"The course of true love ne'er did run smooth."
The Passionate Oxymoron - stylistic excesses and excessive style in Romeo and Juliet.
By René Girard.
- true love implies that no one else is interesting - there is no intermediary. It is a notion infused with modern individualism.
- Except true love always runs into trouble, so it can't be that independent: MND - "The course of true love ne'er did run smooth."
- MND: the four lovers were all about a potion. It wasn't true love, and that potion was just an excuse, albeit a charming one, to orchestrate a ballet of mimetic disharmony. Form > content on this one.
Is it true love in Romeo and Juliet?
- love affair was too short to be trusted. While it lasted, they were fiercely loyal and true. For instance, Juliet wouldn't be coy unless Romeo wanted her to be. // Cressida, who surrenders too quickly to Troilus, except he is not worthy.
- Romeo and Juliet are unable to betray each other, by opposition to MND or Troilus and Cressida. That meant a lack of dramatic possibility. Boooring. Bad for theatre. So he introduced the blood feud, a dramatic effect that is coming from outside the love affair, and is present in the play from the first to the last line.
- the usual form of the clichéd balcony scene is for the woman to threaten to close the window or call her father. But everyone, down to the characters, know that the window won't be closed, on the contrary, that Romeo is invited into the bedroom, the bed even. The suspense consequently comes not from Juliet, but from her kinsmen, who don't show up but are all Romeo and Juliet speak about. The blood feud is just a literary device.
Full of flamboyant rhetoric
- its most obvious feature is the oxymoron.
- the love poetry of early medieval Europe was all about associating love with strong hostility. Early twentieth century critics looked down on oxymora.
- the most spectacular collection of oxymora takes place after Romeo has killed Tybalt: "O serpent heart… gorgeous palace."
"fiend angelical": seems absurd, but it's about major events pulling Juliet in different directions: old hatred vs. true love. The question is how appropriate those oxymora are. Juliet is a living oxymoron.
- That speech is so filled with clichéd oxymora that it comes off as irony. In the tirade, there is not one allusion to Tybalt. If it had been a standalone poem, it would've seemed like the problem stood with the loved man himself, and possibly an infidelity.
- The language of true love, logically, should only be positive, but the oxymoron marries positive and negative. You'd expect it to weaken her love, that mixing hatred in with it would weaken it. Instead, those oxymora increase her love: it is made much stronger.
- This great tirade shows Juliet madly in love with Romeo. The negative feelings that should diminish passion actually make it stronger, more intense.
The link between oxymoron and mimetic desire
- mimetic desire: we desire the same object as our model. The law of mimetic desire is one of universal frustration. Even when the object is safely possessed, because then it is no longer desired. Only inaccessible objects are forever desired.
- so if true loves never does run smooth, it's because it is not true love, but mimetic desire that won't confess to being precisely that. It is simply that the model is too big to be overcome, and thus the object of desire is forever out of reach.
- mimetic addicts cannot keep loving someone who reacts positively, and cannot stay indifferent when faced with indifference. (Just like the Dark Lady keeps the Poet at bay.) Intense love is never rewarded, it needs to be married with intense resentment, and in comes the oxymoron.
- thanks to the blood feud, Shakespeare can bring in the right conjunction of events: the oxymoron is brought back in surreptitiously, not on account of a real crime since Romeo did his best not to have to do it. The murder is just an excuse: so that the love might be intense enough, it needed contrariety. The darker feelings coming from the blood feud were projected (transference!) on the love, adding spice to it.
- Shakespeare needs mimetic defiance but can't give Juliet the usual reason, since true love should not know cruel mimetic tricks (but then that is rather boring). Consequently he had to resort to contraband violence: Tybalt's death stands in for the infidelity Romeo cannot commit, so that there is intense jealousy without tainting true love.
- the nurse is the only other character on stage during Juliet's tirade. She urges Juliet to no longer love Romeo, because as a simple woman she does not understand the logic of the oxymoron. The nurse insulting Romeo sends Juliet into a rage (in the same manner as Friar Laurence's words about Rosalynd had Romeo).
- the oxymoric style testifies of the mutual contamination of the love affair. Juliet's love is deepened by hate. While the interpenetration of the blood feud and the love affair seems accidental, it is in fact the playwright's decision.
- the star-crossed lovers are just as mimetic as any other; for proof, look at Rosalynd. But Shakespeare wanted them to pass the test of true love, and consequently used outside influences to inject the necessary conflict to their love.
- The way love and hate mingle is paralleled in Friar Laurence's first medicinal speech, with the pharmakon, both poison and remedy, a speech that figures for Romeo and Juliet in its entirety. Friar Laurence is, in fact, a humorous symbol of Shakespeare himself, since he tries to control everything.
