Day 8

 

Excellent 🌿 Let’s continue. Today’s pairing sets fiery young passion against Socrates’ ironic coolness — Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene beside Socrates’ first (mocking) speech in the Phaedrus.

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Day 8 – Shakespeare & Plato

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Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2

The balcony scene — Juliet speaks of love

Context:
Romeo has slipped into the Capulet orchard. Juliet, not knowing he is there, speaks aloud her thoughts about him, about names, and about love that defies family feud. This is the play’s most famous exchange, trembling with youthful passion and daring.

Extract (~55 lines, abridged to flow as one scene):

Juliet: O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Romeo: [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

Juliet: ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Romeo: I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptiz’d;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

Juliet: What man art thou that, thus bescreen’d in night,
So stumblest on my counsel?

Romeo: By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee;
Had I it written, I would tear the word.

Juliet: My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words
Of that tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound:
Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?

Romeo: Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.

Juliet: How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
The orchard walls are high and hard to climb;
And the place death, considering who thou art,
If any of my kinsmen find thee here.

Romeo: With love’s light wings did I o’er-perch these walls;
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do that dares love attempt;
Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.

Juliet: If they do see thee, they will murder thee.

Romeo: Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity.

Reflection prompts:

• Copy the line “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.”
• Notice how love redefines identity here — names, families, dangers dissolve in passion.
• Compare with Othello’s last speech: both make love the measure of self, but one in fresh fire, the other in tragic ashes.

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Plato: Phaedrus

Socrates’ first (mocking) speech — better to love a non-lover

Context:
After hearing Lysias’ written piece, Socrates, half-ironically, offers his own speech making the same case: that non-lovers are better than lovers. He does this in a tone of parody, full of exaggeration, before later retracting it and praising divine madness.

Extract (~3–4 paragraphs, Jowett translation):

“He who is in love is in a state of madness; he is like one who has caught a disease. And madness is by no means a blessing, but brings the greatest evils both upon the lover himself and upon the beloved. For the lover is enslaved to pleasure, and envies all who share in the beloved’s company. He is jealous, suspicious, quarrelsome, and thus he brings endless troubles upon the one whom he professes to love.

“Further, he flatters in order to obtain his desires, and after he has succeeded he becomes faithless. He makes promises which he cannot keep, and when his passion ceases, he deserts the beloved. But the non-lover, being free from this madness, lives in calm friendship, untroubled by jealousy, and so is more trustworthy.

“Therefore, if one is to choose wisely, he ought to prefer the non-lover, who has command of himself, to the lover who is carried away by passion. For all men should desire to live in peace and freedom, not in servitude to another’s irrational desire. This is the sum of my discourse.”

Reflection prompts:

• Copy the phrase “He who is in love is in a state of madness.”
• How does this parody sit beside Juliet’s balcony speech — where love is madness, but life-giving?
• Socrates here pretends to be sober and “reasonable.” Do you feel the irony?

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✨ Today’s resonance:
Juliet exalts love’s passion as freedom from name, family, and death. Socrates, tongue in cheek, calls passion a sickness and prefers the calm of reason. Tomorrow, he will reverse himself — praising divine madness as a gift of the gods.