The famous balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet is not a straightforward romatic rhapsody - Romeo's soliloquy is subtly undercut by Shakespeare's humour.
The balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, Scene i) is often seen as the epitome of high romance, in a play whose very name is with romantic love. However, I would suggest that Shakespeare handles the star-crossed lovers with a touch of irony and ridicule in this scene. The soaring romantic language in this Shakespeare soliloquy is subtly undercut by the way Romeo fails to deploy it to best effect.
Romantic cliches
Romeo’s soliloquy, beginning “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” provides a barrage of high-flown comparisons: Juliet is like the sun, her eyes are like stars, her cheek is even brighter and more beautiful than the stars. They sound like typical clichés of love poetry – as they were even in Shakespeare’s day. The imagery of stars, brightness and gloves had all been popularised by the Canzioneri of Petrarch, a collection of love lyrics from the fourteenth century.
By Shakespeare’s time, in the late sixteenth century, these literary tropes were generally used, notably by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Philip Sidney in their sonnets. Indeed Shakespeare himself makes fun of these kinds of cliches in his Sonnet 130, which begins “My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun.” Romeo’s use of them is not particularly sophisticated, either – with his bald statement “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun” and the exclamation “It is my lady, O it is my love/ O that she knew she were!”
Romeo vs. Shakespeare
Romeo’s speech is certainly lyrical and impassioned, with lines such as “That birds would sing, and think it were not night”, but it is not a full-throated “Shakespeare love speech” – at least not by the same Shakespeare who wrote “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment”. It lacks the assurance and skill of the sonnets, and for a very good reason – this is a specific character speaking, not the poetic persona of the sonnets - though it is often taken as one of the definitive statements about love in Shakespeare. Romeo is a tempestuous, immature young nobleman, and Shakespeare puts appropriate lines in his mouth, instead of simply letting fly with all his poetic skills on the subject of love. Romeo comes across a suddenly struck by love, and trying to express it in the only terms he knows, those of Petrarchan love poetry, which don’t quite manage to describe his feelings. A good actor should, I think, be able to play lines like “It is my lady, O, it is my love” with an awareness of their slightly silly sound when taken in the abstract, and a sense of the sincere emotion which lies behind their slight awkwardness.
Humour
There is a moment of pure comedy in the brief exchange at line 66:
ROMEO: Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
JULIET: Ay, me.
ROMEO: She speaks!
Oh, speak again, bright angel.
There is something definitely ludicrous about Romeo’s rapturous response to Juliet’s meaningless sigh. The comedy, however, is not satirical: it does not demean the love between the young characters (who are only in their early teens) but gently shows how true love can render inarticulate even the most glib of Romeos.
