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Jennifer Connolly

ENG 581

Dr. Carl Springer

2 May 2014

The “Comedy” of Romeo and Juliet? Hardly.

Does comedy have a place in the serious? Can humor ever be appropriate in academic

discourse? Questions of rhetorical strategy are never far from the surface when humor is a component

being analyzed. While the origins of comedy as a genre can be traced back to ancient Greece and the

works of Aristophanes and Menander, and we can follow its progression through literary history, falling

in and out of fashion over the course of time, the use of comedy in tragic works is seemingly a largely

unexplored territory.

William Shakespeare, arguably one of the most prolific writers who ever lived, often integrated

humorous wordplay and comic elements into his works, even the most serious ones. Critics, particularly

in the early 1700s, have “lamented Shakespeare’s lack of taste in inserting comedy in his tragedies”

(Nason 28). While admiring the comic passages, they felt them misplaced in serious works – distasteful.

One of Shakespeare’s earliest tragedies, Romeo and Juliet was “an experiment in more ways

than one” (Kermode 1057). Dated around 1595, most of Shakespeare’s prior works were historical in

nature while this one hinged on tragic romance. Most noticeable are the “flexibility and fullness” he

adds to enhance the rather sparse original theme. The main characters are not royalty, just wealthy,

another experimental and possibly risky move in a time where tragic heroes were typically of royal

blood. And the mention of Fate as a possible “player” in the tragic sequence was “out of such prolixity”

as Benvolio might state – not at all the norm for an Elizabethan audience. In the same manner as The

Winter’s Tale and As You Like It the playwright works mainly from one pre-existing text, transforming it

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into the play that is still regarded as one of the essential works of Shakespeare and presented as

standard curricula in secondary schools the world over.

To more closely examine how comedy and humor operate within the context of such a tragic

(even if tragic by circumstance) play, perhaps a quick review of the work’s background and general story

is in order. As previously mentioned, Shakespeare did not conceive the storyline of Romeo and Juliet,

basing it rather on a 3,000 line poem titled the Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke

(published 1562) (Kermode 1055). While Brooke’s tale is laden with morality, Shakespeare enlivens it,

transforming the story into the masterpiece it remains today. Perhaps as the moral poem is brought to

life in its theatrical version, humor might have a place after all.

With the well-known movie adaptation by Franco Zeffirelli in 1968, the drastically re-visioned,

modernized movie of 1996 directed by Baz Luhrman, and even a new version released earlier this year,

Romeo and Juliet continues to wow audiences and entertain the masses. A quick synopsis: At the start

of the play, Romeo, of the house of Montague, is in “love” with some girl (Rosaline) who does not return

his affection. Thus, he is moody and depressed. By accompanying his friend/cousin Benvolio in a gate-

crashing excursion, he ends up at a party held by the Capulets, a rival house who has had an ongoing

feud with the Montagues for longer than anyone can remember. At the party, he meets and instantly

falls in love with Juliet, who turns out to be the only daughter of his great enemy. When the party is

over, Romeo hides out, secretly spies on Juliet at her balcony window, and the two decide to get

married. A secret wedding plan is concocted and carried out thanks to the help of Juliet’s faithful Nurse

and Friar Laurence, who thinks the match will help to end the family feud. Before the marriage can be

consummated, Romeo ends up in a street brawl where he kills Tybalt (Juliet’s cousin) in revenge for

Tybalt’s murder of Romeo’s friend, Mercutio. For this terrible crime, Romeo is banished from town

(Verona) and may never return. Although devastated by this terrible “luck,” the couple spends the night

together, and then Romeo leaves town, hoping the Friar can eventually work things out. To complicate

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matters, Juliet’s father (unaware that his daughter has secretly married) promises her hand to another

young man, Count Paris, and plans the wedding to be practically immediate – to cheer everyone up from

the sadness of losing Tybalt. Because she refuses to betray her new husband by marrying another,

Juliet, with help from the Friar, attempts to carry out a complicated plan in which she drinks a sleeping

draught, appears dead to her family and is buried in the family tomb. Due to unlucky circumstances,

Romeo doesn’t receive any news of the risky plan and hears “through the grapevine” that Juliet is dead.

