The Sword of Peace

"BENVOLIO: Part, fools! Put up your swords; you know not what you do " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act I, Scene I), cries the young sage Benvolio, trying to separate a handful of the Capulets' servants who, mimicking their masters and eager to earn their good will, have charged, like a pack of iron-teethed hounds, another handful, of the Montagues' ones. So much dirt has been stirred in the street, that one cannot see one's own feet, and the brawlers' shoutings are so loud as to affect one's hearing for a month. The truth is no sparks jump from their lethal blades, nor does any blood gush from their wounds. Maybe here and there some button loosely sewn falls off or some handcuff stitch ends up torn. The newly-arrived does not actually fear anyone may get as much as a scratch. But he knows that this "rivalry" game can turn in no time, before one can cry "fire", into a life-and-death fight between their masters, the true sword-happy rascals who have a history of corpses behind them, who have slain the cream of the city youths in the name of a vendetta whose origin has been all but forgotten, although it still terrifies the other burgh-people's nights. So Benvolio draws his sword to scare the troublemakers away. At that very moment, Tybalt happens to pass by, a nephew of the foe-family, an adolescent whose mind does not transcend the blade of his sword, with boiling blood, devoured by who-knows-what physiological nightmares that have marked his bony cheeks with swelling ulcerations, one who hates all living things, all beauty, and all freedom, the most hideous of them all. Tybalt mistakes his honour for the only thing he has learned abroad: the right of the faster and mightier to kill anyone for anything, anywhere, at any time. Simple-minded, as usual, he hastens to spit out his coarseness, grinds a perfunctory question between his teeth, then threatens: "TYBALT: What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death " ( ibidem ). Benvolio is unable to comprehend angry men such as Tybalt. As any decent human being, he thinks it is everybody's duty to intervene in the name of peace. Hence, he calls on his unexpected rival to join him in trying to separate the howling packs: "BENVOLIO: I do but keep the peace: put up thy sword, or manage it to part these men with me " ( ibidem ). His opponent growls, insensitive to reason. He is obsessed with accusing everybody else; as all the likes of him, he needs to find someone to blame, so he may warm up his blade in that someone's belly. Born to be the advocate of death, only his hot-headedness and disregard for discipline have prevented him from becoming a legal whip. We know only too well, from many other plays, the weathercock-type who pretends not to hear the arguments of common sense and the voice of truth, who relentlessly accuses his fellow-men of being liars and sons of liars, of being immoral, decomposed, parasitical, implying that he himself is the son of justice and the only one who deserves to enjoy the light of day. Unless one complies with his command, he is always ready to enforce it with his fists. Hence, Tybalt says: "TYBALT: What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word. " ( ibidem ). How simple and beastly is the mechanism of his thinking: "Reality does not suit me? I call it a lie and turn it upside down!" Reality, however, means people. "Well - claim the delirious Tybalts -, then we skin it off and turn it inside out as it suits us."

How nice it would be if the others at least, the victims, were upright men. But this does not happen in the world Shakespeare guides us into. The same Benvolio, the peace-maker, the just and honest Benvolio dances according to a tune we know only too well; it is the same tune Polonius, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern went by when they imitated art; it is the theme of the spy employed by the mightiest. Romeo is sad, his father - worried. "BENVOLIO: My noble uncle, do you know the cause? " ( ibidem ) inquires the nephew. The other waves his hand vaguely, as if saying: "There are so many causes. These youngsters." Benvolio urges him with a question, almost as skillfully as a expert: "BENVOLIO: Have you importuned him by any means? " ( ibidem ). He has. How could he not? He has tried every possible way. Montague knows how to raise his son. But Romeo is very much to be blamed, in his father's eyes (just like Hamlet). His father accuses him of not trusting any other counsellor, except himself, that he is " so secret and so close " ( ibidem ). Worse even, Romeo is frightened. How could he not be? He lives in a world of hatred. To whom is he going to unburden his soul if his own father is one of the two blood-thirsty tyrants of the world he lives in, the head of a faction determined to win irrespective of the city's fate and life. Benvolio cannot forget that his own material status depends on this faction head. Upon seeing his cousin approach, he pleads: "BENVOLIO: See, where he comes: so please you, step aside; I'll know his grievance, or be much denied " ( ibidem ). How could the playwright not analyze this dychotomic-antonymical behaviour, if he stumbles against it everywhere?

