Monday 3 August 2015

What quotes illustrate Romeo and Juliet's awareness of their forbidden love? How do the Nurse and Friar Lawrence emphasize the forbidden quality of...

Juliet says after she first meets Romeo and discovers he is a Montague: "My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy." 

When they meet on the balcony after the Capulet's party, they have this exchange. This is an interaction that reveals they are aware of how dangerous their love is and how it is forbidden: 


ROMEO: By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, Because it is an enemy to thee; Had I it written, I would tear the word.


JULIET: My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words Of that tongue's utterance, yet I know the sound: Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?


ROMEO: Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.


When the Nurse meets Romeo, she says:


"But first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behavior, as they say: for the gentlewoman is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing." 


The Nurse isn't directly refusing for them to be together, but she recognizes the dangers in Romeo and Juliet falling in love.


Before he marries the lovers, Friar Laurence gives Romeo a fair warning about loving one's enemy and marrying hastily:


"These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite: Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."


After Romeo kills Tybalt, Juliet's Cousin, the Nurse says:


"There's no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. Ah, where's my man? give me some aqua vitae: These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. Shame come to Romeo!"

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