Some thoughts on 1.1. It’s long – by a very rough line count, around 8% of the play. And it’s really good. The tonal shifts dazzle: the coiled spring of the Prologue. The increasing pace and driving rhythm of the servants (and the way in which this moves so naturally into first, verse, and then […]

ROMEO                                               ’Tis the way                         To call hers (exquisite) in question more:                         These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows,                         Being black, puts us in mind they hide the fair;                         He that is strucken blind cannot forget                         The precious treasure of his eyesight lost;                         Show me a mistress that is […]

BENVOLIO      Be ruled by me, forget to think of her. ROMEO           O teach me how I should forget to think. BENVOLIO      By giving liberty unto thine eyes,                         Examine other beauties. (1.1.216-219)   Plenty more fish in the sea, in other words. (According to the OED, the Cambridge student Gabriel Harvey made this observation in […]

BENVOLIO      Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste? ROMEO           She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste;                         For beauty starved with her severity                         Cuts beauty off from all posterity.                         She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,                         To merit bliss by making me despair.                         She […]

Romeo and Juliet, dir. Tom Littler, presented by the Marlowe Society, Cambridge Arts Theatre, 27 January 2018 Not a review, but some thoughts and observations in response. This is at least the fourth student production of Romeo and Juliet that I’ve seen in Cambridge (the first was also the Marlowe in 2001, with a near-unknown […]

ROMEO           Well, in that hit you miss: she’ll not be hit                         With Cupid’s arrow, she hath Dian’s wit;                         And in strong proof of chastity well armed,                         From Love’s weak childish bow she lives uncharmed.                         She will not stay the siege of loving terms,                         Nor bide th’encounter of assailing eyes,                         […]

BENVOLIO      Tell me in sadness, who is that you love? ROMEO           What, shall I groan and tell thee? BENVOLIO                                                      Groan? why, no;                         But sadly tell me, who? ROMEO           Bid a sick man in sadness make his will –                         A word ill urged to one that is so ill:                         In sadness, cousin, I […]

ROMEO           Farewell, my coz. BENVOLIO                                          Soft, I will go along;                         And if you leave me so, you do me wrong. ROMEO           Tut, I have lost myself, I am not here,                         This is not Romeo, he’s some other where. (1.1.186-189)   Lovely, loyal Benvolio, the one character in the play who is entirely true […]

ROMEO           Dost thou not laugh? BENVOLIO                                          No, coz, I rather weep. ROMEO           Good heart, at what? BENVOLIO                                          At thy good heart’s oppression. ROMEO           Why, such is love’s transgression:                         Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,                         Which thou wilt propagate to have it pressed                         With more of thine; this love that […]

ROMEO           Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,                         O any thing of nothing first create!                         O heavy lightness, serious vanity,                         Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,                         Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,                         Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!                         This love feel I, that feel […]