LOVE AND HATE IN ROMEO AND JULIET

R.S. Smith

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy of young love. The opening

chorus explains that the lovers are "star-crossed"; their
love is "death-marked"; and their destruction is
"misadventured". They are foredoomed to an evil destiny.
But their tragedy and their love are clearly and carefully
set in a wider, social framework. For the Chorus begins by
introducing the interrelated theme of their families' enmity
and hate. The reason for their rivalry is not clearly
defined; it is described merely as an "ancient grudge"; but
there is a hint in the Chorus's opening words about the two
households being "both alike in dignity". Neither family
can bear to be outdone in wealth, importance, and precedence
by the other. Put their rivalry is a bitter and continual
blood-feud, posing a constant threat of civil war. And
apparently one of its worse bouts has just broken out
afresh: the Chorus speaks of "new mutiny". The play sets
out to show that the deaths of their children will prove to
be the only means of putting an end to their parents' sense-
less strife. The deaths are thus a kind of sacrifice that
redeems the parents' sin. The basic theme of the play is
thus love's triumph over hate.
The play itself opens with the latest of these family
quarrels. The servants of the Capulets begin it, though they
hesitate until they are sure of the support of Tybalt. Vicious
and insolent, always on the lookout for a fight, they have the
same mentality and lack of social conscience as our contemporary
teddy-boys or surfios, or the street-corner mobs of leather-
jacketed motorcyclists. It is important to realise that the
general body of citizens are vigorously opposed to their
disruption of the public peace. As this latest brawl gets
under way, an officer calls on the citizens to put an end to
it; "Strike, beat them down. Down with the Capulets, down with
the Montagues" This will be echoed later by the dying
Mercutio, when he three times curses the warring families: "A
plague on both your houses!" (3.1). The ruling prince is like-
wise deeply concerned to put an end to these recurrent brawls.
He will not have the peace and quiet of his streets any further
disturbed, and the penalty he imposes is death. The absurdity
of the fray is shown up when old Capulet joins it in his dress-
ing-gown, and wielding an old-fashioned two-handed sword that
was a useless weapon against the modern rapiers of the younger
men, sharply pointed for thrusting. Benvolio, too, tries to
prevent the fray. Indeed his constant role is to act as
peacemaker - his name moans Goodwill. He plays the same part
in the fateful duel between Tybalt and Mercutio in 3.1, when
he urges them to withdraw from the public street and calmly
discuss their grievances in private, or else separate altogether.
He also acts as commentator, recounting the details of the
brawls for the Montagues in 1.1 and for the Prince in 3.1; and
he shows himself a very reliable and impartial witness.
The culorit is Tybalt, with his fiery temper and his ready
sword. He is a born trouble-maker. We see this again in 1.5,
at Capulet's ball. When he discovers Romeo among the guests,
he at once sends his page for his rapier, and is all for strik-
ing Romeo dead on the spot. He imputes Romeo's presence to
an absurdly scornful motive, and has to be bullied into
submission by his uncle Capulet. But he regards Romeo as
nothing less than a villain, and next morning sends him a
 8.3

challenge - as we learn frori Renvolio and Mercutjo at the

beginning of 2.4. Vi1lain" is the word with which he in-
suits Romeo in 3.1, the same insult as Montague hurled at
Capulet in 1.1. Romeo, having just married Tyhalt's cousin
Juliet, tries to keep the peace. It is only when he cones
to blame himself for his friend Mercutio's ignominious death
at Tybalt's hands, that he rounds upon him and slays him.
Benvolio is at once concerned for Romeo's safety in view of
the Prince's earlier threat of death, especially as the
citizens too are again up in arms against this latest out-
rage. But Romeo is deeply conscious of the full significance
of his fateful mistake, for his subsequent banishment is
ultimately the cause of his own and Juliet's deaths: "This
day's black fate on more days doth depend: This but begins
the woe others must end". And when Romeo and Juliet are
discovered lying dead in the tomb of the Capulets, it is the
Prince who reappears to underline the inter-relation of the
play's themes of love and hate. To the implacable enemies
Capulet and Montague he says: "See what a scourge is laid
upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys
with 1ove" (5.3). And Capulet realises that the deaths of
the young lovers are "Poor sacrifices of our enmity" Peace
is re-established at last, but at what an appalliiig cost
The hate-theme is thus simple and straightforward. The
love-theme is much more complex. The first aspect of it that
we see in the play is bawdry. This physical side of love is
introduced in the dialogue of Capulet's servants, Sampson
and Gregory. Their smutty conversation represents the
typical male attitude of sexual dominance, the woman being
regarded as merely the means of gratifying the man's desire.
There is clearly an element of sadism in this attitude; as
Gregory says, "when I have fought with the men, I will be
cruel with the maids: I will cut off their heads." Gregory
replies: "The heads of the maids?" Sampson answers: "Aye,
the heads of the maids, or their inidenheads; take it in
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what sense thou wilt." Gregory quibbles: "They must take

