A Light-Hearted Commentary on Romeo and Juliet The Montagues are the good guys, Of that there is no doubt. They'd rather slay you with their wit Than in a murderous bout. The boy-god's two arrows Inscribed with 'R' [1] and 'J' (Two pasta-munching maids), Hath made the mortal boy his prey. By love-wounded fancies Young Romeo is assailed And Tybalt was, we must assume By lucky strike impaled. Monkey-like among the orchard trees Is Romeo’s preferred game. By beauty made effeminate, [2] By heart-throb quickly tame. Among the filthy Capulets Yet one fair jewel shows From whose pandoric mischief The legion evil grows. "Ay me" [3] she sighs aloud To the night-sky's sparks of gold, [4] The wonder-wounded hearers, [5] Who cross her as foretold [6] With Romeo, who in earshot (On unmanned blood [7] intent) Seals the rash o'erhasty marriage [8] With the beauty truly blent. [9] In virgin crimson modesty [10] She likens him to a rose [11] Though poppy or mandragora [12] Will sicken her repose [13] Administered by a bungling friar Who in monastic state Brews dire unwitting consequence Within his holy pate. And now to foul-mouthed Mercutio, Served his comeuppance by Tybalt's spite. Who so abused the honey nurse, [14] It really serves him right. Although he knew a thing or two Of poetry, fairies, dreams, [15] Verona can breathe easier now Without his bawdy scenes. The Prince sits musing in his marbled study At fair Verona's helm: "Secretly I thank thee, Romeo For cleansing thus my realm. "Two of the foulest troublemakers In all the Heaven's span [16] Are now dispatched. I'm off to the beach And there to get a tan! "I'm bereft of but a troubling kinsman, The jester at some family gathering. If he should need an epitaph, 'Good riddance' would I sing. "A smutty and infantile piece of work Was he, scorning every good, Chief 'mongst undesirables A villain and a hood. "Yet for appearance's sake 'Tis better I refrain from public leisure: Though Mercutio was less kind than kin, [17] In private take my pleasure. "I must appease the Capulets too. Though Tybalt was more loathsome yet, I'm up for re-election soon, Need all the finance I can get. "Doubtless a dispute over women Brought on this vile fray: I understand not these jealousies Perhaps it's because I'm gay. "A dainty work is done today But Romeo must stay away So I can keep the press at bay At least 'till polling day.” Meanwhile the souls of warring youths, Once but a little 'bove Romeo's head, [18] Still find no peace between themselves Although their lives are sped. [19] Now knocking at Heaven's gate To find it yet more narrow Than a church door; [20] and they regarded less Than even the provident sparrow. [21] Not even the width of a needle's eye [22] Answers their screaming fit: The oh so worthy victims Of the oh so palpable hit. [23] Moaned Mercutio in anguish quite unheard, "These gates of pearl show no opening, no. Ye saints, please let me in, I only asked for a blow." [24] A thought alike fair Paris groans Within his palace tower Imagining atop sweet Juliet The fair chaste vestal flower. Inverted is his fantasy Of Juliet end to end, Performance of the magic number When to his will she bend. Reliving in his mind the masque By wine there t'have made her merry, Then take her to the murkiest den [25] And now to pop her cherry. "Then up I'll rise, and don my clothes And dup the chamber door, Let out the maid that I just made Right here upon the floor. [26] "But now I fall again, my spirit spent In a wrist of shame. [27] Why can't I have my way with her And leave her full of blame? [28] "Enough of her mixed messages And long equivocations, Why doth this maid, unlike the others Delay my invocations? "My only recourse now Is to that loathsome goat Her ranting father Pander [29] to fetch me oats. "If not, perhaps I'll send again For her mother, that faded flower, That Capulette waist of shame [30] Of hot adulterate power." Yet Paris is soon dispatchèd too, Whose boiling lust o'eryearned. "Your Percy, peppered Paris Is now fit food for worms!" [31] For Romeo did him swift compound With dust (of closest kin), [32] Then off he went and duly died Whence Juliet followed him. So carnal, bloody and unnatural acts [33] Mark the outcome of this play, But each time hearing it yet we hope 'Twill end a different way. [A personal note] And yet this boyish role I must assay Ere half my light is spent, [34] Before the tint of grey appears, And critics scorn my bright intent. Doubtless yet I'll cut a dash In all those rapier fights; I look so very stunning In Elizabethan tights. Awak'ning by my Juliet Amid the lark's dawn din, [35] My dreamy beckoning come-to-bed eyes Shall make her heart still sing. And crouching underneath Night's whisper and her cloak, [36] Straining to hear my Echo's voice And aching for a poke.   [1]       'R' refers to the fair Rosaline whom Romeo has wooed in vain, but whom he quickly forgets once he has set eyes on Juliet (I.5.53-54). R and J are also, of course, the initials of the tragedy itself. [2]      Romeo declares after Mercutio is slain: "O sweet Juliet, Thy beauty hath made me effeminate, And in my temper softened valor's steel" (III.i.112-114) [3]       II.2.26 [4]       See 'Julius Caesar' (III.1.65): "The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks"; and Lorenzo to Jessica in 'The Merchant of Venice' (V.1.66-67): "Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold." [5]      See Hamlet to Laertes (Act V, scene 1): "Who is he whose grief bears such an emphasis, Whose phrase of sorrow conjures the wandering stars And makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers. This is I, Hamlet the Dane." [6]       Romeo and Juliet are described in the prologue as "A pair of star-crossed lovers" [7]      In her famous "Gallop apace..." speech (III.2.1-31), Juliet celebrates her imminent loss of virginity with the words "Hood my unmanned blood bating in my cheeks" [8]       See Gertrude's belief, expressed to Claudius, that Hamlet's "distemper" is caused by "His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage." (II.2.57) [9]       In 'Twelfth Night', Viola describes Olivia's face thus: "'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on." [10]      Burgundy describes the French Princess Katherine to King Henry in Henry V as: "a maid yet rosed over with the virgin crimson of modesty..." (V.1.267-268) [11]      Juliet utters about Romeo from her balcony: "O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet" (II.2.42-44) [12]      Iago plots so to poison Othello's mind that: "Not poppy nor mandragora Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday." (III.3.373-376) [13]      Friar Laurence gives Juliet a liquor that will bring on her "A cold and drowsy humor" (IV.1.96) and the appearance of death. [14]      See II.iv.100-142 and Juliet's "O honey Nurse, what news?" (II.v.18) [15]      See Mercutio's famous "Queen Mab" speech (I.iv.53-103) [16]      A parody on Romeo's "Two of the fairest stars in all the Heaven" (II.ii.15) [17]      Hamlet describes Claudius as "A little more than kin and less than kind" (I.2.65) [18]      Romeo challenges Tybalt with these words: "For Mercutio's soul Is but a little way above our heads, Staying for thine to keep him company. Either thou or I, or both, must go with him." (III.1.125-128) [19]      Mercutio cries out after Tybalt has mortally wounded him "A plague o' both your houses! I am sped." (III.1.90) [20]      Mercutio describes his wound as "not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door..." (III.1.95-96) [21]      Hamlet tells Horatio "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow" (V.2.217-218), itself derived from the gospels: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? Yet not one of them shall fall on the ground apart from the will of your Father" (Matthew 10:29-31; Luke 12:6-7). [22]      See the Gospel according to St. Mark 10:25-27. [23]      When Hamlet wins the first strike against Laertes in their fencing bout, Osric declares "A hit, a very palpable hit" (V.2.83). [24]      A reference to Mercutio's taunt to Tybalt: "And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something: make it a word and a blow" (III.1.38-39). The bawdy double-meaning of the word "blow" is also established, as borne out in the subsequent verses on Paris. [25]      A reference to Ferdinand's protestation to Prospero in 'The Tempest' that he will not deflower Miranda prematurely: "The murkiest den, The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion Our worser genius can, shall never melt Mine honor into lust..." (IV.1.24-27). [26]      A parody on Ophelia's song of distraction in 'Hamlet': "Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donned his clothes, And dupped the chamber door, Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more." (IV.5.48-55) [27]      See Sonnet 129: "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame..." [28]      See note above. [29]      Benedick describes Troilus (in the latter's pursuit of Cressida) as "the first employer of panders" in 'Much Ado About Nothing' (V.2.31); see also the role of Pandarus in Shakespeare's 'Troilus and Cressida'. [30]      Another reference to Sonnet 129. [31]      A reference to Mercutio's dying words: "I am peppered, I warrant, for this world" (III.1.97-98). "Percy" refers to Lord Percy's (Hotspur's) dying utterance in Henry VI Part 1: "No, Percy, thou art dust,/ And food for -".  Prince Hal completes the sentence after the former's death with "For worms, brave Percy." Both "peppered" and Percy have bawdy double-meanings as the male sexual organ. [32]      When Rosencrantz asks Hamlet what he has done with Polonius' body, Hamlet answers "Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin." (IV.2.6) [33]      See Horatio's closing speech in 'Hamlet': "So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters..." (V.2.382-385) [34]      A reference to Milton's Sonnet 19: "When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide..." [35]      When Romeo awakes beside Juliet, he persuades her the birdsong they hear belonged to "the lark, the herald of the morn..." [36]      In the balcony scene, Romeo tells Juliet "I have night's cloak to hide me from their (her kinsman's) eyes."