Romeo and Juliet Juliet Quotes

Juliet feels pretty helpless when she says goodbye to her new husband, Romeo, after the couple's one and only night together. Fortune (or Dame Fortuna, goddess of fortune and fate) is often portrayed as a "fickle" (unpredictable and unreliable) goddess because she could raise men up to great heights or cast them down at any moment with the spin of her wheel (a.k.a. the wheel of fortune). Juliet begs "fortune" to be kind to Romeo and reasons that since Romeo is so "faith[ful]" (as in not fickle or unreliable), then "fickle" fortune should want nothing to do with him. Sure—seems like sound logic to us.

Before Juliet even knows Romeo's name, she's head over heels in love and worries that he may already be married to someone else, in which case, she says (rather dramatically) that she'll die. Teenage melodrama aside, Shakespeare is foreshadowing the way Juliet will die shortly after her marriage to Romeo. (She will literally kill herself and she will also have sex with Romeo – to "die," means to have an orgasm in Elizabethan slang.) Check out "Symbols" if you're interested in how Shakespeare links sex and death throughout the play.

Juliet sure does know what she wants. Here, she basically tells Romeo to put a ring on it, which was unheard of in Shakespeare's day. As soon as Juliet knows that she and Romeo love each other, she immediately asks him when they can be married. Love and marriage are inseparable for Juliet. We have to ask: would Romeo have brought it up if Juliet hadn't?