it in sense that feel it." And Samoson boasts: "Me they
shall feel while I am able to stand." This sexual punning
carries over into their preparations to fight the opposing
servants of the Montagués: "Draw thy tool", says Gregory;
and Sampson replies: "My naked weapon is out."
Such is the attitude towards love of the average man-in-
the-street. The next attitude that the play presents is
represented by Romeo's affair with Rosalifle. This affair is
a parody of the petrarchan love-conventions that formed the
basis of so many Elizabethan sonnets. Shakespeare shows
the8e conventions as being productive of sentimental unreality.
They are characterised by the complete dominance of the female
over the male, the exact opposite of the outlook represented
by Sampson and Gregory. Romeo is infatuated with Rosaline's
beauty, but she does not respond to his passion. She holds
aloof, scorning him from the cool heights of her chastity.
He therefore mopes about in despair, going for solitary walks
or shutting himself up in his room. He displays, in short,
the unsociable and introspective moodiness generally supposed
to be characteristic of the teenager. He expresses Rosaline's
attitude in the conventional theme of many Elizabethan sonnet
sequences, including Shakespeare's OWfl. This theme is that
by refusing her lover's advances, the disdainful lady wastes
her beauty by not perpetuating it in having children. But
Romeo is not genuinely in love with Rosaline: he is in love
with the idea of being iniove. and the attitude he expresses
is pretty much a self-conscious pose. He is merely rehearsing
the part conventionally expected of a moonstruck young lover.
He gives himself away when, in the midst of his soulful
ravings about his sorry state, he pauses to ask Benvolio:
"Where shall we dine?" The pangs of adolescent hunger prove
too much for the pangs of puppy-love. His love is unreal,
conventional, sentimental - mere infatuation.
 8.5

Yet another attitude to love is represented by Juiiet';

nurse, who is one of Shakespeare's great comic character
creations. We first meet her in 1.3. She too believes that
love is a matter of physical joys, but she has experienced
it within the bounds of marriage. Perhaps she is to some
extent a pathetically lonely woman, for she has lest both
her own daughter Susan and her husband. She feels these
losses because her daughter was the same age as Juliet, and
because, like herself, her husband was "a merry man", a Inaii
who enjoyed life's fun. These losses of hers may go far
towards explaining her later opportunism, when she advises
Juliet to marry Paris because, since Romeo is banished, he
can be no use to her as a husband. She thus represents the
average woman's viewpoint that being married means having a
man in your bed. But she is not merely the female countcr•
part of Sampson and Gregory, for in her outlook there is no
suggestion of sadistic dominance. She simply likes to
encourage young people to enjoy the physical side of marriage
together while they can, for (unlike herself) they don't
know what suffering and sorrows the future may hold. She
heartily embraces sexuality as a means of rejoicing in life's
physical pleasures. Her attitude is basically earthy and
limited, but it is healthy. It does not include the lewd
smirkings of Sampson and Gregory. It simply indicates a
candid and warm acceptance of the physical side of married
life. It thus stands in strong contrast to the unreality of
the conventional attitude of the Petrarchan lover's mistress,
as we have already seen it illustrated in Rosaline, an
attitude of cold and aloof disdain. This is the nurse'r
characteristic outlook: with her there is no hehind-hnd
sniggering: she speaks openly and freely of natural and
necessary sexual matters. She is quite ready to recalL with
a laugh, how she weaned Ju]ict by rubbing bitter wormwood on
her own nipple so that the child would refuse to suck. She
recalls how, when Juliet fell over and hurt herself, she had
a bump on her forehead "as big as a young cockerel's stcne".
 86

