This makes Juliet sure that it's Romeo who is dead.
Enter CAPULET in his gown, and LADY CAPULET. When Juliet exclaims "O that deceit should dwell / In such a gorgeous palace!"
12 September-19 October
It best agrees with night.
and answering, "That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband" (3.2.101). I suggest that by this very choice of simile Juliet shows that she is aware of her double nature.
Affixes dictionary.
14 Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks.
Othello
24 July-31 July
he was not born to shame" (3.2.90-91). 10 August-18 August
Come gentle night, come loving black-browd night, Juliet believes that when night and Romeo come, the love-making will be magical, because "Lovers can see to do their amorous rites / By their own beauties" (3.2.8-9).
And the higher Juliet flies, the greater is our pity, knowing what she is about to learn. Examples in newspapers and magazines are legion; this one appeared in the Daily Mirror on 12 April 2003: She hasnt responded yet but Michael is waiting with baited breath.
Q From Steve Gearhart: Where does the term baited breath come from, as in: I am waiting with baited breath for your answer? Like Phaethon, Juliet is about to crash in fire.
he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead!"
And even if she can't see Romeo that will be as it should be, because "if love be blind, / It best agrees with night" (3.2.9-10). Page created 21 Jun.
Leap to these arms untalkd-of and unseen.
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2003, Problems viewing this page? With thy black mantletill strange love growbold. (3.2.105-107), "O, it presses to my memory, / Like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds: / 'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo--banished.'"
Even from these bare bones, cant you feel the intensity building with each repetition until it attains the force of an incantation (Come night.
(3.2.61-63).
Hamlet, First Folio Juliet's blood, wildly beating in her blushing cheeks, is "unmanned" because it is unmanned -- without Romeo. Plainly Juliet is eager not just to express her spiritual passion but to engage in adult sexuality.
Enter several persons of both houses, who join the fray; then enter Citizens, with clubs and partisans.
Re-enter others of the Watch, with FRIAR LAURENCE.
Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die
Hood my unmannd blood, bating in my cheeks,
A Lane by the wall of CAPULETS Orchard.
Scholarly editors will tell you this is an epithalamion, a song for the bride in celebration of a wedding. Think true love acted simple modesty.
As is the night before some festival
(3.2.59-60), "O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had! (3.2.84-85), the Nurse replies that all men are like that, declares that she's ready for a good stiff drink, and says, "Shame come to Romeo!"
The Nurse, who has seen Tybalt's body and heard how he died, is so disturbed by it all that she delivers exclamations rather than explanations.
(3.2.40).
a very good whore, Consort!
All rights reserved.This page URL: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bai1.htmLast modified: 21 June 2003. give this ring to my true knight, / And bid him come to take his last farewell" (3.2.142-143).
She asks if this is true, then says that if it is, doomsday is come, "For who is living, if those two are gone?"
/ O courteous Tybalt! Now see what happens when we put the meat back on the bones.
At this, it seems that Juliet's heart turns against Romeo. In the balance of this speech we will see her go supernova.
Its easy to mock, but theres a real problem here.
Shakespeare, of course, conveys this through the words he gives her; they soar that much higher, the further she has to fall. If Tybalt, her father, and her mother had all died she could grieve as other people grieve, but "There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, / In that word's death; no words can that woe sound." O, here comes my Nurse. And it is the wonderful final lines that cinch it in my view.
An "unmanned" falcon is untamed; it will try to escape from its keeper by "bating," beating its wings wildly; and it is controlled by having a hood placed over its head, so that it can't see.
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
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And learn me how to lose a winning match
Then the Nurse appears, carrying the rope ladder.
14 July-20 July A bier is a platform on which a corpse is laid; "press" means "to weigh down," and "heavy" means "sad" or "melancholy."
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Our trusty friend Eric Partridge glosses mansion of love as The human body as the vehicle of loves physical activities, and sold/Not yet enjoyd looks at the situation from Romeos point of view. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
Try reading it aloud, or watching one of the many, many readings available on YouTube. Enter, at the other end of the Churchyard, FRIAR LAURENCE, with a. Re-enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR.
