In this week'south Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the meaning of a strange Shakespearean quotation

Let's outset with 2 correctives to common misconceptions about Romeo and Juliet.

First of all, when Juliet asks her star-cross'd lover, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art one thousand Romeo?' she isn't, of form, asking him where he is. 'Wherefore' means 'why': 'the whys and the wherefores' is a tautological phrase, since whys and wherefores are the same. (If we wish to be pedantic, 'wherefore' strictly means 'for what' or 'for which', only this means the same as 'why' in about contexts.)

2d, the and so-called 'balcony scene' in Romeo and Juliet was unknown to Shakespeare'due south original audiences. In the stage directions for Romeo and Juliet and the and then-called 'balcony scene' (Act ii Scene 2), Shakespeare writes that Juliet appears at a 'window', but he doesn't mention a balcony. It would take been difficult for him to do so, since – perhaps surprisingly – Elizabethan England didn't know what a 'balcony' was.

As Lois Leveen has noted, when the Jacobean travel-writer Thomas Coryat described a balcony in 1611, he drew attention to how foreign and exotic such a thing was to the English language at the time. The balustrade scene was near probably the invention of Thomas Otway in 1679, when the Venice Preserv'd writer tookRomeo and Juliet and moved its action to ancient Rome, retitling the playThe History and Fall of Caius Marius. It was hugely popular, and, although Otway'southward version is largely forgotten now, it did leave one lasting legacy: the idea of the 'balcony' scene.

But let's return to the first of these: the most famous line from the play, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore fine art k Romeo?' The play'south most-quoted line references the feud between the two families, which ways Romeo and Juliet cannot exist together. But Juliet's question is, when we stop and consider information technology, more than a footling baffling. Romeo's problem isn't his beginning name, simply his family unit name, Montague. Surely, since she fancies him, Juliet is quite pleased with 'Romeo' as he is – it'south his family unit that are the trouble. And so why does Juliet not say, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Montague?' Or perhaps, to make the poesy of the line slightly meliorate, 'O Romeo Montague, wherefore art thousand Montague?'

Solutions have been proposed to this puzzler, but none is completely satisfying. As John Sutherland and Cedric Watts put it in their hugely enjoyable prepare of literary essays puzzling out some of the more curious aspects of Shakespeare'south plays, Oxford World's Classics: Henry V, State of war Criminal?: and Other Shakespeare Puzzles, 'The most famous line in Romeo and Juliet is also, information technology appears, the play'south most illogical line.'

Indeed, putting the line into its immediate context, Human activity ii Scene 2, scarcely makes things clearer. It makes them worse:

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art g Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if m wilt not, exist but sworn my dearest,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

Not 'I'll no longer be a Juliet': that wouldn't make sense. But then if that doesn't, why does 'wherefore fine art k Romeo?'

Juliet goes on to ostend that information technology is the family unit name rather than the given name that is the trouble:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What'due south Montague? it is nor hand, nor human foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a human being. O, be some other proper noun!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By whatever other proper name would olfactory property every bit sweet;
And so Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

'Though not a Montague'; 'What'southward Montague?' These point out that Romeo being a Montague is the upshot. And even so Juliet then immediately turns dorsum to his forename, and sees that as a trouble too. After the other earth-famous lines from this scene 'What's in a name? that which we phone call a rose / By whatsoever other name would aroma as sweet'), Juliet goes on the offensive where 'Romeo' is concerned: 'Then Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd …'

Sutherland and Watts endeavour to explain this oddity by arguing that Juliet is cartoon attention, even subconsciously, to the arbitrariness of signs or words and their just conventional human relationship with the things they represent.

(When I used to teach linguistic communication to kickoff-yr English language students, the way I demonstrated – and got them to recall – the arbitrariness of all signs was by thinking of the English language and French words for the thing with branches and leaves out in that location on the campus backyard. We may call information technology a 'tree', just those four letters just mean the branchy affair considering English speakers follow the convention that 'tree' volition announce the branchy matter; in France, they don't recognise that convention, instead using the five letters, 'arbre' to refer to the same object. And so the relationship between give-and-take and thing is completely 'arbre-tree' – i.e., arbitrary.)

I have a lot of fourth dimension for Sutherland and Watts's 'solution' to this puzzle. If we approach Juliet'due south lines from a purely rational or logical perspective, they don't brand much sense: 'wherefore art thou Romeo' should read 'wherefore art chiliad Montague'. Merely she has only met and fallen head-over-heels in love for the first time, with a boy who is part of the family that is her family unit's sworn enemy. She isn't existence guided past pure logic, but past emotion – conflicted emotion, love vying with regret, passion fighting with sorrow.

Past this, I don't mean she is so emotionally overwrought that she isn't making any sense, either: nosotros all know what she ways when she says, 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore fine art thou Romeo'. Instead, she is choosing to vent her sadness over the state of affairs, not by narrowly attacking his surname, but past attacking the very fact that he is both Romeo the male child she loves and Romeo of the house of Montague. Both of these 'signifiers' – to follow Sutherland and Watts's interpretation inspired by Saussure and Lacan – refer to the youth who stands exterior her window, merely she would love him just as much if he were a boy named something else. Names themselves, and the baggage they bring with them, are the problem: hence 'wherefore art thou Romeo'.

Names shouldn't matter: Montague, Romeo, Capulet, Juliet. But she knows they do. Hence the plaintive lament in her line 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art grand Romeo'. If he wasn't known as 'Romeo Montague', or 'Romeo' for curt, and belonged to some other family, he would still be the youth he is. And their love would not be doomed.

Oliver Tearle is the author of The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History , available now from Michael O'Mara Books, and The Tesserae, a long verse form well-nigh the events of 2020.