Even the most delicate feelings become a doublefold chaos in Romeo's own words: "ROMEO: [.] Here's much to do with hate, but more with love. Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh? - BENVOLIO: No, coz, I rather weep. [.] - ROMEO: Why, such is love's transgression. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest with more of thine: this love that thou hast shown doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet. " ( ibidem ). Any comment is superfluous. All we want to stress is the essential definition offered here: one is and is not - this is love. Because he is in love, Romeo reaches this conclusion: "ROMEO: .I have lost myself; I am not here; this is not Romeo, he's some other where " ( ibidem ). No wonder, then, that he is not himself, when love is not love and his beloved is not herself: "ROMEO: [.] .she is rich in beauty, only poor. " ( ibidem ).

When he becomes aware of the above-mentioned contradictions, Romeo suffers, he is confused. Benvolio, who is more experienced, suggests that contradiction may itself be used, as a means, to overcome suffering. They are both right, because the feelings of each are in accordance with his specific nature. So this is Benvolio's solution: "ROMEO: [.] Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning. " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act I, Scene II). He thus presents the young dreamer in love with a motivation that should suffice him for trying to redirect his love towards someone else. The jolly gang of Romeo's friends and relatives try their fortune blindly. They rush head on towards the Capulets' masked ball, where Romeo is about to meet his lady Juliet.

She is the first to grasp the burden of their parents' politics. After the ball, she hurriedly dispatches her nurse to find out the identity of the handsome stranger. When the old woman exits, Juliet words without respite the genuine abyss that her destiny has placed before her: "JULIET: Go ask his name if he be married. My grave is like to be my wedding bed " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act I, Scene V). She has, however, misunderstood the disaster secretly awaiting her, that her nurse's answer throws the becoming light upon: " Nurse : His name is Romeo, and a Montague; the only son of your great enemy. - JULIET: My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed enemy " ( ibidem ).

The Prologue of Act II defines the situation as clearly as daylight: "CHORUS: Now Romeo is beloved and loves again [.] . Being held a foe, he may not have access to breathe such vows as lovers use to swear " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act II, Prologue).

Juliet torments herself in trying to solve the situation, to find a way for their pursuit of happiness, and resorts to her female, wide-awake practical spirit when analyzing the hopeless confusion in which the two of them have got entangled. She finally foresees a loop hole, but it is an impossible deadlock: "JULIET: O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act II, Scene II). Whatever he may do, Romeo will never be recognized by society except as his parents' son. Moreover, he is not the man who would deny an older love and former duties for the sake of others more recent; it is like trying to determine a coin to give up its head for the sake of its tail, or the other way round, and still remain a coin. Such a dychotomic-antonymical situation goes beyond the classical concept of conflict (which can be appeased), into the realm of logical impossibilities that are not, however, less typically human or less frequent sources of tragedies known well enough to mankind, even if faded into anonymity. We refer here to the love stories between a man and a woman belonging to two different worlds (opposed socially, economically, culturally, ethnically, or religiously), or the status of their children - that hopeless cancer of the morals of older times, that persist in the obsolete ways of the modern ones and have been so honestly and impartially fought against by the Romanian philosopher of culture P.P. Negulescu. Striving to escape from this trap is tantamount to stepping out of life itself. Even Juliet, who complains about the furnace of this feud, in which her soul burns alive, has manifestations and feelings shaped according to the same pattern: "JULIET: [.] .I should kill thee with much cherishing. " ( ibidem ). Oscar Wilde took over and developed such outbursts in the Ballad of Reading Gaol .

Finally, to make us well aware that this particular play does not submit to our attention the individual dychotomic-antonymical thinking, its behavioural patterns, and the situations it engenders, but a whole dychotomic-antonymical view of the world, Laurence, the hermit, meditates upon life in this sense: "FRIAR LAURENCE: [.] The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb; what is her burying grave that is her womb. [.] For nought so vile that on the earth doth live but to the earth some special good doth give, nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; and vice sometimes by action dignified. Within the infant rind of this small flower poison hath residence and medicine power. For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act II, Scene III). He adds other variations on the same theme on the occasion of the young couple's wedding: "FRIAR LAURENCE: These violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness and in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; too swift arrives as tardy as too slow " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act II, Scene VI). From his definition we may infer not only the outlook of a naturalist and observer (this is the most well-balanced character in all of Shakespeare's plays), but also the natural circumstances in which the flower of Romeo and Juliet's love is about to grow.