She starts to leave, saying, "I'll to my wedding-bed; / And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!" (It persists today, if only in French, which refers to an orgasm as le petit mort.) But Juliet pretty clearly means it literally as well; when she dies physically, Romeo will be taken up and made into a constellation (cut him out in little stars is both beautiful and macabre; its one thing for Romeo to be taken up into the heavens, but he might not be dead when hes being cut into little stars) that will make the world forget the Sunlight in dark indeed.
She says, "Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night" (3.2.140). She accuses the Nurse of torturing her as a devil tortures a soul in hell, then asks, "Hath Romeo slain himself?" he's dead, he's dead, he's dead! 6 May-12 May
Whiter than new snow on a ravens back. / Alack the day! Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice, in which Shylock says to Antonio: Shall I bend low and, in a bondmans key, / With bated breath and whispring humbleness, / Say this . (3.2.96), "Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?" You cannot analyze them using modern English grammar definitions, terms and rules.
In English, the word "curtain" was first used of a bed-curtain; Juliet is seeing things as though she is on a bed, seeing the curtains close about her, bringing the dark in which the acts of love are performed.
Nice mice to an untimely death.
now she identifies herself with the Sun, and all we can say is, Watch out! Since Juliet is a virgin, it would be a bit much to liken this soliloquy to Molly Blooms monologue in Ulysses, but it does have something of the freight-train intensity of that tremendous yes I will Yes, and it is a similar embrace of life.
Come night!)?
Thus this scene, which began with Juliet's joy and brought her to sorrow, ends with her looking forward to a moment in which joy and sorrow will mingle -- a wedding-night which is also a farewell.
Playd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. 6 January-10 February
A Midsummer Night's Dream 23 June-29 June The Nurse is so wrapped up in what she saw -- the wound, the pallor of death, the corpse -- that she talks about those without saying who it is that's dead. Enticing thus with baited breath Take him and cut him out in little stars,
/ We are undone, lady, we are undone!
Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the unstressed first vowel (a process called aphesis); it means reduced, lessened, lowered in force. Since the way this soliloquy builds is the key thing, Im going to give you a bigger chunk than I usually do all at once.
But with Romeo, in the dark, her desire could be set free, so that she could do the acts of love as though they were chastity itself.
Remember hes famous for comparing her to the sun. She says the single word "banished" is worse than the death of ten thousand Tybalts. To pick up from last time, if you look at Romeo and Juliet as Juliets story (and it is), whats startlingand what burns away 400 years of encrusted clichesis her development from a nave, passive girl to a woman prepared to bring down the world for love.
Juliet is a better poet than Romeo. The soliloquy concludes with what I take to be Juliet speaking as a woman: O, I have bought the mansion of a love
20 October-6 January
She says that after they are done weeping for Tybalt, she'll still be weeping for Romeo's banishment.
The Tempest
Confusion is almost inevitable. Cookies and privacy
And pay no worship to the garish sun. For those who know the older spelling or who stop to consider the matter, baited breath evokes an incongruous image; Geoffrey Taylor humorously (and consciously) captured it in verse in his poem Cruel Clever Cat: Sally, having swallowed cheese,
World Wide Words is copyright Michael Quinion, 1996. (3.2.125-126). Juliet follows this metaphor with a dozen more, all of which express shock and amazement that Romeo could look so good and be so bad. (3.2.125-126), "I'll to my wedding-bed; / And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!" What better antidote could there be to the wilted flowers and long-digested chocolate than a return to Juliets speech? L~02gsvO/>"$*=
But not possessd it, and, though I am sold, She asks, "Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin?" This is cruelly confusing to Juliet, who thinks that maybe the Nurse means Romeo has killed himself.
She sees herself as adult and child at once. In the phrase "that word's death" the "word" is "banished," and the "death" is the death brought by that word to everything in Juliet's world.
In the same vein, Juliet, who can feel herself blushing with desire, asks the night to cover her so that her desire can be fulfilled. 30 August-10 September
The pointRomeos brilliance, redoubled by contrast with the black backgroundis obvious, and its expressed in a really striking way.
