In Defence of Romeo
by
Andrew Lomas
[Editor's Note: Not Long ago Andrew Lomas, Joseph Pearce and Kevin O'Brien engaged on this website in a fascinating debate on Joseph Pearce's method of biographical criticism. Lomas launched his critique with How to Read Shakespeare? or Anyone Else? O'Brien responded with The Text, the Whole Text and Nothing but the Text; and Pearce with Learning to Read.
Glad that the old bloodlust that marks most academic pursuits finally made things interesting here on The Christian Shakespeare, we welcome another article by Andrew Lomas, which corrects what he asserts is Joseph Pearce's non-traditional and narrow assessment of the character of Romeo, and indeed of the whole play, Romeo and Juliet.
I am taking the time to write this introductory note to welcome any scholars of Shakespeare - amateur or professional - to contribute material that disagrees with the overall thesis of this website - which is that Shakespeare's Catholicism influenced his worldview in a way that most modern critics ignore, and in a way that readers and audiences of his plays must acknowledge in order to appreciate his works more fully.
I am particularly interested in receiving submissions of articles that are as well-written as the one that follows - and that can make a solid case, whether it agrees with the thesis of The Christian Shakespeare or not.]
IN DEFENCE OF ROMEO
In the
early chapters of Shakespeare on Love, Joseph Pearce gives a
scathing assessment of Romeo Montague. Romeo is, according to Pearce,
“totally self-centred, the epitome of the impetuous
adolescent”(loc.286), he may be “a hypocrite and a liar”(639),
there is suspicion of “a venality in his character and a venereal
motive in his actions”(464); “if he weren’t so young we would
have no hesitation in dubbing him a contemptible cad”(287). One is
left, a little open-mouthed, wondering “Are we talking about the
same Romeo here? The youth beneath the balcony? The model for young
lovers down the ages?”
It is
clear that Pearce intends his book to challenge the picture of Romeo
in the popular imagination. However, his overwhelmingly negative
portrayal is also a major departure from almost all critical
accounts. And therefore the question may be asked whether, in
providing a corrective to the popular image of Romeo, Pearce does not
go too far in the opposite direction, also misrepresenting
Shakespeare’s text: so that something should be said in Romeo’s
defence. In the present paper I will critically examine Pearce’s
case against Romeo, and investigate the implications for our
understanding of Romeo and Juliet as a whole.
What,
then, has Romeo done to earn Pearce’s censure? The foremost, and
most grievous, charge is that he latches onto, seduces, and corrupts
a much younger woman, indeed a child. For Shakespeare’s Juliet, we
are repeatedly told in the play, is just thirteen years old. As
Juliet’s father declares to another suitor, Paris, she “is yet a
stranger in the world”, not ready for marriage, since “too soon
marr’d are those early made”( Ignatius ed.,1.2.8,13). Pearce,
moreover, cites historical evidence that Elizabethans usually married
at a much later age, and concludes that Juliet’s courtship would
have shocked Shakespeare’s audience. Whereas Romeo, says Pearce, is
“considerably older than she”(371); “Shakespeare clearly
suggests he is older”(375).
Well,
there is no argument here that thirteen year old girls shouldn’t be
involved in marrying, wooing, or anything to do with these things. In
real life, that is—while we are talking about a play: more on this
point in a moment. First of all, though, I want to consider the idea
that Romeo is significantly older than Juliet. Pearce makes no
serious attempt to substantiate this notion, which he believes
obvious; he merely observes that in Arthur Brooke’s source poem
Romeo is described as so young that “his chin sports no
beard”(374), while Shakespeare’s Romeo is not described as
beardless. But since Shakespeare’s Romeo is not described as
bearded, either, whether this version has facial hair must remain
forever a mystery, and cannot prove anything. And at the risk of
appearing obtuse, I must say that the significant age gap between
Romeo and Juliet is not at all “clear” to me, nor has this “clear
suggestion” been recognized by any of the critics I’ve read.
Now it is
true that Romeo proves to be very proficient with the sword,
defeating the feared “King of Cats”, Tybalt; which may appear the
deed of one fully matured. However in a society obsessed with
duelling, fight training would begin early; and Romeo has not
established a reputation as a swordsman, even among his
friends—Mercutio thinks Tybalt will beat him easily. Then, it is
also true that Romeo is friends with Benvolio and Mercutio, who do
seem older. But these two treat Romeo like a kid brother, mocking his
infatuation with Rosaline, and attempting to cajole him out of it.
