What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night, so stumblest on my council?
By a name...
I know not how to tell thee who I am.
My name, dear saint...
is hateful to myself because it is an enemy to thee.
Had I it written, I would tear the word.
My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words of thy tongue's uttering...
and yet I know the sound.
Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?
Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.
Romeo and Juliet is the story of the agony and ecstasy of young love.
Two teenagers who struggle desperately, but in vain...
to come together despite the hatred of their families for each other...
and the dead weight of authority set against them.
The play was first staged in 1595...
a period of freedom for the young dramatist...
that would vanish in later years...
following the execution of his friend the Earl of Essex...
and never return.
Shakespeare, like Romeo and Juliet...
discovered that passion could be dangerous...
and moved on into even darker waters.
What deep chords has Shakespeare sounded in the human mind...
that transform the story of two infatuated teenagers...
into such a popular and enduring play?
Yond light is not daylight; I know it, I.
It is some meteor that the sun exhaled...
to be to thee this night a torchbearer...
and light the on thy way to Mantua.
Therefore stay yet. Thou needst not to be gone.
It's a sort of quintessence of everybody's ideal moment of first love.
I think it's absolutely as personal as that.
This kind of immediacy, faint absurdity...
of utter, total head over heels commitment.
And we are, I think, early in the play...
invited to smile at their extraordinary...
their absolute belief that this is it for all time.
I think "Romeo and Juliet" has always been a popular play...
partly because it's about love...
and then it's two young people in love.
And then on top of that it's the opposition of their parents...
and it has an ending that's sad...
but mightjust have been happy, only things go wrong.
And I think that combination...
which would be true to a lot of plots of all sorts of popular stories...
is the basic appeal of the thing.
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say 'Ay'...
and I will take thy word.
Yet if thou swear'st thou may prove false.
At lovers' perjuries, they say, Jove laughs.
O gentle Romeo...
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully;
Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown, and be perverse...
and say thee nay, so thou wilt woo...
Shakespeare doesn't write many prologues...
but he does here in "Romeo and Juliet".
The fearful passage of their "death-marked-love".
Those syllables are very, very strongly accented in that line.
We know that the play is heading for the tomb...
but then we all are.
So there is a kind of quintessential, archetypal...
intensity about the play that I think makes popular. It's accessible.
It's night. Lovers thoughts are filled with wild imaginings.
The encounter of Romeo and Juliet at Juliet's balcony...
is a transforming experience, a revelation...
that most of us experience perhaps only once, or twice, in our lives.
For many, this scene...
arguably the most famous in all of Shakespeare's works...
contains the heart and core of the play.
It touches upon the central questions: what engenders love and hate...
driving the bearers of those emotions to such extremes of action.
It is my lady, O, it is my love.
O that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing.
'Tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all heaven...
having some business...
do entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return.
I think the balcony scene is notjust the most famous scene in the play.
If you say to somebody; "What's your image of'Romeo and Juliet'?"
They usually think of a balcony with the two lovers.
That's what's on the cigar labels after all.
But the balcony scene is the scene which is a point of change...
for the two people we are most interested in...
and it has a very interesting shape to it.
Romeo and Juliet both begin...
very tentative and she in particular, becomes clearer and clearer...
about declaring herself in the course of the scene.
The balcony scene is of course the central scene of the play...
the heart of the play, yes I do think it is.
The lovers only really meet five times in the play anyway.
The Capulet party scene, the balcony scene itself...
the little scene at Lawrence's cell...
the dawn parting and the final meeting...
not quite simultaneous, in the tomb.
But, yes the fervor, the commitment...
the romanticism which we're also allowed to smile at...
is the distillation of the mood of the play...
in the balcony scene itself, I think.
O Romeo, Romeo...
wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name...
or if thou wilt not...
be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet.
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's a Montague? It is not hand, nor foot...
nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man.
O, be some other name!
What's in a name?
That which we call a rose...
ny any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called...
retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title.
Juliet's marvelous practicality...
and Romeo's, I suppose, utterly sincere...
romantic absurdity in the scene...
is tremendously enjoyable, I think.
"The orchard walls are high and hard to climb."
"With love's light wings id I o'erperch these walls."
Again, there's a lovely acting choice there.
Is he slightly tongue-in-cheek as he comes back...
with all these high romantic answers...
or is he wonderfully youthfully naive with all these high romantic answers.
How cam'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
The orchard walls are high and hard to climb...
and the place death, considering who thou art...
if any of my kinsmen find thee here.
With love's light wings I o'erperch these walls...
for stony limits cannot hold love out...
and what love can do, that dares love attempt.
Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
If they do see thee...
they will murder thee.
Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords.
Look thou but sweet, and I am proof against their enmity.
"My kinsmen will kill thee if they find thee here"...
"Alas, there lies more peril in thine eyes" he says to her.
They're wonderfully set off against each other, I think.
Of course when she lets go...
with romantic commitment...
itjust wipes him off the board.
"My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep.
The more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite."
What a wonderful sentence. What a wonderful sentence.