And it was a great joke when the nurse's husband told Juliet
that one day she would be falling backwards to accommodate a
man,-and the innocent child stopped crying long enough to
answer "Yes". And now that Juliet is old enough, the nurse's
one wish is to see her happily married. She is ready to
commend Paris because he is "such a man ... a man of wax", a
model of what a husband should be. Lady Capulet urges her
daughter to the match because by accepting Paris Juliet would
lose nothing: "So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him making yourself no less". The nurse chimes in:
"No less Nay, bigger women grow by men" Her attitude
clearly is that a wife's pregnancy is a natural matter for
rejoicing. But it is a wife's pregnancy: she clearly regards
the fulfilment of love as being marriage. She ends the scene
by urging Juliet to make the most of Paris: "Go, girl, seek
happy nights to happy days." But another sidelight on her
attitude to marriage appears in her conversation with Romeo at
the end of 1.5. She tells him that whoever marries Juliet
will have the advantage of marrying money: "I tell you, he
that can lay hold of her Shall have the Chinks". Her formula
for marriage thus seems to be a combination of materi-al wealth
and sensual pleasure. We next see her in 2.4, when we find
her very properly protesting at Mercutio's bawdiness. He has
just assured her that the time is alteady afternoon, "for the
bawdy hand of the dial is now upon.the prick of noon". She
is rightly indignant at such a remark from a strange young
man in a public place. "Out upon you what (sort of) a man
are you?" she asks. She herself is polite and courteous, and
conscious of her dignity as an older woman: in taking his
leave of her, Mercutio calls her "ancient lady". When he is
gone, it is several minutes before she finishes expressing
her resentment against his rudeness. She refers to him as a
"saucy merchants' (i.e. an impudent fellow), and twice as a
"scurvy knave" (i.e. a despicable ruffian), full of "ropery"
(i.e. filthy talk). If he says anything against her, she'll
 87

take him down a peg or two, or find someore else who will.
She is no street-girl or easy pick-Up, i.e. she is not the
sort of woman that we can imagine such low types as Sampson
and Gregory being interested in. She is so infuriated that
she rounds upon her servant Peter, accusing him of standing
idly by and allowing any ruffian to "use (her) at his pleasure",
i.e. treat her as he pleases. But Peter is another Sampson
or Gregory, and quibbles on her words in their typical style.
He has seen "no man use (her) at his pleasure", i.e. enjoy
sexual intercourse with her; "If I had, my weapon should
quickly have been out. I warrant you I dare draw as soon as
another man". Yet the Nurse's general treatment of Peter is
another variation on the Petrarchan theme of the dominance
of women over men: "My fan, Peter s', "flefore, and apace." But
then the Nurse gets down to business with Romeo, and it is
important to notice how she proceeds. Her sole and insistent
concern is whether Romeo's love is honourable. With her
characteristic and admirable candour, she tells him straight
that if he merely intends to seduce Juliet, he is unworthy te
be considered a gentleman. But once she is assured that he
intends to marry the girl that same afternoon, she is comp1eteV
satisfied, and is even reluctant (or makes a show of being so?
to accept the money that Romeo offers her for assisting with
the arrangements. This episode entirely confirms the attitude
to love that she established for us in the earlier scene. When
she returns to Juliet with her good news, she is careful to
assure her that Romeo is an honourable gentleman, courteous,
kind, handsome, and virtuous. And she anticipates the delights
of the young lovers' wedding-night in the same breath as she
complains of the trouble of arranging them: "I am the drudge,
and toil in your delight: But you shall bear the burden soon
at night". For as we have seen, it is also characteristic of
her to regard the mark of a true man as his sexual prowess.
It is significant that when she finds Romeo in despair at being
separated from Juliet, she rouses him by means of a sexual
 88

quibble. She urges him to show his manhood by standing up

and facing the situation squarely; Stand up, stand up
Stand if you be a man; For Juliet's sake, for her sake rise
and stand: Why should you fall into so deep an O? (3.3).
We should expect to hear her say: "fall into so deep a hole",
and the idea of "hole", combined with the notion that the
letter 0 s a circle, together give a clear indication of
the carnality of the Nurse's suggestion. Yet her suggestion
is a very practical consideration when we remember that at
this point in the story the marriage of the young lovers has
not been physically consummated. Put the limitations of the
nurse's preoccupation with the physical side of marriage are
clearly defined in her last advice to Juliet (3.5). Threatened
with an imminent marriage to Paris, Juliet has already been
unsuccessful in appealing against it to her mother and father.
When she finally turns to her nurse for comfort, 1\rigeiica
shows no realisation that Juliet is inseparably wedded to
Romeo by any ties other than those of the body. That husband
and wife could be bound together by spiritual affinities is
beyond her camacity to realise. She even goes so far as to
overlook the fact that they have been formally joined together
in holy matrimony by the Friar, with the result that Juliet's
proposed marriage to Paris would be bigamous. Her sole con-
cern is that since Romeo is banished, marriage with Paris
will orovide Juliet with a good-looking, well-built young bed-
fellow. Small wonder that such opportunism comoletely
alienates Juliet: "Go, counsellor: Thou and my bosom hence-
forth shall be twain".

