Sample: Day and Night (Plot2)

Meghan Hicks, student in English L315, Fall 1995

Darkness and light are two opposing forces in Romeo and Juliet. While each lover is constantly comparing the other to lights, torches, suns, stars or lightning, most of their interactions occur during the hours of darkness. Shakespeare uses these metaphors of light so that even though the audience is watching two young people in a sexual relationship, they do not disapprove of the youngsters' pure, heavenly love.
The first time Romeo sees Juliet, in 1.5, this is the first thing he says about her:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear--
Beauty to rich for use, for earth too dear. (1.5.51-54)

Romeo says a lot with this comment. He says she is brighter than the torches, introducing Shakespeare's desire for the audience to perceive Juliet as innocent and pure. When Juliet hangs upon the cheek of night, she is a beautiful light in the blackness of night; furthermore, she is like a bright light set off against the dark skin of an Ethiopian. And when Romeo says Juliet's beauty is for earth too dear (meaning "valuable"), he is telling the audience that Juliet is practical a celestial body, closer to heaven than to earth. This reinforces early on Shakespeare's desire to make the lovers and their later sexual relationship as pure and righteous as possible.
Juliet later speaks about Romeo in 3.2:

Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun. (3.2.23-27)

This is Juliet's tribute to her beloved as a heavenly body that is so bright he could make everyone hate the sun and love the night. How can the love of two people who are so virtuous, even if it is physically consummated, be the subject of disapproval from the audience?

In 3.5, Romeo and Juliet are parting after their wedding night, Romeo must leave before it becomes day because he has been banished. As he is about to leave, he says, "More and more light, more dark and dark our woes" (3.5.36), to which Juliet answers, "Then, window, let day in, and let life out."(3.5.41). Light and dark have taken on new meanings for the young lovers. The light of their love for each other burns brightest at night, the time that is theirs. As the light of dawn approaches with Romeo's impending banishment, it draws strength from their love and represents their separation. The audience now feels compassion for the lovers who must part.

The end of the play confirms the metaphors Shakespeare has laid as a foundation: Romeo and Juliet are joined in death, in heaven. Even in death, Romeo says in 5.3, her beauty makes "This vault a feasting presence full of light" (5.3.85). And at the end, when both are dead and Prince Escalus is attempting to comfort both families, he says, "The sun for sorrow will not show his head" (5.3.316). Even the sun, in respect for the two lovers whose light shone so brightly, refuses to shine. And the audience will refuse to censure the physical relationship between them.