L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 1

An Operatic Reading of Romeo and Juliet

Lars T. Lih

At a certain level of abstraction, the plot of Romeo and Juliet is indistinguishable from an

operatic buffa or farsa plot. A daughter is in love with an unsuitable suitor, and secretly marries

him. Her father, unaware of these developments, insists on her marriage to a suitor of his own

choosing. When confronted with his daughter’s reluctance, he throws a tantrum. In the end,

when faced with evidence of the passionate determination of the young couple, he accepts the

fait accompli of the marriage.

This is the plot, not only of Romeo and Juliet, but also of Il matrimonio segreto [The

Secret Marriage] and La cambiale di matrimonio [The Marital Bill of Sale].1 Of course, by the

time Juliet's father accepts the fact of her marriage, she and her husband are lying dead in front

of him. This unhappy ending—a burial, not a wedding—is one reason why Romeo and Juliet

realizes the tragic potential of the L-shaped plot that we have hitherto considered only in buffa

form. But it is not the only nor perhaps even the most essential reason. Indeed, as we shall see,

the unhappy ending was rather the last stage in the working-out of the operatic L-shaped tragedy

—a step that ratified an almost completed development.

[A brief description of the L-shaped plot: A notable structural feature of many operas,

especially in bel canto and Verdi, comes into relief when we focus on the position of the

daughter. The tension underlying the plot arises from the fact that the daughter must negotiate

between a vertical relationship (her hierarchical subordination to the father) and a horizontal

1
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 2

relationship (her autonomous and mutual commitment to her lover). This standard plot can

therefore be described as L-shaped.

The conflicts between the characters in an L-shaped plot gain resonance because they

embody the clash between two principles of social relations: the vertical principle and the

horizontal principle. The vertical principle represents the ideal of traditional society and the

ancien régime: status hierarchies in which ideally everyone finds their place. In particular, father

figures—God, king, paterfamilias—are all to be obeyed without question, because they gave us

life and because society would fall apart if they were not obeyed.

The horizontal principle puts forth a fundamentally different picture of the creation and

legitimacy of social bonds. In this view of society, the only obligatory bond is created by the free

and autonomous decision of two individuals—a contract, or, to use a more operatic term, a

giuramento, a vow of mutual loyalty. One’s social identity is not determined by birth but by

one’s ability to win the free consent of others. The affirmation of the horizontal principle

constituted a direct and deadly challenge to the ancien régime.]

The Romeo and Juliet story realizes the tragic potential of the L-shaped plot along a

number of dimensions that bring out and emphasize aspects that are only implicit in comic buffa

versions. In discussing these dimensions, I will illustrate with Shakespeare's canonical The Most

Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. We should keep in mind that the

Romeo and Juliet story has a long and varied pre- and post-Shakespeare history, so that

Shakespeare’s play is best regarded as just one, rather influential, version. Furthermore,

Shakespeare’s play contains a number of elements—the extreme youth of the lovers, the lyrical

expression of the course of their love, the feeling of capricious fate—that can be separated from
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 3

the abstract L-shaped plot that dominated opera in the early nineteenth century. What follows

might therefore be considered opera’s reading of Romeo and Juliet.

The aspects of Romeo and Juliet that stand out when examined through the lens of

nineteenth-century opera are: the logic of the four-character framework consisting of Romeo,

Juliet, Capulet and Paris; the effort to bring out the larger social resonance of father-daughter

conflict over marriage; the interest in the mechanisms of creating new social bonds through

individual autonomy; the gripping picture of paternal hysteria and the clogged communications

to which it gives rise; the daughter’s hinge position and the relative lucidity this position makes

possible.

Expanded Social Dimension

Romeo and Juliet differs from buffa because, first, it has a strong social dimension. As

the opening Chorus states, the scene is set “in fair Verona,” where “civil blood makes civil hands

unclean.” This Verona-wide framework differs from buffa’s confined bourgeois household,

where the father’s objections to his daughter’s lover are personal, tied to the suitor’s financial or

social status or perhaps his position as the son of a personal rival. In Romeo and Juliet, the

father’s objections are tied up with a host of group loyalties that provide the necessary weight for

tragedy.

As we shall see later, Rossini and his librettists made exactly the same move in their

effort to give tragic status to the L-shaped plot. What can be called Rossini’s city-state trilogy—

Tancredi, Otello, and Bianca e Falliero—constitute his first efforts at creating a suitable tragic

framework with an appropriate ending. Maometto II—his first fully successful presentation of
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 4

the tragic L-shaped plot—also takes place in an Italian renaissance city-state, although the

essential conflict has here been moved to an international setting.

The feud between the Montagues and the Capulets does more than create obstacles for

the lovers. It shapes the clash between vertical loyalties and horizontal loyalties, between

ascribed status and individual autonomy, that is the engine of the L-shaped plot. Vertical

loyalties are strengthened by group conflict, so that the choice of a lover from the opposing

group seems like betrayal, with a corresponding increase in pressure on the individual.

