Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

Earlier the Nurse had asked Lady Capulet how long it was to Lammas-tide and had been answered:

—Act I, scene iii, line 15

We can therefore place the beginning of the play at about July 13. It is summer and the hot weather is referred to later in the play.

There must be some reason why Shakespeare harps so on Juliet's age.

The Nurse has another way of dating Juliet's age, too, for she remembers the circumstances of the weaning. She says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 23-24

This verse has sometimes been given special significance, for in 1580 there was a notable earthquake felt in London. The argument is therefore presented that this was referred to at this point and that the play was consequently written in 1591. This seems awfully thin, however, and most critics do not accept the reasoning at all.

The garrulous Nurse is finally persuaded to be silent and Lady Capulet begins to talk Juliet into marriage. She takes the opportunity at once to stymie any objections as to age, by saying:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 71-73

Apparently, then, Lady Capulet is herself some twenty-eight years old. Juliet, however, seems unmoved by the thoughts of marriage and Lady Capulet tells her that Paris will be at the banquet that night and she can look him over and decide whether she can love him.

In the next scene it is later in the day and the Capulet feast will soon begin. In the street outside come Romeo and Benvolio, who plan to attend in masks.

This seems to give an impression that it is dangerous for the Montagues to invade the Capulet feast, but the presence of masks does not necessarily prove it. Masking at feasts was common and masked dances are featured in Henry VIII (see page II-761) and Love's Labor's Lost (see page I-440), for instance. Masks afforded young men and ladies a chance to flirt in semiconcealment.

To weaken the case for danger, Romeo does no more than wear a mask. He makes no attempt to disguise his voice, for instance, and is, in point of fact, readily recognized at the feast, as will soon be apparent.

To be sure, Romeo does express reservations about going. He says:

—Act I, scene iv, lines 48-49

But when asked why, he can only say:

—Act I, scene iv, line 50

If the feud were really alive and deadly, he could easily have said that it was "no wit to go" because discovery would mean death. To fall back on a dream, a mere presentiment of evil, shows how little importance Romeo attaches to the feud.

With Romeo and Benvolio is a friend, Mercutio, who is of neither faction and is friendly with both, for he has been invited to the feast. He is, it appears, a relative of Prince Escalus.

Mercutio is, in essence, Shakespeare's invention. Da Porto had a minor character named Marcuccio, but Shakespeare took that and touched it with his own special gold even down to the small change in the name. Mercutio suggests Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods, who flits through the air with superhuman speed. Mercutio is mercurial, with a flashing wit that never leaves him.

Mercutio does not seem to think of the feud as a deadly thing either. He makes no attempt to dissuade the Montagues from going, as he might well have done if there were real danger. Rather, he is intent on rallying Romeo out of his melancholy and is so anxious to have him come to the feast that he eagerly turns dream presentiments into nonsense by advancing his own theory on the origin of dreams as the product of a tricky elf. He says:

—Act I, scene iv, lines 53-55

Queen Mab is out of Celtic mythology. The pagan Irish had a goddess named Meadhbh, who was the ruler of a group of the "little people." This may have contributed to the notion of Queen Mab.

Queen Mab need not be considered a fairy queen in the sense that Titania was in A Midsummer Night's Dream (see page I-26). She is the fairies' "midwife"; that is, she helps men and women give birth to dreams, and this is no task for a queen.

Here, in all likelihood, "Queen" is used in its original sense of "woman" and to speak of "Queen Mab" would be something like speaking of "Dame Mab" or "Mistress Mab." The word "queen" early split into two forms: one of them, "quean," degenerated to mean a degraded woman, a harlot; the other, "queen," rose to mean an elevated woman, the wife of a king. "Queen," in its ordinary original sense, neither depressed nor elevated, vanished altogether.

Mercutio's speech about Queen Mab presents the view that dreams are not messages of fate but the product of the routine thoughts of the day. Lovers dream of love, courtiers of curtsies, lawyers of fees; soldiers of war and drink, and so on. This is one of many examples of Shakespeare's modern-sounding rationalism.

Thus, when Romeo tries to stem the flow of Mercutio's brilliance and says:

—Act I, scene iv, lines 95-96

Mercutio answers at once, with stabbing relevance:

—Act I, scene iv, line 96

Within the mansion the feast is in full progress. The masked dancers are enjoying themselves and Romeo sees Juliet for the first time. He falls immediately and hopelessly in love and completely vindicates Benvolio's promise that Romeo had but to look at other women to forget Rosaline. Romeo says:

—Act I, scene v, lines 54-55

But his voice is overheard and instantly recognized-and by Tybalt, the only person of consequence in either faction who takes the feud seriously. He flares into mad rage at once and is prepared to kill. He says:

—Act I, scene v, lines 56-57

Capulet is at once aware that Tybalt is in a passion and demands the reason. Tybalt says:

—Act I, scene v, lines 63-64

Capulet is not moved in the slightest. He recognizes Romeo at once and says to Tybalt:

—Act I, scene v, lines 67-70

Surely the feud is as good as dead when the leader of one side can speak so of the son and heir of the leader of the other side. Capulet speaks so highly of Romeo, in fact, that one could almost imagine that a prospective match between Montague's son and Capulet's daughter would be a capital way of ending the feud.

Then, when Tybalt objects to Capulet's tame endurance of the presence of a Montague, the old man isn't in the least shamed into taking a stronger stand. On the contrary, he turns savagely on Tybalt, crying: