“For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” A widely known phrase, I find that these words mean a bit more than what meets the eye. Typically one would find that the quote refers to the respective suicides committed by the two “lovers.” I find that it actually refers to all the lives that were lost throughout the course of the play and the idea that ultimately, the two households, the Montagues and the Capulets, do not reconcile. When the two join hands and agree to build golden statues for the loss of one another, many see a reconciliation between the families, a new-found harmony that came about after the two elders realized the loss of their own blood. I see two old men outbidding one another by displaying their wealth, which signals that the feud is not yet over. Capulet starts off to say, “O brother Montague, give me thy hand… for no more Can I demand,” to which Montague responds specifically, “But I can give thee more, For I will raise her statue in pure gold.” Montague goes on to brag about how as long as Verona stands, there will be no figure with such a high value. Seeing Montague offer such an expensive tribute, I feel Capulet felt compelled to offer the same for Romeo, so as not to look any less than his rival. Furthermore, they were just admonished by the Prince over their feud and seeing the many lives that were lost over the course of a few days, they would have found continuing their conflict immediately problematic. The idea that other students have brought up saying that the ending compromise was rushed seems ludicrous to me. Shakespeare’s play may not have taken place over a long period of time but he did not speed up important ideals throughout the play; he included long sonnets of conveying love and spent a long passage on something relatively irrelevant like Queen Mab. Why would such an author hasten the settlement of such a large dispute; how could the underlying problem within the entire play be solved so briskly? The rushed feeling students are referring to may be intentional though (on the author’s part), to prove a separate point I believe in, that Romeo and Juliet did not love each other at all and that they were attracted to each other on the basis of lust. Shakespeare, in my judgment, deliberately sped up Romeo and Juliet’s loving each other to imply from the start that the two were simply acting on naive childish impulses. Going back to the topic at hand, the two houses felt barely any remorse when so many of their kin were killed and I think that Montague and Capulet’s remorse is simply materialistic, an appropriate but not an everlasting grief that has taught them any sort of lesson. Lastly, the symbol of gold is not used in a positive connotation in this play. Other students speak of the time period and how gold resembled honor and respect. However, when Romeo went to purchase gold from a poverty stricken Apothecary, he pays him in gold and says, “There is thy gold – worse poison to men’s souls … I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. ” Therefore, gold is not presented in a positive light but rather as poisonous and vile. Romeo implies wealth is the cause of all problems and by exchanging his gold for the Apothecary’s poison, it is the Apothecary who has bought the poison. By connecting this symbol of gold with those of the statues that Montague and Capulet agreed to have stand, one can also connect the symbol of poison. Erecting the structures is foreshadowing further strife in my opinion. Thus, the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet is not their death, for they were simply childish, stubborn and victims of their hormones. No, it is in fact the possibility that the strife between the two households will continue and more lives will be lost.
-Zohaib A Qazi 9/9/09 CHC 1