In the earlier part of his play Shakespeare presents yet

another attitude to love. This attitude is embodied in the
character of Mercutio. Tt'is the tyoical attitude of under-
qraduates. It is a gaily witty attitude, regarding sex as an
intellectual game to he blayeci with verbal cleverness. Notice
that we never see or hear about Mercutio actually with a woman.
 89

His conversation overflows with sexual innuendoes and

wittIcisms, exercising his lively intellect in a playful
verbal game on the subject of sex. Yet like Sampson.
Gregory, Peter, and the Nurse, he too is limited to the
physical aspect of, love. He has no time for Romeo's dream >'
drooling over Rosaline. He mocks Romeo's conventional pose
of the dejected lover by telling him to soar above his
moodimess by means of Cupid's wings. H6 tries to take Poreo
out of himself by insisting that he come to the Capu1ets
dance. And when Romeo persists in being in the dumps.
Mercutio tries to jest him into brighter spirits. When }.c.tco
says, "Under love's heavy burden do I sink" (1.4), Mercttio
tries to rally him by quibbling: "And, to sink in it,
should you burden love - Too great oppression for a tender
thing." This is precisely the same jest we later hear from
the Nurse in her delighted anticipation of Romeo and Juliet':
wedding-night. (And the same jest that forms the climactic
conclusion of Mercutio's Queen Mab speech in this same scene.
Queen Mab "is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That
presses them and learns then how to bear, Making them women
of good carriage.") Romeo replies that love is not a tender
thing, but rough and boisterous, "and it pricks like thorn."
Mercutio's exuberant wit cannot resist the suggestive retort
that if love gives you a roágh time, you should cure it by
means of intercourse: "Prick love for pricking, and you bear
love down." And when even this fails to make Romeo sociable,
MercUtiO simply calls him a stick-in-the-mud and turns to
leave him. But Romeo does go to the ball, where he meets and
falls in lcve with Juliet. Afterwards, when the dancing is
done, he cannot go home, but climbs the wall into the Capulets'
garden. Benvolio sees him, and Mercutio calls to him to join
them. But they still think that he is in love with RosaLine,
and Mercutio, in high spirits after the dance, acts the fool
by pretending to be a magican, suxnmoning Romeo by means of
magic spells. And before he is finished, in typical fashion
he has got round to summoning Romeo by the charm of Rosalifle's
 9,

"fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the

demesnes that there adjacent lie". Benvolio fears that this
will anger Romeo, but Mercutio quips "'Twould anger him
To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle Of some strange
nature, letting it there stand Till she had laid it and
conjured it down", whereas "in his mistress' name I conjure
only but to raise up him." When Romeo does not answer,
Benvolio is ready to leave him behind in the dark, because
this is the most appropriate place for his blind love. To
which Mercutio again replies: "If love be blind, love cannot
hit the mark!', and goes on even more outrageously about
medlars and a poperin pear. It is clear that where women are
concerned, Mercutio's thoughts scarcely rise above the navel.
When next he meets Romeo (2.4), Romeo has just come from
arranging for rriar Lawrence to marry him that afternoon to
Juliet. He feels on top of the world, with the result that
his encounter with Mercutio develops into a sparkling wit-
contest, in which Romeo shows himself more than a match for
his friend. Morcutio calls on Benvolio to intervene in their
duel of words, for he feels himself being bested but Romeo
calls on him to keep the contest going or he will claim the
victory. Mercutio is overjoyed to see that Romeo is restored
to his old sociable self, and his exuberance sets him off on
his favourite topic again: "this drivelling love is like a
great natural (i.e. fool) that runs lolling up and down to
hide his bauble in a hole." Benvolio calls on him to stop, but
Mercutio quips: "Thou desirest me to stop in my tale, against
the hair?" And Benvolio, carried away by Nlercutio's sheer
high-spirited gusto, quips back: "Thou wouldst else have made
thy tale large'. But Mercutio has the last word: "0, thou
art deceived I would have made it short, for I was come to
the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy the
argument no longer." It is to be noted that Romeo takes no
part in this bawdy exchange, and that his own wit-contest with
Mercutio is entirely free of bawdy. But Mercutios masterpiece
 0

of witty obscenity is still to come. It is his fin1

flourish before he goes. This is his song about "An old
hare hoar", i.e. about a bawdy old whore, who provides
fleshly enjoyment but is not worth paying for because she
grows old and mouldy before she is worn out. This is the
last we hear of Mercutjo's wit, for the next time we see bin
he is killed by Tylialt in the fateful duel in 3.1. Put it
is clear that his attitude to love is on the same level as
that of other characters we have examined: it never risic
above the physical.