Juliet herself asks to hear a lie from the nurse she has dispatched as a messenger to Romeo, for fear the old woman might lie anyway, since her parents and the manners of the "highlife" she has been raised in have accustomed her to concealing the truth: "JULIET: Now, good sweet nurse. O Lord, why look'st thou sad? Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily; if good, thou shamest the music of sweet news by playing it to me with so sour a face " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act II, Scene V).

Even Tybalt, the ruffian, when trying to show a sense of humour, discovers his own capacity of talking along the same lines: "TYBALT: Romeo, the hate I bear thee can afford no better term than this - thou art a villain " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act III, Scene I). He does not even realize where he stands or how appropriately he pinpoints the general atmosphere of the events. Romeo is the one who stresses their tragicality: "ROMEO: [.] .my reputation stain'd with Tybalt's slander - Tybalt, that an hour hath been my kinsman! " ( ibidem ). Tybalt's death gives way, rolling out through his gracious cousin's lips, to an avalanche of structures similar to the ones we seek: "JULIET: O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, a damned saint, an honourable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell, when thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend in moral paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter so fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace! " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act III, Scene II). But her anger (her angry love) dissipates, so she exclaims: "JULIET: [.] But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed. " ( ibidem ).

Even the way Romeo faces the imminent disaster is considered to be a double-faced behaviour. Friar Laurence treats him harshly, in order to prevent a worse wrong-doing: "FRIAR LAURENCE: Hold thy desperate hand. Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art. Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote the unreasonable fury of a beast. Unseemly woman in a seeming man! Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! Thou hast amazed me. " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act III, Scene III).

Juliet dreams of a fairy-tale wedding. Her parents dream, too, of a fairy-tale wedding and almost push their daughter, without her or themselves being aware, into bigamy. The key-image of the play is supplied by Capulet, who refers to the precise time of night when he talks to Paris about the wedding: "CAPULET: [.] .it is so very very late, that we may call it early. " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act III, Scene IV). His words express the essence of his daughter's marital status, of the link (or rupture) between the two opposing families, of the life and death of the young couple, of all the existences to be found in the tragedy. When talking to her mother, Juliet sets straight all these meanings: "JULIET: [.] .I will not marry yet. " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act III, Scene V), although she is actually married, body and soul. While her father speaks the words above, the two young lovers express the very same thing: "JULIET: Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: it was the nightingale, and not the lark. " ( ibidem ); then: "JULIET: It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away! It is the lark that sings so out of tune. " ( ibidem ). Not even their love manages to sprout from the midst of so much deadly hatred, so it may be said that its time has not yet come. The couple breathe the very air of contradiction: "JULIET: O, now be gone; more light and light it grows. - ROMEO: More light and light; more dark and dark our woes! " ( ibidem ). They have already begun to feel like some living dead; Friar Laurence, deeply moved, grieves over Juliet's hypostasis: "FRIAR LAURENCE: Poor living corpse, closed in a dead man's tomb! " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act V, Scene II). Soon, after having slain Paris , Romeo utters similar statements about himself: "ROMEO [.] Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd " ( Romeo and Juliet - Act V, Scene III).

Friar Laurence is the one who levels antonymical dychotomy up to the essence of the structure of life; he is the one again who speaks on behalf of humanity, like an ancient chorus, before the last judgment: "FRIAR LAURENCE: [.] And here I stand, both to impeach and purge myself condemned and myself excused " ( ibidem ). He thus brings before the judgment of culture the society of passionate rivalries whose implied witness he has been.

The love between Romeo and Juliet brings the hatred and bloodsheds to an end. It makes the swords remain in their sheaths, the invectives stick to the lips, it calls for fraternization over the corpses of so many innocent relatives, for the denial of the past torn by vendettas, for the ordaining of universal friendship. The two lovers can see the dazzling light of love in the depths of their souls, but it cannot actually hide out the numberless worthy youths, relatives and friends of both of them, lying in pools of blood; they can also hear their fathers utter tremendous fighting cries, their mothers and aunts mourn bitterly, the servants cursing their fates. Romeo and Juliet's love is a monument because it goes hand in hand with their desire of peace, expressing the secret hope of all the poor bastards drawn into those fierce confrontations; the very beings of Romeo and Juliet turn into pawns of the peace to come. We readers admire the two shakespearean characters precisely for the ideal they represent.



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