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Started reading
February 24, 2025
Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
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.
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite, And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay, And follow thee my lord throughout the world.
Love. Loyalty.
A thousand times good night!
Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified.
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;
As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine, And all combin’d, save what thou must combine By holy marriage.
Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, So soon forsaken?
Fickleness. Infatuation.
Young men’s love then lies Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Infatuation.
Pink for flower.
Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter?
Ay, nurse, what of that? Both with an R.
My words would bandy her to my sweet love, And his to me.
Romeo! no, not he.
These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume.
Therefore love moderately: long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Till Holy Church incorporate two in one.
Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy, and as soon mov’d to be moody, and as soon moody to be mov’d.
Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives;
cats and nine lives mythology.
Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
A plague a’ both your houses!
Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.
O, I am fortune’s fool!
lady fortune
This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.
truth or die for truth
Think true love acted simple modesty.
But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.
Hath Romeo slain himself?
For who is living, if those two are gone?
is Romeo dead? is Tybalt dead? what will she be left? Both a substance of love, who will she choose? Romeo or Tybalt?
Sole monarch of the universal earth.
Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
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?
This is a fork road for Juliet; Romeo is alive because he killed Tybalt, her cousin. Tybalt is dead, or else he would have killed Juliet's lover and husband.
“Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banished.” That ‘banished,’ that one word ‘banished,’ Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts.
Romeo's banishment is worse, likened to her continued moaning of Tybalt.
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.
Romeo's banishment drives Juliet into an existential crisis; without love, what does she have? "She is nothing."
Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.
What is it about banishment that makes more scary than death?
There is no world without Verona walls, But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
It is the only world he knows, unwelcoming to exile. Without Verona, can they exist?
Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy, To comfort thee though thou art banished.
Socrates would not go into exile; he'd rather die in Athens. Romeo would rather be killed at Verona than go into exile; he'd not listen to even philosophy that provides preservation unless philosophy can solve the root cause of all the miseries.
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
O then I see that [madmen] have no ears.
Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.
Could someone who has not been in another's situation understand them? Could a rich person understand the poor if he has never been impoverished?
O, he is even in my mistress’ case, Just in her case.
The mirroring effect is so evocative: Romeo in Juliet's state and her in his.
Stand up, stand up, stand, and you be a man.
Unseemly woman in a seeming man,
Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself, And slay thy lady that in thy life [lives], By doing damned hate upon thyself?
O Lord, I could have sta’d here all the night To hear good counsel. O, what learning is!
The young won't listen to counsel; the old do.
Well, we were born to die.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
Not proud you have, but thankful that you have.
