hands, she measures the consequences of a potion that may work or may fail. In each instance, she chooses constantly. (Seen in this light, the Chorus's insistence that she is "star-crossed" is woefully misguided.) Sequentially, but in a kind of parallel, Romeo's choice to face death by returning at once to Verona is embodied in his decision to pause in Mantua to visit an apothecary and choose, literally, his own poison. Here, as later in the tomb, he will, like Juliet, voluntarily choose death. They die by no authority but their own; if they take on themselves the sins of their fathers (their births were "star-crossed"), they also take on themselves responsibility for their choice to marry secretly in the Friar's cell.…

The need for the lovers to die in this play is not entirely of their own choosing, … because Romeo and Juliet were born into an ancient grudge not of their making. But the characters' sense of responsibility seems central to the final actions of the play when the Friar, returning to his function as chorus, gives a synopsis of the play and offers himself as a sacrifice (5.3.267– 68), seeming to know that his special role will save him. So it does, and when the Prince says, "We still have known thee for a holy man" (270), he excuses both the Friar and himself.… The Prince excuses the Friar—lets him off without any civil punishment—because the Friar is "a holy man" and therefore, apparently, answerable to a different, higher authority. But the line also betrays the Prince, who surrendered his authority early in the play by failing to provide justice and prevent bloodshed. Finally, the two sets of parents vie in establishing memorials for the deceased lovers, beginning a variant of the feud all over again. The Prince's final pronouncement of "A glooming peace" (5.3.305) openly subscribes to this failure.

In stark contrast to their elders, the young lovers, lying dead, have made choices and exercised responsibility and punishment. If Romeo and Juliet's sense of justice (and love) does not teach any of those who remain on stage, their bodies lie there as silent emblems of authority and responsibility. If we attempt to stage this last scene in our minds … we see that the characters crowd on the stage as they have in only two other scenes in the play: the masked ball and the fight between the Capulets and the Montagues in 1.1. (The latter scene contrasts with the fight in 3.2 where the chief Montague refuses to engage in combat.) In fact, Romeo does not fight in the first scene either (he is absent) and Juliet is in neither scene. Now that Romeo and Juliet appear with all the others for the first time, their silent presence judges everyone else.

There is another way to look at the staging scenes in the play. Given a discovery space that might hold large props or suggest privacy, the three episodes necessarily at the rear of the stage, taking up the same theatrical space, are the bedroom scenes and the scenes in the Friar's cell (and the apothecary shop), and all are displaced by the large tombs at the end. The bedroom tempts the body, the cell tempts the soul, but both temptations are overcome in the graveyard when the lovers voluntarily reunite. In the end, the dead teach us, the living; Romeo and Juliet, through their actions, experiences, and choices, finally meld paradox and parable. But they do more— by embodying the tragic significance of their story, they make the play's final choric comment. They displace the earlier, more limited Chorus because their wider, deeper comment on the risk and cost of life is one that the Chorus never understood. The authority of Romeo and Juliet … is the authority the play has been searching for.

Note

1. Citations to Romeo and Juliet in this essay are from the J. A. Bryant, Jr., edition.