Yep, the core and heart of the play, surely, surely.
O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?
Th'exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine.
I gave thee mine before thou didst request it...
and yet I would it were to give again.
Wouldst thou with draw it? For what purpose, love?
But to be frank and give it thee again.
And yet I wish but for the thing I have.
My bounty is boundless as the sea, my love as deep.
The more I give to thee the more I have, for both are infinite.
Juliet is only just on the threshold of womanhood...
a vulnerable child-like angel, wooed by a teenager...
who is completely defenseless against the onslaught of emotions...
he has never experienced until now.
But should such unfettered emotions...
combined with such youthfulness...
simply be accepted without a second thought?
Has Shakespeare issued a challenge and made us ask ourselves...
should we feel uncomfortable at the extreme youth of the lovers?
I think that this is a question whose relevance today is indisputable...
and one which we must confront.
Modern audiences should certainly feel uncomfortable...
at the extreme youth of Juliet and so should Elizabethan audiences.
If anybody tells you that 14 was a normal marriage age...
in Shakespeare's England, don't believe them.
Average marriage ages for women were 18/19 at the time this play was written.
O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris...
from off the battlements of any tower...
or walk in thievish ways...
or bid me lurk where serpents are.
Or bid me go into a new-made grave and hide me with a dead man in his tomb.
Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble...
and I will do it without fear or doubt...
to live an unstained wife to my sweet love.
Shakespeare wants the youthful commitment...
the first love feeling from this play. He also wants pure sacrifices.
These two utterly innocent young people...
are the victims of their parents boring strife and wickedness.
And sacrifices have to be pure.
It's a long religious tradition...
and Shakespeare wants that and makes certain that he gets it.
But I think it's important, first of all...
that they're young and impetuous and not yet experienced...
and therefore only discovering how to deal with something...
that neither of them really knew about before.
So you've got that sort of awkwardness that seems very real.
Although the word 'teenagers' has recently been invented...
it looks like this is the Elizabethan equivalent of'teenagers'...
in the sense of trying to work out how they are themselves...
in relation to what people think they ought to do.
And then as their relationship progresses very rapidly...
to a marriage which they ascent to...
they are given the benefit of clergy in that respect...
and then to their first night together and we see the aftermath of that.
It's as though...
the whole of sexual maturing and experiencing and understanding...
has been put on a kind of roller coaster. It's much too fast...
and that's both exciting and slightly appalling...
and the fact that the people are young adds to that.
Wilt thou be gone?
It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark...
that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.
Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
It was the lark, the herald of the morn;
No nightingale.
Look, love...
what envious streaks do lace the severing sky in yonder East.
'The good die young' is a phrase that Shakespeare...
may well have had in mind when plotting the demise of Mercutio.
And how well he knew the effect...
of the merciless and senseless destruction of young life.
Mercutio the lover of life...
confidant, loved and admired...
clever Mercutio, the philosopher, cut down, because...
ironically Romeo wanted to prevent him being killed.
What then is the effect of Mercutio's murder on the play's action?
Good Mercutio!
Away Tybalt!
With the death...
that is brutal, accidental, messy...
a sort of shuddering...
surprise in the play.
The play has looked forward from its prologue...
to the death of the lovers in the tomb.
We're expecting that, that's part...
of the satisfaction, of expectation in the play.
But the death of Mercutio is a horrible shock.
- Art thou hurt? - Ay, ay...
a scratch, a scratch;
- 'tis enough. - Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much.
No, 'tis not so deep as a well...
nor so wide as a church door...
but 'tis enough. 'Twill serve.
Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
Course he's very bawdy as well, Mercutio.
He can't even tell the time without making a bawdy joke.
You remember where the hand of the dial is when the clock reaches noon.
So all of those things are tremendously attractive in the part.
He gets the superb set speech about Queen Map...
which is powered by a kind of...
imaginative energy that one doesn't find anywhere else in the play, I think.
And also he gets...
one of the best death lines puns in all drama, doesn't he?
"Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man".
What a way to go! What a way to go!
Romeo thinks it's all for the best when he tries to stop the fight...
and he's the direct cause of the fight going wrong and Mercutio being killed.
And then when he turns on Tybalt, he's in an absolute fury.
Very often on stage that's played very savagely...
because Romeo is beside himself.
Now, Tybalt...
take the 'villain' back again That late thou gavest me.
For Mercutio's soul is but a little way above our heads...
staying for thine to keep him company.
Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.
One of the particularly attractive things about Romeo...
is that he turns himself into a complete prat sometimes.
When he's in an agony of despair and he's lying on the ground...
weeping and wailing and failing and...
I've seen performances of that where you just think...
the Friar really ought tojust slap him and tell him to pull himself together.
The Friar says so but doesn't actually use the violence.
And then the nurse comes in and then you get a sense that...
everything is falling below a level of tragic dignity...
- and I think that's very good. - Without the Friar's intervention...
Romeo and Juliet would probably have been miserably alive...
instead of immortalized in death.
Should he have attempted to play God?
