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). Montague’s emotions. Yet, Eros’s Roman connotation with fatherly love mirrors that of Pheobus, who gives Cupid, who shoots his arrow, causing people to Phaeton the chariot’s reigns even though he fall in love instantly, allows the allusion to knows its danger. Because Ovid’s “Phaëton” is a foreshadow Romeo and Juliet’s instantaneous story about fatherhood, the sun, and time, love-at-first-sight interaction at the Capulet Montague’s brief appearances act oppositely as festivity. In the post-Freudian, modern “the imagery of an inverted solar cycle [which] understanding of Eros, Eros’s association with stands out as a signal of the dysfunction Thanatos, the death instinct, also connects love inherent in Montague and Romeo’s with fatality, again bolstering the play’s fateful relationship” (Heyworth 239). Early in the tone. morning, Juliet states, “Now is the sun upon the highmost hill / Of this day’s journey . . .” While Eros allusions support the romantic (Shakespeare 2.5.9-10). As Jonathon Bate theme, most of the play’s allusions refer to articulates, “from this point on, its motion—and tragedies and prophecies. Shakespeare’s with it that of the play—can only be downward references to Phaeton, which heavily influence like Phaëthon’s” (Bate 177). While speaking of the play’s plot structure, strongly link to Ovid’s Romeo’s anticipated arrival, Juliet pleads, interpretation of the Phaeton myth. Phaeton, “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, / son of Phoebus, loses control while driving his Towards Phoebus’ lodging; such a waggoner / father’s chariot, forcing Zeus to strike him down As Phaeton would whip you to the west . . .” with a thunderbolt. As Heyworth states, (Shakespeare 3.2.1-3). Here Shakespeare wraps Ovid’s myth opens to spatio-temporal order: the allusion in irony. As Bate notes, “The irony Phoebus’s attendants, Day, Month, Year, Century is that in willing on the night, she is willing on and Hours, stand about his throne at equal the tragedy, the moment of separation, distances . . . but Phaëthon’s unruly transit soon Romeo’s exile, and ultimately the confusion and disrupts that necessary distance both spatially and mistiming which bring the death of both temporally . . . . In Romeo and Juliet, this hybrid lovers” (Bate 177). The repeated Phaeton solar motif measures dramatic time calibrated to allusions are central to many of the play’s the eccentric rhythm of romantic and tragic anxiety. (234) elements: supporting the tragic tone, contributing to the irony, and foreshadowing Phaeton’s swift descent from his joyous ride into the play’s dramatic temporal shift into sudden tragedy parallels Romeo and Juliet’s quick tragedy. downward spiral from their nuptials to their suicides. Phaeton and Romeo similarly Just as Romeo alluded to Echo in discussing his disregard their fathers’ wishes and die trying to love for Rosalind, as shown above, Juliet alludes fulfill their own desires. While Capulet is to Echo’s myth while repeating Romeo’s name extremely outspoken about his daughter’s in love. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Echo is a rejection of Paris, Montague only voices nymph hopelessly in love with the god concern for his son. Montague tells Benvolio, Narcissus, and she wastes away after his “Could we but learn from whence his sorrows rejection. She only leaves behind the sound of grow / We would as willingly give cure as her voice, which Juliet mimics in repetition.

Journal of Creative Inquiry 3429 After Romeo and Juliet’s first encounter on the destined to their own tragic demise. balcony, Juliet states, “Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, / And make her airy tongue In Act 2, Mercutio briefly lists a plethora of more hoarse than [mine] . . .” (Shakespeare Roman allusions. Upon greeting Romeo, he 2.2.161-62). Bate points to the linguistic states, “Dido [was] a dowdy, Cleopatra a gipsy, constraints endured by Echo and Juliet. While Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, Thisby a alluding to Echo, Juliet “alludes to her grey eye or so, but not to the purpose” concomitant linguistic imprisonment at the end (Shakespeare 2.4.38-43). Dido, mentioned in of the first balcony scene . . . But in the very act the Metamorphoses story “The Pilgrimage of of speaking thus, she overcomes her bondage. Aeneas,” is portrayed as having a “heart too ill- Unlike the conventionally silent woman, she inured / To bear the parting from her Trojan speaks aloud; and, as Echo cannot, she initiates spouse [Aeneas]. / Feigning a holy rite, she a further dialogue with her beloved” (Bate 180). built a pyre / And fell upon his sword and, Echo’s myth also invokes the myth of Narcissus, duped herself, / Duped all” (Ovid 14.83-87). who meets a prophetic death like Romeo and Dido’s suicide by her lover’s sword mirrors Juliet’s. In Metamorphoses, Nemesis approves a Juliet’s demise in Shakespeare’s play. prayer by enemies of Narcissus that “So may he Metamorphoses briefly mentions Helen, her love—and never win his love!” (Ovid 3.405). kidnapping by Paris sparking war in Book XII. While this prophecy leads to Narcissus falling in While Paris and Romeo share similar fates love with his reflection and his ultimate demise, pursuing their loves, Shakespeare’s allusion to it also resonates with Romeo’s brief love for the Ovidian Paris relates to Count Paris, Juliet. Heyworth refers to the “Narcissus and adapted from the source poem by Brooke, who Echo” allusion in comparison to Romeo and