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- Light is typically a symbol of openness, purity, hope, and good fortune, while dark often represents confusion, obscurity, and doom. Shakespeare, however, turns these commonplace associations on their heads and inverts both 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.
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 ...
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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.
Light. When Romeo initially sees Juliet, he compares her immediately to the brilliant light of the torches and tapers that illuminate Capulet's great hall: "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" (1.4.46). Juliet is the light that frees him from the darkness of his perpetual melancholia.
Quick answer: In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", Romeo's statement about light and darkness signifies the growing danger and sorrow he and Juliet face with the arrival of...
Light in Darkness in Romeo and Juliet | Shmoop. Back. More. Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory. (Click the symbolism infographic to download.) Like a candle in the darkness, the imagery of light in dark comes up a lot in Romeo and Juliet. "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright," Romeo says when he first sees Juliet.
