Why Does Juliet Cries Out O Romeo Romeo! Wherefore Art Thou Romeo?
In this week'south Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the pregnant of a strange Shakespearean quotation
Allow's first with two correctives to common misconceptions near Romeo and Juliet.
Beginning of all, when Juliet asks her star-cantankerous'd lover, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore fine art thou Romeo?' she isn't, of class, asking him where he is. 'Wherefore' means 'why': 'the whys and the wherefores' is a tautological phrase, since whys and wherefores are the aforementioned. (If we wish to exist pedantic, 'wherefore' strictly means 'for what' or 'for which', merely this means the same every bit 'why' in nigh contexts.)
Second, the so-called 'balcony scene' in Romeo and Juliet was unknown to Shakespeare's original audiences. In the stage directions for Romeo and Juliet and the so-chosen 'balcony scene' (Act 2 Scene 2), Shakespeare writes that Juliet appears at a 'window', but he doesn't mention a balcony. Information technology would take been difficult for him to do so, since – mayhap surprisingly – Elizabethan England didn't know what a 'balcony' was.
As Lois Leveen has noted, when the Jacobean travel-writer Thomas Coryat described a balustrade in 1611, he drew attention to how foreign and exotic such a thing was to the English at the time. The balcony scene was well-nigh probably the invention of Thomas Otway in 1679, when the Venice Preserv'd author tookRomeo and Juliet and moved its activity to ancient Rome, retitling the playThe History and Fall of Caius Marius. It was hugely pop, and, although Otway's version is largely forgotten now, it did leave one lasting legacy: the idea of the 'balcony' scene.
But let's return to the get-go of these: the most famous line from the play, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?' The play'south most-quoted line references the feud between the two families, which means Romeo and Juliet cannot be together. Only Juliet'south question is, when we stop and consider it, more than than a little baffling. Romeo's trouble isn't his first name, but his family name, Montague. Surely, since she fancies him, Juliet is quite pleased with 'Romeo' as he is – it's his family that are the problem. So why does Juliet not say, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art grand Montague?' Or perhaps, to make the poetry of the line slightly ameliorate, 'O Romeo Montague, wherefore art thou Montague?'
Solutions have been proposed to this conundrum, merely none is completely satisfying. As John Sutherland and Cedric Watts put information technology in their hugely enjoyable ready of literary essays puzzling out some of the more than curious aspects of Shakespeare'southward plays, Oxford World'due south Classics: Henry V, War Criminal?: and Other Shakespeare Puzzles, 'The well-nigh famous line in Romeo and Juliet is also, information technology appears, the play's near illogical line.'
Indeed, putting the line into its immediate context, Act 2 Scene 2, scarcely makes things clearer. It makes them worse:
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and turn down thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, exist merely sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
Non 'I'll no longer be a Juliet': that wouldn't make sense. Only and then if that doesn't, why does 'wherefore art thou Romeo?'
Juliet goes on to confirm that it is the family name rather than the given proper noun that is the problem:
'Tis merely thy proper name that is my enemy;
Thou fine art thyself, though non a Montague.
What'due south Montague? it is nor mitt, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor confront, nor whatever other role
Belonging to a human being. O, be another name!
What's in a name? that which we phone call a rose
By whatever other name would olfactory property as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that honey perfection which he owes
Without that title.
'Though not a Montague'; 'What'south Montague?' These point out that Romeo existence a Montague is the issue. And yet Juliet then immediately turns back to his forename, and sees that every bit a problem likewise. Later the other world-famous lines from this scene 'What'south in a name? that which we telephone call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweetness'), Juliet goes on the offensive where 'Romeo' is concerned: 'So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd …'
Sutherland and Watts effort to explain this oddity by arguing that Juliet is drawing attention, even subconsciously, to the arbitrariness of signs or words and their simply conventional relationship with the things they represent.
(When I used to teach linguistic communication to showtime-twelvemonth English students, the mode I demonstrated – and got them to remember – the arbitrariness of all signs was by thinking of the English and French words for the thing with branches and leaves out there on the campus backyard. We may telephone call it a 'tree', merely those iv letters only mean the branchy thing because English speakers follow the convention that 'tree' will announce the branchy affair; in France, they don't recognise that convention, instead using the five letters, 'arbre' to refer to the aforementioned object. So the relationship between word and thing is completely 'arbre-tree' – i.due east., arbitrary.)
I have a lot of time for Sutherland and Watts'southward 'solution' to this puzzle. If we approach Juliet'due south lines from a purely rational or logical perspective, they don't make much sense: 'wherefore art thou Romeo' should read 'wherefore fine art thou Montague'. Merely she has just met and fallen head-over-heels in love for the commencement time, with a boy who is part of the family that is her family'south sworn enemy. She isn't being guided by pure logic, but by emotion – conflicted emotion, love vying with regret, passion fighting with sorrow.
By this, I don't mean she is so emotionally overwrought that she isn't making any sense, either: nosotros all know what she ways when she says, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo'. Instead, she is choosing to vent her sadness over the state of affairs, not by narrowly attacking his surname, merely past attacking the very fact that he is both Romeo the boy she loves and Romeo of the house of Montague. Both of these 'signifiers' – to follow Sutherland and Watts'southward estimation inspired past Saussure and Lacan – refer to the youth who stands outside her window, but she would love him just as much if he were a male child named something else. Names themselves, and the luggage they bring with them, are the problem: hence 'wherefore art thou Romeo'.
Names shouldn't matter: Montague, Romeo, Capulet, Juliet. But she knows they do. Hence the plaintive complaining in her line 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thousand Romeo'. If he wasn't known as 'Romeo Montague', or 'Romeo' for brusque, and belonged to some other family, he would still exist the youth he is. And their love would not exist doomed.
Oliver Tearle is the writer of The Undercover Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History 
Source: https://interestingliterature.com/2021/05/romeo-wherefore-art-thou-romeo-quotation-meaning-analysis/
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