l.133
JULIET: Go ask his name. If he be married,
My grave is like to be my wedding bed.
Another absolute beauty of a quote to pick apart and revise.
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- First of all, dramatic irony. Juliet's biggest fear is that she has fallen in love with a married man. But of course, it's "ask his name" that is going to cause her the problems.
(although, of course, she will be the secretly married one soon).
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- Next, the foreshadowing. Juliet's grave isn't *quite* her wedding bed -- she gets her wedding bedding in Act 3 -- but certainly R&J will only be united publically in death.
Dramatic irony again -- we already know from the prologue that their love is "death-marked".
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- Now let's make it interesting. Let's get away from the whole-play structure and take it back to Juliet's character.
Why does Juliet herself make the link between love and death -- or sex and death -- so early and so clearly?
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First of all, she's not the only one. Romeo warns in 1.4 of "some consquence yet hanging in the stars". He also feels the hand of death upon him.
It fits with Juliet's character -- knowledgeable beyond her years -- that she knows the stakes of the game she's playing.
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She knows that as a young woman operating outside of her parents' aegis she is vulnerable. She knows that a liaison with the wrong man -- an adulterer, or a man from the wrong family -- spells the end of her honour and family life.
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I also wonder if people 400 years ago just lived in the presence of death more than we do today. We know from Lord C and Nurse's comments in Act 1 that Juliet carries a burden of love and hope that cannot be shared by untold dead brothers and sisters.
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Juliet's *life* is death-marked to an extent, not just her love.
I also think Shakespeare is making a choice about his characterisation of R&J and how we, as an audience, respond to them.
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They fall in love and lust uncontrollably, they act on it hastily. But it isn't just a game -- they know the consequences. Shakespeare wants us to feel the walls closing in all the way through the play. Their passion burns brighter because of the darkness behind it.
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The extent to which the Witches cause rather than predict M's tragedy is deliberately ambiguous. And that's entirely Shakespearean: his tragedies always deal in blurred lines between fate, individual agency and outside influence.
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Shakespeare uses foreshadowing and verbal echoes to create the effect that the Witches are influencing events. We might say they create a pattern of events.
In Act 1 Sc 1 their line "fair is foul and foul is fair" is rich with meaning for the play as a whole.
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And of course, their influence over Macbeth is demonstrated when his first line in the play is "So foul and fair a day I have not seen" (Act 1 Sc 3).
The First Witch's speech in Act 1 Sc 3 is also worth exploring for its foreshadowing:
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Thinking about SLEEP and SLEEPLESSNESS in Macbeth.
Sleep is mentioned 34 times in the play. Sleep represents what we today might call "mental health": rationality, clear thought, natural order.
"Balm of hurt minds...Chief nourisher in life's feast", indeed (Act 2 Sc 2)
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Sleeplessness, conversely, is the sign of a damaged mind, of corruption, of the influence of evil.
In fact, the motif of sleeplessness is introduced in 1:3 by the First Witch as she plans to torture a sailor:
"Sleep shall neither night nor day / hang upon his penthouse lid"
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The first character to experience sleeplessness in the play is Banquo:
"A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursèd thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose." (2:1)
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The influence of the mystery / whodunnit genre on An Inspector Calls is under-recognised. The formula, of a detective arriving at a well-to-do house with a family of unlikeable characters, was well established by 1945.
This was the era of Agatha Christie!
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Christie was already writing for the stage by 1945 and in her fiction had already begun to experiment with the genre: including, for example, Murder on the Orient Express whose punchline is *SPOILER* that every suspect with a motive helped to kill the victim.
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AIC uses the conventions of the genre to create its structure and tension. We know that all the Birlings (and Gerald) will be somehow related to the girl's death...but how? The first audiences probably expected that one of them was directly responsible or involved...
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Act 1 Sc 2
SOLDIER: "His brandish'd steel / Which smoked with bloody execution."
The soldier's account of Macbeth's exploits in battle establish him as a fierce warrior capable of bloody violence.
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The play sets up a contrast between Macbeth's skill and savagery in battle, shedding the blood of countless enemies, and his doubt and self-torment over killing one man when it's the King himself.
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"Blood" changes its meaning throughout the play: in battle, blood is a symbol of patriotism and heroism. Duncan tells the soldier his wounds "smack of honour". But later blood becomes a symbol of guilt and inescapable consequences.
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