In response, the autonomous choice that creates horizontal loyalties is forced into making

a clear distinction between individual and group. Juliet famously asks “what’s in a name?”, and

by “name” she means “group membership”. Her question is thus extremely subversive for a

traditional society in which everything is in a name. Juliet also perceives that “thou are thyself,

though not a Montague” (2.1.82). This conceptual isolation of the individual from the group

encapsulates some seismic shifts in social structure and outlook.

In Romeo and Juliet, the conflicting groups are “two households, both alike in dignity.”

Indeed, there is nothing to distinguish the two households in social structure or ethos (even

though the internal dynamics of the Capulet household are shown in much greater detail). Only

a meaningless feud can account for their mutual hostility. Thus the social conflict of Romeo and

Juliet constitutes a default or null version of social conflict. In the later development of the L-

shaped plot, opera used this plots to explore all sort of more deep-rooted types of social conflict:

national, religious, class, and others.

Nevertheless, even in Romeo and Juliet, the conflict is not just between two families, but

between two households—a larger and more articulated social institution. Shakespeare’s play
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 5

starts off with a clash between servants that is comic, because lower-class, but that also points to

the ways in which the Veronese household is a mini-society, where patriarchal power not only

dominates daughters but provides a linchpin for social stability.

Newly Assertive Horizontal Principle: “Stolen Contracts”

The horizontal axis of love between autonomous individuals also takes on a new

seriousness and intensity. This new intensity is not just the result of powerful emotions caused

by almighty Venus—or, as we would say, by adolescent hormones. Even before Shakespeare,

the Romeo and Juliet story is marked by an awareness of what is at stake in the contract of love

—or rather, love seen as a contract. Shakespeare shows himself to be particularly interested in

the mechanisms of newly created social bonds.

There are three moments involved in the contract of love (as in any contract):

autonomous choice by the individual, mutual agreement with another autonomous individual,

and loyalty to the new social bond thus created. These three moments are displayed most vividly

by the daughter figure, Juliet, especially in the balcony scene, where we see (among other things)

the creation of a freely negotiated contract. Juliet rightly comments on her own boldness in

stating her own intentions and desires without coyness. But she is not so overwhelmed by love

and/or desire that she is unable to sound out the intentions of the other party. “If that thy bent of

love be honorable, thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow … But if thou meanest not

well, I do beseech thee to cease thy strife and leave me to my grief” (2.1.186-197).

Juliet’s prudence does not exclude her complete acceptance of the newly created bond:

“all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay, And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world” (2.1.190-1).

Nevertheless, she is worried about the solidity of the new relationship: “Although I joy in thee, I
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 6

have no joy of this contract tonight. It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden” (2.1.160-1). In

many ways, her forebodings are justified, but essentially she is mistaken: both sides turn out to

be fiercely loyal to the contract made at night in the orchard—especially when later solidified by

a ceremony before witnesses in broad daylight.

Shakespeare’s principal source for his play was the novel-in-verse The Tragicall

Historye of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke, published in 1562. In his preface, Brooke set

out patriarchal society’s disapproving view of the vertical principle as “stolen contract”:

And to this end, good Reader, is this tragical matter written, to describe unto thee a

couple of unfortunate lovers, thralling themselves to unhonest desire; neglecting the

authority and advice of parents and friends; conferring their principal counsels with

drunken gossips and superstitious friars (the naturally fit instruments of unchastity);

attempting all adventures of peril for th’attaining of their wished lust; using auricular

confession, the key of whoredome and treason, for furtherance of their purpose; abusing

the honourable name of lawful marriage to cloak the shame of stolen contracts; finally by

all means of unhonest life hasting to most unhappy death (p. lxvi).2

But a different, more forward-looking attitude toward “stolen contracts” arises from the

story itself, even in Brooke’s own version. We cannot help admire Juliet when she motivates her

suicide by asserting that no one will enjoy “my love, which aye I have reserved / Free from the

rest, bound unto thee, who hast it well deserved” (ll. 2784-6). Brooke’s words bring out the

paradox that a new social bond has been created by self-assertion (“I have reserved”) and

disregard of family duty (“free from the rest”).

2
The text used here is J. J. Munro, ed., Brooke’s “Romeus and Juliet” Being the Original of Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet (London: Chatto and Windus, 1908).
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 7

“Free from the rest”—Juliet is aware of the subversive quality of what she is doing. In

Shakespeare, she says “be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet” (2.1.78-9). The

implications are immense for Romeo as well: “Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father, and refuse thy name” (2.1.76-7).

In this way, family bonds are suddenly perceived as bondage. Juliet cannot call out to

Romeo from her balcony because “bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud” (160).

Shakespeare probably got the word “bondage” from Brooke’s Juliet, who ponders, in a different

context, the best way “to ‘scape the bondage of my friends” (l. 1622). Brooke’s expressive

oxymoron shows how “friends” (that is, family and established social network) are now

perceived as “bondage.”

