A discussion of Juliet's soliloquy in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet, and how the scene is more complex than a simple declaration of love.
The words “Romeo, Romeo”, instantly call up the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, with the lovestruck Juliet calling to her lover from her bedroom window. It’s an image which has become part of our cultural mythology of love, in Shakespeare and in general, a reference we all immediately recognise and understand. (It's also and example of that most potent of cultural weapons, a Shakespeare soliloquy.) Like many such images, however, it has more to do with society’s clichés about romance than with the original play. The balcony in scene in Romeo and Juliet is actually far more subtle than the stereotype, and balances wit and irony in its presentation of the characters and their feelings.
Romantic Raptures
Firstly, Juliet is not speaking to Romeo. She doesn’t know he’s under her window. Her opening words are an “apostrophe” or rhetorical address, just as a poet might start a poem with “O, Moon”, or “Hear me, you busy bees”. Shakespeare is actually playing a joke on his heroine: whilst she comes onto her balcony to think about the boy she fancies, and imagines talking to him, Shakespeare has hidden the boy in her garden to overhear her. Romeo speaks his soliloquy, with all the traditional devices of love poetry, and Juliet makes a poetic speech to her absent lover, just as romantic heroines are supposed to, but both are faced in this scene with the tricky question of what to do when the subject of your raptures actually talks back to you.
The Awkward Reality
Finding that Juliet is talking about him, Romeo is unsure how to respond. Having made his elaborate comparisons of Juliet, he is disconcerted that she seems to be addressing him – this is the wrong way round for a poet of courtly love. “Shall I hear more, or shall I speak now?” he asks, expressing both his desire to listen to Juliet talk because he finds her eloquent and beautiful, and his uncertainty as to how to deal with someone who is soliloquising about you whilst you are present. He sounds like an actor in a romance who is unsure of his cue lines. Given his past declarations of love for Rosaline, it would be interesting to play Romeo this way; as a glib player who suddenly finds out the real meaning of the words he’s been saying all this time, and doesn’t know how to use them any more.
Likewise, when Romeo does make himself known, Juliet recoils – “What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night/ So stumbles on my council?” When they’ve established his identity, Juliet demands “How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?” This is a long way from her elegant apostrophe a few lines ago, and she continues to focus on the practical details, “If they do see thee here they will murder thee.”, “I would not for the world they saw thee here.”, “By whose direction found’st thou out this place?” It takes her this long until she can collect herself and face the fact that Romeo has overheard her immodestly admitting her love for him, and she now has to face him as a possible lover, rather than a poetic abstraction.
There is a vein of humour in this scene – after all, two lovelorn teenagers emoting their affection whilst unaware of each other’s presence could easily be played for laughs. This effect, though not immediately obvious when reading the play, comes out in production (and is a compelling argument for staging Shakespeare as well as studying it.) But it is a comedy which only deepens the emotion; it allows us to see Romeo and Juliet not as symbols, or emblems of romantic love, but real characters who have to deal with the extraordinary human situation they find themselves in.
