Act 1, Scene 4

Question 1

I have a soul of lead so stakes me to the ground I cannot move.

Answer 1

This extended metaphor is used to describe Romeo’s depressed sate due to his unrequited love for Rosaline, as the word ‘lead’ suggests he is feeling heavy. However, ‘stakes’ suggests that he is feeling this way against he will and he is almost trapped. He has not chosen to feel this way but love has made him like this

Question 2

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

Answer 2

The question is seemingly uncharacteristic for Romeo as he is questioning love, showing how his unrequited love has made him unlike himself. The use of asyndetic listing also creates tension, in which the climax is the simile at the end, ‘pricks like thorn’, which has a double meaning as it suggests love is painful but also beautiful like a rose

Question 3

I love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

Answer 3

Mercutio acts a foil to Romeo, in terms of their ideas on both fate and love. Romeo focuses on the emotional and romantic aspects of love whilst Mercutio focuses on the physical and sexual aspects of love, hence why he advises Romeo to ‘be rough with love’. ‘Prick’ has a fallic meaning and suggests that Mercutio is telling Romeo to be a man and control love instead of letting it control him

Question 4

True, I talk of dream which are the children of an ideal brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is an thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, who woos

Answer 4

Mercutio emphasises the insignificance of dreams, through a metaphor ‘children of an idle brain’, suggesting that dreams are unformed and juvenile. Alternatively, dreams could also be playful and therefore should not be taken serious. By saying they are less substantial than the air and more unpredictable than the wind, he emphasises this.

Question 5

Fear too early for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this night’s revels, and the expire the term of a despised life closed in my breast by some vile forfeit of untimely death

Answer 5

Romeo is telling both his friends and the audience that in his dream, he want to the party and was met by his ‘untimely death’. This is extreme foreshadowing by Shakespeare as well as the use of dramatic irony as the audience is aware he eventually dies through meeting Juliet at the party. Romeo is shown to believe in the power of dreams and predestination. It is likely that him believing something bad will happen so his actions may incidentally cause it - self fulfilling prophecy