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Popular Culture Review
Bawdy humor, double entendre, sexual insinuation, disguise, a flurry of
entrances, exits, stage business, and slapstick are also staples of comedy. The
entire first half of Romeo and Juliet incorporates these elements—from the
almost slapstick brawl between cowardly Capulet and Montague servants that
introduces the heads of the feuding families as Pantaloons (as Lawlor, 130,
describes them), to the sexual innuendo and puns of Mercutio and Benvolio, to
the Nurse’s long-winded reminiscences, to the masked visitors at the Capulet
party, to Father Capulet’s attempts to chastise his boisterous nephew and be
pleasant to his guests, to the bawdy and slapstick teasing of the Nurse by
Mercutio, to the Nurse’s teasing of Juliet about her meeting with Romeo. Even
at the halfway point, where Mercutio and Tybalt meet their deaths, that very
scene begins with puns and riposte, and is followed by a scene in which the
impact of those deaths seems undermined by the overblown wailing of the
Nurse, and Juliet’s mistaken notion that the Nurse is describing Romeo’s death.
Juliet’s “terrors of the tomb” speech before she takes her potion, and the
bombastic, “can you top this” laments of Nurse, Father and Mother Capulet over
her still body read, and sound, like parodies of some of Marlowe’s “mighty”
lines (Forse 93), or like those of Shakespeare’s own Pyramus and Thisbe in
Midsummer Night *s Dream, especially when it is remembered that just as the
onstage and offstage audiences of Midsummer Night’s Dream know that
Pyramus is not dead, the audiences of Romeo and Juliet off stage and onstage
(in this case Friar Lawrence), are in on the joke that Juliet is not dead. The scene
ends with three doltish musicians indulging in slapstick and musical puns. D.
Biggins (29) termed this scene “a burlesque.”
Dependence upon accidents of time usually does not drive nor create plot in
tragedy. Macbeth’s ambition is not created and driven by his accidental meeting
with the witches on the heath. Lear’s madness does not result from slipping on a
banana peel and falling on his head. Nor is Antigone driven by the accidental
timing of her brothers’ deaths. But accident of timing is a common device in
comedy. In Comedy o f Errors, Adriana just happens to come upon her
husband’s unknown twin before her husband comes home for dinner. Twelfth
Night is replete with accidental meetings in which the disguised Viola and her
twin brother Sebastian are confused for one another. Innumerable French farces
portray the would-be philanderer who just happens to be faced with the untimely
arrival of his spouse at the scene of his assignation.
Romeo and Juliet is filled with the comedic technique of “happenstance.”
Father Capulet just happens to send out his invitations with a servant who just
happens to be illiterate. Romeo and friends just happen to come upon that very
servant, and thus just happen to decide to go to the Capulet feast. Juliet just
happens to be there. Juliet just happens to be on the balcony when Romeo turns
up in her garden. Mercutio just happens to get killed because Romeo just
happens to step between him and Tybalt. Hence Romeo just happens to get
banished on his wedding day. Romeo just happens to hear of Juliet’s supposed
death because Friar Peter just happens to get quarantined in Verona. Romeo kills