Romeo
and Juliet
SCENE
II. Capulet's orchard.
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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.
'Tis
but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
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Explanation
Juliet speaks these
lines, perhaps the most famous in the play, in the balcony scene (II.i.74–78).
Leaning out of
her upstairs window, unaware that Romeo is below in the orchard, she asks
why Romeo must
be Romeo
why he must be
a Montague, the son of her family's greatest enemy ("wherefore"
means "why," not "where;" Juliet is not, as is often assumed,
asking where Romeo is).
Still unaware
of Romeo's presence, she asks him to deny his family for her love. She adds,
however, that if he will not, she will deny her family in order to be with him
if he merely tells her that he loves her.
A major theme in
Romeo and Juliet is the tension between social and family identity (represented
by one's name), and one's inner identity. Juliet believes that love stems from
one's inner identity, and that the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets
is a product of the outer identity, based only on names. She thinks of Romeo
in individual terms, and thus her love for him overrides her family's hatred
for the Montague name. She says that if Romeo were not called "Romeo"
or "Montague," he would still be the person she loves.
"What's in
a name?" she asks. "That which we call a rose / By any other word
would smell as sweet" (II.i.85–86).