A Shakespearean Upskirt

At Juliet's window, Romeo voices one revealing fantasy about her

Argument

Romeo betrays the true nature of his interest in Juliet when, in a seldom-discussed fantasy voiced at her window, he imagines her as a dress-clad angel “bestride the clouds,” himself gazing up from the ground below with “white upturned wondering eyes.” [800 words]

“Excellent,” said a prof at UCLA.

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According to TS Eliot, Romeo and Juliet’s encounter at her window involves poetry so beautiful it approaches the level of music.

But there are many problems with this view, not the least of which is that, again and again, Romeo’s poetic proclamations betray an exclusively carnal interest in the 13yo object of his affection.

The scene begins with the Montague eavesdropping on the Capulet for 50 lines. Before revealing his presence on her property, Romeo, hearing Juliet speak, voices a very peculiar fantasy about her. “O, speak again, bright angel,” he exclaims,

for thou art

As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,

As is a winged messenger of heaven

Unto the white-upturned wond’ring eyes

Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him

When he bestrides the lazy puffing clouds

And sails upon the bosom of the air.

The second-to-last noun is one hint of the suggestiveness here. But the key detail is the verb “sails,” which indicates how this angel is appareled—in a dress.

With that in mind, do you notice anything curious about the situation?

She’s above. In a gown. A light, airy gown. Mid-stride.

And he’s below. Directly below. Gazing thigh sky-ward. Gazing with “white upturned wondering eyes.” With eyes that are at once wondering in the sense of marveling and wandering in the sense of straying. And “white” in that they’re so turned up and transfixed you can’t see his pupils.

In critical editions of Romeo & Juliet, editors should but don’t cite parallel passages in Shakespeare. For example, the same trope appears in Love’s Labor’s Lost, a play written at approximately the same time. Here, Berowne supposes what would happen if his lady were walking and the street was “paved with eyes.” “O, vile!” answers Dumaine,

Then, as she goes, what upward lies

The street should see as she walked overhead.

The parallel is precise, “overhead” comparing with “over my head,” “upward” with “upturned.”

Romeo too is evidently thinking of “what upward lies” from his vantage-point on the ground, of what he can “see” as his lady “walk[s] overhead.”

(Why don’t editors note such obvious parallels? Because they’re biased in favor of the romantic view—a point I discussed most recently in Romeo’s Mischief and one I’ll return to again and again).

And so, you can add that to your list of Shakespearean poetic devices, to Romeo’s skills and accomplishments as a poetic speaker.

The upskirt.

Extended similes. Check. Extended metaphors. Check. Extended upfrocks. Check.

Romeo’s angel-astride-a-cloud fantasy might seem like an anomaly in a scene widely considered the height of romance. In fact, many of his other utterances are similarly suggestive. For example, he also urges Juliet to “cast off” her clothing, exhorts her to renounce Diana, the goddess of chastity, proposes to “take all” of Juliet, and even asks her directly to “satisfy” him (“O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?”).

Romeo’s known for his imagination—and he uses his imagination indeed: to repeatedly disrobe his new inamorata.

Glaring in itself, Romeo’s image is even more glaring in context, his friend Mercutio having just insinuated exactly this—that Romeo’s interest in his beloved extended but to her procreative part.

In particular, in a series of bawdy jokes voiced less than 50 lines earlier, Mercutio had suggested that Romeo’s true interest was his lady’s “quivering thigh, / And the demesnes that there adjacent lie” and joked that it “would anger [Romeo] / To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle.”

In the lines immediately following, one might have expected Shakespeare to show just how wrong Mercutio is, to show that Romeo’s interest in Juliet went well beyond the physical.

Instead, in having Romeo voice a nakedly sexual fantasy centered on that same area of the female body, Romeo’s iconoclastic friend appears both prescient and perspicacious.

Noticing a pattern? In The Trafficking of Juliet, we saw Mercutio suggest Romeo was about to pay for sex—right before Romeo did just that. “A bawd, a bawd, a bawd!” he cried, calling the Nurse a procuress, Romeo a john—right before Romeo pulled coins from his pocket.

Crazy-sounding insinuation followed by near-instant instantiation—that’s the pattern, again and again, and involving many of the play’s most definitive events.

But here’s the really astounding thing: in 400 years, no one has ever taken the play’s built-in satirist seriously. Never. Not once. Not that I’ve seen—and I’ve looked.

No scholar has carefully examined Mercutio’s claims and made an evidence-based assessment of their aptness.

He’s assumed to be wrong—because he just has to be. Because the alternative is inconceivable. Because Romeo & Juliet is a straightforward tale of circumstance-transcending love.

Because no work of art could be that cunning.

No poet successfully hide his meaning for centuries.

But what if.

What if Mercutio's right—and demonstrably so?

What if Romeo spoke and behaved exactly as his friend says?

What if the caricature were no caricature but apt, illuminating, Chorus-like commentary?

Coming soon: a two-part expose, “The Vindication of Mercutio.”