Romeo & Juliet: Married to their Graves

In this post I want to look at chastity and marriage, death and suicide, topics that tragically intersect in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. 

At least four characters use metaphors in which the marriage bed and the death bed overlap, starting with Juliet’s comment about Romeo at the masquerade party before she even knows who he is or whether he is single. “If he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed,” she says. (Act I, Scene 5, lines 148-149.) The day of the pair’s secret wedding and the untimely killing of Mercutio leading to Romeo’s banishment, Juliet hopes fervently for a wedding night with her groom before he flees, and vows that if it doesn’t happen, “I’ll to my wedding bed, And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead,” (III.2.149-150). Even after their consummation, and the charming “lark and nightingale” scene, she looks at Romeo and her “ill-divining soul” imagines seeing him in a tomb (III.5.54-57). 

That very morning, Juliet’s mother unwittingly takes up the same theme in frustration when Juliet refuses the marriage to Paris that her parents have arranged. “I would the fool were married to her grave,” (III.5.145). As the argument continues, Juliet says—in what turn out to be her final words to her mother—that if her parents insist on this marriage they may as well “make the bridal bed” in the family tomb (III.5.213). The next day when Juliet’s father discovers the apparently dead body of his daughter, he laments to Paris, the intended groom, “Death hath lain with thy wife,” (IV.5.41-45). 

Away in Mantua the banished Romeo, who has heard none of this, has his own similar—but temporarily hopeful—forebodings. “I dreamed my lady found me dead” but brought him back to life as an emperor with her kisses, (V.1.6-10) Don’t miss the irony of what will actually happen soon as a result of Juliet kissing Romeo when she finds him dead! And of course within a few lines, Romeo will have heard the report of Juliet’s ostensible death, and will promise, “Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight,” (5.1.37). 

Suicide

Several of the lovers’ statements just cited imply or directly state that suicide will be the solution to their dilemma. This is probably the most problematic element of the play for Christian readers/ viewers and suggests that while the young people are honest and earnest about their love, and respectful of marriage and sexual fidelity as we shall see, they are immature in their understanding of God’s wisdom, love, and ability to provide the solutions for their problems.

Friar Lawrence, as the voice of the church and Christian orthodoxy, vehemently warns Romeo against “doing damned hate upon thyself” (III.3.128). Meanwhile Juliet is considering her own alternatives and clearly including suicide among them, (III.5.255). As soon as she can meet with Lawrence, she tells him she will kill herself if he has no better solution (IV.5.55-68) and even as she privately prepares to put the Friar’s scheme into effect, she sets the suicide knife at hand as the back-up plan (IV. 3.24).

Romeo, of course, makes specific provision for his death (V.1.37-91) calling the lethal liquid that he will swallow a “cordial [stimulating drink] and not poison” (line 90). When he does drink the mixture, it is in the style of a toast, “Here’s to my love,” (V.3.119). Both lovers have treated suicide as brave and virtuous under their circumstances, ignoring or unable to grasp the warning of Friar Lawrence or the reality of God’s sovereignty.

A High View of Chastity

I’ve addressed the point in a previous post that Juliet has a high moral standard when it comes to sexuality, and that Romeo, if he did not have one before meeting Juliet (think about I.1.216-232) certainly does after meeting her. See “Romeo & Juliet: Sexual Propriety and Impropriety,” dated 4-24-12, and “Sexual Morality” dated 7-22-10. Notice how Romeo in II.2.1 pivots quickly away from Mercutio’s bawdy joking about Romeo’s attraction to Rosalind (by then a non-issue anyway) and into the stark contrast of the famous, innocent garden and balcony scene. The young man is, on the one hand, covertly peeping in at this girl late at night from her back yard, but his private fantasy goes like this: “Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek,” (II.2.25-26). Later, in one of his most sensitive utterances in the play, he describes the “vestal modesty” of her kisses (III.3.39-41). Even the couple’s very brief “wooing scene” is an exchange of word play on religious terminology—shrine, pilgrims, saints, prayer, purging of sins (I.5.104-121).

A High View of Marriage

It should naturally follow that high respect for chastity means high respect for marriage as well, and in Romeo & Juliet it does. Draw your own conclusions as you survey statements made by the lovers and by Friar Lawrence in the following lines: III.2. 133-155, II.3.64-65, II.6.36-37, III.5.217-220, IV.1.56-60, 89-90. Of course, these good marital intentions on the part of all three characters are flawed by the haste and secrecy in which the marriage is entered, and that may well be the central explanation for why the story ends so tragically. At the same time that we take into account the extraordinary circumstances of the feud between the two households that drives the risky choices that are made, we can take from the play the kind of lesson that all tragedies are supposed to convey. In this case it seems to be a caution against ignoring the “unchanging counsel of God” in decision making. Psalm 33:11 promises, “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation.” The corresponding warning is in Psalm 106:13, “They quickly forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel.”

Moral Choices, Not “Inauspicious Stars,” in Romeo & Juliet (with a conjecture on Romeo’s tragic flaw)

Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet has acquired a reputation for putting forth a fatalistic world view, as if these young lovers’ lives (and possibly everyone’s) are dictated more by astrology than by the consequences of human choices.  But this reputation is ill-deserved and comes from too much shallow reading of the play.