The vertical principle feels threatened

The second dimension in opening up the tragic potential of the L-shaped plot is paternal

power. Buffa plots center on the father’s power over the daughter, and lurking in the background

is the real possibility of wrecked lives. Nevertheless, the buffa father is more than slightly

ridiculous, and his bark is worse than his bite. After a moment or two of pleading or criticism,

he caves in and blesses the union of the lovers.

Paternal rage and oppressive power shows a much grimmer face in the character of

Capulet, Juliet's father, precisely because of the subversive nature of “stolen contracts”. In

Brooke’s version, the ideological dimension of the clash between vertical and horizontal loyalty

is brought out explicitly in the confrontation between Juliet and her parents over the proposed

marriage to Paris. Juliet talks back to her mother “with unwonted boldness” and asks why she is
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 8

being married off “before you know if I do like or else mislike my love” (l. 1908).3 In response,

Capulet reads her a long lecture about the enormous power of Roman parents (!) and ends with

the threat:

For were it not that I to County Paris gave

My faith, which I must keep unfalsed, my honour so to save,

Ere thou go hence, myself would see thee chastened so,

That thou should’st once for all be taught thy duty how to know;

And what revenge of old the angry sires did find

Against their children that rebelled and showed themselves unkind (ll. 1985-9).4

This invocation of Roman patria potestas gives a distinctly reactionary tinge to Capulet’s

rants, even in the Elizabethan context, and thrusts the issue of fatherhood as a changing social

institution into the attention of the reader. Brooke’s verse novel well expresses the new grimness

of paternal rage:

The sire, whose swelling wrath her tears could not assuage

With fiery eye, and scarlet cheeks, thus spake her in his rage (ll. 1945-6).

Shakespeare evidently found this a bit blatant for the stage (although he elsewhere stated

the ideological issues plainly enough). He suggests the subversive potential of Juliet’s autonomy

more subtly by having the character of Capulet combine a number of moments that may appear

3
Shakespeare’s Juliet also talks back to her mother, and brings up the issue of choice: “I wonder at this
haste, that I must wed Before he that should be husband comes to woo” (3.5.119-20.
4
“Unkind” means “unnatural.” The motive of keeping “unfalsed faith” with his fellow patriarchs is a
common one with operatic fathers.
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 9

contradictory on the surface. All of these moments are essential features of the father figure in

the operatic L-shaped plot.

Capulet insists that his daughter’s happiness is his only criterion for marriage and that her

free consent is essential:

But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart.

My will to her consent is but a part,

And, she agreed, within her scope of choice

Lies my consent and fair according voice. (1.2.16-19)

Having put the ideological principle of autonomous choice on the table, Shakespeare

makes all the more shocking its complete abandonment in practice. Capulet’s real attitude

toward female autonomy is shown in his later description of Juliet as “a peevish self-willed

harlotry” (4.2.10-15).5 These words form an ascending tricolon of disapproval: talking back is

linked to a more deep-seated and illegitimate autonomy, and then finally defamed as sexual

latitude.

Capulet undertakes to betroth Juliet in her absence, convinced he is doing her a good turn

for which she will be grateful. Mixed up with his benevolence is thus a good deal of

presumptuousness:

Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender

Of my child’s love. I think she will be ruled

5
In context, this grumbling can be seen as indicative of paternal affection getting the upper hand after
Capulet’s temper tantrum, but the words are nonetheless expressive.
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 10

In all respects by me. Nay, more, I doubt it not (3.4.12-4).

Third, he flies completely off the handle when confronted with his daughter’s opposition.

Capulet’s tantrum is no amusing hissy-fit à la buffa, but rather an emotionally violent outburst in

which he declares that he would rather see his daughter dead:

And you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend

And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,

For, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee

Nor what is mine shall never do thy good (3.5.193-5).6

In other words: you want to be a free individual? Then be free—of any familial or

familiar bond or bound, support, or position! Capulet’s threat, however, is double-edged, aimed

against the family as well as the daughter—particularly, as Capulet earlier stressed, “Earth hath

swallowed all my hopes but she” (1.2.14). Can the family survive “if you be not mine”—if the

daughter is cast out?

Capulet makes clear that one of his motives for screaming at a person he undoubtedly

truly loves is social pressure and his concern to keep his word and preserve his honor among his

male equals: “I’ll not be forsworn” (3.5.195). Finally, Capulet is truly devastated at his

daughter’s death (first faked and then real), and shows signs of real repentance:

Dead art thou, alack, my child is dead;

6
Sharon Hamilton well describes this “scalding torrent of blame and abuse”: “As his tantrum comes to a
climax, Capulet puts his claim of ownership in the harshest terms: Juliet is either ‘his’ to ‘give to [his] friend’ or her
own to ‘hang, beg, starve, die in the streets’ (ll. 193-4). The hyperbolic verbs suggest how out of control he is: each
one stabs.” Hamilton, Shakespeare’s Daughters (McFarland and Company, Inc.: Jefferson, NC, 2003) pp. 20-1.
[Note: the issue is more than Capulet’s heartless anger, but the social rules under which “what is mine” operate to do
Juliet good.]
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 11

And with my child my joys are buried (4.4.89-90).7

Capulet’s words make his earlier statement, quoted above, tragically prophetic: “Earth

hath swallowed all my hopes but she.” Grief over his child and over his blasted family line are

mixed together.

