Act 3

Scene 1 Analysis

The sudden, fatal violence in the first scene of Act 3, as well as the build-up to the fighting, serves as a reminder that, for all its emphasis on love, beauty, and romance, Romeo and Juliet still takes place in a masculine world in which notions of honour, pride, and status are prone to erupt in a fury of conflict.

The viciousness and dangers of the play’s social environment are dramatic tools that Shakespeare employs to make the lovers’ romance seem even more precious and fragile—their relationship is the audience’s only respite from the brutal world pressing against their love. The fights between Mercutio and Tybalt and then between Romeo and Tybalt are chaotic; Tybalt kills Mercutio under Romeo’s arm, flees, and then suddenly, and inexplicably, returns to fight Romeo, who kills him in revenge. Passion outweighs reason at every turn.

Romeo’s cry, “O, I am fortune’s fool!” refers specifically to his unluckiness in being forced to kill his new wife’s cousin, thereby getting himself banished (3.1.131). It also recalls the sense of fate that hangs over the play. Mercutio’s response to his fate, however, is notable in the ways it diverges from Romeo’s response. Romeo blames fate, or fortune, for what has happened to him. Mercutio curses the Montagues and Capulets. He seems to see people as the cause of his death, giving no credit to any larger force.

Elizabethan society generally believed that a man who was too much in love lost his manliness. Romeo clearly subscribes to that belief, as can be seen when he states that his love for Juliet had made him “effeminate.” Once again, however, this statement can be seen as a battle between the private world of love and the public world of honour, duty, and friendship. The Romeo who duels with Tybalt is the Romeo who Mercutio would call the “true” Romeo. The Romeo who sought to avoid confrontation out of concern for his wife is the person Juliet would recognize as her loving Romeo. The word "effeminate" is applied by the public world of honour upon those things it does not respect. In using the term to describe his present state, Romeo accepts the responsibilities thrust upon him by the social institutions of honour and family duty.

The arrival of the Prince and the angry citizens shifts the focus of the play to a different sort of public sphere. Romeo’s killing of Tybalt is marked by rashness and vengeance, characteristics prized by noblemen, but which threaten the public order that citizens desire and the Prince has a responsibility to uphold. As one who has displayed such traits, Romeo is banished from Verona.

Earlier, the Prince acted to repress the hatred of the Montagues and the Capulets in order to preserve public peace; now, still acting to avert outbreaks of violence, the Prince unwittingly acts to thwart the love of Romeo and Juliet. Consequently, with their love censured not only by the Montagues and Capulets but by the ruler of Verona, Romeo and Juliet’s relationship puts Romeo in danger of violent reprisal from both Juliet’s kinsmen and the state.

Scene 2 Analysis

The love between Romeo and Juliet, blissful in Act 2, is tested under dire circumstances as the conflict between their families takes a turn more disastrous than either could have imagined. The different ways in which the young lovers respond to their imminent separation help define the essential qualities of their respective characters. After hearing that he is to be exiled, Romeo acts with customary drama: he is grief-stricken and overcome by his passion. He collapses on the floor. Romeo refuses to listen to reason and threatens to kill himself. Juliet, on the other hand, displays significant progress in her development from the simple, innocent girl of the first act to the brave, mature, and loyal woman of the play’s conclusion. After criticizing Romeo for his role in Tybalt’s death, and hearing the Nurse malign Romeo’s name, Juliet regains control of herself and realizes that her loyalty must be to her husband rather than to Tybalt, her cousin.

Shakespeare creates an interesting psychological tension in Romeo and Juliet by consistently linking the intensity of young love with a suicidal impulse. Though love is generally the opposite of hatred, violence, and death, Shakespeare portrays self-annihilation as seemingly the only response to the overwhelming emotional experience of being young and in love. Romeo and Juliet seem to flirt with the idea of death throughout much of the play, and the possibility of suicide recurs often, foreshadowing the eventual deaths of the lovers in Act 5. When Juliet misunderstands the Nurse and thinks that Romeo is dead, she does not think that he was killed, but that he killed himself. And thinking that Romeo is dead, Juliet quickly decides that she too must die. Her love for Romeo will allow no other course of action.

