Romeo & Juliet Analysis Flashcards
(19 cards)
What’s the key quote for Lady Capulet?
Hint: Talk
“Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word.” (Act 3)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Imperative & Authoritarian Tone: Immediately shuts down dialogue with Juliet; reveals emotional detachment.
✦ Subservience: Lady Capulet’s compliance with her husband’s anger shows passivity rather than maternal protection.
✦ Disillusionment: Juliet is emotionally abandoned by both parents, deepening her isolation.
✦ Monosyllabic Dismissal: The blunt, final structure reflects a cold, inexpressive tone — no softness or empathy.
Context:
✦ Gender Roles: Women were expected to support their husbands, not challenge them.
✦ Emotional Repression: Lady Capulet embodies a learned maternal coldness, shaped by class and convention.
What’s the key quote for Lord Capulet?
Hint: Hang
“Hang thee, young baggage, disobedient wretch!” (Act 3, Scene 5)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Derogatory Language: “Baggage” and “wretch” violently degrade Juliet, reducing her to a source of family shame.
✦ Linguistic Insults: “Disobedient” frames her as a public transgressor, not just a rebellious daughter.
✦ Belligerence: Reflects Capulet’s furious defence of family honour and control — he lashes out as his authority collapses.
✦ Regression: Capulet shifts from playful father to a “belligerent tyrant,” exposing how fragile patriarchal control really is.
Context:
✦ Patriarchal Structure: Fathers expected obedience; Juliet’s defiance threatens Capulet’s social reputation.
✦ Honour Culture: Juliet’s choices aren’t just personal — they’re seen as public betrayal in a household built on status and hierarchy.
What’s the key quote for Tybalt?
Hint: Furious
“Furious Tybalt” (Act 3, spoken by Benvolio)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Epithet: Reduces Tybalt’s identity to fury — Shakespeare uses Benvolio’s speech to define him by violence alone.
✦ Symbol of Destructive Masculinity: Tybalt becomes a figure of uncontrolled passion rather than honour or reason.
✦ Transcendence of Rage: His fury grows beyond personal grievance; he embodies the feud itself.
✦ Violent Adjective: “Furious” signals instinctive, animalistic aggression — rage that overwhelms rationality.
✦ Belligerent Nature: Tybalt destabilises peace not through rebellion, but because he cannot suppress violence.
Context:
✦ Masculine Honour Culture: Verona’s toxic honour system prizes aggression — Tybalt is its extreme.
✦ Social Fragility: One man’s unchecked passion is enough to topple the city’s fragile order.
What’s the key quote for Tybalt?
Hint: Thou
“Thou art a villain” (Act 3)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Direct Address: “Thou art” confronts Romeo head-on, eliminating distance and creating personal provocation.
✦ Provocative Insult: Transforms an abstract insult into a clear, inescapable attack — escalates tension.
✦ Declarative Sentence: Delivered with certainty and finality, showing Tybalt’s refusal to negotiate or compromise.
✦ Belligerence & Impulsiveness: His black-and-white worldview means people are either allies or dishonourable enemies — no middle ground.
Context:
✦ Honour-Based Culture: In a society where insults are public threats to reputation, Tybalt’s aggression reinforces how fragile honour truly is.
✦ Masculine Identity: Tybalt defines himself by confrontation, not reconciliation — a product of Verona’s violent social codes.
What’s the key quote for Mercutio?
Hint: Rough
“If love be rough with you, be rough with love.” (Act 1, Scene 4)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Personification: Love is imagined as a violent opponent — Mercutio elevates it from emotion to antagonist.
✦ Foil: His cynical, combative attitude contrasts Romeo’s romantic idealism, showing two extremes of masculinity.
✦ Rhetorical Repetition: “Love” and “rough” create an aggressive rhythm that echoes the internal conflict of the scene.
✦ Masculinity & Emotion: Mercutio mocks Romeo’s “callow melancholy” and encourages emotional suppression — love should be conquered, not embraced.