The new grimness and emotional violence of paternal power is profoundly tied to the new

emphasis on social context. Capulet’s actions are determined not so much by internal

psychology as by the pressures of a social role. Shakespeare’s achievement is to perceive and

bring out precisely this aspect of the inherited Romeo-and-Juliet plot. His Capulet is in many

ways a charming individual but one who is always shown exercising a social role. The demands

and dilemmas of this role in a time of social transition finally destroy him and his family.

The question arises: what attitude did Shakespeare and other writers in the Romeo and

Juliet tradition take toward Capulet and his exercise of potential power? Several possibilities

present themselves:

Conservative: Capulet acts properly to assure his daughter’s happiness and to preserve

the social hierarchy and stability threatened by her disobedience. The tragedy is caused by the

actions of Juliet, a “wily wench,” as Arthur Brooke calls her more than once (ll. 717, 2273).

Reformist: paternal power is necessary—only it should not be exercised in the tyrannical

and blindly destructive manner exemplified by Capulet.

7
At the end of the play, Capulet along with Romeo’s father Montague realizes that both children are “poor
sacrifices of our enmity” (5.3.204).
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Revolutionary: Capulet shows the destructive nature of autocratic power in and of itself,

even when exercised by otherwise benevolent individuals. This sort of paternal power must be

abolished.

Analytic: Fatherhood is an important social institution that accurately reflects many of the

strains of ongoing social change, so we should do our best to paint an accurate picture of it.

Trying to decide which of these attitudes best describes Shakespeare and other writers in

the tradition is impossible and ultimately not very interesting. More important is the fact that

readers and audiences can adopt one or (more likely) a mixture of these attitudes and also that

the balance can shift over time.8

Clash of principles

Romeo and Juliet might be seen as resorting to an arbitrarily unhappy ending; as Tony

Tanner remarks, “Romeo and Juliet fails of being a ‘comedy’ by something under a minute

(Juliet wakes up from her pseudo-death twenty-seven lines after Romeo commits suicide).”9

Nevertheless, the clash between vertical and horizontal loyalty turns the ending into a genuinely

tragic necessity. Family ties become “bondage,” and because “bondage is hoarse,” it impedes

communication among the lovers and those aiding them. The marriage is forced underground,

and the resulting need for secrecy gives rise to all the missed connections and misleading news.

Each one taken by itself may be accidental, but the distortions caused by autonomy operating in

a patriarchal world are as a whole inevitable.10

8
[Note: not just social identity, such as we have, timeless because a. policed; b. ‘deny your father’]
9
Tony Tanner, Prefaces to Shakespeare, p. 92; Tanner actually put Romeo and Juliet into the comedy
volume of his Everyman edition of Shakespeare. As we shall see when discussing Rossini’s Otello, a similar remark
about the ending can be made about Shakespeare’s Othello.
10
In buffa, these misunderstandings can be treated as a joke, as the running gag of “ma” in Rossini’s La
cambiale di matrimonio shows. In Romeo and Juliet, we see their tragic potential.
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 13

Lack of communication along the vertical axis also generates tragic necessity.

Shakespeare’s stress on this aspect seems to be new. The exact point where the plot veers out of

control is when Juliet cries out “hear me with patience but speak a word” and Capulet replies

“Speak not, reply not, do not answer me.”11 The wedding has been set for Thursday, three days

later; by refusing to listen to Juliet and at least to delay the date, Capulet directly sets in motion

the final catastrophe, since the compressed time frame makes aborted messages and

miscommunication inevitable.

Because the approved suitor relies on paternal power, he too suffers from clogged

communication. In an episode added by Shakespeare to the story, the approved suitor Paris

blows his chance to avert the tragedy. Paris meets Juliet at Friar Laurence after the marriage has

been set for Thursday. He admits to the friar that he does “not know the lady’s mind,” yet pleads

her father’s good intentions. Juliet arrives on the scene, and Paris has an excellent chance in a

face-to-face encounter to find out the lady’s mind. Instead, he allow patriarchal privilege to

stifle all communication (4. 1.18-20):

Paris: Happily met, my lady and my wife!

Juliet: That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.

Paris: That ‘may be’ must be, love, on Thursday next.

In the ensuing dialogue, Juliet’s answers all have double meanings, and Paris therefore

completely misapprehends the situation. The New Penguin edition comments here that Paris

shows “amiable possessiveness,” but in context, his possessiveness is not so amiable. Paris

11
3.5.159-63 Lady Capulet also says “Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word” and sweeps out of the
room (3.5.203)
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accepts unquestionably the benefits of Capulet’s paternal power and so, in some sense, he

deserves his later death at Romeo’s hand.