This infatuation is, indeed, in its exorbitance and instability
painfully immature, the calf-love of one who is still, in Pearce’s
own term, “adolescent”. “Adolescent”: that is, not yet adult:
that is, not significantly older than Juliet. Further, Romeo’s bond
with Friar Laurence is clearly a teacher/pupil, even a father/son
relationship, not that between two adults. The “holy man”(4.3.29,
5.3.269) Friar Laurence, note, does not object to marrying Romeo and
Juliet on the grounds that he is too old for her.
Neither
does the “holy man” Friar Laurence object to marrying Romeo and
Juliet on the grounds that she is too young for marriage. And here we
can begin to see how Pearce’s focus on Juliet’s age, though
admirable morally, causes him to misapprehend the text as a whole.
Pearce has provided historical evidence that an actual marriage at
Juliet’s age would have been scandalous in Elizabethan England. But
his evidence does not show how a contemporary audience would have
reacted to early marriages in the alien, exotic Verona of the play,
and in a play. Whatever the attitude of the man in the stalls
might have been, moreover, it does not give us the attitude of the
drama he’s watching. This can only be determined through openness
to all the evidence provided by Shakespeare’s text.
As
previously observed, Juliet’s father states at one point to Paris
that she is too young to wed. Yet immediately afterwards he
encourages Paris to win Juliet’s heart, and says he will bless the
union if Paris is successful. Later, of course, Capulet commands
Juliet to marry. Juliet’s mother, Lady Capulet, while encouraging
her daughter to “think of marriage”, comments that “Younger
than you,/ Here in Verona, ladies of esteem/ Are made already
mothers”(1.3.70-72). And Lady Capulet declares “I was your mother
much upon these years/ That you are now a maid”(1.3.73-74). Since
Juliet’s father, mother, priest, also nurse—and Veronese society
generally—feel she is ready for marriage, the obloquoy Pearce heaps
on Romeo for taking the same view must be judged excessive. But,
indeed, any blame attached to Romeo would be excessive, since it is
evident that Shakespeare doesn’t intend Juliet’s courtship and
marriage to be shocking.
If in real
life a father agreed to the marriage of his fifteen year old daughter
to the first young man she has ever met, just days after they meet—as
Prospero does with Miranda in The Tempest—we would have him
up before the courts. But obviously age functions differently,
non-realistically, in The Tempest—as it also does in Romeo
and Juliet. According to F.R.Leavis’ dictum, “The mode has to
be recognized before the relevant criticisms can be made”(67): we
cannot assume that characters in Shakespeare’s poetic dramas are
just like characters in realist novels, or like people in real life.
With Romeo and Juliet, Pearce himself comments that “romantics
will no doubt stress that the youth of the lovers is merely a device
to highlight the unblemished purity of their true love”(323). It
seems to me that these “romantics” have got it pretty right.
#
There is,
however, a second part to Shakespeare on Love’s case against
Romeo. And while the charge here is not as grave as that of preying
on a child, it still draws most severe strictures from Pearce. For
Romeo is said to be “devoted to Venus and the religion of erotic
love”(389), and so to show a heinous impiety regarding
Christianity. He certainly transgresses against Pearce’s
Christianity, and Pearce holds that he transgresses against
Shakespeare’s Christianity.
I want to
investigate two crucial instances of Romeo’s alleged impiety. Near
the beginning of the play, Romeo has been rejected by the object of
his youthful infatuation, Rosaline, who has told him she intends to
remain chaste. Romeo decries her choice as a “huge waste”:
“For beauty, starved with her severity,
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair”(1.1.216,217-220).
Pearce
glosses that Romeo “scorns [Rosaline’s] desire to remain chaste
and treats with apparent contempt her apparent claim that her vow of
chastity is connected to her Christian convictions”(281).
Yet there
is something familiar about Romeo’s argument, repeated just
afterwards, that Rosaline should produce beautiful children,
otherwise her beauty will die with her. It is typically Renaissance
in its concern with the ravages of time, and appeal to a neo-Platonic
notion of beauty. I don’t find the reasoning terribly impressive
myself—but clearly Shakespeare thought otherwise. The opening lines
of the Sonnets are “From fairest creatures we desire
increase/ That thereby beauty’s rose might never die”(1.1-2). And
for the next seventeen poems some of the most beautiful poetry ever
written elaborates and illustrates this line of thought to the Fair
Youth.
