Day In Romeo And Juliet

In one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, Romeo and Juliet, he uses wordplay, different motifs, contrasting behaviors, and many other devices to examine and explain teenage emotions. He strategically references day and night, which many other authors have used concerning life and death respectively, to foreshadow how and why Juliet and Romeo kill themselves in the end of the play and other facets of their relationship. He uses day to represent adults and night to represent teenagers, and in the context of Juliet and Romeo specifically, day/the sun represents Juliet and night/the moon represents Romeo. Shakespeare uses these metaphors to suggest how the play will end and to show dramatic tendencies of teenagers such as Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare …show more content…
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.” First, Shakespeare alludes Juliet to the sun, which was also her place in the foreshadowing earlier. Then, Romeo describes Juliet (as the sun) “killing the envious moon” as the moon is less beautiful than she. If Shakespeare wrote this soliloquy only to show Romeo’s passion for Juliet, he would not start off with such a violent metaphor. Instead, he is linking death to Juliet and almost making it seem as if Romeo has death on his mind in general. He also makes another foreshadowing; Romeo takes the submissive place in the relationship throughout the play, listening to Juliet’s commands (as will happen later in this scene in her speech beginning II.ii.85) and playing her game. This makes Juliet the alpha, which, combined with her controlling actions and self-centered nature, makes her (seem) superior. She was directly compared to the sun, and continually likened to different sources of light throughout the scene, but in the context of their relationship, Romeo is the moon, who is “sick and pale with grief” when he dies because of her (or lack of her). Romeo likens Juliet to sources of light, but never day itself; this is an extent of her role of power. Adults dwell in the day, but they …show more content…
She says, “Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,/Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,” already speaking about death, “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.” Juliet, being the sun as in the last speech, is putting Romeo above herself in this comparison. Each child views themselves as worth much less than the other, which allows them to take their own lives so thoughtlessly and impulsively. Shakespeare also shows a mindset of violence or death in Juliet. She mentions Romeo “when he shall die” as soon as she mentions him, as if death is more prominent in her mind than the love for Romeo. She continues with violent imagery of “cut(ting) him out in little stars” and making a more beautiful sky than exists now. She explains how people will prefer night over day (as she prefers Romeo over herself) because of Romeo’s good qualities. This dark imagery places death in the front of the reader’s mind, which is more foreshadowing and/or setup from Shakespeare. Another use of this passage is, again, Shakespeare’s display of how Juliet and Romeo view each other in comparison to themselves. III.ii.28-30 immediately after, she continues, “...so tedious is this day/As is the night before some festival/To an impatient child....” She soon learns what the audience knows,