There is one more lover of whom we must say something ata

that is Paris. His love for Juliet is rather like the hat,.•
theme in that it forms another framework within which the
love-theme of Romeo and Juliet is worked out. We first rneet
Paris in 1.2, where Capulet is talking to him about the blood
feud, and saying that he thinks it shouldn't be hard for such
old men as he and Montague to keep the peace as the Prince
has commanded. Paris agrees that it is a pity they have lived
at odds for so long. But he then immediately turns the
conversation to his wish to marry Juliet. Camulet merely
repeats what he has said before on this subject: that ,Joliet
is his only child, that she is not yet fourteen, and that
she is inexperienced in the ways of the world. Paris had
better wait a couple more years, but meantime he is free to
court Juliet and try to win her consent. We oresume that Paris
is the "knight" whom Romeo sees dancing with Juliet when he
first arrives at the ball (1.5). When the Nurse first comes
to Romeo, she tells him of Paris's interest in Juliet (2.4).
In 3.4 Paris is with ('apulet again, telling him that court-
ship must be held in abeyance during the period of family
mourning for Tybalt's death. But Capulet suddenly takes it
into his head to reverse his earlier attitudr. He wi 11 nat
only actively pr000te Paris's courtship, but decides that
Juliet shall marry him in three days' time. And when Juliet
refuses, in the next scene, he bullies and browbeats her, and
finally issues an ultimatum: either she marries Paris, or he
 2

will turn her out of house and home. Next day he is so

pleased with Juliet's professed submission that he advances
the wedding another day (4.2): "Send for the County: go
tell him of this. P11 have this knot knit up tomorrow
morning". When Paris sees Juliet apparently dead (4.5), his
thought is only of himself: death has deprived him of the
joys he had anticipated. In the final scene, he arrives at
Juliet's tomb with flowers, and acts the conventional idea of
the bereaved lover: he will bring flowers and weep there
every night. When Romeo's arrival interrupts him, he attempts
to apprehend Romeo as the criminal responsible for Tybalt's
murder. There is a cool, correct formality, mixedwith self-
pity and self-righteousness, that renders Paris a much less
sympathetic character than his rival Romeo. There is no
doubt that in its own limited way, his love for Juliet is
genuine: its very persistence is a guarantee of that; and of
course he does not know that Romeo is already Juliet's
husband but his love is obviously paler than Romeo's: it
is of the kind that would hardly sweep a woman off her feet.
Romeo does not arrive at Juliet's tomb with the conventional
flowers and tears: he brings a mattock and a crowbar, for
nothing must stand between him and his purpose to join his
wife, as he thinks, in death. He has no desire to kill Paris,
but must do so when Paris persists in being a troublesome
obstacle to Romeo's transcendent purpose. Yet recalling
Paris's love for Juliet, he generously and nobly fulfils his
dying request to be laid in the tomb with her.
We come to realise, then, that Shakespeare's purpose in
presenting not only the hate-theme but also these various
other attitudes to love, is to suggest their inadequacy in
comparison to the love of Romeo and Juliet. What he is
suggesting, I think, is the difference between maturity and
immaturity. The family, blood-feud is not only senseless, it
is absurd. Hased as it is on the code of so-called "honour",
it is sinful ("Thou shalt not kill") , un-Christian ("an eye
 93

for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"), and puerile. It is

puerile because rational adults ought not to engage in
childist squabbles. Silly Dride has usurped the place of
mature wisdom. And the same is true of the various attitudes
to love, which allbasically never get past the stage of
adolescent crudity and adolescent sniggering about the more
physical aspect of sex. No matter what the chronological
ages of the persons concerned, such attitudes are immature.
And Paris's love is likewise im'natUre in its unadventuraus
acceptance of the conventional formalities, i.e. in its tame-
ness. What sets the love of Romeo and Juliet apart, and
makes of it one of the great stories of all time, is the rich
fullness of the romantic experience it enshrines. Their 'ove
is physical, and full of romantic adventure - it is not every
new husband who, like Romeo, climbs to his wife's bedroom on
a rope-ladder. But it is also psychical, it involves their
whole personalities, and this is why it is expressed in
some of our finest lyric poetry. It is the rich totality of
their experience that urges them to accord it the full.st
expression within the socially acceptable bounds of marriage.
Other people's so-called love is limited to sexuality; Poaco
and Juliet's love is a total sharing of both body and spirit.
It is this total sharing of the positive quality of love,
expressed in marriage, that is infinitely more mature than
the negative, destructive, disintegrating force of hate.