Roman Mythological Allusions and Organic Unity in Romeo and Juliet Kelsey Rhea Taylor
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Fulfilling Their Fate: Roman Mythological Allusions and Organic Unity in Romeo and Juliet Kelsey Rhea Taylor This essay interprets formal elements in explaining character motives and William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, to clarify foreshadowing the fateful conclusion. This essay and achieve a deeper understanding of the predominately focuses on these allusions, which play’s organic unity. While the ironic forbidden are under-researched in current scholarship, to love between the children of the feuding contribute to the contemporary critical Montague and Capulet families establishes the discourse of Romeo and Juliet. primary tension, the “star-cross’d lovers” (Shakespeare, Prologue line 6) ultimately resolve Understanding the play’s Roman allusions and this tension by fulfilling their fated doom. their contribution to its organic unity requires a Shakespeare’s diction, figures of speech, brief look at the play’s conflicts and tensions. metaphors, irony, foreshadowing, and most Shakespeare’s diction highlights these conflicts importantly Ovidian, Roman mythological and tensions, which are inherent in poetic allusions underpin the love/hate tension and language (Bressler 60). The prologue overflows support the play’s resolution and unified with word choices that establish an ambiguous meaning. I analyze the play’s formal elements, tone to the play: all of which reinforce Romeo and Juliet’s fate. Two households, both alike in dignity, Most notably, I examine certain mythological In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, allusions in the play that illuminate the tragic From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, tone and foreshadow the lovers’ demise. Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes Existing scholarship has not sufficiently A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life . addressed the play’s Roman allusions. (Prologue 1-6) Shakespeare’s Ovidian allusions, specifically to the myths of Phaeton, Narcissus and Echo, and This passage suggests multiple meanings of the Pyramus and Thisbe, focus on tragedies and word mutiny (line 3), ranging from a “quarrel” prophecies that foreshadow Romeo and Juliet’s (“Mutiny,” def. 1), such as the one between the double suicide and strengthen the play’s overall two families, to “an open revolt against consti- foreboding tone. The Phaethon references tuted authority” (“Mutiny,” def. 2b), which re- presage the lovers’ demise and reflect the play’s sembles Romeo and Juliet’s rebellion against plot structure, while Narcissus and Echo’s myth their parents’ wishes. With deliberate literary encapsulates both prophetic death and linguistic ambiguity, the prologue not only hints that the constraints endured by Echo and Juliet. Montagues’ and Capulets’ grudge has initiated Pyramus and Thisbe’s myth closely parallels a new feud, but also foreshadows Romeo and Romeo and Juliet’s plight. Shakespeare’s Juliet’s fervor, which revolts against their allusions create an objective correlative parents’ authority. The word fatal (line 5) also Journal of Creative Inquiry 31 26 has two relevant denotations: “allotted or connotations, as well as miscommunications, decreed by a fate or destiny” (“Fatal,” def. 1), that support the play’s chief tension. As the play and “producing or resulting in death” (“Fatal,” develops, the comedic aspect takes a tragic turn. def. 6a). The etymological root of fatal is fate, Heyworth notes, “the game of language veers, which is defined as “the principle power, or under Shakespeare’s guidance, from ludic agency, by which . all events, or some events frivolity to mortal crisis” (246). in particular, are unalterably predetermined from eternity” (“Fate”). Since the word fatal Shakespeare’s figures of speech moreover connotes both fate and death, it implies that strengthen the overall form’s interrelatedness. Romeo and Juliet’s relationship is doomed from The use of metaphor further develops the love/ the beginning. This ambiguous diction hate tension. When Juliet learns of Tybalt’s foreshadows the events to come and introduces death and Romeo’s banishment, she describes the play’s tone. Romeo as having a “serpent heart, hid with a flow’ring face . .” and as a “Dove-feather’d While the aforementioned diction employed in raven! wolvish ravening lamb!” (Shakespeare the prologue lends to the play’s tragic air, 3.2.74, 76). Romeo’s opposing portrayals Shakespeare strategically uses misled represent Juliet’s conflicted emotions: grieving communication that shifts the play’s comical both a cousin’s death and the consequences her tone to tragic. Throughout the play, husband will face. Likewise, the play’s abundant miscommunication abounds primarily through death personifications underscore the ambiance missed letters and misinterpretations, such as of fatality mentioned in the prologue. Friar Lawrence’s missed letter to Romeo, and Shakespeare first personifies death as Juliet’s Benvolio’s misunderstanding of Juliet’s staged husband when she tells her Nurse, “I’ll to my funeral, which he mistakenly communicates to wedding-bed, / And death, not Romeo, take Romeo. Gregory Heyworth discusses another my maidenhead!” (3.2.136-37). When Juliet’s pivotal scene between Romeo and a Capulet father finds her apparently deceased, he tells servant that not only encapsulates the comedic Paris: aspect but also highlights how “the sound and O son, the night before thy wedding-day shape of letters can prove perilously alien to Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies, their denotations” (243). Flower as she was, deflowered by him. SERVANT. I pray, sir, can you read? Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir, ROMEO. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery. My daughter he has wedded. I will die, SERVANT. Perhaps you have learn’d it without And leave him all; life, living, all is Death’s. book. But I pray, can you read any thing you see? (4.5.35-40) ROMEO. Ay, if I know the letters and the language. (Shakespeare 1.2.56-60) These ironic personifications of death foreshadow the only resolution to Romeo and As Heyworth states, “Romeo is stubbornly Juliet’s impossible marriage: the lovers’ deaths. figurative in his concept of reading, the Servant stubbornly literal” (244). The figurative-versus- Irony, considered “New Criticism’s master trope literal dichotomy parallels the denotations and because it is essential for the production of paradox and ambiguity” (Bressler 61), Journal of Creative Inquiry 3227 additionally bolsters the play’s contradictory the poisonous flower serves: mock death nature. Juliet’s metaphorical observance of resulting in actual death. The overall tension of Romeo, and Capulet’s personifications of death the play, that the lovers attempt to unite in the in the passages quoted above are not only face of fateful and feuding opposition, resolves contradictory, but also imbued with irony. Juliet with their suicides. does not truly think Romeo has deceived her, and death cannot actually substitute for a living Ovidian inspired Roman allusions reinforce this person. Because Shakespeare capitalizes the fulfillment of fate. These allusions act as an first letter of the word Death four times in these objective correlative, T. S. Eliot’s term for a six lines, he not only stresses the irony by symbol that induces an emotional response personifying Death as a living person, but also from a reader by using certain situations instead alludes to the Grim Reaper, a popular of a direct statement of the emotion (Bressler personification of death in the Middle Ages and 56). References to these well-known tragedies in the Renaissance. Additionally, these death complement the play’s foreboding, calamitous references intensify the foreshadowing of the tone. Though Shakespeare’s direct source for lovers’ demise, and ironically so, since the the play was the 1562 poem by Arthur Brooke, characters are yet unaware of the play’s The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet multiple casualties. Shakespeare also employs (Kermode 1101), Ovid’s Metamorphoses also ironic missed communications between the two heavily influenced Shakespeare. As Robert lovers, which ultimately leads to the play’s most Kilburn Root notes in his introduction to ironic moment: Juliet’s mock death causing Classical Mythology in Shakespeare, “It was to Ovid Romeo to kill himself, and thus Juliet to follow that Shakespeare . turned for the classical suit. allusions which the taste of the sixteenth century demanded in its literature” (Root 2). Close attention to Shakespeare’s figures of While twenty-five mythological allusions appear speech reveals another metaphor that likewise in the play, all but five occur in the first two acts foreshadows death as the resolution to Romeo (Root 9). This shift reflects the play’s shift in and Juliet’s love/hate tension. Friar Lawrence tone: from the romantic encounters of the describes a poisonous flower, while also lovers in Acts 1 and 2 to the tragic events in Act foreshadowing the lovers’ deaths: 3, when Tybalt kills Mercutio, and Romeo kills Tybalt. When telling Benvolio of his love for Within the infant rind of this weak flower Rosalind in Act 1, Romeo mentions Eros, Poison hath residence and medicine power; stating, “Alas that love, whose view is muffled . still, / Should, without eyes, see pathways to his Two such opposed kings encamp them still will!” (Shakespeare 1.1.171-72). In mythology, In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Eros is the “boy god of love who was identified Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. by the Romans with Cupid or Amor” (“Eros” (Shakespeare 2.2.23-24, 27-30) 126). Eros’s association with love reinforces the play’s romantic theme. When in the This metaphor illustrates the play’s ironic love/ aforementioned allusion Romeo speaks of the hate tension and foreshadows the dual purpose blindfolded Eros, he intimates his love for Journal of Creative Inquiry 3328 Rosalind and implies that he is blinded by his know” (Shakespeare 1.1.154-155).