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The Face of Beauty: Love at first sight
and
the deaths of Romeo and Juliet
The ladies and gentlemen of Verona,
“From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.”
Romeo and Juliet, Prologue
And act like a lot of pre-pubescent spoiled brats. Greed, envy, jealousy, and down-right annoyingly emotional rise out of these folks simply to pass the time of day. And the lead player, Romeo? This guy who is supposed to be the great romantic knight, well, he is the most adolescent of the bunch. In Act III he criticizes himself about just this fact, “O! I am fortune’s fool!” That he is. He bounces from one extreme emotional state to the other with very little provocation, other than seeing yet another pretty face or an insult. He is ready to marry the former and kill over the latter. Lack of emotional control obviously runs in the family, thus the feud between the Montague and the Capulet. Lack of control and sense are the main subjects in this famous play where romance only plays a minor role in the drama. Actually, this play is like a traffic accident, it is bloody, tragic, fatality from which you can’t look away.
The only person that is not totally self-centered, overly emotional and annoyingly condescending is Rosaline, the niece of the Capulet. Rosaline holds herself off from Romeo’s excessive mooning and distance admiration. Romeo reports Rosaline’s sensibleness to his adolescent friend, Benvolio, in Act I, scene 1.
“. .
. . she'll not be hit
With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit;
And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,
From love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd.
She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,”
A young woman that is controlled and mature, so boring, so dull that
she doesn’t even appear in the play, she is only discussed as an object. “O,
she is rich in beauty, only poor,
That when she dies with beauty dies her store.” Chides
Romeo. She will die unspoiled virgin, bummer! This comment points to a
relatively disconcerting thing about the play, the way women are treated. They
are degraded and objectified. Rosaline’s character benefits greatly by not
getting involved with these egoistical, self-centered children. Women in the
play are simply objects of amusement and entertainment for the men, maybe pets
would be a better description. You can love a dog, fight with a dog, tease a
dog and it will always be loyal, no matter how stupid you act toward it. As
long as you feed it and pet it, that dog will love you as a superior being.
Women and pets are put on about equal level in the play.
In Act II, scene 4, the way Mercutio and Romeo treat the Nurse is just appalling. Yes, I understand that Nurse is one of the only sources of comic relief in this dark play, but still what jerks Mercutio and Romeo are. What would any woman find interesting in these silly boys? Maybe what is enduring about Shakespeare is that he even points this jerkiness out, The Nurse says this to tease Juliet, in Act II, scene 5.
“. .
. though his
face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels
all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body,
though they be not to be talked on, yet they are
past compare: he is not the flower of courtesy,
but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb.”
Romeo is just another pretty face! That is the first part of her evaluation, but she does complain about Romeo’s childishness. He is a bad boy that was rude and crude with Nurse, still, it made her giggle, so go ahead and marry him. Nurse sees him as not so bad that he is uncontrollable though, the “gentle as a lamb” comment shows her thoughts. A good woman can control a sufficiently bad boy. Juliet too seems to like the bad boys as does her Nurse. Paris, is a respectable handsome good guy, but Juliet totally ignores him. So a pretty face isn’t enough for Juliet. Juliet does like the controllable aspects of Romeo. Juliet actually ends up controlling both Romeo’s and Paris’s life and death. Juliet makes her decisions on their lives by her own and Nurse’s first impressions. Death by Pretty Face.
First impressions, the superficial appearance are everything in this play. Instant gratification is a key driver here. There isn’t enough time for anything else. All the action of this play happens in less than a week. Give the audience what it wants now! Unrequited love, followed by requited love and death in just three hours. Quite a feat! No time for thought or thoughtfulness, just me, me, me, and damn the consequences and other people’s feelings. Selfish thoughtlessness is the main driver in this play. Every character has the same problem, except for wise Rosaline.
Everyone, except Rosaline, is turned by a pretty face. The Nurse was swayed as already shown. The unrequited lovesickness of Romeo for Rosaline is cured simply by him seeing another prettier face, Juliet’s. So much for love’s loyalty. Shakespeare never wrote a play with that title, boring! Paris too, doesn’t take any time to get to know Juliet as a person. Her pretty face was enough for him. Lord Capulet’s party, the Mask, is such a success! It was to be a meat market for the girls to meet the boy of their dreams and so it did. Juliet, well, she too falls for Romeo’s face, immediately. That is so much more satisfying as response for Romeo than Rosaline’s. It has to be purely his pretty face, because Juliet doesn’t even know Romeo’s name and still she is in love. Love at first sight true, but did she need glasses? For all of them, it was love at first site, but the site of a gun, because, all of these superficial lovers end up dead. No meeting of the minds here, there is barely enough time for the meeting of the bodies, just that one night between Romeo and Juliet. No meetings of any kind for Paris except Juliet dead. Even death is superficial with these self-centered people. Juliet dies twice. Her family has to mourner her first death, a superficial, false death, and then, after they find her dead in her tomb, they realize the deceit of her first death, feel hurt by that and mourn her all over again. First impressions are clearly false and dangerous. It is one of the moral lessons of the play.
