Light in darkness – this is the image that constantly recurs in Romeo and Juliet. "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright," Romeo says when he first sees Juliet. "It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night / Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear" (1.5.51-53). Variations on this image are repeated again and again – images of Juliet as a sun rising in the darkness, of Juliet’s eyes shining in the sky, images of Romeo’s body cut out in little stars, of Romeo and Juliet’s love as a bright furious lightning flash. The image of a flash of light disappearing into the dusk symbolizes both the brilliant strength of Romeo and Juliet’s love, as well as its transience. The images of light and darkness also pick up the play’s emphasis on the contrasts between love and hate, passion and death.
Night
Night is also a powerful symbol in the play. The lovers’ passion appears against a backdrop of darkness, as against a background of hatred and violence. But night also shelters and protects the lovers, while the glare of day threatens to reveal them. The heat of the sun makes the young men of Verona irritable and prone to violence. The cool night, in contrast, is a haven for love. We often think of night as both a time for romance and liberation, as well as a time of danger, and the imagery of night in Romeo and Juliet carries both night’s promises and its threats. Hidden in darkness, Romeo and Juliet’s love is free from the social rules that would divide them. But danger also lurks in the darkness, and the secrecy of Romeo and Juliet’s marriage will prove fatal to them.
Death and Premonitions Thereof
Both lovers have intimations of coming death – Romeo before he even arrives at the Capulet’s party, and Juliet when she sees Romeo climbing from her window on his way to exile in Mantua. "Oh god, I have an ill-divining soul," she calls down to him. "Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, / as one dead in the bottom of a tomb" (3.5.54-56). In the most literal possible way, Juliet’s drug-induced deathlike state foreshadows her own death. And the apothecary from whom Romeo buys the poison is described as looking like death – thin, starving, with hollow eyes. Romeo is symbolically buying his death from death.
Dagger and Goblet
Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber suggests that the way that Romeo and Juliet each die also carries symbolic meaning. Romeo drinks his poison from a goblet, a traditional symbol of female sexuality. (This same symbolism was used in the Da Vinci Code, where the Grail, a big goblet, symbolized the eternal feminine.) Juliet, in contrast, stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger – a traditional symbol of male sexuality. Symbolically, Romeo and Juliet are combining physical death and sexual climax. These two opposites are united through the means of death Romeo and Juliet choose to kill themselves.
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