LADY CAPULET Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother’s child!
O Prince! O husband! O, the blood is spilled
Of my dear kinsman. Prince, as thou art true,
For blood of ours, shed blood of Montague.
O cousin, cousin! (3.1.137-141)
And this already chaotic scene explodes, as Lady Capulet pushes her way, shrieking and howling, to the front of the action. It’s an intensely economical way of reminding us of the larger consequences of all the actions in this play, the tight networks of relationship and kinship. Some productions suggest an affair between Tybalt and Lady Capulet, presumably to ‘explain’ her hysterical grief; it can work, but it’s not necessary: Lady Capulet here reminds everyone that Tybalt isn’t just the gallant, the Prince of Cats, the annoying, hot-headed, single-minded scrapper, but also a nephew, a cousin (cousin means kinsman), a son, somebody’s child. We imagine her hurtling to her knees beside the body, first addressing Tybalt, then, in supplication, and looking to her husband for support, the Prince. She speaks to one then the other in disbelief, a combination of stasis (there are almost no verbs in this speech) and furious energy. It’s Lady Capulet who introduces blood into the scene; there may well not be any on stage, but she spills it in the present and imagines it shed in the future, blood also a powerful signifier of those ties of kinship and honour which have, at least in part, brought about this crisis. Keep your word, Prince, she adds: you promised death for the next breach of the peace. Do it. (She’s adopting exactly the same baiting, taunting tactics as Mercutio and Tybalt.)
The scene has swerved into rhyming couplets with Benvolio and Romeo’s last exchange (their last in the whole play!) and these continue with the Prince and the Officer. And Lady Capulet augments the couplets with those repeated Os, which aren’t just inchoate howls of pain, shock, anger, and grief, but are the sound of ritual lamentation, a quality which will be even more prominent in the next act.