✦ Belligerence: His words suggest that vulnerability is weakness and emotional control is power.
Context:
✦ Elizabethan Masculinity: Men were expected to dominate emotion; Mercutio represents the era’s hostility to male vulnerability.
✦ Commentary on Love: Mercutio’s harsh view of love foreshadows the violent consequences of passion in the play.
What’s the key quote for Mercutio?
Hint: Both
“A plague o’ both your houses!” (Act 3, Scene 1)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Rhetorical Repetition: The line is spoken three times, building a ritualistic, almost spell-like force — it carries spiritual weight.
✦ Comic Hyperbole to Divine Retribution: What begins as sarcasm escalates into a curse — his language becomes prophetic and final.
✦ Inexorability: The plague metaphor signals unavoidable punishment; Mercutio becomes a symbolic voice of fate.
✦ Emblem of Collapse: His death embodies the wider social decay caused by unchecked belligerence between the families.
Context:
✦ Fate & Conflict: In Shakespearean tragedy, curses often foreshadow doom — Mercutio’s death marks a turning point where personal feuds become cosmic judgment.
✦ Societal Commentary: The feud destroys not only enemies, but innocents caught in its path.
What’s the key quote for Juliet – Family?
Hint: Deny
“Deny thy father and refuse thy name” (Act 2)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Imperative Verbs: “Deny” and “refuse” show Juliet’s assertiveness — she challenges patriarchal and familial control.
✦ Subversion of Gender Norms: Juliet breaks away from passive female expectations, revealing her impetuous independence.
✦ Symbolism: Names represent fate, duty, and conflict — Juliet’s rejection of them is a rejection of social constraints.
✦ Disillusionment & Idealism: Her plea shows emotional idealism, blind to consequences — driven by transcendent love.
✦ Progression: This moment marks her growth from obedient daughter to tragic heroine, choosing love over loyalty.
Context:
✦ Elizabethan Obedience: Daughters were expected to submit to their fathers — Juliet’s language defies this norm.
✦ Tragic Foreshadowing: Her boldness empowers her, but also isolates her — leading toward inevitable downfall.
What’s the key quote for Juliet – Fate?
Hint: Grave
“My grave is like to be my wedding bed.” (Act 1)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Juxtaposition of “grave” and “wedding bed”: Semantic opposites fuse love and death, foreshadowing tragedy.
✦ Destabilising Innocence: Her speech undermines romantic idealism, presenting death as a natural end to love.
✦ Foreshadowing: Juliet unknowingly predicts her own demise — her words are laden with fatalism.
✦ Inexorability of Fate: Her impetuous declaration reveals how tightly love and death are bound in the play.
Themes: Fate, Death, Love, Youth, Foreshadowing
What’s the key quote for Juliet – Violence?
Hint: Happy
“O happy dagger!” (Act 5)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Oxymoron & Linguistic Paradox: Joy is entwined with death — her suicide is framed as a joyful reunion with Romeo.
✦ Epitomises Tragedy: The dagger, symbol of destruction, becomes her instrument of salvation.
✦ Subverts Gender Roles: Juliet takes active control through violence, rejecting traditional feminine passivity.
✦ Impetuous Agency: Her impulsive act mirrors Romeo’s, revealing shared hamartia.
✦ Transgression & Autonomy: She violently transgresses social expectations, asserting autonomy over her body and fate.
Themes: Violence, Gender, Fate, Autonomy, Death
What’s the key quote for Juliet - love?
Hint: Boundless
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep” (Act 2, Scene 2)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Nature Simile: Juliet uses vast natural imagery (“sea” and “depth”) to externalise her internal feelings.
✦ Tangibility: Her emotional intensity is made physical — love becomes a measurable, concrete force.
✦ Transcendence: The image lifts her love to a cosmic scale, suggesting permanence and inexorability.
