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- Romeo and Juliet subverts traditional symbols of light and dark. Generally, light represents goodness and hope, while dark signifies confusion and danger. Shakespeare upends these common associations, however, as day and bright lights are portrayed as negative in the play.
www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/romeo-and-juliet/symbols
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Romeo and Juliet complicates traditional notions of light versus dark and day versus night. Light is typically a symbol of openness, purity, hope, and good fortune, while dark often represents confusion, obscurity, and doom.
- Symbols
Romeo and Juliet complicates traditional notions of light...
- Symbols
One of the most often repeated image patterns in Romeo and Juliet involves the interplay of light and darkness. For example, Romeo compares Juliet to light throughout the play. Upon first sight of her, Romeo exclaims that she teaches "the torches to burn bright" (I.5.43).
- The Motif of Light and Dark in Romeo and Juliet
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- Comments
The images of light and dark are one of the most constant visual motifs in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Characters such as Benvolio, Juliet, and Romeo, who exhibit goodness, innocence, and love, are often seen giving off light, discussing light, or in the presence of light. Characters who exhibit violence, evil, and death are often assoc...
Associations almost instantly follow the very first mention of Romeo in the play with light and with darkness. After Montague’s wife asks Benvolio whether or not he has seen Romeo, he responds with, “…an hour before the worshipped sun / Peered forth the golden window of the east,…so early walking did I see your son” (I.1.117-22). After this, Montag...
Juliet is almost always associated with light. Almost immediately before Romeo meets Juliet, there is a foreshadowing by Romeo of his meeting with Juliet. “Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling. / Being but heavy, I will bear the light” (I.4.11-12). Not only is this a pun on the word light, but it is also a foreshadowing of Romeo’s bearing the...
Darkness is a perpetual presence in the final scenes of the play. When Paris is traveling to Juliet’s grave, he has a torch indicating that it is night (V.3.1). This is one of the darkest scenes in the play, both figuratively and literally. Finally, after Romeo and Juliet’s death, Prince Escalus gives a final speech saying, “A glooming peace this m...
Throughout the play, light and dark are almost as large of a presence as some of the characters. Light is seen when there is love, hope, and joy; darkness is present when hatred and death are afoot. All of these light and dark images foreshadow what is going to happen by the end of the play. Just as night swallows the day, so does darkness swallow ...
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Light/Dark Imagery. One of the play’s most consistent visual motifs is the contrast between light and dark, often in terms of night/day imagery. This contrast is not given a particular metaphoric meaning—light is not always good, and dark is not always evil.
At times, the image of a flash of light disappearing into the dusk seems to symbolize both the brilliant strength of Romeo and Juliet's love, as well as its transience. The imagery of light and darkness also picks up the play's emphasis on the contrasts between love and hate, passion and death.
For Romeo, Juliet's presence transforms the dark, gloomy, underground grave into its opposite -- a room high in the air, full of light and joy. In the last speech of the play, Prince Escalus says that the morning sky is dark, fitting the mood of occasion: "A glooming peace this morning with it brings; / The sun, for sorrow, will not show his ...
Romeo and Juliet complicates traditional notions of light versus dark and day versus night. Light is typically a symbol of openness, purity, hope, and good fortune, while dark often represents confusion, obscurity, and doom.