Vowing to never be without his love, he buys a poison and goes to her tomb to kill himself. In the dark

and confusing graveyard, Romeo, having no regard at this point for his own life, kills Paris, enters the

tomb, and drinks the fatal poison. The Friar arrives too late, Romeo already being dead, and tries to get

Juliet to run away with him, but she refuses, he “chickens out,” and ultimately, she stabs herself with a

dagger and dies (this time for real). The result of all this chaos? The Montagues and Capulets are

distraught over the loss of their children and finally see what a foolish thing it is to feud with one

another. It’s tragic.

Was this tragedy simply caused by an over-exaggeration of teenage emotion? Was it the price

to be paid for being “star-crossed” to begin with? Regardless, it is a serious matter – only resolved with

the suicide of two young lovers bringing about the stark realization that fighting doesn’t really solve

anything. So, how is humor even part of something so dire? Can comedy have a place in a work of such

gravity? Shakespeare’s mastery of language gives the reader/audience a cathartic experience associated

with tragic ends, but tempers it with sprinklings of humor throughout – the same kind of humor we

need in everyday life to maintain balance and perhaps sanity in times of great stress or even sadness.

Arthur Huntington Nason, in his piece “Shakespeare’s Use of Comedy in Tragedy,” notes that in

the eight tragedies of Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear,

Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus) passages comic in nature are present, and he proceeds

to categorize examples by those “that in effect are comic,” that because they contrast too harshly with

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the tragic setting are actually “pathetic,” and that ease tensions adding to the tragedy that follows (30).

While these categories are seemingly useful for classifying examples of humor in the eight tragedies

overall, a more specific look at Romeo and Juliet lends itself to a different set of categories. Careful

examination of the types of jest employed by Shakespeare in the work at hand, leads to the following

divisions (although there is certainly bound to be some overlap): bawdy humor, wordplay humor,

derisive humor, and comic relief.

Bawdy Humor

“It's only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can

get tenderness.” – Lawrence Durrell

Bawdy, when applied to language is defined as “of, pertaining to, or befitting a bawd; lewd,

obscene, unchaste” 1, and Shakespeare’s groundling audience would both relate and find humor in the

bawdy statements woven into practically all of his stage works, history, comedy, and tragedy alike.

From the start of the play, the dialogue between characters incorporates bawdy humor. The opening

scene finds Samson and Gregory, men of the house of Capulet, making bawdy jests.

Samson. ‘Tis true, and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to

the wall; therefore I will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his

maids to the wall.

Gregory. The quarrel is between our masters, and us their men.

Samson. ‘Tis all one; I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the men, I will

be civil with the maids; I will cut off their heads.

Gregory. The heads of the maids?

Samson. Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads, take it in what sense thou

wilt.

1 Oxford English Dictionary online definition

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Gregory. They must take it [in] sense that feel it.

Samson. Me they shall feel while I am able to stand, and ‘tis known I am a pretty piece

of flesh.

(I.i. 15-29)

Although the play is a tragedy and the prologue has just forewarned the audience of the doomed fate of

the play’s heroes, scene one finds minor characters jesting obscenely about sexual encounters. The

obscene joke (smut) is a function of exposure (according to Freud2), to expose those at whose expense

the joke was uttered (115). Here the predominantly white, male audience can laugh at the cavalier way

these two “rogues” joke about what they will do to Montague women through the double entendre of

Samson. From a critical perspective, this really isn’t funny, but as glib conversation that precedes an all-

out brawl between the two feuding families, it serves a comic purpose.

In scene three of the same act, wherein Lady Capulet asks Juliet what she thinks of the

handsome Paris, sexual/fertility humor is evoked with her comment, “So shall you share all that he doth

possess, / By having him, making yourself no less” and the Nurse adds, “No less! nay, bigger: women

grow by men” (I. iii. 93-95). Again, the Nurse delivers suggestive commentary when she tells Juliet the

plans are in place for a secret wedding to Romeo as she mentions the ladder he needs to climb up to

Juliet’s room.

Hie you to church, I must another way,

To fetch a ladder, by the which your love

Must climb a bird’s nest soon when it is dark.

I am the drudge, and toil in your delight;

But you must bear the burthen soon at night.

2 Although Freud’s work does not deal primarily with jokes in literary works, a look at “jokes” and humor from a psychological perspective helps in categorizing the comic moments and considering what constitutes humor in the human mind – the WHY we find humor in certain situations or word choices.

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(II. v. 72-76)

While this example doesn’t produce laugh-out-loud funniness, it brings a lighthearted humor at the

suggestion of the highly anticipated (and “legitimate” – they will first be married) sex between the

young lovers.

Interestingly, these bawdy jests have been, at times, excised from stage productions of the play.