✦ Foreshadowing: The sea’s immensity also suggests danger — her love’s intensity may be overwhelming or uncontrollable.
✦ Naïve Idealism: Her poetic language is callow — she expresses this depth of love just hours after meeting Romeo.
Context:
✦ Youthful Passion: Juliet’s metaphor reflects both emotional maturity and the impulsiveness of first love.
✦ Tragic Structure: The overwhelming scale of her feelings mirrors the tragic, unstoppable path their love will take.
What’s the key quote for Romeo – Love?
Hint: East
“What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East and Juliet is the sun.” (Act 2)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Metaphor: Comparing Juliet to “the sun” elevates her to an omnipotent celestial body — she becomes a divine force, not just a person.
✦ Obsessive Idealism: Romeo’s worshipful tone suggests not love, but reverence bordering on obsession.
✦ Transcendence: Juliet becomes a cosmic power, reinforcing Romeo’s role as a lover caught in inexorable fate.
✦ Tragic Foreshadowing: The sun rises and sets — this metaphor hints at how their relationship will be intense but short-lived.
Context:
✦ Astrological Symbolism: Elizabethan audiences saw the heavens as controlling fate — Romeo’s imagery aligns Juliet with destiny.
✦ Romantic Conventions: Romeo expresses emotion through exaggerated poetic language, typical of Petrarchan lovers.
What’s the key quote for Romeo – Fate?
Hint: Fool
“I am fortune’s fool!” (Act 3, Scene 1)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Personification of Fate: Romeo casts “fortune” as a capricious force that controls his life, deflecting blame from his own actions.
✦ Plosive Alliteration: “Fortune’s fool” uses soft yet striking ‘f’ sounds to create a tone of both despair and inevitability.
✦ Tragic Awareness: This marks a moment of clarity — Romeo realises he’s become a puppet of fate.
✦ Romanticised Despair: Even in anguish, Romeo uses poetic phrasing, showing how romantic ideals shape his downfall.
Context:
✦ Classical Tragedy: The idea of a “fortune’s fool” aligns Romeo with the archetype of the tragic hero — doomed despite his will.
✦ Honour Culture: His violent response to Tybalt is rooted in social expectations, but Romeo blames fate instead of society or himself.
What’s the key quote for Romeo – Violence?
Hint: Mercy
“A madman’s mercy bid thee run away.” (Act 5)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Oxymoron: “Madman’s mercy” blends rage and compassion — Romeo is both killer and saviour, reflecting a fractured psyche.
✦ Imperative Verb: “Run away” shows urgency and directness, adding dramatic tension to the moment.
✦ Flicker of Benevolence: In his disconsolate grief, Romeo shows agency — he attempts peace before giving in to fate.
✦ Psychological Complexity: Romeo is not one-dimensional; he is compassionate even amid emotional breakdown.
Context:
✦ Tragic Duality: Shakespeare shows Romeo as a blend of benevolent lover and tragic aggressor.
✦ Inevitable Violence: Despite his peaceful plea, the scene spirals into death — mercy is ultimately ignored.
What’s the key quote for Romeo – Family?
Hint: Limits
“With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, for stony limits cannot hold love out.” (Act 2, Scene 2)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Metaphor: “Love’s light wings” presents love as a liberating, transcendent force — Romeo imagines it can overcome all obstacles.
✦ Naïve Conviction: He believes passion can overcome social divisions and familial constraints.
✦ Tragic Idealism: Romeo’s impetuous hope reveals his fatal flaw (hamartia) — love is omnipotent in his eyes.
✦ Structural Juxtaposition: His emotional freedom contrasts the very real, physical “walls” of family feuds and honour codes.
Context:
✦ Family Conflict: The Montague–Capulet feud physically and emotionally divides the lovers; Romeo believes love is greater than legacy.
✦ Tragic Blindness: His refusal to acknowledge real barriers foreshadows how love and idealism will ultimately fail him.
What’s the key quote for the Nurse?
