In addition to the excellent remarks concerning Juliet's
maturity above:
In Romeo and Juliet
Act III, scene ii, Juliet has discovered from the Nurse that her cousin Tybalt is dead,
and it was Romeo who killed him. Juliet is visibly upset, and the Nurse thinks it's
because she's mourning the death of Tybalt. But, Juliet is more worried over Romeo's
exile: will she ever see him again?
Here's a section of the
monologue she says to the Nurse:
My husband lives, that
Tybalt would have slain;
And Tybalt's dead, that would have
slain my husband: All this is comfort; wherefore weep I
then?
This
is a kind of interior monologue, a mini-soliloquy, almost an aside. Juliet is trying to
rationalize the situation and calm herself down. Her logical side is trying to talk
some sense into her emotional side. Her statement is a syllogism: "my husband is alive,
and the man who tried to kill him is dead; therefore, I should be happy." Although, it
ends with a rhetorical question that she doesn't have an answer to. Juliet would be
happy, but the fact that Romeo is banished is a fate as bad as
death.
Notice, the Nurse does not try to comfort her or
help her plan any more rendezvous with Romeo after this. The Nurse is completely
emotional, and so Juliet must talk herself into action. This scene thus ends their
relationship.
In a similar scene at the Friar's, Romeo will
be more emotional than Juliet. He will try to kill himself, but Friar Lawrence will
talk him out of it. Friar Lawrence's advice to Romeo sounds almost identical to
Juliet's words:
thy Juliet is
alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately
dead;
There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill
thee,
But thou slew'st Tybalt; there are thou happy
too:
So after this,
Juliet, betrayed by her family and the Nurse, will seek guidance from Friar Lawrence
too. By staging her suicide, Friar Lawrence will be their only intercessor in their
post-exile reunion.
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