In the mid-1700s, David Garrick managed Drury Lane3 and prepared Romeo and Juliet for a stage revival.

“From 1748 to 1776 in the two major London theaters alone over 329 performances of the play

occurred” (Stone 191). But times, it seemed had changed a bit since the debut of Shakespeare’s original

version of the play, and with them sensibilities. Many of the comic nuances are left out in Garrick’s

version; “[d]ecorum dictated not only the excision of bawdry but of certain references unpleasant to the

eighteenth-century sensitivity as well” (201). Bodily function mentions were reduced as they were

uncouth, and many sections of servant “quibbling” were replaced with musical numbers, choreography,

and an extended scene of the Capulet’s ball, making it a masquerade all around (201). While modern

audiences tolerate well the re-inclusion of the bawdry lines and sexual innuendo, it is worthwhile to

note that the extension of the dance scenes remains even in the movie versions of the twentieth

century.

Wordplay/Punning Humor

“There is no kind of false Wit which has been so recommended by the Practice of all Ages, as that

which consists in a Jingle of Words, and is comprehended under the general Name of Punning. It is

indeed impossible to kill a Weed, which the Soil has a natural Disposition to produce. The seeds of

Punning are in the Minds of all Men, and tho' they may be subdued by Reason, Reflection, and good

Sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest Genius, that is not broken and cultivated by 3 “Since 1663 the Theatre Royal Drury Lane has provided entertainment for the masses and has been visited by every monarch since the Restoration. The theatre has not one, but two, royal boxes and it was here that the public first heard both the National Anthem and Rule Britannia. Previous buildings were managed by the great actor David Garrick and the famous playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and the current, fourth, building was opened in 1812” (“Theatre Royal, Drury Lane”).

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the Rules of Art. Imitation is natural to us, and when it does not raise the Mind to Poetry, Painting,

Musick, or other more noble Arts, it often breaks out in Punns and Quibbles.” – Joseph Addison

It is by no means a stretch to recognize Shakespeare’s mastery of the English language and also

his innovation in creation of new words and ways of expression. One of his particular talents, punning

and wordplay, adds a bit of semantic humor to any and arguably all of his works, genre notwithstanding.

Why, exactly, this kind of “joke” entertains us regardless of the “contempt with which [it is] regarded”

(Freud 50), perhaps lies in the mental challenge of simply “getting it.” To understand and appreciate the

wordplay, the audience must make connections in the way vocabulary is used and toyed with. Even

Shakespeare’s original audiences, of whom many could not read or write beyond a rudimentary level (if

at all), loved the clever word use and the unravelling of the pun. Notably in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo

and his young friends provide a good amount of playful banter in their interactions with one another.

Once Romeo has shaken off his disappointment at not capturing Rosaline’s attention (by, of

course, instantly falling in love with Juliet), he meets up with his best friends, Mercutio and Benvolio,

again.

Mercutio. Signior Romeo, bon jour! there’s a French salutation to your French slop.

You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

Romeo. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?

Mercutio. The slip, sir, the slip, can you not conceive?

Romeo. Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great, and in such a case as mine a

man may strain courtesy.

Mercutio. That’s as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the

hams.

Romeo. Meaning to cur’sy.

Mercutio. Thou hast most kindly hit it.

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Romeo. A most courteous exposition.

Mercutio. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.

Romeo. Pink for flower.

Mercutio. Right.

Romeo. Why then is my pump well flower’d.

Mercutio. Sure wit! Follow me this jest now, till thou hast worn out thy pump, that

when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain, after the wearing, soly singular.

Romeo. O single-sol’d jest, soly singular for the singleness!

(II. iv. 43-66)

The quick-witted banter continues through the next 40 lines as well, and it pleases a clever audience in

its contest kind of format. Everyone wants the last word, each character wants to have the next smart

remark, and the wordplay through both pun and word/sound repetition keeps each on his toes. By the

end of the friendly competition, Mercutio is quite sure that Romeo is no longer upset and has returned

to a good humor. Particularly in the “single-sol’d” and “soly singular” lines, the “joke” is based on

alliteration and repetition, both elements that create music in language and enliven writing (when used

with reason). What a remarkable use of humor itself.

Are these scenes too frivolous for use in a true tragedy? Time and context can certainly dictate

appropriateness. Looking again at Garrick’s eighteenth century production, punning scenes and lines

“amongst Mercutio, Benvolio, and Romeo are cut” (Stone 200). Sometimes wordplay exists on the edge

of propriety and “good taste,” challenging the political correctness of the time. Had Shakespeare truly

been bound by these rules, “the running times of some of his best plays would be considerably

shortened” (Tatum 63) and the enjoyment of wordplay would be missed – even within the tragedy.

