A thread on Lord Capulet.
Sometimes a little bit of Shakespeare sticks in my brain and works away at me.
CAPULET:
The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she.
This is top-tier Shakespeare, if we allow Capulet some genuine fatherly feeling.
1/
Sometimes a little bit of Shakespeare sticks in my brain and works away at me.
CAPULET:
The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she.
This is top-tier Shakespeare, if we allow Capulet some genuine fatherly feeling.
1/
I asked my students, since he means that his other children have died, why use the image of the earth swallowing them, instead of putting it more plainly?
When Capulet remembers his lost children, the memory is too raw to smooth over...
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When Capulet remembers his lost children, the memory is too raw to smooth over...
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His mind jumps straight to the moment of their burial. It's a terrible memory and it's as if he can still feel the grave dirt on his hands.
It's almost a forerunner of Lady Macbeth's "plucked my nipple from his boneless gums". A visceral sense-memory of parenthood.
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It's almost a forerunner of Lady Macbeth's "plucked my nipple from his boneless gums". A visceral sense-memory of parenthood.
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Except I made a terrible discovery in the footnotes of my Arden Edition.
Shakespeare appears to have thought better of it. In Act 3.5 he specifically refers to Juliet as his "only child" -- "Now I see this one is one too much".
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Shakespeare appears to have thought better of it. In Act 3.5 he specifically refers to Juliet as his "only child" -- "Now I see this one is one too much".
4/
And in later editions of Romeo and Juliet, "The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she" is likely CHANGED to "She is the hopeful lady of my earth".
Which is a damn shame, because I'd been dwelling on the juxtaposition of those lines and how they work together.
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Which is a damn shame, because I'd been dwelling on the juxtaposition of those lines and how they work together.
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"She is the hopeful lady of my earth".
If you think of "earth" as still carrying the feeling of the grave, it's a deep and moving expression of fatherly love: it gives his love for Juliet a desperate, tragic quality.
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If you think of "earth" as still carrying the feeling of the grave, it's a deep and moving expression of fatherly love: it gives his love for Juliet a desperate, tragic quality.
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Capulet's own "earth" -- his life, the ground he walks on -- bears the indelible imprint of those lost children. He senses his own mortality, perhaps, in horrific contrast with that of his children.
How much of that feeling can be retained if the earlier line is lost?
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How much of that feeling can be retained if the earlier line is lost?
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So I go on the hunt for the word "earth" in the play. Sure enough, it appears 22 times.
So EARTH is very much a key motif in Romeo and Juliet.
And Shakespeare plays with both senses -- as both a symbol of life and of death. To be both ON the earth and IN the earth.
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So EARTH is very much a key motif in Romeo and Juliet.
And Shakespeare plays with both senses -- as both a symbol of life and of death. To be both ON the earth and IN the earth.
8/
We see this clearly when Romeo describes Juliet as a "beauty too good for use, for earth too dear."
Juliet is at once too beautiful for life, but too precious to be lost from it.
It is a symbol of death-in-life, which is very much the tone of the entire play.
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Juliet is at once too beautiful for life, but too precious to be lost from it.
It is a symbol of death-in-life, which is very much the tone of the entire play.
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We can enjoy a little moment of insight into Shakespeare's mind at work, if he revises his lines, but knows he must keep "earth" in there. Capulet must remain, as all characters are, in love with life but haunted constantly by death.
The end.
10/10
The end.
10/10