Scene 3 Analysis

Romeo’s actual threat of suicide in Friar Lawrence’s cell, in which he desires to “sack / The hateful mansion” (3.3.106–107) that is his body so that he may eradicate his name, recalls the balcony scene, in which Romeo scorns his Montague name in front of Juliet by saying, “Had I it written, I would tear the word” (2.1.99). In the balcony scene, a name seemed to be a simple thing that he could hold up in front of him and tear. Once torn, he could easily live without it. Now, with a better understanding of how difficult it is to escape the responsibilities and claims of family loyalty, of being a Montague, Romeo modifies his metaphor. No longer does he conceive of himself as able to tear his name. Instead, now he must rip it from his body, and, in the process, die.

Scene 4 Analysis

Capulet’s reasons for moving up the date of Juliet’s marriage to Paris are not altogether clear. In later scenes, he states that he desires to bring some joy into a sad time, and to want to cure Juliet of her deep mourning (of course, ironically, she mourns her husband’s banishment and not Tybalt’s death). But it is also possible that in this escalating time of strife with the Montagues, Capulet wants all the political help he can get. A marriage between his daughter and Paris, a close kinsman to the Prince, would go a long way in this regard. Regardless of Capulet’s motivation, his decision makes obvious the powerlessness of women in Verona. Juliet’s impotence in this situation is driven home by the irony of Capulet’s determination to push the wedding from Wednesday to Thursday when a few days earlier he wanted to postpone the wedding by two years.

Scene 5 Analysis

To combat the coming of the light, Juliet attempts once more to change the world through language: she claims the lark is truly a nightingale. Where in the balcony scene Romeo saw Juliet as transforming the night into day, here she is able to transform the day into the night. But just as their vows to throw off their names did not succeed in overcoming the social institutions that have plagued them, they cannot change time. As fits their characters, it is the more pragmatic Juliet who realizes that Romeo must leave; he is willing to die simply to remain by her side.

In a moment reminiscent of the balcony scene, once outside, Romeo bids farewell to Juliet as she stands at her window. Here, the lovers experience visions that blatantly foreshadow the end of the play. This is to be the last moment they spend alive in each other’s company. When Juliet next sees Romeo he will be dead, and as she looks out of her window she seems to see him dead already: “O God, I have an ill-divining soul! / Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. / Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale” (3.5.54–57).

In the confrontation with her parents after Romeo’s departure, Juliet shows her full maturity. She dominates the conversation with her mother, who cannot keep up with Juliet’s intelligence and therefore has no idea that Juliet is proclaiming her love for Romeo under the guise of saying just the opposite. Her decision to break from the counsel of her disloyal nurse—and in fact to exclude her nurse from any part in her future actions—is another step in her development. Having a nurse is a mark of childhood; by abandoning her nurse and upholding her loyalty toward her husband, Juliet steps fully out of girlhood and into womanhood.

Shakespeare situates this maturation directly after Juliet’s wedding night, linking the idea of development from childhood to adulthood with sexual experience. Indeed, Juliet feels so strong that she defies her father, but in that action she learns the limit of her power. Strong as she might be, Juliet is still a woman in a male-dominated world. One might think that Juliet should just take her father up on his offer to disown her and go to live with Romeo in Mantua. That is not an option. Juliet, as a woman, cannot leave society; and her father has the right to make her do as he wishes. Though defeated by her father, Juliet does not revert to being a little girl. She recognizes the limits of her power and, if another way cannot be found, determines to use it: for a woman in Verona who cannot control the direction of her life, suicide, the brute ability to live or not live that life, can represent the only means of asserting authority over the self.