THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S MAN 107
to be setting us up for the same
cautionary tale of misbegotten
love as appears in Brooke’s version.
But as soon as this cautionary
rhyme is done, we are plunged
into the anarchic reality of the
feud, as the formal poetry gives
way to a full-scale brawl on the
streets of Verona. In the roughest
of prose and with rude gestures,
two pairs of servants, Samson
and Gregory, Abraham and
Balthasar, hurl bawdy threats
at each other. Samson talks of
cutting off the (maiden) heads
of the Montague women.
Swords are drawn, fighting
begins, and soon the young
blades of the families enter the
fray, followed quickly by old
Capulet, feebly wielding his
sword against the equally frail
old Montague—as feebly, his much
younger wife implies, as he now
wields his marital “sword.” This
is an unruly world of macho
posturing in which even the aged
who should know better join in,
and wisdom and guidance is left
in the dubious hands of Friar
Laurence and Juliet’s nurse.
What’s in a name?
In such a dysfunctional city,
“name” is everything, and true
substance and feeling is lost.
But when Romeo and Juliet later
embark on their romance, Juliet
realizes a name can be a terrible
trap, lamenting famously: “O
Romeo, Romeo, wherefore [why]
art thou Romeo? / ...That which
we call a rose / By any other word
would smell as sweet” (2.1.75–86).
Juliet yearns for her love to
provide a way to transcend the
trap of names: “Romeo, doff thy
name, / And for thy name—which
is no part of thee—/ Take all
myself” (2.1.89–91). But ultimately
even their true love is not enough.
“In what vile part of this anatomy /
Doth my name lodge?”
(3.4.105–106) Romeo asks Friar
Laurence after his banishment,
likewise realizing the poison
in his name and desperate to
rid himself of it. That name
becomes his death sentence.Breaking convention
In Verona’s world of false honor,
even love, to begin with, is a
posture. When Romeo first appears,
wandering distractedly into the
aftermath of the brawl, he is in love,
not with Juliet—who he has yet to
meet—but with a Capulet girl
called Rosaline. She is never fully
seen, remaining as insubstantial
as Romeo’s love for her.
Fittingly, it seems, for a romance
set in Italy, Romeo declares his love
for Rosaline in a sonnet—a short ❯❯Contemporary audiences will have
identified in Mercutio a portrait of the
playwright Christopher Marlowe who,
like Mercutio, died in a knife fight, in
- This illustration dates from 1903.