‘Romeo and Juliet’ Act 4 – “ No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou lives.”

‘Romeo and Juliet’ Act 4 – “ No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou lives.”

Brooke’s poem was not the only source that Shakespeare used for ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The twists and turns that navigate the final two acts of the play are influenced by an older legend and story that Shakespeare probably read if he did attend Grammar school in Stratford upon Avon or else encountered in someone’s private library if he did work as a tutor to a rich family sometime during the 1580’s. An ancient Greek romance written by Xenophon of Ephesus in the mid-second century BC entitled ‘The Ephesian Tale of Anthia and Habrocome’ is a tale of two young people who fall in love, marry, try to sail away to Egypt together and are taken by pirates and separated. Anthia, the heroine of the tale, takes poison later in the story to avoid being forced into another marriage. Unfortunately, the drug is a sleeping potion that makes her appear dead when she is asleep, and when she wakes up in a tomb, she is discovered by grave-robbers who take her and sell her into slavery.

Shakespeare’s use of aspects of this story help to propel the only act of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ where Romeo is absent and Juliet is central. Juliet must drive the plot and blossom as young woman and a character, that, although initially played by what must have been one hell of a young male actor, is such a zenith of acting prowess that Mary Saunderson, the first actress to play Juliet in around 1665, continued to play the part of 14 year old Juliet when she was almost 30 years old.

We start this act with Friar Lawrence speaking to Paris about his intended marriage to Juliet. Friar Laurence expresses his belief that the marriage should be delayed. Paris points out that although Juliet still seems to be weeping “immoderately” for Tybalt’s death, Old Capulet wants the marriage to proceed quickly because he thinks it dangerous that Juliet, “ … doth give her sorrow so much sway…”

Enter Juliet, who the arrogant Paris speaks to with as much love as one so self-assured and self-centred can muster from such superficial depths. Juliet speaks with a distance that Paris takes for naïve youth. He gives her a kiss before he leaves Juliet supposedly to have Friar Laurence hear her confession prior to her marriage to Paris. After Paris leaves, the scene changes. Juliet brandishes a knife and hyperboles and says she has the resolution to kill herself unless the Friar can help her. Friar Laurence, whether because he has been prepared for this moment or because he sees Juliet’s resolve, reveals a strong potion and proposes a plan where Juliet will consent to marry Paris, but on the night before her wedding, she will take a strong sleeping potion the Friar shows her. Then she will be laid in a tomb as if she is dead and then via a message from the Friar, Romeo will come to take her away. Juliet agrees and takes the potion home with her.

Juliet arrives home to frenetic preparations for her wedding. Juliet shows such suitable obedience and seems to have learnt to “… repent the sin of disobedient opposition..” that her father moves the wedding forward to the next day, Wednesday. Juliet asks to be alone in her room while her father and mother prepare to spend all night in preparations for the now imminent wedding.

In her own room, Juliet dismisses the Nurse and her mother to be alone.

“My dismal scene I needs must act alone…”

Shakespeare now gives us one of the most emotionally charged and emotionally meandering speeches of any of his earlier plays. It starts with fear, then Juliet allows logic to dominate before her imagination brings wild imaginings and childish nightmares to the fore. She starts with wanting to call her mother and the Nurse back again because

“…a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,

That almost freezes up the heat of life.”

Instead, she lays a dagger down as her insurance policy (interesting that this is not found latter unless directors or actors playing this Act have the prying Nurse remove it or Friar Laurence remove this evidence when he advises them t make funeral preparations). Juliet clutches the vial of strong sleeping draught given to her by Friar Laurence and wonders whether she is wise in taking it. She thinks initially that the Friar might have given her poison to kill her since his reputation might be tarnished by having married. She dismisses this because the Friar is a “holy man”. Then her imagination overtakes her reason and imagery and symbolism shift her at lightning pace from fear to despair. She thinks that she will suffocate:

“Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?”

Then, in one of the longest and most lavishly poetically packed sentences or thoughts of early Shakespeare, which is thirteen lines long, she imagines that madness shall be her fate:

“The horrible conceit of death and night,

Together with the terror of the place…

And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad…”

She then sees that even if madness and spirits do not overtake her that her distraught feelings might turn her to madly playing with her “forefather’s joints” until she eventually cracks and using the power of the bones and alliteration, “… with a club, dash out my desperate brains?” Finally, as she thinks that Tytbalt’s ghost is seeking out revenge on Romeo, she finds strength in loyalty and love and drinks Friar Laurence’s potion for Romeo.

Although it is now the early morning, we know that the Capulets and their entire household have been up all night preparing for the wedding. The Nurse is sent to wake Juliet. The Nurse once again makes crass suggestions that Juliet will get little sleep on her wedding night as Shakespeare allows humour to undercut the gravity of the powerfully dramatic moment when Juliet is found and presumed to be dead. The Nurse’s lament and shock is wailed out across the household. Lady Capulet and Capulet shows genuine shock, sorrow and grief when they see:

“Death lies on her like an untimely frost

Upon the sweetest flower of all the field…”

Paris and Friar Laurence (and the musicians) enter and join in the general grief. Friar Laurence in the lamentations. The friar reminds them all that Juliet has gone heaven and suggests that they:

“Dry up your tears… and, as the custom is,

In all her best array bear her to church:

For though fond nature bids us an lament,

Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment…”

And so all that were prepared for a wedding, now prepare, ironically for a funeral.

The stage is left with the musicians and the servant Peter. Often this comic interlude is cut so we must ask ourselves what function does it perform? Firstly, the reason may be seen in terms of the mechanics of the mise en scene in the next act, Act V. This comic distraction may give time for costumes and simple set to be changed to that of the split settings of the four places used in Act V of Mantua, Friar Laurence’s cell, the Churchyard and the tomb where Juliet has been laid. Secondly, it’s function could be dramatic, undercutting the emotion of the previous few scenes and giving the audience a breather or some relief from the emotional onslaughts they have endured and those they are about to endure. Thirdly, it gives us an insight into another class of people and how a death instead of a wedding may mean they go without bread and payment unless they are able to turn a loss into an opportunity. The fourth reason may be less obvious. Shakespeare as a writer wrote for the actors of his company and their strengths. He worked quickly and maybe semi-collaboratively with these actors or wrote in some ways for his actors. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that a team of experienced clowns and comic actors were not pleased with how little they had to do in the second half of the play and without the possibility of a comic dance and song at the end, they demanded that Shakespeare write them another sequence or scene and he complied while also finding a way for this sequence to fit into the unique emotional journey he believed he was taking his audience on.