“Twixt My Extremes”: Juliet as Proto-Soprano

We have examined various ways in which the Romeo and Juliet story realizes the tragic

potential of the L-shaped plot. The story is moved into the wide arena of an entire society, and

its institutions; the vertical axis of paternal power becomes grimmer; the essence of the

horizontal axis—the power of autonomous choice to create new social bonds—is shown to be

highly subversive; the clash between vertical and horizontal principles leads to a sense of tragic

inevitability. No wonder, then, that a key feature of the L-shaped plot—the heroine’s position as

hinge figure—is also found in Romeo and Juliet. Indeed, in many ways, Juliet can be seen as a

proto-soprano.12

The tragic outcome is produced by pressures converging on the heroine, and so, in

theory, the outcome could be prevented if the pressure from either direction were removed. The

power of the Romeo and Juliet story as fashioned by its various retellings is in showing why

these pressures have to be so unrelenting. On the one hand, Juliet could no more renounce

Romeo than she could take the Nurse’s advice and become a bigamist. On the other hand,

Capulet’s individual situation is put in a social context that makes him a representative of

paternal power who cannot relent without destroying the institution.

When we first see Juliet, prior to the activation of either horizontal or vertical pressures,

she is practically inert. When her mother asks “speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?”, she

answers “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move. But no more deep will I endart my eye Than
12
To bring out this aspect of Juliet, I have gathered together relevant excerpts of Shakespeare’s play; see
my “The Hinge Figure: Shakespeare’s Juliet as Proto-Soprano (Selected Scenes from Romeo and Juliet)”. [A rash
promise! – This does not exist.]
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 15

your consent gives strength to make it fly” (1.3.97-100). Safely ensconced as a daughter of an

aristocratic family, she assumes that there could not possibly be a clash between vertical and

horizontal. But, as we have seen, after a new union is created by free choice, her family position

turns into bondage, and she is caught in a vise.

The pressures set up by the working-out of the plot all converge on Juliet. Romeo puts

pressure on her by killing her kinsman and thus straining (but not breaking) her loyalty; her

father puts pressure on her by unbending insistence on his prerogatives. Only Juliet knows the

full extent of these converging pressures. Capulet knows nothing of her attachment to Romeo,

Romeo knows nothing of Capulet’s insistence on a hasty marriage. The Nurse and the Friar

understand the basic situation, but they are not in a position to grasp its intensity. The Friar, for

example, learns of the Thursday marriage from Paris and never hears about Capulet’s violent

temper tantrum.

Thus Juliet and only Juliet is in a position to fully grasp the situation in all its tragic

dimensions—only she has the potential for full lucidity. She expresses this lucidity in ways that

(as we shall see) are highly typical of the nineteenth-century soprano heroine. After Capulet

storms out of the room following his tantrum, Juliet asks “Is there no pity sitting the clouds That

sees into the bottom of my grief?” (3.5.198-9). Her call to the cosmos for pity—later to become a

central topos in nineteenth-century opera—is less an expression of her own self-pity than a lucid

insight into the nature of the trap in which she finds herself.

Juliet goes on to cry “Alack, alack, that heaven should practice stratagems Upon so soft a

subject as myself” (3.5. 211-2). Her perception of a cruelly indifferent heaven is yet another
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 16

anticipation of nineteenth-century opera and its incessant worrying about whether there is such a

thing as a giusto cielo.

The converging pressures threaten to immobilize Juliet. Thus the Nurse describes Juliet

to Romeo and the Friar:

O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps,

And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,

And Tybalt calls, and then on Romeo cries,

And then down falls again. 3.3.99-103.

One is reminded of Aida and her mental paralysis after the selection of Radames as the

Egyptian leader: to which community, Ethiopian or Egyptian, does she owe loyalty?

Of course, Juliet is not immobilized. With help from her friends, she adopts a daring and

tricky scheme to solve her problems. The business with the potions and the fake death is the sort

of thing we might expect in comedy. But, above and beyond the potion trick, Juliet always has a

tragic Plan B in reserve: suicide with a dagger. Juliet’s love-affair with the dagger makes her the

forerunner of many a “soprano with a stiletto,” starting with Pamina and continuing into the

nineteenth century. A closer look at Shakespeare’s remarkable use of the dagger motif is

therefore warranted.