Yes, line 6 of the opening Prologue calls the lead characters “star-crossed lovers,” and Romeo, upon hearing of Juliet’s supposed death, defiantly cries, “Then I defy you, stars!”  In his last speech before his suicide Romeo says he is about to “shake the yoke of inauspicious stars” (Act V, Scene 3, line 111, or V.3.111, in the Folger Shakespeare Library edition). 

Very early in the play, before crashing the Capulet’s masquerade party where he will meet Juliet, he expresses fears that:
“Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels…”  (I.4.114-116).

After he has rashly killed Tybalt in the play’s pivotal scene, Romeo laments that he is “Fortune’s fool” (III.1.142) rather than expressing any remorse for a tragic moral choice.  In the final scene he professes himself to be “writ… in sour misfortune’s book” (V.3.82).

Isn’t that enough to constitute a theme of the play?  Not if we look closer.  Notice that every one of these references—other than the line from the Prologue—is in the words of one character:  Romeo.  Other characters refer to “heaven” or “the heavens” (clearly a metonymy for God) as having power to influence the action.  See Friar Lawrence in IV.5.100-101 and Prince Escalus in V.3.302-303.  Juliet uses “the clouds” very similarly (III.5.208).  But these are references to a superintending deity exercising moral judgment, not the impersonal zodiac.

Moral Choices

The play is driven at every turn by the free moral choices of its major characters.    Inordinate haste in matters of love and marriage, especially matters hidden from both sets of parents, is a moral issue that the characters are aware of yet hurry ahead regardless.  Juliet in the famous balcony scene pushes the romance forward precipitously despite confessing “no joy” at a contract that is “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden” (II.2.124-127).  Friar Lawrence soon seconds her concern, urging Romeo, “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast,” (II.3.101) yet the young lovers hasten ahead with his assistance.  Lawrence even foresees that “These violent delights have violent ends” (II.6.9).

Morally irresponsible decisions by the characters themselves create virtually every development leading to the final tragedy.  Romeo’s fatal vengeance on Tybalt, (III.1.88-91) which he admits is abandoning mercy in favor of “fire-eyed fury” (III.1.128-129) is provoked by Tybalt himself, but still not excusable on biblical grounds (“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,” Rom. 12:19) and Prince Escalus does not totally excuse it (III.1.196-197).  [It is worth noting, however, that Escalus reduces to banishment his previously-threatened penalty of death even as he moralizes that “Mercy but murders, pardoning those who kill” (III.1.207).  He will later regret his leniency (V.3.304-305) and blame that moral fault in himself for additional deaths—those of his own kinsmen.]

In the final graveyard scene Romeo kills Paris unnecessarily and seems to blame the victim for the sinful act, even acknowledging that his killing of Tybalt was similarly sinful.  “Put not another sin on my head by urging me to fury” (V.3.62-63).

We should not let Friar Lawrence himself escape our moral scrutiny.  He does marry a 13-year-old girl to the young son of her household’s mortal enemy without telling either family, and then puts the young bride through a “desperate” exploit (IV.1.70), which goes fatally wrong after all, in an effort to keep the matter hidden.  Even more inexcusably in the graveyard scene, he leaves the desperate Juliet to her suicide in the tomb (after V.3.165) because “a noise did scare me from the tomb” (V.3.271).  He will admit that his action was blameworthy (V.3.234-236) and express his willingness to die for this guilt (V.3.275-278) but Escalus immediately (and leniently!) excuses him as a “holy man.”

The only crucial plot development that was nobody’s fault is the miscarried message from Friar Lawrence to notify Romeo of the pseudo-death stratagem involving Juliet, which Lawrence will only call “Unhappy fortune” (V.2.17) and an “accident” (V.2.27 and V.3.260) rather than blaming it on the stars.

We’ve examined moral choices of Romeo, Friar Lawrence, and Escalus, and we could do the same with other important characters including Juliet.  But we can probably afford to excuse her for being 13, and even without her the evidence seems as overwhelming as it is generally overlooked.  Romeo & Juliet is not a play about fatalistic celestial interference in innocent lives, but a straightforward cautionary tragedy with the standard Aristotelian features of a tragic hero and his tragic flaw which brings about his tragic fall.  (See my 7-26-10 post titled “Tragic Heroes”.)  Too often Romeo is easily dismissed as an exception to Aristotle’s rule, but here is the conjecture on his tragic flaw promised in the title.  Isn’t Romeo, young as he is, fatally flawed with moral denial—that is—a refusal to acknowledge his own responsibility for his woes and a “default reaction” of blaming, instead, the stars (fate) and even the victims of his fury (Tybalt and Paris)?

James 1:13-16 warns us not to be deceived into thinking that our sins result from forces outside ourselves (even God, specifically) that impel us to sin.  It is temptations and lusts within ourselves, not acknowledged and resisted in a godly way, that lead to sin and “bring forth death.”  If we refuse to take responsibility for our own sins, we are calling God a liar, says the apostle in First John 1:8-10, a text that Romeo desperately needed to understand and obey.  

Well, there’s the big ending for now.  But I have at least one more post that I want to get into words before long dealing with another serious moral issue of the play.  Suicide.  It’s not just the bleak outcome of the play, it’s a recurring theme throughout, and it deserves a Bible-based exploration one of these days.