Romeo and Juliet As a Cautionary Tale of Hierarchy And
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2004 Talk of Peace with Swords Drawn: Romeo and Juliet as a Cautionary Tale of Hierarchy and Sacrifice Tonia Jean Hoffman Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES TALK OF PEACE WITH SWORDS DRAWN: ROMEO AND JULIET AS A CAUTIONARY TALE OF HIERARCHY AND SACRIFICE By TONIA JEAN HOFFMAN A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2004 The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Tonia Jean Hoffman defended on March 18, 2004. _____________________ Daniel Vitkus Professor Directing Thesis ______________________ Barry Faulk Committee Member _______________________ Karen Laughlin Committee Member The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii To Lenny, for continued support, and to my parents, for a lifetime of academic encouragement. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you, Dr. Vitkus, for your faith in this project and your efforts to help me succeed. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ vi INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 1. THE ROLES OF GENDER, MARRIAGE, AND FESTIVITY .............................................. 7 2. SACRIFICING THE INNOCENT: PURGING THE COMMUNITY OF ITS VIOLENCE ............................................................... 20 3. THE CONSEQUENCES OF HASTE AND CONVENTION ................................................ 27 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................. 38 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 42 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ....................................................................................................... 44 v ABSTRACT Twentieth-century Americans share a patriarchal, capitalist history with 17th century Elizabethans, one that informs the society reflected in the Verona of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This thesis shows how Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation demonstrates the play’s relevance particularly well. Characters display an awareness of the cultural constraints of class and gender as they contend with battling drives to pursue personal desire and to remain safely within their community by performing their given roles. This thesis shows how René Girard’s theory of the sacrificial crisis is at work, which provides a view of the impact of violence in relation to rituals designed to preserve social order. The feud is a source of dangerous contagious violence, and while the characters work to come to terms with their conflicting individual loyalties and desires, they fall victim to the consequences of this violence because of their reluctance to examine their implicit participation in the systems and institutions that support it. Only through the sacrifice of a scapegoat, Juliet, do they begin to achieve peace and purge the community of the violence. The play functions as a cautionary tale, in that it demonstrates the consequences of pursuing personal passion instead of fulfilling the roles dictated by society and family. Subversion of the system is punishable by violence, so the play seems to warn against it. However, the play’s themes of haste and literacy suggest a more compelling cautionary tale warning against the system itself; the entire community suffers tremendous loss as a result of its rigid support of the system. vi INTRODUCTION If the tragic crisis is indeed to be described in terms of the sacrificial crisis, its relationship to sacrifice should be apparent in all aspects of tragedy--either conveyed directly through explicit reference or perceived indirectly, in broad outline, underlying the texture of the drama. René Giard, Violence and The Sacred William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet begins with an overview of the play’s events, immediately pointing to violence: “From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,/ Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean” (Prologue, 3-4), to fate: “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,/ A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life” (Prologue, 5-6), and to the tragic role of sacrifice in ending a blood feud: “Whose misadventured piteous overthrows/ Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife” (Prologue, 7-8). These themes of violence, fate, sacrifice, and tragic misadventure work together to demonstrate the systems at work in Verona, a society which resembles both Elizabethan English society and our own. In this thesis, I will show that the text of this play instructs the reader (or audience member) to question the causes of culturally infused violence, questioning constant references to fate as a cue to ponder its role (or lack thereof). The violence in the community clearly stems not from chance but from the eruption of passionate human desire, often exacerbated by indoctrination and cultural obligation. This play’s misadventures result from adherence to socially constructed ritual and tradition, as well as the characters’ failure to get important messages, which, I argue, is most significant. To be civilized is to exercise control over animal desires. Societies (such as the Elizabethans and our own today) enact rituals to attempt to create and maintain a sense of civility, including counter-rituals to regulate festive release and keep our base desires in check. Societal conventions govern most aspects of Elizabethan life, including gender roles, family loyalty, courtship, the marriage rite, duel protocol, and even a festive masque. Defying convention still carries consequences today, though perhaps not as severe as banishment from the safety of the community. René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred illustrates an anthropological theory of ritual violence, one that works well to describe this prominent system at work in Verona, whether in terms of maintaining peace by threatening violence or enacting vengeance in the name of justice, but especially in terms of sacrificing a scapegoat. While Girard’s approach may be described as “universalist,” I do not intend to demonstrate how Shakespeare’s work somehow reveals a universal human nature or reflects an awareness of one. Verona reflects many Elizabethan aspects of society, and not surprisingly, this play remains relevant to American audiences because our culture shares a common history, and many of the same features, namely a primarily patriarchal structure, a capitalist economic and class system, and a taste for violence. 1 New historicists such as Michael Bristol explain how festive rituals serve the function of creating and maintaining order, and Girard explains how human societies’ rituals of sacrifice serve the same function, however tragically. Girard may or may not be accurate in predicting that, based on human history, we will forever continue to establish and perform sacrificial rituals and, perhaps unknowingly, create systems of reciprocal violence. But the Montagues and Capulets and their loyal servants and kin do take part in such a system, seemingly unknowingly, and Elizabethans and Americans continue to push certain members of society to the margins, often scapegoating entire groups. Keeping in mind that we share a common history with the Elizabethans, including a patriarchal society tied closely to capitalism, Baz Luhrmann’s recent film adaptation, William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet demonstrates a continued relevance of the text of this play. Even with a late 20th century setting (the time is not specific, but Paris’s astronaut costume at the masque and elements such as a 35 mm gun for a “sword” suggest it is at least the 20th century), the cautionary tale warning against subversion comes through. With the help of a soundtrack that enhances themes of youthful impetuousness (haste) and shortsightedness (failure to read carefully), as well as the desire for freedom from oppressive systems (which taps into the meta- cautionary tale warning I will examine), this film works well to demonstrate how Girard’s sacrificial crisis does seem to be at work in the Elizabethan society reflected in the text of the play as well as in 20th-century American society. Even with significant cuts and updates to costume and properties, the Luhrmann film preserves the language and major plot elements of the play, and with these timely updates, the text does not seem foreign to American audiences. The film’s setting is hard to place in time, allowing the setting itself to function as a paradox, from medieval throwbacks (Romeo’s knight costume at the masque) to a modern and almost futuristic mood, with a television anchorwoman reporting the Prologue and Romeo “dropping ecstacy,” as well as both an old history and a future time beyond ours suggested by Verona’s ruins in the backdrop. In this film, the play is an old story, a remnant of Elizabethan society with its rituals and gender distinctions, but it is also a new story, fresh and alive as it represents American society’s rituals and problems, many of which are similar because of our shared history. One element in the film that