Shakespeare’s
Sonnets, more generally, exhibit a scepticism about a young
person’s determination to remain single similar to Romeo’s. This
attitude of Shakespeare is perfectly compatible with respect for
those whose Christian religious vocation he accepts, as is shown by
his treatment of Friar Laurence. And Romeo’s scepticism is also
compatible with respect for those whose Christian religious vocation
he accepts—as shown by his treatment of Friar Laurence. It
is not plausible, though, that Shakespeare intends us to be
scandalized by Romeo’s protest against Rosaline, when Shakespeare
himself makes the same protest, in much the same terms, elsewhere.
The first
converse between Romeo and Juliet—the famous sonnet passage—is
for Pearce an even more grave example of Romeo’s impiety, and
iniquity. On Pearce’s reading, indeed, what we have is the
Temptation and Fall of Juliet. Romeo begins to Juliet,
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender
kiss.”(1.5.91-94)
Pearce
sees these lines as an example of Romeo’s “hyperbolic abuse of
religious imagery”(443). If we are to condemn the use of religious
realities as metaphors, though, we would have to condemn the entire
tradition of courtly love poetry, much of which was written by
Catholics. But I want, once again, to consider Romeo’s words in a
wider Shakespearean context. In Romeo and Juliet, the Nurse
produces a stream of dirty jokes—“bawdy”, if you like—yet
remains a generally sympathetic comic relief; Mercutio is relentless
in his sexual innuendo, yet still manages to emerge as witty,
imaginative, dangerously glamorous. The displaced religious imagery
of Juliet’s response to Romeo’s killing of Tybalt—“fiend
angelical!”, “damned saint”, “the spirit of a fiend/
In...such sweet flesh”(3.2.75,79,81-82)—is truly extravagant.
Then look at a work written close to the composition of Romeo and
Juliet, the poem “Venus and Adonis”. Shakespeare’s
treatment of the character Venus is humorously irreverent rather than
worshipful; nevertheless, the tenor of his poem is most decidedly of
“the religion of Venus”. Even the pure, unspoilt Perdita of The
Winter’s Tale says things about flowers and maidenheads that
would make the denizens of a modern night-club blush. These examples
would offend many Christians of many types and many times: but
clearly they didn’t offend Shakespeare. Consequently it is just not
tenable that William Shakespeare should consider Romeo’s tame
religious metaphors about kissing sacrilegious.
When
Juliet replies to Romeo’s “blushing pilgrims” advance, she is,
says Pearce, “torn between chaste decorum and erotic desire. As the
mysterious stranger manipulates her words to serve his amorous
purposes, bestowing the first kiss, the girl’s struggle with her
conscience is strained to the limit”(447-8). Finally, with a second
kiss, “Romeo has inflamed desire in the object of his
advances”(457). Juliet has fallen into sin.
Fallen
very quickly, it must be said, at the risk of being indelicate. The
Pearcean Juliet succumbs to temptation in one and a half sonnet’s
worth of speech; Romeo’s contribution being eleven lines. That must
be some sort of record. However, I would like to draw attention to
the concluding words of the exchange. For after Romeo has
administered the momentous kisses, what is Juliet’s verdict? “You
kiss by th’ book”(1.5.108).
“You
kiss by th’ book”: the note to the Ignatius edition, by Pearce,
comments “i.e., take my words literally to gain more kisses”(n.240,
5400). But this is not a plausible reading of Shakespeare’s line.
The phrase “by the book” meant to Shakespeare and the
Elizabethans what it means to us, “strictly according to the
rules”, in a very correct manner (cf. As You Like It,
5.4.90-1). But if Juliet is really protesting against Romeo’s
literal construction of her words, why does she apply “by the book”
to his kiss rather than his interpretation? Moreover why, in this
context, would “strictly according to the rules” be a literal
interpretation? The standard gloss of the line—in the New Penguin
Shakespeare edition, the New Cambridge Shakespeare, HBJ Shakespeare,
etc., etc.—is that Romeo kisses as if following the rules in a book
of etiquette ( New, n.110, p.200). Unfortunately, though, this
generally accepted meaning throws Pearce’s account of the sonnet
scene into doubt.