It is to be noticed that light-hearted, word based humor is found mostly in the beginning acts of

the play and as the situation becomes increasingly dire, the comedy in wordplay dwindles to some

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examples relegated to the lower level characters in comic relief situations (as will be noted later).

Whether this is a function of the complexity of the plot in later acts or is primarily related to Mercutio’s

exit as a character, its impact can be seen through the playfulness of the dialogue, or rather the lack of it

toward the tragic end.

Derisive/Mocking Humor

“Where wit is a form of criticism or mockery, humor includes an element of self-criticism or self-

mockery; where wit tends to proclaim imperfection, humor wryly acknowledges it; where wit

undresses you, humor goes naked. At its best, humor simultaneously hurts and heals, makes one

larger from a willingness to make oneself less. It has essentially much more breadth than wit, from

being much more universal in appeal and human in effect. If harder to translate or explain, it often

need not be explained or translated at all, revealing itself in a sudden gesture, a happy juxtaposition.

We speak constantly of "the humor of the situation," almost never of the wit; just so, virtually

everything that is farcical or funny derives from humor gone a bit wild.” – Louis Kronenberger

Another kind of humor in Romeo and Juliet unveils itself as derisive humor – humor at

someone’s expense. Said derision happens in two ways: at the expense of others and at the expense of

the joke-teller him/herself. Freud notes in Jokes and the Unconscious that those wishing to “joke” seek

to create intentional humor either “in relation to oneself” or by “making other people comic” through

mimicry, caricature, parody, and the like kinds of degradation (247-249). Shakespeare allows his

characters to employ comedy in the mocking of both characters of lower station and themselves.

When we meet the Nurse in the first act, she rambles on and on mocking both herself and being

humorously scolded about her behavior. In a dialogue that establishes Juliet’s age, the Nurse says, “Ill

lay fourteen of my teeth – / And yet to my teen be it spoken, I have but four” (I. iii. 12-13). This self-

derision continues when she says to Juliet, “An [honor]! Were not I thine only nurse, / I would say thou

has sucked wisdom from thy teat” (I. iii. 67-68) ridiculing her own lack of intelligence. Throughout the

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play, characters including Lord and Lady Capulet as well as Juliet repeatedly tell the Nurse to be quiet,

“Enough of this, I pray thee hold thy peace” (I. iii. 49) and “Peace, you mumbling fool!” (III. v. 173). The

repetition of this reprimand making it border on comedy.

As Shakespeare’s characters poke fun at those whose social class lies below their own, so

Romeo plays with the servant who cannot read the list of party invitees he is searching for.

Servant. God gi’ god-den. I pray, sir, can you read?

Romeo. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.

Servant. Perhaps you have learned it without book.

But I pray, can you read any thing you see?

Romeo. Ay, if I know the letters and the language.

Servant. Ye say honestly, rest you merry!

Romeo. Stay, fellow, I can read.

(I. ii. 57-63)

As Romeo’s wordplay takes advantage of the uneducated servant of Capulet (at the servant’s expense),

the audience finds comic amusement in the servant’s easy resignation that he is being toyed with and

will continue his search to find someone learned. Of course, Romeo stops him from leaving, reads him

the list, and learns of Capulet’s party. Maybe Romeo and Benvolio do “get the last laugh” here by later

showing up at the party uninvited.

Mimicry of others is perhaps most prominent late in the second act when the Nurse shows up to

meet with Romeo concerning secret wedding plans and Mercutio relentlessly and ruthlessly mocks and

ridicules the Nurse. First, he insults her looks “for her fan’s the fairer face” (II. iv. 107), then calls her

names, “A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!” (II. iv. 130), sings an offensive and bawdy song,

An old hare hoar,

And an old hare hoar,

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Is very good meat in Lent;

But a hare that is hoar

Is too much for a score,

When it hoars ere it be spent

(II. iv. 134-139),

and follows by calling her “ancient.” This mockery so infuriates the Nurse that it takes some time for her

to get a hold again of her emotions and return to her original purpose. Her indignation is delightfully

funny, even if the teasing was mean-spirited on Mercutio’s part. Even if it were real life, the situation

would be seen in a darker light; as a part of theatrical entertainment, the audience is allowed this

amusement.

