William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is an epic tale of forbidden love. Juliet’s character goes through a major shift throughout the play, from a naive, innocent girl to a steadfast, strong woman who is willing to do anything for her love. The pinnacle of her despair and love is in act 4 scene 1, with Friar Lawrence. The scene depicts Juliet after she learns she is to be married to Paris, and Romeo has been banished. She runs to the Friar for help, telling him all the horrific things she would rather do than marry Paris and live without Romeo. In the end, Friar Lawrence gives her a vial of potion that would mimic death, and plans to wait with Romeo for her to awake in the tomb. I portrayed Juliet in this scene. I then combined that scene with the beginning of act 4 scene 3. In this scene, Juliet takes a leap of faith, drinking the potion given to her by Friar Lawrence and hopes she will end up with her love, Romeo. The language in these two scenes played a major role in my staging and acting. Shakespeare’s use of foreshadowing, dramatic tone and imagery allows for a development of Juliet’s inner turmoil and conflict with Friar Lawrence, which I showed onstage with blocking, emphasis, and body language.
Act 4 scene 1 occurs towards the end of the play, very near to Romeo and Juliet’s death. Shakespeare uses foreshadowing to prepare the reader for the depressing future. Shakespeare tells the audience Juliet is going to kill herself when she says “God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands,/ And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal’d,/ Shall be the label to another deed.” (4, 2, 55-57) The “other deed” he writes of is suicide - Juliet literally threatens to kill herself if Friar Lawrence cannot help her get Romeo back. Later, after describing all of the things she would to do harm herself if she has to marry Paris, she says “Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble-/ And I will do it without fear or doubt,/ To live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love.” (4, 2, 86-89) This line is Shakespeare’s way of informing the reader that Juliet will do anything to be with Romeo. She does not see a life without him. Notice how he writes “unstain’d wife” not unstain’d life. This is a subtle hint that she will not have a life with Romeo. Later on in the play, Juliet takes the vial given to her by Friar Lawrence. She contemplates the possibility that this potion leads to her death, but convinces herself she will live to see Romeo again. In the play, both of those things happen. She sees Romeo again, but this time he is dead, and she kills herself now that she cannot be with him. Shakespeare’s heavy usage of foreshadowing demonstrated Juliet’s inner conflict. She was stuck between her family and Romeo, and in this scene makes her final decision to commit to Romeo.
Onstage, I used emphasis and body language to portray Shakespeare’s foreshadowing and Juliet’s own conflict revealed in the scene. Before my partner and I got to staging, we went through every line, carefully reading them out loud on our own and bolding words we wanted to emphasize. Every time death or love was mentioned, I emphasized it, as well as every time Juliet said “Romeo.” This helped the audience understand which words were important, and implanted these themes and foreshadowing into their minds. When Juliet had her final monologue, I sat down on a bench, holding the vial. This is the last time the audience saw Juliet before Romeo’s death, and thus her own, and I wanted to keep it deeply personal and indicative of what was to come. Sitting down allowed her to use her voice, rather than her stance or distracting body language, to truly show the audience that she was scared, but that whatever happens next was big for her. At the very end, I emphasized Romeo’s name in the sentence “Romeo, I come! This do I drink to thee.” (4, 3, 58). This showed her dedication to Romeo and the resolve of the conflict she faced between family and love, and foreshadowed that the next time she saw him, she would face the consequences of her potion.
Two of my favorite lines in the scene is in Juliet’s dramatic plead to Friar Lawrence for help. For the first, she threatens that if he cannot help her, she will “Twixt my extremes, and me this bloody knife/shall play the umpire” (4, 1, 62-63) She says this while holding a knife to herself - Juliet is not joking around. Shakespeare writes these lines with a dramatic flair, particularly in the words “Twixt” and “Bloody.” He could have simply written “If you do not help me I will kill myself,” but he chooses to make it vivid and dramatic. To the reader, this line is proof of Juliet’s disparity and inner conflict over marrying Paris, as well as her conflict with Friar Lawrence in the scene. She later describes her fear of being trapped in the vault as “shall I not be distraught,/ Environed with all these hideous fears?” (4, 3, 49-50) The phrase “hideous fear” here is another example of Shakespeare’s excessively dramatic language, because the word “hideous” adds another level of depth to her fear. This language helped show more of Juliet’s conflict within herself, but also more of her conflict with others in the scene, as it showed how dramatic she was towards Friar Lawrence.
This dramatic language was difficult to handle when performing this scene. Because it was written with extreme flair, Juliet had to be extremely emotional. As an actor, portraying all of these emotions can be very difficult. I started by sorting out what emotions she was feeling, and when. I color-coded my script with 11 main emotions. In the beginning, there was a lot of pink and blue - suicidal and sadness. The middle was mostly purple, for desperation, and the end had lot of flipping between red anger and orange anxiety. I had to find a way to portray all of those emotions with a distinct difference. This was the most difficult part of the scene. Blocking helped me show a lot of feelings to the audience. In the beginning of the scene, Friar Lawrence tries to comfort Juliet by putting his hand on her shoulder. Right after his attempt, Juliet has the line “Tell me not, friar, that thou hears’t of this,” On my script, I color coded this blue and red, and to demonstrate that sadness and anger, I pushed Friar Lawrence’s hand away and backed away from him, maintaining eye contact. This action shows Juliet’s conflict with Friar Lawrence. I kept looking at him because this scene is one of the first times Juliet gets comfortable with herself, and wanted to show the new assertiveness she possessed - her inner conflict. However, I also wanted to show Juliet’s gradual loss of hope, and her excitement when Friar Lawrence proposes a solution. I achieved this with levels - sitting down when the Friar told Juliet to go home and prepare to marry Paris, and then standing and grabbing the bottle quickly with the line “Give me, give me! O, tell me not of fear!” (4, 1, 121). To the audience, Juliet’s change in levels align with a change of mindset from hopeless to hopeful.
Imagery
- Literary Analysis
- Use of knife
- He never gives stage cues, but blocking is understood
- Alteration of line to imagine Paris present
- “Chain me nightly in a charnel house - chapless skulls”
- Unnessecary description that proved her dedication
- Translation of lines to understand full motivation
- Description of vault as a creature with a mouth
- Translation onstage
- Body language
- Fake knife, point towards self vs threaten him
- Struggled with
- Closeness determines seriousness
- Set
- Simple set
- Second chair implied Paris
- Chair in middle allowed for Juliet’s emotions
Reflection
- Inconsistencies with body language
- Good facial expressions
Note: will continue to work on drafting over weekend, this is first rough draft (very rough)
Note: scared it will be too long and i can concise things
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