Hint: Lamb
“What lamb! What ladybird!” (Act 1, Scene 3)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Syntactic Repetition: The repeated “what” mimics the rhythm of a nursery rhyme, establishing a musical, comforting tone.
✦ Benevolence & Maternal Role: The Nurse’s playful speech shows her as Juliet’s maternal substitute, offering affection absent from her parents.
✦ Diminutives: “Lamb” and “ladybird” highlight Juliet’s fragility and youthful innocence.
✦ Foreshadowing: The term “lamb” subtly links Juliet to a sacrificial figure, hinting at her future tragedy.
✦ Epitome of Affection: The Nurse embodies nurturing love, but her simple language also reveals her limits in understanding the spiritual depth of Juliet’s love.
Context:
✦ Social Structure: In aristocratic households, nurses often raised children — emotional bonds with parents were often weak.
✦ Dramatic Irony: Though the Nurse comforts Juliet, her inability to grasp the gravity of Juliet’s passion isolates her from the true stakes of the tragedy.
What’s the key quote for The Nurse?
Hint: Dead
“He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead! We are undone, lady, we are undone!” (Act 3)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Rhetorical Repetition / Tripling: “He’s dead…” mimics breathless panic, reflecting grief-stricken disarray.
✦ Inexorability: Suggests fate has sealed their tragedy, deepening emotional weight.
✦ Role Shift: The Nurse transgresses her usual maternal composure — becomes disconsolate and unstable.
✦ Collective Pronouns: “We, our” shows emotional parity with Juliet — grief now shared across households.
✦ Breakdown of Boundaries: Her reaction collapses the hierarchical divide between servant and mistress, reinforcing universal suffering.
Themes: Fate, Grief, Class, Emotion
What’s the key quote for Friar Lawrence – Family?
Hint: Rancour
“This alliance may so happy prove to turn your households’ rancour to pure love.” (Act 2, Scene 3)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Modal Verb “may”: Suggests tentativeness — his intentions are hopeful but uncertain.
✦ Benevolent Role: Presents himself as a peacemaker, aiming to heal the feud.
✦ Futility & Irony: The audience knows the tragic outcome — this dramatic irony undermines his optimism.
✦ Emblematic of Misguided Authority: His hope reveals the instability of human plans against the force of inexorable fate.
Context:
✦ Catholic Setting: Friars symbolised moral wisdom — here, he’s well-meaning but naïve.
✦ Themes: Family, Fate, Conflict, Peace vs Violence
What’s the key quote for Friar Lawrence – Love?
Hint: Eyes
“Young men’s love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.” (Act 2, Scene 3)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Juxtaposition: “Eyes” vs “hearts” reveals lust vs love — Friar critiques Romeo’s superficiality.
✦ Callous Critique: Views Romeo’s affections as callow and unearned.
✦ Scepticism: He’s doubtful of Romeo’s sincerity so soon after Rosaline — highlighting unrequited love and emotional immaturity.
✦ Mentor Role: His benevolence attempts to guide Romeo, but his advice goes unheeded.
Context:
✦ Courtly Love: Reflects Renaissance ideals of passion vs virtue.
✦ Themes: Love, Youth, Wisdom vs Impulsivity
What’s the key quote for Friar Lawrence – Fate?
Hint: Womb, Tomb
“The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb; what is her burying grave, that is her womb.” (Act 2, Scene 3)
Technique & Effect:
✦ Juxtaposition: “Womb” and “tomb” reflect the duality of life and death — an unstable coexistence.
✦ Nature Metaphor: Nature both gives and takes life — embodies cyclical fate.
✦ Didactic Role: Friar is a philosophical figure trying to impose moral restraint, but events spiral beyond control.
✦ Transcendent View: He sees fate as a powerful, impartial force, both benevolent and destructive.
Context:
✦ Fate vs Free Will: Shakespeare warns of hubris in trying to control destiny.
✦ Themes: Fate, Nature, Duality, Death