By René Girard.
- true love implies that no one else is interesting - there is no intermediary. It is a notion infused with modern individualism.
- Except true love always runs into trouble, so it can't be that independent: MND - "The course of true love ne'er did run smooth."
- MND: the four lovers were all about a potion. It wasn't true love, and that potion was just an excuse, albeit a charming one, to orchestrate a ballet of mimetic disharmony. Form > content on this one.
Is it true love in Romeo and Juliet?
- love affair was too short to be trusted. While it lasted, they were fiercely loyal and true. For instance, Juliet wouldn't be coy unless Romeo wanted her to be. // Cressida, who surrenders too quickly to Troilus, except he is not worthy.
- Romeo and Juliet are unable to betray each other, by opposition to MND or Troilus and Cressida. That meant a lack of dramatic possibility. Boooring. Bad for theatre. So he introduced the blood feud, a dramatic effect that is coming from outside the love affair, and is present in the play from the first to the last line.
- the usual form of the clichéd balcony scene is for the woman to threaten to close the window or call her father. But everyone, down to the characters, know that the window won't be closed, on the contrary, that Romeo is invited into the bedroom, the bed even. The suspense consequently comes not from Juliet, but from her kinsmen, who don't show up but are all Romeo and Juliet speak about. The blood feud is just a literary device.
Full of flamboyant rhetoric
- its most obvious feature is the oxymoron.
- the love poetry of early medieval Europe was all about associating love with strong hostility. Early twentieth century critics looked down on oxymora.
- the most spectacular collection of oxymora takes place after Romeo has killed Tybalt: "O serpent heart… gorgeous palace."
"fiend angelical": seems absurd, but it's about major events pulling Juliet in different directions: old hatred vs. true love. The question is how appropriate those oxymora are. Juliet is a living oxymoron.
- That speech is so filled with clichéd oxymora that it comes off as irony. In the tirade, there is not one allusion to Tybalt. If it had been a standalone poem, it would've seemed like the problem stood with the loved man himself, and possibly an infidelity.
- The language of true love, logically, should only be positive, but the oxymoron marries positive and negative. You'd expect it to weaken her love, that mixing hatred in with it would weaken it. Instead, those oxymora increase her love: it is made much stronger.
- This great tirade shows Juliet madly in love with Romeo. The negative feelings that should diminish passion actually make it stronger, more intense.
The link between oxymoron and mimetic desire
- mimetic desire: we desire the same object as our model. The law of mimetic desire is one of universal frustration. Even when the object is safely possessed, because then it is no longer desired. Only inaccessible objects are forever desired.
- so if true loves never does run smooth, it's because it is not true love, but mimetic desire that won't confess to being precisely that. It is simply that the model is too big to be overcome, and thus the object of desire is forever out of reach.
- mimetic addicts cannot keep loving someone who reacts positively, and cannot stay indifferent when faced with indifference. (Just like the Dark Lady keeps the Poet at bay.) Intense love is never rewarded, it needs to be married with intense resentment, and in comes the oxymoron.
- thanks to the blood feud, Shakespeare can bring in the right conjunction of events: the oxymoron is brought back in surreptitiously, not on account of a real crime since Romeo did his best not to have to do it. The murder is just an excuse: so that the love might be intense enough, it needed contrariety. The darker feelings coming from the blood feud were projected (transference!) on the love, adding spice to it.
- Shakespeare needs mimetic defiance but can't give Juliet the usual reason, since true love should not know cruel mimetic tricks (but then that is rather boring). Consequently he had to resort to contraband violence: Tybalt's death stands in for the infidelity Romeo cannot commit, so that there is intense jealousy without tainting true love.
- the nurse is the only other character on stage during Juliet's tirade. She urges Juliet to no longer love Romeo, because as a simple woman she does not understand the logic of the oxymoron. The nurse insulting Romeo sends Juliet into a rage (in the same manner as Friar Laurence's words about Rosalynd had Romeo).
- the oxymoric style testifies of the mutual contamination of the love affair. Juliet's love is deepened by hate. While the interpenetration of the blood feud and the love affair seems accidental, it is in fact the playwright's decision.
- the star-crossed lovers are just as mimetic as any other; for proof, look at Rosalynd. But Shakespeare wanted them to pass the test of true love, and consequently used outside influences to inject the necessary conflict to their love.
- The way love and hate mingle is paralleled in Friar Laurence's first medicinal speech, with the pharmakon, both poison and remedy, a speech that figures for Romeo and Juliet in its entirety. Friar Laurence is, in fact, a humorous symbol of Shakespeare himself, since he tries to control everything.