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2 - Romeo and Juliet: What's in a name?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Alexander Leggatt
Alexander Leggatt
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

FROM HEALING TO BREAKING

Romeo's first meeting with Juliet seems designed not only to begin the love story of Romeo and Juliet but to heal the wounds of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus. Chiron and Demetrius raped Lavinia, cut off her hands, and cut out her tongue. Romeo's first words to Juliet are:

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

(I.v.92–95)

Just to touch her could seem a violation; but he does touch her, and wants to kiss her, and the idea that this is an offense is absorbed into a game of language that excuses it. Asking for a kiss, he is apologizing for the profanity of one physical contact, touching her hand, by proposing a more intimate one that will heal it. The shyness and the frank desire are nicely balanced against each other, and come together in the rush of blood evoked by “blushing.”

This time the woman feels the same desire and finds a playful way of returning it:

juliet

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

romeo

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

[He kisses her.]

Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg'd.

juliet

Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

romeo

Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg'd.

Give me my sin again.

juliet

You kiss by th'book. (I.v.104–9)
Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare's Tragedies
Violation and Identity
 , pp. 29 - 54
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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