Juliet’s
appraisal that Romeo kisses as if following an etiquette manual shows
firstly that, as the daughter of an aristocratic Veronese family, she
is well acquainted with the etiquette of kissing. It also tells us
that Romeo’s kisses weren’t the passionate pashes of a Byronic
seducer, as Pearce imagines. But there are even more important
implications. If, after the kisses, Juliet is able to deliver her
calm, objective assessment of Romeo’s technique, then clearly,
contra Pearce, her judgement hasn’t been overwhelmed by
erotic desire. That Juliet should make this composed assessment
shows, further, a mind free from any concern that Romeo’s behaviour
may have involved her in sin. So her response to the first kiss,
“Then have my lips the sin”(1.5.106), did not express a genuine
fear she had been defiled, or reflect any real “struggle with
conscience”. Rather, it was an artful move in a sophisticated game.
Pearce
says that Juliet is too young “to play her part in the intertwined
sonnet with a suave savoir faire”(455). Here a theory about the
text has overwhelmed what is actually there in the text: for
Pearce rules impossible what Juliet does. Juliet’s lines in
the sonnet scan just as well as Romeo’s, their rhymes complete the
complex rhyme-pattern, and her metaphors of conventional piety answer
Romeo’s of conventional impiety. The sonnet exchange of
Shakespeare’s play is elaborate, formal, verbal fencing. Juliet is
neither tempted, nor does she struggle with her conscience, and she
doesn’t fall into sin. Though Romeo had her heart, as the saying
goes, at “Hello”—or even before “Hello”; as she had his.
I recall
reading a long time ago a critic who asserted that, in all his plays,
Shakespeare had never portrayed a gentleman. In terms of the
nineteenth century/ early twentieth century understanding of
“gentleman”, this may be true. Romeo certainly isn’t one. But,
of course, Shakespeare wasn’t aware of such a standard, and, if he
had been made aware of it, would probably have regarded it as absurd:
his own ideal of manhood was quite different. G.K.Chesterton remarks
that the Renaissance poets, including Shakespeare as the greatest of
them, inhabited “a wider and a wilder world”(230) than poets of
medieval times. “A wider and a wilder world”, too, than
Victorian/ Edwardian English gentlemen, and some twenty-first century
Catholics (including, in some parts of its geography, myself).
Whether these Renaissance innovations are really compatible
with Christianity is a tremendous question, far beyond the scope of
the present essay. However it is clear that Shakespeare’s views on
acceptable imagery, acceptable jokes, appropriate manners between the
sexes, the place of pagan ideas, cannot simply be read off from his
presumed Christianity. For even assuming this Christianity, sincere
Christians of different places, cultures, times have had greatly
varying positions on these matters. In his condemnation of Romeo for
profanity, I believe Pearce imports his particular Christian
standards into a play which embodies different standards.
#
Pearce’s overarching
“cautionary or moral”(148) interpretation of Romeo and Juliet,
whereby the play is about morally wrong choices made by the
characters and their consequences, undoubtedly contains much truth.
The “rashness and hastiness”(1289) of the lovers and parents is
convincingly shown to promote the ultimate tragedy; though it is
arguable that fate, or bad luck, are just as important, with the
Chorus lamenting the “star-crossed”(Prol.6) couple. However that
may be, and despite the merit in Pearce’s overall interpretation,
we have seen that he misconstrues the initial connection between
Romeo and Juliet, by putting Romeo in a far too negative light. Even
Capulet, sworn enemy of Romeo’s family, admits that “Verona brags
of” Romeo “To be a virtuous and well-govern’d youth”
(1.5.65-66); and nothing in the play overturns this testimomy of a
basic good nature. When Juliet says “if that thy bent of love be
honourable”(2.2.143), he should arrange their marriage, Romeo
accepts without a qualm: this is not the behaviour of a cad, even a
junior cad.
And
because Pearce misconstrues the initial connection between Romeo and
Juliet, he goes astray on the fundamental relationship of the play.
After giving his version of the sonnet scene, Pearce admonishes that
“the love between Romeo and Juliet can be nothing but skin-deep and
purely physical at this stage”(484). “How can such love be
anything but superficial, a bewitching of the eye in response to
great physical beauty?” (486) “Whereas true love is desiring the
good of the other”, moreover, he has noted earlier, “Romeo
desires that the other should feel good to him”(284). The relation
of Romeo and Juliet is thus seen as a shallow, selfish eros,
as opposed to self-less “true love”, the agape or caritas
of Christianity.