Comic Relief

“The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection

from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose

themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can

do little for him.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The last category, comic relief, is maybe the most out of place in this tragic work (the other

possibility being simply the character of Mercutio). Nason, in his look at Shakespeare’s comic elements

in tragedy, calls this “comic in effect” and declares it “most unseasonable” (31). Happening much later

in the play than many of the aforementioned jests, the primary “offender” here is a scene inserted at

the conclusion of Act four amidst all the “heavy.”

Juliet’s family has just found her “dead.” They, including the Nurse, are in a shocked and un-

consolable state having just buried their kinsman Tybalt and finding their only child dead on none other

than the morning of her wedding (the arranged one to Paris). Here an abrupt shift occurs and Peter,

the Nurse’s man interacts with the musicians. Once again, we have one class – Peter the servant – using

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language play to talk down to and play with those one social class below him – the musicians. He asks

for a song of comfort and when the musicians refuse to play, threatens them. What follows is a clever

wordplay – a sort of contest of wits among them with Peter as judge.

Peter. Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and put up my

iron dagger. Answer me like men:

“When griping griefs the heart doth wound,

[And doeful dumps the mind oppress,]

Then music with her silver sound”—

why “silver sound”? Why “music with her silver sound”? What say you Simon

Catling?

First Musician. Marry, sir because silver hath a sweet sound.

Peter. [Pretty!] What say you, Hugh Rebeck?

Second Musician. I say, “silver sound,” because musicians sound for silver.

Peter. [Pretty] too! What say you, James Soundpost?

Third Musician. Faith, I know not what to say.

Peter. O, I cry you mercy, you are the singer; I will say for you; it is “music with her silver

sound,” because musicians have no gold for sounding:

“Then music with her silver sound

With speedy help doth lend redress.”

(IV. v. 123-143)

While seen by some as a comic relief between the heaviness of Act four and the conclusion and

inevitable “death-fest” in Act five, Nason argues “the jesting does not relieve; it merely jars” (31)

reasoning that perhaps Shakespeare saw it as an entirely “independent interlude.” Knowing that this

non-historical tragedy was the first of its kind for Shakespeare, maybe it was simply an attempt that

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wasn’t quite refined enough to successfully add to the tragic effect yet to come (36). He does use this

type of comedy again in tragedy – consider the gravediggers’ scene in Hamlet – but with smoother

transition in and out of the comic situation. A scene of “low comedy” with no major characters, Peter

and the musicians certainly stand out here as an anomaly.

Characters Prone to Wit and Humor

Examining four uses of comic devices in Romeo and Juliet – bawdy humor, wordplay humor,

derisive humor, and comic relief – by no means changes the tragic theme of the play. Love is not always

predictable, even logical, and hatred can be just as strong an emotion as love, crippling our abilities to

see reason and let go of grudges. Interestingly, many of the instances of comedy situate themselves

around two particular characters, Mercutio and the Nurse. As a mirror to life, this makes sense – some

people have a knack for wit and entertainment, a personality trait central to Mercutio’s character, and

some people are easy to make fun of (and maybe for that very reason) are quick to make fun of

themselves, as is the Nurse.

Because Mercutio “displays dazzling linguistic fireworks,” his character draws reaction from

Shakespearean critics, including John Dryden, who felt the character should not have been killed off so

early in the play (McArthur 35). But for a tragedy, Shakespeare may not have wanted Mercutio’s wit

and wordplay to “steal the show” and detract from the looming death and seriousness of the occasion.

Mercutio’s humor is seen either to reflect the Elizabethan age, a “fragment of life” of the time, or to

“[project] in Mercutio a personality valid in all ages” (36). As a character who is at the top of his game

when punning and able to make fun of others seemingly spontaneously, Mercutio is able to use his

humor until and during his own death scene with Shakespeare writing,

Benvolio. What, art thou hurt?

Mercutio. Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch, marry, ‘tis enough.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Mercutio. No, ‘tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but ‘tis enough,

‘twill serve. Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am

pepper’d I warrant, for this world. A plague a’ both your houses! ‘Zounds, a

dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a

villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!

(III. i. 92-103)

As the jesting wordplay retains a bit of comic humor, lingering beyond Mercutio’s exit from the stage,

tragedy takes center stage when Benvolio returns to announce “O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio is

dead! / That gallant spirit hath aspir’d the clouds, / Which too untimely here did scorn the earth” (III. i.