also dies in pursuit of Juliet. Though Mercutio’s Juliet, stating, “the Narcissus and Echo myth acts allusion to Hero does not appear in Ovid’s as a model for a linguistic game of hide-and- mythological narrative, Hero’s story is found in seek gone awry: watching that begets hiding another famous Ovidian work, Double Heroides. that begets calling. Romeo, like Narcissus Dido, Helen, and Hero all make appearances in evading pursuit, is the hider; Juliet, like Echo, is Ovid’s epistolary poems in Heroides, and its the caller . . .” (Heyworth 246). Echo’s inability follow-up, Double Heroides, which takes the form to speak more than repetitive words reflects the of a collection of letters written by distressed lovers’ inability to communicate. As Heyworth heroines and absentee heroes from Greek and notes, these miscommunications “grow out of a Roman mythology. The allusions to these tragic quibble over letters and grow into an lovers’ correspondence mirror the tragedy of increasingly desperate discontinuity between Romeo and Juliet’s misled communication. The intention and expression, the literal and the allusion to Thisbe resonates with the entire figurative, fact and message” (246). As the premise of Romeo and Juliet. According to Ovid’s Phaeton myth bolsters the play’s tragic interpretation, Thisbe has a forbidden elements, Echo’s myth strengthens the relationship with her lover Pyramus that ends in prophetic ones. Romeo and Juliet must fulfill joint suicides. Pyramus and Thisbe share with their doomed destiny to resolve the play’s Romeo and Juliet the parental ban of their love, tension, just as Narcissus and Echo are similar meetings in tombs, and suicides caused

Journal of Creative Inquiry 3530 by temporal miscommunication. Roman allusions, a seemingly paradoxical work of art fuses together. When Prince Escalus Because the particular Ovidian allusions gathers the families together after Romeo and employed derive from ancient Rome, they Juliet’s suicides, Shakespeare uses this moment additionally reflect the play’s Italian location, as a reflection on the play’s ultimate paradox: Verona. Paulina Kewes notes, “The history and literature of Ancient Rome pervaded the See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, thought and imagination of Elizabethan That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love, England . . . Lessons of Roman history were a And I for winking at your discords too shaping influence on Elizabethan thinking Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d. about issues that were central to the age . . .” (Shakespeare 5.3.291-95) (515). For the Elizabethan playgoer, Rome The fundamental resolution of the love/hate would connote Italy. Deepening this allusion is tension requires the lovers to die. Romeo and the consideration of Romeo’s name as a Juliet’s deaths also terminate the Montague and derivation of Rome, which the Elizabethan Capulet feud, and, as Heyworth notes, “the audience would have associated with Italy final scene returns us full circle to the feud of (Tutino 738). As Robert C. Jones states, “Italy the prologue, putting an end at last to ‘the offered not only a frequent setting but a continuance of their parent’s rage’” (10). This constant source of allusion with which poets too means an end to the Montague and more interested in the resources of allusion Capulet lineages; as Heywood states, “Peaceful than in those of a regional setting could charge closure may have replaced the continuance of their tragic scenes” (268). The significance of strife, but it’s brought with the sacrifice of a these Roman allusions, acting as an objective greater flesh-and-blood continuity” (238). The correlative, bolsters the play’s tone effectively resolution also ultimately fulfills the fate of the due to the audience’s familiarity with Rome and “star-cross’d lovers” foreshadowed throughout Italy. the poem. Yet, the ill-fated Ovidian Roman allusions stand as the most significant technique In conclusion, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet’s in supporting the chief paradox or the primary central feud between the Montague and tension. Shakespeare takes full advantage of the Capulet houses is overshadowed by the love of allusions as an objective correlative, evoking their children, Romeo and Juliet. The ironic emotion from the Elizabethan audience, while forbidden love between the children of the also contributing to the overall foreboding, feuding families becomes the play’s primary tragic tone. With the tragedies of Echo, Dido, tension. Because Romeo and Juliet fulfill the Helen, and Hero, the prophecy of Narcissus, fated doom of the “star-cross’d lovers” Phaeton’s disastrous journey, and the familiar (Shakespeare, Prologue 6), the play concludes doomed parallels of Pyramus and Thisbe, with their deaths and the dissolution of the resolving the love-hate tension of Romeo and Montague and Capulet quarrel. Consequently, Juliet requires analysis of the play’s allusions to the tension between love and hate resolves, the Ovidian stories of love and death that giving the poem organic unity. After closer resonate profoundly throughout literary history observation of Shakespeare’s diction, metaphor, and give the play organic unity. irony, paradox and most significantly Ovidian, Journal of Creative Inquiry 36 31 References Kermode, Frank. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The Riverside Shakespeare, pp. 1101-3. Bate, Jonathan. Shakespeare and Ovid. Oxford UP, 1993. 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