In the early Italian versions of the story, Juliet kills herself by a sheer effort of will:

“recalling the loss of her dear lover and resolving to live no longer, she drew in her breath, held

it for some time, then letting it out with a great cry she fell lifeless of the dead body of Romeo.” 13
13
Luigi da Porto in Masuccio Salernitano, Luigi da Porto, Matteo Bandello, and Pierre Boaistuau, Romeo
and Juliet before Shakespeare: Four Early Stories of Star-Crossed Love, edited and translated by Nicole Prunster
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 17

Boaistuau’s French version introduces the dagger motif: “Having drawn out the dagger that

Rhomeo had girded at his side, she stabbed herself with it several times through the heart,

murmuring in a weak and piteous voice: ‘Ah, death, who are the end of my misfortune and

beginning of my happiness I welcome you!’.”14

Brooke develops the idea of the dagger by adding a couple of foreshadowing moments in

which Juliet threatens to kill herself with a knife. She tells Romeo early on that if he is caught

and killed by her kinsmen, “In ruth and in disdain, I, weary of my life With cruel hand my

mourning heart would pierce with bloody knife.”15 She tells her mother “with unwonted

boldness” that if forced to marry Paris, “first, weary of my painful life, my cares shall kill my

heart, Else will I pierce my breast and sharp and bloody knife, And you, my mother, shall

become the murderess of my life.”16

Writing for the stage, Shakespeare strengthened Brooke’s foreshadowing by making the

dagger a visible stage prop. He also deepened the role of the dagger by making it a metaphor for

last-ditch autonomy in a very tight spot. The carefully planted instances of the dagger motif thus

prepare the way for the suicide at the end. After the confrontation with her father, in the very last

lines of the scene, Juliet makes suicide sound like a way of controlling her own fate:

I’ll to the friar to know his remedy.

If all else fail, myself have power to die (3.5.243-4).

(Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 200), p. 46 (hereafter referred to as Prunster); see also
Bandello’s version: “She adamantly refused to listen to [Friar Lorenzo’s words of comfort], but persevering in her
dire resolve, she lamented not being able to restore Romeo’s life by offering her own, and she determined to die.
Having then drawn her spirits together within herself, without uttering a word she died with Romeo in her lap”
(Prunster 84).
14
Prunster 118.
15
Brooke, ll. 495-6.
16
Brooke, ll. 1904, 1914-16. See also Brooke’s prefatory Argument: “And she with Romeus’ knife, when
she awakes herself, alas! She slay’th” (lxix).
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 18

In the next scene, Juliet flourishes a dagger and tells the friar:

If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help

Do thou but call my resolution wise

And with this knife I’ll help it presently …

Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time,

Give me some present counsel; or, behold,

‘Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife

Shall play the umpire (4.1.52-4 … 60-4).

The image of the knife playing the umpire “twixt my extremes and me” suggests the

basic structure of the L-shaped plot and its external pressures converging on the figure in the

hinge position.17 Juliet’s possible suicide is not presented as simply an impulse of emotional

despair, in contrast to Romeo’s earlier outburst when he pulled a knife on himself in the friar’s

cell and had to be disarmed by the Nurse.18 Juliet is always ready to fight to overcome the

pressures placed on her, but also ready to kill herself if this is the only way to preserve “true

honor.” (4.1.65) Friar Laurence condemns Romeo’s attempt at suicide as womanish, but seems

to see Juliet’s threats as evidence of manly courage. Without condemnation, he argues that if

“thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,” then she is brave enough to adopt his dangerous

scheme.

17
“Extremes” can be read simply as “hardships,” but the phrase “’twixt my extremes” does suggest the idea
of converging pressures.
18
Teste Folio’s stage directions
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 19

The dagger, the tragic Plan B, is kept before us as Juliet steels herself to take the friar’s

potion: “What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then tomorrow morning?

No, no! This shall forbid it. Lie thou there. (She lays down a knife)” (4.3.21-4).19

This particular dagger is for using in Juliet’s own house if the potion fails. But the potion

does not fail, and therefore, when she wakes up in the tomb and finds Romeo dead, she does not

have a dagger. Her cry “O happy dagger!” thus means, among other things, “oh, how lucky it is

to find a dagger right here.” Even after Juliet’s death, Shakespeare wants us to focus on the

dagger. Capulet personifies it when he says to his wife, “this dagger is mistaken,” since it is

“missheathed in my daughter’s bosom!” (5.3.203-5).

The dagger is thus consistently associated with Juliet’s courage, resolution and lucid

understanding of the situation. She is determined to live “an unstained wife to my sweet love”—

a phrase that mingles the patriarchal code for female behavior with Juliet’s autonomous choice,

with emphasis on the latter. The centrality of Juliet’s hinge position in the L-shaped plot is

underlined by the last line of the play, which appropriately gives our proto-soprano top billing:

“For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo” (5.3.309-10).

Absence of the L-shaped plot in earlier opera

We have considered the tragic potential of the L-shaped plot by looking in some detail at

the inner workings of the paradigmatic Romeo and Juliet plot. Before returning to Rossini’s use

of this tragic potential in his operas, we shall take a brief look at the role of the tragic L-shaped

plot before, during and after opera’s tragic moment, that is, more or less the first half of the

nineteenth century.

19
The expression “lie thou there” can be seen as marriage imagery.
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 20

L-shaped plots simply do not exist in eighteenth-century opera seria and tragédie lyrique,

much less earlier opera. The essence of the L-shaped plot is the convergence of vertical and

horizontal pressures upon a single individual, but the aristocratic protagonists of opera seria

would scorn to find themselves in a subordinate position receiving vertical pressure from above.

