More flowers, and more death, and Paris speaks (4.5.35-42)

CAPULET        O son, the night before thy wedding day

                        Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,

                        Flower as she was, deflowerèd by him.

                        Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir,

                        My daughter he hath wedded. I will die,

                        And leave him all; life, living, all is Death’s.

PARIS              Have I thought long to see this morning’s face,

                        And doth it give me such a sight as this? (4.5.35-42)

Having set up my big musical analogy, we’re not quite there yet… Tonally, this is a tricky speech for Capulet. I think I want to give him the benefit of the doubt as regards the sincerity of the emotion, but it’s all just a bit icky, this sex and death conceit being voiced by Juliet’s father, and deflower is a hideous verb which is surely unacceptable in any circumstances, even if here it almost inevitably picks up the flower of Capulet’s earlier speech and so is – sort of – justified. But the address to Paris as O son– when ‘my lord’ would scan equally well – is touching, as is the reminder, implicitly (Death is my heir) that Capulet now has no living children, Juliet having been the only survivor, a point which was made in the very first scene with Paris (earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she). Capulet is a businessman; in the scene where he raged at Juliet for refusing to marry Paris, he told Juliet, her mother and the Nurse that day, night, work, play, alone, in company, still my care hath been to have her matched – and while in that context it was hyperbolic, there is a real sense here of Capulet having lost both the focus and the meaning of his life: life, living, all is Death’s. Everything that he has worked for, his wealth, and his posterity, his achievements and his property being successfully transferred to his daughter and so living on after his death, has now been taken away from him. Comparatively speaking, Paris’s response is understated (and fortunately does not mention flowers): the suggestion that this morning’s face is both the dawn of this wedding day and Juliet’s own face is delicate and moving (and perhaps echoes the balcony scene: It is the east and Juliet is the sun).

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