Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Juliet and the light motif.

This is the second essay about Romeo and Juliet, which discusses Juliet and the light motif. You can find all the Shakespeare essays here, and the schedule for future meetings here. The first part is here, do read it first. We meet on Sunday 3rd March, 19.00 UK time to discuss Love’s Labour’s Lost. Paid subscribers can also join this chat about the play.

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Romeo & Juliet is a play of light and dark.

Light is a constant motif and image, from Romeo’s first lines to the lovers’ dying speeches. Capulet calls for more light at the party. With his friends on the streets, Romeo feels a heavy burden so he carries the lights. Mercutio calls for hedonism now, or else “We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.” Romeo first calls Juliet the light that from yonder window breaks. When she asks how he got into the orchard, he says it was with love’s light wings. Juliet is repeatedly symbolised as light. The acts are structured as a series of dawns and dusks.

And light is not always a good thing: the lovers don’t want the sun to rise on them in the bedroom, which will mean Romeo must leave. “More light and light it grows”, cries Juliet. Romeo replies, “More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!” He is always the shadow to her light. In the balcony scene he says, “Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon.” Since he has been entirely associated with night, and remains in the shadows in this scene, this is at once a call for the end of virginity (the moon being Diana, goddess of chastity) and an example of Romeo’s death drive.

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In her first long speech, responding to Romeo’s wooing, Juliet draws a revealing comparison.

In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my ’havior light:
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.

This is not the first time someone has inadvertently described Romeo, who has plenty of cunning to be strange. Throughout the play so far, Romeo has flipped between deep self-sorrow, nurturing the “griefs of mine own”, and playful, social, bawdy interactions. With Mercutio he is often strained to be the calm force to his friend’s depravity, displaying what Coleridge called his “half-exerted, half-real state of mind.” He is often self-centered, as he confesses to Benvolio who tells him to go to the party and enjoy looking at pretty girls, to which Romeo says,

I'll go along, no such sight to be shown,
But to rejoice in splendor of mine own.

He will not rejoice in a party sense, but in a dark manner, rejoicing in his own dark splendour, the “griefs of mine own” that have become so splendid to him. He may not be cunning, but he is strange; Romeo flips, from self-sorrow to splendid wooing, equally intense. This intensity leads Juliet to call for slower progress.

although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say ‘It lightens.’

The more we read this play, the more unbearable these lines becomes. She sees his rashness, his wildness, but not its implications. Of all the tragic motifs, this is the most painful. Juliet is symbolised as a light, but she captures her own tragedy perfectly: “Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be”. In Juliet’s image, the metaphor of love’s ideal becomes a tragic motif. She foreshadows her own death. The light that symbolises their love is not a long-burning torch, but a lightning flash.

Light is a dual symbol of life and death, as seen in Romeo’s lines when he put Paris in the tomb.

This vault a feasting presence full of light.
Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d.
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death: O, how may I
Call this a lightning?

Romeo has been ambivalent about light all the way though. One of the first things we hear about him second-hand is when his father says,

Away from the light steals home my heavy son,
And private in his chamber pens himself,
Shuts up his windows, locks far daylight out.

Juliet is the exception to Romeo’s distrust of the light: she is the only sun he worships. But even in this, we see the duality of Romeo, the inherent instability in all his passions.

The high point of the light/dark motif is in Juliet’s soliloquy, “Gallop apace you fiery footed steeds.” She calls on the night to arrive, because it brings Romeo, and their honeymoon. This is an intense speech, full of assertion, and disobedience, too often played with those qualities brought to the fore, rather than allowing the overwhelming nature of Juliet’s passion speak for itself. And there are many ironies written in to Juliet’s words.

She wants the night to arrive quicker and says to the slowly declining sun,

such a waggoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.

Phaethon, wanting to know his parentage, went to the palace of Helios, god of the sun. Confirmed that he was indeed son of the sun god, Phaethon took the sun chariot out, against the warning of Helios. Alas, the boy could not control the horses, flying too close and then too far from the earth, creating as he did so the deserts and the arctic poles. Phaethon cannot control the horses and disaster threatens, so Zeus kills him with a thunder bolt. “Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be” indeed.

Juliet calls for night because that is the time for love:

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,

All too soon, at the end of this speech, a sober-suited matron will arrive—the nurse, with news of Tybalt’s death, the climax of the play’s tension, the pivot to inevitable tragedy. And then she says this:

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he 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.

These are the sort of lines that get this play a reputation for it lyrical romance; look at them again, think of the events to come, and this is another tragic motif, too like the lightning, which doth cease to be.

Learning that Romeo killed Tybult sends Juliet a little mad, she cannot help but echo the prison language of madness that Romeo used earlier, but she is not confined: her imprisonment is vasty and open, she has no escape from the desert of death.

‘Romeo is banished!’
There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
In that word’s death; no words can that woe sound.

What a reverse! Juliet had once thought infinity was joy.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

Infinity is now a curse. Similarly, there is a reversal of the appeal of the night: the madness of the dark is taking over—antic Romeo will now lead her to death. Tragically, Juliet got what she asked for. The night arrives.