I know that as an actor I was made painfully aware by Shakespeare...
of the dilemma he poses even more powerfully in later plays.
Should the Friar have followed his conscience...
as I think we all would have done?
Or should he keep within the rules of the society he administers to?
And let events take their own course?
His role is pivotal in the action:
is he the moral center of the play?
Get thee to thy love, as was decreed.
Ascend her chamber;
hence and comfort her.
But look thou not stay not till the watch be set...
for then thou canst not pass to Mantua, where thou shalt live...
till we can find a time to blaze your marriage...
reconcile your friends...
beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back...
with twenty hundred thousand times morejoy...
than thou wen'st forth in lamentation.
Two ways of playing the Friar:
a well-meaning...
fussy old bungler...
or somebody serious and gritty...
who genuinely does want to do something...
to resolve the situation which is destroying Verona:
the family feud. This marriage might, he thinks...
bring the households closer to pure love.
So do I, I myself incline to the second reading of the part...
but you can see the first version well played in all sorts...
of stagings of the play.
I don't find all that much mileage...
in the idea of blaming Friar Lawrence for what happens in "Romeo and Juliet".
Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone.
Let not the Nurse lie with thee in thy chamber.
Take thou this vial...
being then in bed, and this distilling liquor drink thou off.
So I think that the Friar is a pivotal character...
not because he's a guide to what is the right view of things...
but because he's an indication of how easy it is...
for right thinking not to turn out right in the end.
But the only two adults in the play who know what's happening...
with their affection for these people they still regard as children.
"Stand up, stand up and you be a man"...
with the implication that you may not be it.
It's almost as tough she has come to smack his bottom for being so childish.
There's a feeling of that about it.
Stand up, stand up, stand and you be a man...
for Juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand.
Why should you fall in so deep an O?
- Nurse. - Ah sir, ah sir, death's the end of all.
Spak'st thou of Juliet?
Where is she, and how doth she...
what says my concealed lady to our cancelled love?
O, she says nothing, but weeps and weeps...
and now falls on her bed, and then starts up...
and "Tybalt" cries, and then on Romeo calls...
and then falls down again.
At the end of the play the Prince says to the Friar:
"We still have known thee for a holy man."
Which implies that he will be pardoned.
But the Friar has still failed to secure what he wanted...
except by very extreme means.
The Friar wanted to reconcile the two warring houses by the marriage.
Well, it happened but not the right way.
This was always meant to be a tragedy...
and Friar Lawrence is trying to turn it into a comedy.
Death of evil leaves us undeniably feeling thatjustice has been done.
But the death of beauty, of love, ofjoy?
We rail against it and Shakespeare knows...
that in order for humanity to change its bigotry...
intolerance and blind injustice...
events must be shattering to the human mind and spirit.
He gives us twin suicides.
Does this fact secure the play's mythic status?
Three deaths. Young people whose only crime was to love too strongly.
Paris must die for love of Juliet...
she and Romeo for the love of one another.
Their suicides side by side in the cold vault...
when they should have been warm in one another's embrace...
leaves us horrified at the emotional bankruptcy of those...
who should have protected them from themselves.
The death scene absolutely...
fulfils expectations and gives the play...
its necessary shape and indeed its mythic status.
We know from the prologue...
that this is a "death-marked love".
We know throughout the play...
that this marriage in the tomb is where the play is heading.
O my love, my wife!
Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath.
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
Thou art not conquered.
Beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks...
and death's pale flag is not advanced there.
The death scene of the two lovers is one of the most famous ones in Shakespeare.
And it's interesting to have a play with that and the balcony scene.
Iconic scenes, scenes people know even if they don't know the play very well.
The lovers speak slightly differently in the scene in the tomb.
Romeo speaks more elaborately. He has the extraordinary personification...
of death as a rival lover.
Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous...
and keeps thee here in dark to be his Paramour?
For fear of that I still will stay with thee.
Time and time again through the play...
the idea of death as Juliet's lover is presented.
When Romeo arrives at the tomb...
he is talking about her beauty...
which is still unspoiled...
by, as he takes it, as he thinks, I mean the irony is that...
of course she's still beautiful because she isn't dead.
But he thinks that death has got her in that tomb, in that grave...
to be his "paramour". That insubstantial dead is amorous.
It's a strange and strong disturbing idea right through the play...
but "Romeo and Juliet" is operating in something of this territory...
it seems to me, throughout.
"Thus with a kiss I die", Romeo's last words.
And the last action of Juliet...
is to push the dagger into her body.
And the dagger as a phallic symbol is a constant in European Literature.
The consummation of love in the grave...
is where the play has been going from the beginning and it's where it ends.
There is no other destination, I think the mythic status of the play...
depends on that disturbing equation.
O churl!
Drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after?
I will kiss thy lips.
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them, to make me die with a restorative.
Thy lips are warm.
But you know, to meet, to love...
to be separated by a horrible accident...
to imagine that you are going to meet again and to die.
I mean, what more typical version of the human journey...
do you want than the story of this play. It's all there.
O happy dagger...
This is thy sheath!
There rust...
and let me die.