Suffering, despair and hope: grief performed at somebody

Nobody in this play suffers quietly. Every character with a grief turns it into a speech. And every one of those speeches makes the next disaster more likely, so the grief does more than react to the plot. It drives it.

The big-idea videos here can be watched in any order, and anyone hazy on the plot can start with the Overview.

Juliet's first grief arrives on Monday, when the Nurse tells her that Romeo has killed Tybalt. Her answer is a run of opposites, beginning: O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face! That is a snake's heart hidden behind a face like a flower. Two opposite words pressed together make an oxymoron, and she builds a speech out of them, aimed at the Nurse. Then the word banished sinks in, and Juliet tells the Nurse: There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that word's death, no words can that woe sound. Why is it odd for Juliet to say no words can sound her woe? Because she says it in carefully made verse, ending on a rhyme. Grief she calls unspeakable comes out as a polished couplet, two rhyming lines, so she performs the pain in order to hold it. Notice who hears all of it, the Nurse, because the listener matters in every grief that follows.

Despair in this play gives orders. By Tuesday, with a wedding to Paris fixed for Thursday, Juliet goes to Friar Lawrence's cell. O shut the door, and when thou hast done so, Come weep with me - past hope, past cure, past help! Even alone with a priest she directs the scene: shut the door, then weep with me. Past hope, past cure, past help is despair said three times, each one further gone. Be not so long to speak; I long to die, If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy. Remedy means cure. Three ways to hear that threat: she is bluffing, she means it and is also pressing the Friar, or she is speaking only to the audience. Which of those three readings fits the scene best? The second. She has a knife with her, and the one adult still listening has to come up with something fast. Hold, daughter: I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate an execution As that is desperate which we would prevent. Craves means needs. The only hope offered in the play is measured by how desperate it is, so write about it as desperation, and it comes from the man who married them in secret. That desperate hope is the drug, a sleep that looks like death, and Juliet's despair is what made him reach for it.

Grief can also be carried to someone, and on Wednesday Romeo's servant Balthasar carries it to Mantua. Romeo has just asked how Juliet is, saying nothing can be ill if she is well. Balthasar answers with his master's own words. He says: Then she is well, and nothing can be ill. Her body sleeps in Capel's monument. Capel's monument is the Capulet family tomb. He means she is well because she is in heaven, so the worst news in the play arrives shaped like good news. Who is Balthasar's grief performed at, and what does that listener do next? At Romeo, who decides on the spot to die beside her that night.

That is the machinery. Grief is always performed at somebody, and each performance backs the listener into a worse decision. Juliet's despair makes the Friar produce the drug, and Balthasar's grieving news sends Romeo to an apothecary, a seller of medicines, for poison.

Then the tomb, at Thursday dawn. Juliet wakes, finds Romeo dead with the cup still in his hand, and speaks to him. O churl, drunk all, and left no friendly drop To help me after? A churl is a rude, mean man. She tells him off for leaving her no poison, then takes his dagger, and with nobody left to listen, the grief stops performing.

One examiner's report describes the pairing many students reached for on this theme. Many chose the balcony scene as reflecting hope for the young lovers and the scene at the tomb to illustrate despair. That pairing works. The way to push it further is to ask who each speech is said to, and what that listener does next. Now an essay question to plan. How does Shakespeare use moments of despair and moments of hope to drive the play forward? Three nudges. Pick a pair, one hopeful moment and one desperate one, and set them side by side. Ask who each speech is said to. Then follow what the listener does next. Could you plan three paragraphs on that now? Write your three points down first. Here's one plan. Begin with Juliet's grief at the Nurse after Tybalt's death, a speech about having no words, made of perfect words. Then the hope: the Friar's kind of hope, which he measures in desperation, and which exists only because Juliet's despair demanded it. End on Balthasar's news and Romeo's decision, and then on Juliet's last lines, the one grief with no listener left. One turn to avoid: a list of sad moments with the word despair dropped on top. Each paragraph needs a speech, a listener, and what happens next.

Five to bring back, one speech at a time, and the last is a grief this video has not looked at. Juliet, hearing that Romeo killed Tybalt: O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring what? Face. O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face. Next, at the Friar's cell: past hope, past cure, past what? Help. Come weep with me, past hope, past cure, past help. Now the Friar's answer: I do spy a kind of what? Hope. I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate an execution. Here's another: why is Balthasar's news so cruel in its shape? It sounds like good news. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill. One more, a new case: the Capulets mourn Juliet aloud. Who carries that grief on? Balthasar. He sees her laid in the family tomb and rides to Mantua at once, so the family's mourning becomes what sends Romeo for poison.

When you can name a speech of grief and the worse decision it produced, you're set for this one, and the thumbs up button is yours to press. Otherwise, store it in a playlist and test yourself on the four quotations tomorrow morning, because pulling them from memory is what makes them stay.

Next in the chapter: Your exam: four boards, one printed extract, four different jobs.

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