Act 2, Scene 6

Question 1

So smile the heavens upon this holy act / That after-hours with sorrow chide us not!

Answer 1

The opening lines immediately impose a tragic feeling on Romeo and Juliet’s marriage as ‘sorrow’ could signal to the audience the onset of tragedy and is thus foreshadowing of their upcoming downfall. The Friar could be said to be tempting fate through mentioning this.

Question 2

Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; / Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow

Answer 2

The fragmented sentence structure slows down the Friar’s speech reflecting the importance of the lesson he is trying to teach the young lovers and the repeated semicolons alongside the consonance ‘o’ sounds emphasise this

Question 3

You shall not stay alone / Till holy church incorporates two in one

Answer 3

As the Friar is about to join Romeo and Juliet in marriage, he invokes a sense of coupling through the rhyming couplet ‘alone’ and ‘one’. However, it is not a full rhyme which undermines the security of their marriage from the start. The scene ends just before their marriage ceremony as it is a sacred ritual to many so showing it could be problematic

Question 4

Love-devouring death

Answer 4

The oxymoron show the uncertainty of their decision to get married and is another foreshadowing of the tragic end of their love but no matter the trepidation he feels, it can’t overwhelm his happiness at the marriage

Question 5

These violent delight have violent ends,

Answer 5

Friar Lawrence issues another of his many ominous warnings with the juxtaposition between ‘violent’ and ‘delights’ suggesting that even though they will be happy, their marriage will have dire and perhaps bloody consequences. It suggests that love is joyful but also painful which could be the lesson the Friar is trying to teach the two young lovers

Question 6

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Answer 6

The Friar is essentially saying that in the peak of our desires, the ending is as sudden and spectacular as its beginning, using ‘fire’ and ‘powder’ to emphasise the extravagance of both

Question 7

A lover may bestride the gossamer

Answer 7

This could suggest that Juliet’s light and free feeling has been induced by her love and it alludes to the previous scene where Juliet repeatedly says that love’s embodiments (Cupid and Venus) have wings

Question 8

Good even to my ghostly confessor

Answer 8

‘Ghostly’ could again elude to the ending of the play with ‘confessor’ perhaps having a double meaning as you go to a Priest for confession but also because she is about to confess her deepest feelings of love