In
constructing this opposition, though, Pearce ignores a possibility
found in his own philosophical and theological guide, St. Thomas
Aquinas. St. Thomas grounds natural law morality on certain natural
“inclinations” or orientations. Among these, as one of the
inclinations humans share with other animals, is attraction towards
the opposite sex—“nature has taught all animals to mate”(
S.T.1-2.94.2, in Kerr, 108; Political, 46). The purely
carnal, pre-rational desire to mate must, of course, be regulated by
morality, should be transformed with maturity, and may be transcended
entirely through grace. But for Aquinas such “natural love is
always good, since it is nothing other than a natural urge implanted
by the author of nature”(Human, 44).
I am not
suggesting Shakespeare had studied Aquinas on natural law. However
St. Thomas’ reasoning here, typically, clarifies a common sense
view, and I am suggesting this same common sense view has
emerged from my readings of Romeo and Juliet. That
Romeo is attracted at first by “charm of looks”(2 Prol.6),
without stopping to quiz the young ladies on their philosophical and
theological opinions, does not reveal a shameful superficiality, but
merely shows that he is a young human animal, not some kind of
disembodied moral calculus. That Romeo switches his interest so
quickly from one pretty girl, who doesn’t return his feelings, to
another who does, may be suprising, and amusing, but is after all
perfectly normal behaviour in a young man seeking a mate; and
salutary, insofar as he now stops pestering Rosaline. That Romeo’s,
and Juliet’s, love involves—in part—“feeling good”, and is
directed towards satisfaction, does not mean that it is immorally
selfish. It is self-interested, certainly, yet the
self-interest is a legitimate element of good natural love.
Personally
I would prefer to leave Romeo and Juliet at this level. However it is
evident from my readings that the play insists on another tier to
their relationship. From the exquisite sonnet exchange of the first
meeting, to the dramatic tableau of the balcony scene, to the
matching gold statues in death—Romeo and Juliet are presented as
souls destined for one another: theirs is also a grand romantic
passion. But does then the play as a whole fall subject to the
criticisms Pearce makes of Romeo for his romantic “love at first
sight”? Does Shakespeare’s play glorify what is really just
imprudent “rashness and hastiness”, an attraction which can only
be “skin-deep and purely physical”?
Well,
considering Joseph Pearce is an admiring biographer of J.R.R.Tolkien,
we might consider the following questions. Are Beren and Luthien of
The Silmarillion culpably imprudent when they fall in love at
first sight? Is Aragorn misled by “charm of looks” when he loses
his heart from the first hour he sees Arwen? Not only before knowing
her name, but before knowing what species she belongs to. Does
Aragorn yield to a “purely physical” desire for Arwen, when a
little moral reflection would have shown that he was actually more
suited to Eowyn—with whom, after all, he has so much more in
common?
It may be
objected that comparisons with Tolkien are invalid, because his works
belong to the genre of fairy-tale. However, the heightened romance of
Romeo and Juliet shows, once again, that the play is to
an extent non-realistic in mode; it is closer to a fairy-tale than to
a George Eliot novel. Besides portraying grand romantic passion,
Tolkien provides a theoretical justification for such portrayal, in a
letter to his son Michael. “The idea of lovers destined for one
another”, he says, “still dazzles us, catches us by the
throat”(52). “In such great inevitable love, often love at first
sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have
been in an unfallen world”(52). The idealized love of Romeo and
Juliet is set midst our fallen world, and the story tells how
this love is destroyed by the sinful world, including by the lovers’
own faults. But we don’t fully understand the play unless we see
that what is destroyed is something free from taint, a “great
inevitable love”(52).
WORKS
CITED
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas:
Representative Selections. Ed. Dino Bigongiari. New York:
Hafner Press, 1953.
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas: A Breviary
of Philosophy from the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Arranged by Josef Pieper. Trans. Drostan MacLaren, O.P.. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002.
Chesterton, G.K.. Chaucer. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969.
Kerr, Fergus. After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2003.
Leavis, F.R.. D.H.Lawrence: Novelist. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1973.
Pearce, Joseph. Shakespeare on Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence
in Romeo and Juliet. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013. Kindle e-book file.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. New Penguin
Shakespeare. Ed. T.J.B.Spencer. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. With Contemporary
Criticism. Ed. Joseph Pearce. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011.
Kindle e-book file.
Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets. A Signet Classic. Intro.
W.H.Auden. Ed. William Burto. New York: New American Library, 1965.
Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey
Carpenter, With assistance of Christopher Tolkien. London: Unwin,
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