116-118). Mercutio’s witty and playful spirit is a contrast to the seriousness of the feud that provides

the barrier to Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love. He belongs to a “sordid, trivial, but complacent world

out of which Romeo and Juliet must rise to another sphere of values” (McArthur 43).

Rambling, prating, always the endless, repetitive stories – the Nurse is a character comic in both

her behavior and her speech. Reminding the audience of a meddlesome family member who always has

old stories to tell, sometimes embarrassing ones, the Nurse repeats a conversation (from back when

Juliet was a baby) in which she quotes her own deceased husband ,

“ . . . dost thou fall upon thy face?

Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,

Wilt thou not, Jule?” and by my holidam,

The pretty wretch left crying and said, “Ay.”

(I. iii. 41-44).

Although the Nurse is mildly joking at Juliet’s expense, humor is evoked in this scene by the three times

these almost exact words are repeated. Here, like comedy that appeals to children, “the comic of

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situation operates by means of repetition” (Freud 281) and combines with the exaggeration commonly

found in the retelling of the past by colorful characters.

Superior Relationships and Humor

No matter the type of humor shown, Romeo and Juliet’s comic examples support a superiority

theory. As Freud suggests, humor is found and the joke made often when the one joking is superior in

class, station, or intelligence to the one who is “targeted” in the joke itself (242-243). In the primary

comic relief scene, all of the characters are minor (Peter and the musicians) and although all servants,

Peter’s position in the Capulet household places him above the musicians (from outside) and allows him

to manipulate them through funny wordplay. Another brief scene including wordplay comedy occurs

when Lord Capulet attempts to help his own servants prepare for the impromptu wedding of Juliet and

Paris.

Capulet. Sirrah, fetch drier logs.

Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.

Second Servant. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs,

And never trouble Peter for the matter.

Capulet. Mass, and well said, a merry whoreson, ha!

Thou shalt be loggerhead.

(IV. iv. 16-20)

Before being murdered by Tybalt, Mercutio’s mocking of the Nurse certainly fits his place above her

socially, as does the way the Nurse, in turn, verbally abuses her servant, Peter. Romeo teases the

illiterate servant with party invitations, and both Lord and Lady Capulet repeatedly berate the Nurse for

her continued and unnecessary chatter. The only comic examples not complying to superiority of

station happen in the friendly jests between Samson and Gregory at the play’s opening and between

Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio as they compete to show superior wit and cleverness (still striving to

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“one-up” each other). Shakespeare integrates these comic moments into a serious and romantic play

gracefully (with exception to the aforementioned out of context relief scene), emphasizing how these

situations all mimic the place of comedy in real life, a way to establish superiority of various kinds.

* * * * * *

A look at the textual evidence of Shakespeare’s humor in Romeo and Juliet shows that comedy

or comic elements can indeed exist within a tragedy as they exist in life outside the theatre. Even when

situations are bleak, ornery comments, jokes through wordplay, and jabs at oneself as well as others can

lighten the mood and momentarily relieve tension. To think that tragic theater should be all serious

business would make it a heavy burden to bear. In performance the use of these jests and scenes are

sometimes curtailed so as not to offend a conservative audience, as in the case of Garrick’s eighteenth

century version, and for modern tastes sometimes heightened or exaggerated. The 1996 film William

Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet directed by Baz Luhrman is a prime example. Mercutio’s entertaining

personality becomes wilder with the addition of the costume party, which he attends in drag – sequined

mini-skirt, high-heels, and red lipstick included. Juliet’s Nurse is a sunglass wearing, Mexican nanny who

goes to such lengths to keep Juliet from the wedding-plan news in Act Two, Scene Five that it produces

laughter in the audience. (Incidentally, neither one of these versions included the jarring comic relief

scene from the end of Act Four).

In The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, “Shakespeare was a master of rhetoric not only in the sense

of the textbook, the elaboration of figures appropriate to meaning and mood, but in the wider sense

that he understood the mixture of rhetorical levels, the clash of styles, which a complex theme requires”

(Kermode 1057). The use of humor, even in tragedy, contributes to the realism that Shakespeare brings

about in many of his plays – the realistic character depiction that keeps audiences clamoring for more

even four hundred years later – but hardly makes the general outcome of the star-crossed lovers

anything less than tragic.

Connolly 17

Connolly 18

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Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. 1055-057. Print.

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Connolly 19

"Theatre Royal, Drury Lane." Really Useful Theatres. Really Useful Theatres Group Ltd., 2014.

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