Throughout William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet, it is glaringly apparent that the affections shared between the titular characters is not simply a momentary infatuation or puppy-love, but a life-defining, wholly enveloping, true love. Juliet is incomplete without her Romeo. During the beginning of Act II, Romeo and Juliet have officially confessed their love for one another, and Romeo is moving about the process of solidifying an elopement under the guidance of Friar Laurence. In the fourth scene, we see Juliet awaiting the return of Nurse, whom she has sent to determine Romeo’s intentions and emotional standing with regard to their relationship. It is within this anxiety-ridden soliloquy, delivered by the unwitting Juliet from lines …show more content…
While waiting, Juliet bitterly complains that “from nine till twelve / Is three long hours, yet she is not come” with the news (II.iv.10-11). Through her nerve-induced arraignment on the Nurse’s character and physical ability, exclaiming “O, she is lame!” (II.iv.4), the audience may infer the paramount importance that Juliet has placed on Romeo’s reciprocity—that she would even deign to criticize the woman who has nurtured her since early childhood in her all-pervasive state of distraction. For Juliet, even the notion that he may not return her wish of marriage causes an overwhelming anxiety. Through this scene Shakespeare is subtly signaling to his audience that Romeo and Juliet are two halves of the same whole, that the influence of their love has caused them to be unable to exist without the other—and it is this very note that proves to be their hamartia, the unsettled internal turmoil that ultimately leads to their …show more content…
She claims that “Had [Nurse] affections and warm youthful blood, / She would be as swift in motion as a ball,” and Juliet’s “words would bandy her to [her] sweet love” (II.iv.12-14). But since Nurse is older and cannot reasonably understand the intensity of love that Juliet is experiencing, she claims that Nurse “feign[s] as [she] were dead— / Unwieldy, slow, heavy” (II.iv.16-17). Shakespeare is using this simile not only to give his audience an image of Juliet’s irrepressible desperation to be with Romeo but also to showcase the direct correlation between love and the nature of life itself that Juliet has in her heart, therefore enhancing the overarching hamartia. If there is no youthful passion in one’s life, then even with physical life perpetuated, there is a vital lacking akin to that of death