LATIHAN PENTERJEMAHAN

ROMEO AND JULIET

1.

Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,

Should without eyes see pathways to his will (1.1.)

2.

My only love sprung from my only hate,

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love is it to me
That I must love a loathed enemy. (1.5.)

3.

With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,

For stony limits cannot hold love out (2.2.)

4.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite. (2.2.)
Love
1
Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should without eyes see pathways to his will (1.1.)

Romeo begins the play in love with Rosaline, but his language in these
opening scenes shows us that his first love is less mature than the love he will
develop for Juliet. This couplet combines two ideas that were already clichés
in Shakespeare’s day: “love is blind” and “love will find a way.” The clichéd
expressions and obvious rhymes which Romeo uses to express his love for
Rosaline would have been ridiculous to a contemporary audience, and
Benvolio and Mercutio repeatedly make fun of them.
2
My only love sprung from my only hate,
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love is it to me
That I must love a loathed enemy. (1.5.)

Juliet speaks these lines after learning that Romeo is a Montague. The
language of Romeo and Juliet insists that opposites can never be entirely
separated: the lovers will never be allowed to forget that they are also
enemies. Significanly, that Juliet blames herself for seeing Romeo “too early.”
Everything in this play happens too early: we learn what will happen at the
end in the opening lines, Juliet is married too young, and Romeo kills himself
moments before Juliet wakes. In Romeo and Juliet, love is a force which can—
and does—move too fast.
3
With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,
For stony limits cannot hold love out (2.2.)

Juliet wants to know how Romeo got into the walled garden of the Capulet
house: these lines are his response. For Romeo, true love is a liberating force.
Love gives him not just wings, but “light wings” and the power to overcome all
“stony limits.” Romeo answers Juliet’s serious and practical question with a
flight of romantic fantasy. Throughout the play, Juliet is more grounded in the
real world than Romeo. For her, the freedom that love brings is the freedom to
leave her parents’ house and to have sex.

4
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite. (2.2.)

Here Juliet describes her feelings for Romeo. Like Romeo, Juliet experiences
love as a kind of freedom: her love is “boundless” and “infinite.” Her
experience of love is more openly erotic than Romeo’s: her imagery has
sexual undertones. Juliet is always more in touch with the practicalities of
love—sex and marriage—than Romeo, who is less realistic. Where Romeo
draws on the conventional imagery of Elizabethan love poetry, Juliet’s
language in these lines is original and striking, which reflects her
inexperience, and makes her seem very sincere.