Romeo & Juliet Study Guide
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Act III, Scene 2
Capulet's orchard

Scene Summary

Juliet eagerly awaits her wedding night, unaware of the violence that has just occurred. The Nurse arrives distraught and, through confusing grief, eventually reveals that Tybalt is dead and Romeo has been banished for killing him. Juliet is torn between grief for her cousin and loyalty to her husband, but ultimately decides that banishment is worse than death itself. The Nurse promises to bring Romeo to Juliet for one final night together.

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Original Text
JULIET. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner As Phaethon would whip you to the west, And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen. Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match, Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods: Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, Think true love acted simple modesty. Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night; For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow on a raven's back. Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night, Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. O, I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold, Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse, And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence. [Enter NURSE, with cords.] Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there? the cords That Romeo bid thee fetch? NURSE. Ay, ay, the cords. [Throws them down.] JULIET. Ay me! what news? why dost thou wring thy hands? NURSE. Ah, well-a-day! he's dead, he's dead, he's dead! We are undone, lady, we are undone! Alack the day! he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead! JULIET. Can heaven be so envious? NURSE. Romeo can, Though heaven cannot: O Romeo, Romeo! Who ever would have thought it? Romeo! JULIET. What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus? This torture should be roar'd in dismal hell. Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but 'I,' And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice: I am not I, if there be such an I; Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer 'I.' If he be slain, say 'I'; or if not, no: Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe. NURSE. I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes,— God save the mark!—here on his manly breast: A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse; Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub'd in blood, All in gore-blood; I swounded at the sight. JULIET. O, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once! To prison, eyes, ne'er look on liberty! Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here; And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier! NURSE. O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had! O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman! That ever I should live to see thee dead! JULIET. What storm is this that blows so contrary? Is Romeo slaughter'd, and is Tybalt dead? My dear-loved cousin, and my dearer lord? Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom! For who is living, if those two are gone? NURSE. Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished; Romeo that kill'd him, he is banished. JULIET. O God! did Romeo's hand shed Tybalt's blood? NURSE. It did, it did; alas the day, it did! JULIET. O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, A damned saint, an honourable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell, When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In moral paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace! NURSE. There's no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. Ah, where's my man? give me some aqua vitae: These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. Shame come to Romeo! JULIET. Blister'd be thy tongue For such a wish! he was not born to shame: Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit; For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd Sole monarch of the universal earth. O, what a beast was I to chide at him! NURSE. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin? JULIET. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? But, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband; Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring; Your tributary drops belong to woe, Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy. My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain; And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband: All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then? Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death, That murder'd me: I would forget it fain; But, O, it presses to my memory, Like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds: 'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo—banished;' That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,' Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death Was woe enough, if it had ended there: Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship And needly will be rank'd with other griefs, Why follow'd not, when she said 'Tybalt's dead,' Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both, Which modern lamentation might have moved? But with a rear-ward following Tybalt's death, 'Romeo is banished,' to speak that word, Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, All slain, all dead. 'Romeo is banished!' There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that word's death; no words can that woe sound. Where is my father, and my mother, nurse? NURSE. Weeping and wailing over Tybalt's corse: Will you go to them? I will bring you thither. JULIET. Wash they his wounds with tears: mine shall be spent, When theirs are dry, for Romeo's banishment. Take up those cords: poor ropes, you are beguiled, Both you and I; for Romeo is exiled: He made you for a highway to my bed; But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed. Come, cords, come, nurse; I'll to my wedding-bed; And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead! NURSE. Hie to your chamber: I'll find Romeo To comfort you: I wot well where he is. Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night: I'll to him; he is hid at Laurence' cell. JULIET. O, find him! give this ring to my true knight, And bid him come to take his last farewell. [Exeunt.]
Modern English

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Act III, Scene 2 opens with one of Shakespeare's most beautiful and complex speeches: Juliet's epithalamium — a wedding-night invocation. Her call to "gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds" is charged with erotic anticipation, invoking classical mythology (Phoebus, Phaethon) to beg the sun to set faster. The speech is remarkable for its boldness: a young woman openly expressing sexual desire in language that is both lush and precise. The repeated invocations of "night" connect to the play's central light and dark motif — for Juliet, darkness is not danger but liberation. The speech contains devastating dramatic irony. Juliet's wish that when Romeo dies, the heavens should "cut him out in little stars" is breathtaking poetry — and a horrifying premonition. Her language is saturated with images of death ("when he shall die," "day in night") even as she speaks of love and consummation, weaving together the play's twin themes of love and death in a way the audience feels but Juliet cannot yet understand. The Nurse's arrival shatters this reverie with one of Shakespeare's cruelest sequences of miscommunication. The Nurse's incoherent grief — "he's dead, he's dead!" — leads Juliet to believe Romeo is dead, not Tybalt. Shakespeare exploits this confusion for maximum...

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"Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, / Towards Phoebus' lodging" — Juliet (opening her passionate epithalamium, begging the sun to set so her wedding night can begin)

"Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, / Take him and cut him out in little stars" — Juliet (imagining Romeo as part of the heavens — beautiful and deeply ironic)

"Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! / Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!" — Juliet (a cascade of oxymorons expressing her torn loyalties)

"That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,' / Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts." — Juliet (arguing that Romeo's banishment is worse than any death)

"Come, cords, come, nurse; I'll to my wedding-bed; / And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!" — Juliet (a haunting prophecy linking love, death, and the tomb)

Themes
Love vs. Hate Appearance vs. Reality Grief Loyalty Banishment Marriage Death
Literary Devices
Oxymoron Dramatic Irony Soliloquy Personification Epithalamium Antithesis Wordplay Allusion
Characters
Juliet Nurse
Motifs
Light and Dark Night Serpent Woe Names
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