The drama of opera seria comes from the horizontal relationships by people who are themselves

atop the vertical structures of society. Their horizontal relations—their loves, friendships, and

power games—have therefore no subversive quality. The pathos of the “stolen contract” is not a

factor in their love relations.

True, there are various kings and tyrants who are often set above the other characters.

But the vertical relationship created in this way are characterized either by raw power of

conquered to conquered (for example, Tamerlano and Bajazet in Handel’s Tamerlano) or by

highly personal relations of individual loyalty akin to friendship (Tamerlano and Adronico, Tito

and Sesto in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito). Their relations are very different from the birth-

created duty of figlia to genitore.

Parental relations of any kind are infrequent in opera seria. When they do occur, they do

not give rise to conflicts over marriage choice. Father and child are usually on the same

wavelength. Tamerlano and his daughter Asteria share a common aim (killing Tamerlano) and

only a misunderstanding over tactics leads them into temporary conflict. Idomeneo has no

problem with his son’s choice of wife, indeed, he seems rather uninterested in the whole issue.

In Handel’s Ariodante, the Scottish king is so happy about his daughter’s marriage choice that he

wants literally to trumpet the news (in Voli co' la sua tromba).
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 21

The social dimension is sorely lacking in opera seria, focusing as it does on the clash

between determined individuals. The larger society shows up mainly in choruses of adoring

plebians. The aristocratic population of these works is therefore quite cosmopolitan and tolerant.

In Mozart’s Idomeneo, the fact that Ilia is Trojan and Idamante is Greek has no bearing on their

mutual love or on people’s attitudes towards them. What does upset the hostile Elettra is rather

that Ilia is or (in her eyes) supposed to be a conquered slave. In Tamerlano, there are Tartars,

Turks, Greek and a princess from Trebizond, but these religious and ethnic divisions matter not a

whit to the loves and conflicts of the principals. Unrequited love bulks large in opera seria plots,

where the bitter frustration of opposed desires is central. In nineteenth-century opera, in

contrast, the theme of unrequited love is a minor one, appearing mainly in the Paris figure of the

approved fiancé.20 Central to these plots is rather the newly created union of lovers who are

fiercely loyal to each other.

The very general formula “love vs. duty” is often used to describe both opera seria and

nineteenth-century opera, but this usage covers up a crucial shift between the two eras. The

heroes of opera seria face a difficult choice between two conflicting principles, for example,

gratitude toward a friend vs. loyalty to a lover in Metastasio’s Olimpiade, or between individual

desire and official duty. Usually there is a right choice, however difficult it may be, and we

cheer our hero’s efforts to do the right thing.

There is no right choice in the tragic L-shaped plot. “Duty” is not just loyalty to a friend

or sovereign, but has vast implications for established social structures, for a whole way of life.

20
[as opposed to examination of the problems of requited love, i.e., managing the freely-chosen bond. In
seria, is there much mistaken jealousy, where you suspect a person who is truly in love with you? Or is it mainly
justified jealousy, where you are angry at someone for not loving you?]
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 22

“Love” is not just personal desire, but an assertion of autonomy that is inherently subversive of

traditional structures. Thus the lieto fine works for opera seria by operating as a sort of reward

for a difficult choice, while the logic of the tragic L-shaped plot drives toward an unhappy

ending.

Two Operatic Treatments of Romeo and Juliet

A look at two contrasting operatic treatments of Romeo and Juliet will give us some idea

at the new but temporary dominance of the L-shaped plot in the nineteenth century. Felice

Romani’s version of infelice Romeo was set to music by Vincenzo Bellini in 1829. Abstaining

from the vexed question of its relation to Shakespeare as opposed to other versions of the story,

we can easily observe that most of the contrast between Romani’s version and the more familiar

Shakespeare text serves to sharpen the outlines of the underlying L-shaped plot. We first

observe what has been discarded: the extreme youth of the lovers, the beginning and rapid

progress of their love, any marriage secret or otherwise between the two lovers, any portrayal of

Romeo’s killing of Juliet’s kinsman, and any hint of social reconciliation at the end. All of these

are absent or relegated to back story.

In contrast, the various tragic dimensions we discussed previously are not only retained

but intensified. The dimension of social conflict has been translated from a family feud to a full

civil war between Guelph and Ghibellines, with pitched battles and no overarching sovereign.

Romeo is no longer just an ordinary young man but the leader of the Ghibellines, and the Paris

equivalent (confusingly named Tebaldo) is himself a leader of the opposed forces.

The vertical principle of paternal power is strongly emphasized throughout the libretto

(although not embodied in any major solo for Capellio). What is distinctive about the Romani
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 23

version is the unambiguous critique of paternal power and indeed fierce attack on its legitimacy.