Another lesson of the play is “Beware of Juliet!” She is directly responsible for her own and Romeo’s and Paris’s deaths. Her decisions direct the action of the play. Strangely, in this male ego, machismo play with sword fighting, street fights, male bragging and lies, it is Juliet who controls the outcome of her loved ones lives and emotions. It is Juliet’s words that guide us down the tragic path of the play.
At the balcony scene, she tells Romeo to go, he goes. She tells him to comeback, he comes back. She tells him to stay, he stays. In this case, Romeo is the pet dog and Juliet the master. You have doubts? At the end of the balcony scene Juliet tells Romeo clearly about his future.
“Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.
If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
By one that I'll procure to come to thee,”
It is a wedding, otherwise, buzz off fella! It is that or nothing and it has to be right away. Like the love-sick, dazed puppy Romeo is, he agrees and it kills him. He also becomes a murderer along the way. He kills Paris for no real reason, other than Juliet’s superficial death. Requited love did them all a whole lot of good. Rosaline was the best woman in Romeo’s life. She said, “No way!” It saved her life.
To further verify Juliet’s dominance in the action of the play, she first wants to kill herself because she hasn’t gotten her way. She married Romeo behind the backs of her parents and then won’t tell them about it. When her father fixes up a marriage for her with Paris, instead of facing her deceit, she wants to take the easy way out and kill herself! A childish decision certainly, which the stupid priest attempts to make better, but like religion in general, he just makes things worse. He suggests to compound her lies, fake her death and then run off with Romeo, and she agrees! Turn against her family, hurt all the people have loved and cared for her, her entire life, for some bad boy that had just killed her cousin Tybalt! What a Siren! What a Harpy! Her own selfish desire is all that she acts upon. Of course, theses deceits of Juliet get punished in Romeo’s and Paris’s deaths. Furthermore, she causes her family so much more grief when they discover she lied to them over and over. You can easily view Juliet as the most self-centered, thoughtless, spoiled brat in the world. She is Helen of Troy. The face that launched a thousand ships, starting a wars that killed thousands on those ships. So many died for those pretty faces, that ultimate, eternal Beauty. Beauty, that “shadow of perfection” as Shakespeare stated in “Two Gentlemen from Verona.”
What is it that makes Beauty so captivating? What is it that makes true love so toxic? What is that Siren’s song being sung by this pretty face of Juliet? Odysseus wanted to know the very same thing. Why would sailors follow a Siren’s song to their deaths? Odysseus suffered great agonies for his discovery. So did Romeo and Paris, so do we all. Where does that beautiful visage of true love come from? What is its origin in our minds? Where did that unconscious Jungian archetype generate from? What is that Pretty Face to generate love at first sight?
Of course it has to be the very first face we see when we open our eyes for the very first time. It is every child’s ultimate source of security and love. It has to be your Mother’s face. It has to be. It is the expressions on your mom’s face that tells you of danger and caution, of approval and acceptance, of support and well being, in the non-verbal world of a baby. Hugs are important too. Mom hugs you first. She hugs you and looks down. And how do you respond? You look with every positive emotion in your small baby brain, directed toward the only other person you know in the entire universe. Mom! Certainly, most certainly you would die to save your Mom, because you know she would. Oedipus fell for his mother because that very face was his first image of the secure loving universe.
Everyone loves their mother. Too glibly Freudian for you? Find another explanation for love at first sight! Mom’s face represents unconditional positive regard! Ultimate universal love, what else could it be? The Ideal woman is the Ideal Mother, who loves you no matter how bad or misbehaved you are. And why wouldn’t you want that all to yourself?
Children are greedy and self-centered. Their perceptions of the world are so limited. Their boundaries of movement so narrow. Mom is their link to survival. Being greedy is an imperative as a child. You only learn sharing later in life. And then only because Mom insists! The origins of male insecurity, possessiveness and jealousy are relatively clear now. They want their Mommy! Juliet’s face is that shadow of perfection, the perfect face, the face of the Ideal woman, Mom!
THE END
Just to be perfectly clear!
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