Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

The play, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, is the best romantic tragedy of Shakespeare. William Shakespeare is considered as the national poet of England. This play has been translated into every major language and is enacted. This poem is in the form of soliloquy, which is extracted from the play.

The two noble families of Verona, the Capulets and the Montagues, were staunch enemies. Romeo and Juliet belonged to rival families. Lord Capulet hosted a grand supper. Though Romeo was of Montague’s, he attends the party in disguise to see Rosaline. There he sees Juliet on the dance floor and he is fascinated by her beauty. After the dance he learns that she is the daughter of Lord Capulet. She too feels a prodigious birth of love for him.

Romeo glorifies Juliet’s beauty and feels that her beauty surpasses the bright light of the torch in the dark. Romeo uses similes’ to describe the mesmerising beauty of Juliet. He compares Juliet’s beauty to a rich jewel worn by an Ethiopian, which meant she outshines the other the ball.  He considered her as a divine soul and explains that her , ‘beauty too rich to use, for earth too dear’. Juliet is dancing with other women and Romeo is enchanted and compares her to ‘Dove’, which is the symbol of purity and her companions to the ‘crow’. Romeo is overwhelmed by her beauty and he resolves to watch her place of stand. He wants to purify himself by touching the hands of Juliet and be blessed. He contemplates asking himself whether he loved anyone before he had seen Juliet: ‘Did my heart till now?’. He asserts that Juliet was his first love. Thus he glorifies Juliet’s beauty in his soliloquy.

Juliet feels prodigious birth of love for a man from the enemy family. She stresses her intense and passionate love for Romeo and gives more focus to her eagerness to meet him. In Juliet’s imagination Romeo is a bright day in the night. She believes that he brightens her life. He looks whiter than a new snow on a ravens back, which symbolise the purity. She addresses the night ‘Gentle’, ‘loving’, and ‘Black-browed night’, and pleads the night to give her Romeo.

She wishes to immortalize Romeo after her death. She begs the fate to take him and cut him out in little stars and place him in the sky, when she dies.  Thereon he would glow in the sky, the face of heaven, and convinces the night that Romeo would replace the garish sun by brightening in the sky. She feels that people will fall in love with night and forget the garish Sun. Thus Juliet expresses her implicit feelings towards Romeo and makes him an immortal and eternal being.

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