Saturday 11 September 2010

What fears does Juliet reveal in her soliloquy (speech) in Act IV Scene iii?

First and
foremost,is worried that the powerful sleeping potion given to her bymight not actually work.
Because then she'd have to yield to her parents' wishes and marryin the morning, and that's the
last thing Juliet wants. But if the worst comes to the worst, Juliet is determined that it won't
happen, anyway. She's already decided to stab herself to death with a knife if things don't go
according to plan:

No, no. This shall forbid it. Lie thou
there. (Act IV, Scene iii).

Then, after laying down the
knife, she starts getting paranoid. What if Friar Laurence mixed the potion to kill her? Who
knows what's really in that little vial? However, Juliet quickly comes to her senses and
realizes that the Friar is a good and holy man who'd never do anything like this in a million
years.

Still, Juliet continues to be worried. What happens if she wakes up
before 's had a chance to ride to her rescue? Won't she suffocate in that tomb with all that
fetid air? And even if she lives, won't she be surrounded on all sides by death and darkness?
Juliet is scared stiff that when she wakes up in the tomb she'll be able to smell the hanging
odor of death and hear the ghostly screams of her ancestors. She's worried that this will drive
her completely mad and make her do something crazy like pulling 's corpse out of his burial
shroud or smashing in her skull with one of her ancestor's bones.

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