Essay
COMMENTARY ON ACT3 S5 ROMEO AND JULIETTE
1000 words essay I wrote in my 2ndr year of degree for an English Literature assignment. It is about Act3 S5 of Romeo and Juliette.
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CHERYLucas
LLCER Anglais
Mme. Baldermann
COMMENTARY
In Shakespeare’s plays the power of language is everywhere, with his speech Shakespeare
makes us see and feel things that can’t be here, and each time we travel thanks to that speech
more far than the theater where we watch that very play. He wrote Romeo and Juliet in 1597 and
it was performed for the first time in 1598. It is a love story about Romeo Montaigue and Juliet
Capulet, two soulmates who are unfortunately part of two rival family, so their love is prohibited
and will be dangerous for them. The passage that we will study is from that play, and it is to be
found in Act 3, Scene 5. What is striking about this excerpt is that it could have been from another
play because it shows a moment when two persons in love are together where everything is
timeless, they don’t belong to any timeline. So how does this passage illustrate the idea of
untimeliness ? First we will see how the opposition of the nightingale and the lark makes the idea
of time uncertain. Then a second part will focused on how the day is seen as a kind of enemy by
the two lovers, who prefer the night to hide their love. And to finish we will talk about the musical
metaphor which can be found throughout this passage.
To begin with we can say that at the beginning each character defends his own bird, Juliet
think that it is still the night and she’s talking about this nightingale that she heard, and Romeo is
in a rush because he says that he heared a lark so it is certainly for him almost daytime and he
has to go. In Juliet’s first line the nightingale we can see the repetition of « It was the nightingale »
at he beginning and at the end of her sentence, then he is associated with « the pomegranate
tree » verse 4, for her he sings on it at night. In some ancient civilisations the pomegranate tree
was associated with different things, but the most obvious caracteristic of the tree found here
could his association with fertility, knowing that before the passage Romeo and Juliet spend the
night together, so we can supposed that Juliet is trying to make Romeo stay to make love again.
However Romeo disagree line 6, he is certain that is was a lark called here « the herald of
the morn ». He symbolizes the beginning of the day and the end of the night and of their moment
spend together. Romeo knows that it is the morning, in fact he begins verse 7 by explaining to
Juliet how the « envious streaks » attract him outside, he seems in a rush because of the day
coming very soon. It seems that he can almost feels the sun coming out slowly from outside when
he says verse 10 that the « jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops ». The opposition
between the nightingale and the lark is ominous because they are in fact within the bigger
opposition of the day and the night, even if they have a big place in the musical metaphor which
we found in the excerpt.
The day is something that Romeo seems afraid of and Juliet wants to extend their night
because she is also scared of the day who is coming, and who is going to stop what she and
Romeo were living. She defends her position with the nightingale, whereas Romeo thinks it was
lark so it is day time, they are compeating without knowing the time passing by. But it appears
that Romeo is more rational, and he could may be trust the day. We see that verse 11 with the
antithesis « I must be gone and live, or stay and die », which gives the idea that Romeo is in
danger if he stays with Juliet. And it can also be seen as a proleptic element knowing what is
going to happen at the end of the play.
On the other hand Juliet is still against the idea that it is daytime, for her the « streaks »
that Romeo sees are from « some meteor that the sun exhaled », and she insists even more verse
13 by saying « I » two times. She personifies « the sun » when she says that he exhales the
meteor as if he was still asleep. But at one moment Juliet changes her mind at verse 25 because
of Romeo who is a few lines before making her afraid of what is going to happen if he stays. So all
of the sudden Juliet becomes anxious and she urges Romeo to go as fast as he can. She
becomes scared of the light, and at the end we have an anadiplosis of « More light and light »
which emphasizes the fact that the day has come and the end of their night too. And Romeo
finishes by opposing the light and the « dark » because for him if they stay in the dark their
« woes » will be darker. So the opposition between Day and night is complex and ominous, but
within this opposition we find a musical metaphor highlighted by the two birds.
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