Come night, come Romeo, come thou day in night, Note also that we in the twenty-first century, but not you as members of the world premiere audience, know the further irony that Juliet will die much sooner than she thinks. A "flowering face" is beautiful, like that of the evil serpent in the Garden of Eden.
She exclaims, "Ah, well-a-day!
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
honest gentleman!
Juliet is described asunmanned in the sense that shes never spent the night with a man, and she is calling on Night to cover her nervousness with darkness and hide the beating in her cheeks her blushing until she grows accustomed to the act of love-making. (3.2.37-39), end motion here; / And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier! Thats the technical, dramaturgical reason it was not just wrong but clueless of Zefferelli to cut the speech (and for Lurhmann, to be fair, to cut half of it).
Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six Masquers, Torch-Bearers, and Others. With thy black mantle, till strange love grow bold,
A The correct spelling is actually bated breath but its so common these days to see it written as baited breath that theres every chance that it will soon become the usual form, to the disgust of conservative speakers and the confusion of dictionary writers. Calm my beating heart, the fluttering in my cheeks (i.e.
23 April-27 April. She knows Romeo is hiding in Friar Laurence's cell, and tells Juliet to wait for him in her room.
[Im indebted to Rainer Thonnes for telling me about this little ditty, which appears in an anthology called Catscript, edited by Marie Angel. Enter Nurse, with cords:
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
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(3.2.37-39). Romeo and Juliet And pay no worship to the garish sun.
Much Ado About Nothing
/ That ever I should live to see thee dead!"
With thy black mantle, till strange love grow bold,
Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks.
Finally, the Nurse makes everything clear: "Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished; / Romeo that kill'd him, he is banished" (3.2.70). (3.2.59-60).
It best agrees with night.
(3.2.68). The Nurse answers that heaven can't but Romeo can, and starts saying Romeo's name over and over.
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he was not born to shame" (3.2.90-91), "O, what a beast was I to chide at him!" At the beginning of the scene Juliet was extravagantly excited by the idea of Romeo coming to her in the night; now she is just as extravagantly agonized by the idea that she won't see him again.
Enter MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, Page, and Servants.
This makes Juliet happy, because "every tongue that speaks / But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence" (3.2.32-33), but in a minute her happiness will turn to anguish. More interesting is that Juliet is starting to engage in wordplay; lose a winning match straightforwardly means to lose a match one should have won (to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as it was once said), but what Juliet means is to win the match by losing, that is, surrendering to Romeo. (3.2.111-113), said 'Tybalt's dead,' / Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both, / Which modern, "There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, / In that word's death; no words can that woe sound." For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night In her imagination, night will bring the consummation of her love. Titus Andronicus (3.2.95). Lets separate them out: Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night
13 May-19 May
general nervousness), with thy cloak of darkness, so that I may confidently make love to my husband.
What!
Montagues, The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.
But if the Nurse is ready to write off Romeo, Juliet certainly is not; she hotly replies, "Blister'd be thy tongue / For such a wish! But Romeos name speaks heavenly eloquence.
he's dead, he's dead, he's dead! Playd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
(3.2.97).
A Churchyard; in it a Monument belonging to the CAPULETS.
Last time I likened her to Lady Macbeth; to venture outside Shakespearean confines, she might also put you in mind of Brnnhilde.
Then she blames herself saying bad things about him, saying, "O, what a beast was I to chide at him!"
Lovers dont need light anyway; they generate their own. And she complains that this day is as tedious to her as to a child who has new clothes she is forbidden to wear until a night-time party.
That all the world will be in love with night They express a simile: Juliet compares herself to the child who cant wait to wear her new dress (the child we saw introduced in Act I scene iii), meaning that she is not that child. That all the world will be in love with night When Juliet sees the Nurse coming, carrying the rope ladder (the "cords"), she is sure that the Nurse has some news of Romeo.
Apparently feeling very sorry for Juliet, the Nurse comes to her rescue.
Juliet then asks for a yes-or-no answer, but doesn't get it.
And she brings news, and every tongue that speaks (3.2.84-85), "Blister'd be thy tongue / For such a wish!