Examples of Love of Family Honor in Romeo and Juliet
Though the forbidden dearest between Romeo and Juliet lives at the eye of the play and drives much of its action, their dear is simply forbidden in the beginning place due to the "ancient grudge," or feud, between the noble houses of Capulet and Montague. The source of the age-old fight between the two families is never explained or even hinted at—all that is articulate is that these houses loathe each other and will leap at any gamble to do violence unto each other, much to the dismay of Verona'due south citizens. Romeo and Juliet are bound by duty to laurels their corresponding families, but every bit their honey for i another deepens and their families' violence towards each other escalates, Shakespeare shows that parents owe their children the duties of respect, openness, and kindness—not exclusively, as the Capulets and Montagues demand, the other mode around.
Many of Shakespeare'southward works examine the duty children and younger generations within a family owe their parents, or the older generation—in Hamlet, King Lear, and The Merchant of Venice, for instance, Shakespeare interrogates filial duty, familial honor, and the difficulties of seeing a parent'south will through. In Romeo and Juliet, however, Shakespeare turns this interrogation on its head. While a kid's award-bound duty to his or her parent is circuitous, to say the to the lowest degree, in the world of Hamlet and Rex Lear, in Romeo and Juliet, it is portrayed outrightly as an absurd, castigating, and even cruel demand. Romeo and Juliet are leap to honor their families' hatred of ane some other—when each learns who the other is after falling in dearest at a party at the Capulets' home, they are crestfallen to realize that they are enemies by default. Of grade, Romeo and Juliet are not, as individuals, each other's enemies—merely the codes of honor their parents take thrust upon them need that they hate one some other merely out of duty. As Romeo and Juliet secretly conspire to shirk that duty, surrender to their love for each other, and ally in cracking haste, Shakespeare points out the ridiculousness of feuds and grudges like the ane between the Capulets and Montagues—ancient resentments whose root cause no one alive can fifty-fifty remember. Shakespeare shows that it is the very fact that Romeo and Juliet'due south love is forbidden which spurs their passion—as immature teenagers, they long to arrive trouble and defy their families, and marrying ane another is the ultimate transgression against their parents' wills.
Shakespeare also points out only how profoundly the Capulets and Montagues fail their children by honoring their desires for social climbing and political advocacy. The Capulets are more concerned with throwing gaudy feasts that will depict the envy and attention of all their friends than they are with nurturing their own family. Though Capulet insists that Juliet is the most of import matter in his life, it is clear from his behavior that he (and Lady Capulet, as well) are interested only in impressing their fellow citizens, marrying Juliet to a man who will improve their family'due south social continuing, and keeping under wraps the very scandals and brawls with the Montagues that they themselves stoke. When Juliet fakes her own death and Capulet mourns her loss in loud, ridiculous, florid terms, Friar Laurence chides him for his hypocrisy—while Juliet was live, "the most [Capulet] sought was her promotion"—now that she is dead and in heaven, the friar points out, she has received the greatest social "promotion" of all. The Montagues, too, are guilty of shirking their duties to their son—Lady Montague is concerned about Romeo existence seen brawling in the streets but doesn't actually carp to keep runway of her son's wellbeing or whereabouts. Montague, as well, seems deeply uninterested in learning about Romeo's inner emotional life—he knows his son is, at the start of the play, struggling with feelings of unrequited love, but has not bothered to get to the heart of his troubles. All of the parents in the play are shown to be more concerned with social appearances and their own petty problems than with honoring their duties to their children—fifty-fifty equally they demand their children conform to arbitrary, outdated social mores and back their ain feuds mindlessly.
Ultimately, Shakespeare uses the tale of Romeo and Juliet and their "star-crossed honey" to show the chaos and destruction that can befall parents who practise not heed to or respect their ain children. "Meet what a scourge is laid upon your hate," Prince Escalus orders the Capulets and Montagues at the cease of the play. "All are punished." In believing their children owed it to them to continue sowing the seeds of their own piddling hatred, the adults in the play have done their offspring—and their community—a great disservice. Shakespeare clearly believes that familial duty runs both ways, and that in failing to acknowledge that fact, gild'southward pompous elders will only bring countless woe upon themselves.
Family and Duty ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what caste, the theme of Family and Duty appears in each scene of Romeo and Juliet. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Family and Duty Quotes in Romeo and Juliet
Below you lot will find the important quotes in Romeo and Juliet related to the theme of Family and Duty.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In off-white Verona, where nosotros lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil claret makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows,
Doth with their expiry bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their expiry-mark'd love,
And the constancy of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children'due south end, nought could remove,
Is at present the ii hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
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Explanation and Analysis:
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
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O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art chiliad Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thousand wilt not, exist but sworn my beloved,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
Folio Number and Citation:
Explanation and Assay:
'Tis simply thy proper name that is my enemy; —
Thou art thyself though, not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor human foot,
Nor arm, nor confront, nor any other part
Belonging to a human being. O, be another proper noun!
What'due south in a proper noun? That which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sugariness;
So Romeo would, were he non Romeo call'd,
Retain that dearest perfection which he owes
Without that title: — Romeo, doff thy proper noun;
And for thy proper noun, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
Folio Number and Commendation:
Caption and Analysis:
I take thee at thy word:
Telephone call me simply love, and I'll be new baptis'd;
Henceforth I never will exist Romeo.
Folio Number and Citation:
Caption and Assay:
For naught so vile that on the globe doth live
But to the world some special good doth give;
Nor zero then good but, strain'd from that fair utilise,
Revolts from true nativity, stumbling on the abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, existence misapplied;
And vice sometimes past action dignified.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Romeo, the hate I comport thee tin can afford
No better term than this: thousand art a villain.
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Explanation and Assay:
Romeo: Courage, homo; the hurt cannot be much.
Mercutio: No, 'tis non so deep as a well, nor and then wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: enquire for me to-morrow, and you shall observe me a grave human.
Related Characters: Romeo (speaker), Mercutio (speaker)
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Explanation and Assay:
Is there no compassion sitting in the clouds
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O sweet my mother, cast me non away!
Delay this marriage for a month, a week,
Or if you do not, brand the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
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Or bid me get into a new-made grave,
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud -
Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble -
And I will practice information technology without fearfulness or dubiety,
To alive an unstain'd married woman to my sweet love.
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Explanation and Analysis:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
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