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

The balcony scene is the love scene people quote. Yet for its first stretch, Romeo stands in the dark below her window talking to himself, and Juliet has no idea he is there. By the time they finally speak to each other, one of them is making plans for the next morning. Read the scene closely and it tells you which one.

This window scene gets a close reading of its own in the collection, and the four days around it are told in order in the Overview.

Act 2 Scene 2 happens later that same Sunday night. Romeo has climbed into the Capulets' orchard after the feast, and Juliet appears above him, at her window. Two kinds of speech build the scene. A soliloquy is a speech made alone, heard by the audience and by nobody on stage. Dialogue is two people talking to each other. Romeo speaks first, from the dark. Juliet speaks next, at her window, and for a long time neither of them is talking to the other. Which part of the scene is soliloquy: before Romeo answers her, or after? Before. Until he answers, each of them speaks alone, so the opening stretch is overheard, and everything after it is dialogue.

Romeo's half is built from pictures of light in the dark, and it begins the moment he sees her window. But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief Soft means hush, and yonder means over there. He turns night into morning, and the play's pattern of light inside darkness starts here. Even the compliment is a fight, because the moon has to be killed for her to shine. It is my lady. O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were! O that she knew she were means if only she knew she was his love. Then he goes on: She speaks, yet she says nothing; what of that? Her eye discourses, I will answer it. What is Romeo answering, when Juliet has not said a word? Nothing she said. He answers a conversation she never had, which is a warning about him as much as a compliment to her. Next come the stars. He pictures her eyes swapped with two stars, and decides: The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp. Doth means does. Stars carry weight in this play, because the Prologue calls the lovers star-cross'd, meaning the stars are against them. Romeo uses stars as a compliment, and the play uses them as a sentence. O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek! After more than twenty lines of suns, moons and stars, he wants to be a glove. The scale drops from the sky to her hand, and it shows what he wants is to be near her.

Juliet does not know he is there, so her speech is a soliloquy too, and its first line turns on one old word: O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Everything in it turns on that word. What does wherefore mean in that line: where, why, or how? Why. She is not asking where he is. She is asking why he has to be a Montague. Then she argues the point out loud, to a garden she thinks is empty. What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. A name is a label. A rose would smell the same under any other name, and Romeo would be the same man without Montague, yet everyone in Verona is about to die for a name. And she does not just wish the feud away. She offers to give up her own name, if he will swear to love her: I'll no longer be a Capulet. When Romeo finally speaks up, she asks at once how he got over the orchard walls, which are high and hard to climb. Why does it matter that she asks about the wall before anything romantic? Because that wall is the danger. If her family find him, they will kill him, so her first thought is his life, while his first thought was the sky. Before the night is out she sets the terms. If his love is honourable and he means marriage, he is to send word tomorrow, and she will send a messenger to fetch it.

So the scene is built out of two kinds of speech. His half is decoration: suns, stars and a glove. Hers is decision: a name given up, a question about the wall, a plan for tomorrow. When they finally talk, she is the practical one.

Now the lines come back with a gap in each, and the gap is yours to fill. Romeo, below her window: it is the east, and Juliet is the what? The sun. It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Try his wish next: O that I were a what upon that hand? A glove. O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek! Now Juliet, alone at her window: what's in a what? A name. A rose would smell as sweet by any other name. Here's another kind of question: can a soliloquy be a lie told to another character? No. Nobody on stage is meant to hear it, so it shows what a character truly thinks, which is why Juliet's speech is the best evidence of her feelings.

Once you can say something about the window scene beyond they are in love, this one's locked in, and your thumbs up belongs on it. Still unsure, then hang on to the video and hear the scene acted once, since his half and her half sound different out loud.

Next in the chapter: The Prologue: the ending, given away in fourteen lines.

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