The ball: two things start at once

Two things start at Capulet's feast on Sunday night, in the same room, at the same time. One of them is Romeo meeting Juliet. The other one starts the chain that kills them both, and it is happening a few feet away.

The feast scene has a video of its own here, and if you want the story around it first, that is the Overview.

Act 1 Scene 5 is a masked party at the Capulets' house. Romeo, a Montague, has come in uninvited behind a mask, and Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, knows his voice. Tybalt sends for his sword and swears: Now by the stock and honour of my kin, To strike him dead I hold it not a sin. Stock means family line. While Romeo falls in love across the room, Tybalt is deciding to kill him. Capulet asks if it is young Romeo, and Tybalt answers: 'Tis he, that villain Romeo. Romeo has done nothing at this party except look at a girl, so the name itself is the offence. Tybalt says: I'll not endure him. And his uncle throws Tybalt's own word straight back at him: He shall be endured. Which does Capulet object to: the feud, the killing, or the scene at his party? The scene at his party. You'll make a mutiny among my guests! A mutiny is a riot, and his worry is the guests, not the hatred. So the feud is stopped here only by a host protecting his evening, and that kind of peace lasts as long as the feast does. Why Capulet chooses it is followed up in the video on Lord Capulet.

Across the room, Romeo takes Juliet's hand. Their first conversation is written as a poem, with the rhymes passing between them, and it ends exactly where they kiss. How many lines does that shared poem run to: eight, twelve or fourteen? Fourteen. That is a sonnet, the fixed fourteen-line form that love poets used, and Shakespeare splits it between two speakers. Romeo speaks the first four lines of it, and these are his first words to her. 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. To profane is to treat something holy with disrespect. He calls her hand a holy shrine and his lips pilgrims, people travelling to a holy place, so a first touch becomes a prayer. Juliet answers him in the same rhyme, and the two of them finish it together, a few lines each. Why does it matter that Juliet speaks half of it? Because a love sonnet of the time was one man praising a silent woman. Here she talks back as his equal, from the start. After the kiss, Romeo says his sin has passed onto her lips, and she turns his own picture straight back on him. Then have my lips the sin that they have took. She takes his metaphor, the kiss as a sin, and finishes it. The first thing Shakespeare shows you about Juliet in love is that she can out-argue him. Before she even knows his name, she sends the Nurse to find out who he is, and says what will happen to her if he is already married. My grave is like to be my wedding bed. Like to be means likely to be. She means she will die unmarried, and the play makes it come true another way, because her wedding bed and her grave end up in the same tomb.

Tybalt leaves the feast without his fight, and as he goes he says that what looks sweet tonight will turn bitter. By Monday he has sent a written challenge to the Montagues, and by Monday afternoon he is out in the street, looking for Romeo. Why does a fight stopped at the feast have to happen in the street? Because Tybalt was overruled in front of the guests, and honour says an insult must be answered. His uncle has closed the party to him, so only the street is left.

So the feast starts both halves of the play. Romeo meets Juliet in one corner, and in another a grudge is refused in public, by Tybalt's own uncle, in front of the guests. Act 3 Scene 1 is Act 1 Scene 5 finishing.

Back to the feast once more, and this time the missing words are yours to supply. By the stock and honour of his kin, Tybalt holds that killing Romeo is not a what? A sin. To strike him dead I hold it not a sin. Next, Capulet's answer to Tybalt: he shall be what? Endured. He shall be endured, in four words that stop a fight for one night. Now Juliet, before she knows his name: my grave is like to be my what? Wedding bed. My grave is like to be my wedding bed. Here's a harder one: Romeo refuses Tybalt's fight in Act 3. Where does that grudge go? To someone else. Mercutio picks up the fight Romeo refused, and Mercutio is the one who dies. A refused grudge moves, the same way it moved out of the feast.

When the feast explains Tybalt's challenge in Act 3 for you, you've cracked this one, so press the thumbs up. Otherwise save it and read the scene itself, which is short, with both stories happening side by side.

Next in the chapter: The balcony: the most famous scene in English, read properly.

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