Capellio is determined to marry off Giuletta from the very start and assures Tebaldo, the

intended bridegroom, that “Sensi de’ miei diversi non può nutrir Giuletta, e a lei fia caro, come a

noi tutti, il pro guerrier che unisce i suoi destini a miei” (Giuletta cannot feel any differently from

me, and she will love, as do we all, the brave fighter who binds his destiny to mine) (45).21

Thus Capellio sees Tebaldo as an extension of himself. Capellio runs roughshod over

various objections to this course from his followers; he is so brutal to Giuletta when she begs

forgiveness in Act II that even his followers are appalled: “l’uccide il tuo rigor” (Your severity is

killing her) (93). No wonder that when Capellio enters in the final scene, sees the two dead

bodies and exclaims “Uccisi! Da chi?” (Killed! Who did it?), he receives a resounding answer

from the Montecchi chorus that is the opera’s remarkable curtain line: “Da te, spietato!” (You,

heartless one!) (119).

The sense of tragic inevitability is further strengthened in Romani’s version by

compressing the plot into one day—even more extreme that Shakespeare’s four days. The plot

mechanism is tightened up by having Capellio himself directly responsible for the

miscommunication that causes the final catastrophe, since he orders that Lorenzo (not a friar in

this version) be detained and not allowed to speak to anyone. In this way paternal power is

directly tied to the fateful lack of communication between Giuletta and Romeo.

In its treatment of the relations between Romeo and Giuletta, Romani’s libretto is much

less interested in any lyric expression of their love and much more interested in the conflicts that

21
Page numbers in the text are from the libretto as published in the Netrebko-Garanca CD recording
conducted by Fabio Luisi. Tebaldo expresses some feeble objections to marrying Giuletta by force, but allows
himself to be very easily persuaded by the assurances given to him by her father. As he observes about himself,
Love “il cor propenso a creder vero quel che più desia” (the heart is ready to believe what it most desires) (45). This
observation applies to many of the Paris figures in nineteenth-century opera.
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 24

can arise out of a horizontal bonding between autonomous individuals. Romeo and Giuletta are

not married, so that their relationship is based entirely on their own promised commitment. The

great duet in Act I is far from the mutual ecstasy of Shakespeare’s balcony scene; it is in fact

conflictual from beginning to end. Romeo pressures Giuletta to leave, pleading the claims of

“duty, law and honor”—all of which turn out to be no more than the dritto al genitor, the rights

of the father (59, 61).

Bellini brings out the essential conflict by giving great weight to two words; Romeo’s

“Vieni” (Come!) and Giuletta’s responding “Cedi” (Yield!) (63). Giuletta’s plea to Romeo to

relent brings out more vividly than usual the pressures on the heroine that come from the

horizontal axis. Remarkably, at this stage Giuletta refuses to go with Romeo—a break with all

earlier versions of the story.22

Giuletta’s trapped moral position is embodied in spatial terms. At the beginning of Act II

we find her ignorant of the outcome of one of the pitched battles because “Né uscir poss’io, e

ignara di mia sorte, io qui m’aggiro” (I cannot go out, and I wander around here, ignorant of my

fate) (87). Thus Giuletta finds herself in the hinge position, facing pressures both from Romeo

and Capellio. Accordingly, she asks both father and lover for pietà. Both refuse.

A final and perhaps ironic contrast between Juliet and Giuletta is that Giuletta does not

resort to the services of a suicidal dagger. As Romeo lies dying, Giuletta asks him for his

dagger, but he refuses. Judging from the libretto, she simply perishes from grief as she falls on

Romeo’s corpse. In general, the pressures converging on Giuletta have turned her into a rather

weepy droopy character who is a far cry from Shakespeare’s spunky heroine.

22
This creates a problem for Romani’s libretto: motivating her later change of heart.
 L-shaped plot: Romeo and Juliet Page 25

Gounod’s Roméo and Juliette was first produced in 1859, some years after the golden age

of the L-shaped plot. The libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré brings back all the parts of

the story in which Romani was studiously uninterested: youth, the initiation and progress of love,

the ecstasy of mutual love that is expressed by a series of soaring duets. The libretto’s various

additions to Shakespeare’s story do not intensify the L-shaped nature of the plot—for example,

the lovers’ plea for God’s forgiveness in the final lines.

The most remarkable contrast in the Gounod version from all earlier versions and

especially Romani’s libretto is the figure of Capulet. Gounod’s Capulet has lost all trace of the

tyrannical, browbeating side of Shakespeare’s figure. The jovial good-host side displayed at the

party is now all there is. In a very surprising change of plot, the dying Tybalt asks Capulet to see

that Juliette and Paris are married. The pressure behind the speedy ceremony is now because, as

we all know, “La volonté des morts, comme celle de Dieu lui-même, est une loi sainte, une loi

supreme!”. Juliet makes no sign of protest or even reluctance. The librettists seem concerned to

avoid even the slightest father-daughter confrontation.

Since the vertical pressure has been reduced to almost nothing, Juliette could hardly be

said to be in a hinge position. But she does retain one connection with Juliet the proto-soprano:

“ce poignard sera le gardien de ma foi!”.