Juliet's apocalyptic impatience

Calling for nightfall—or rather sunfall

This is another in my “Shakespeare’s changes” series, where I examine how Shakespeare alters the Romeo and Juliet story as he found it in his principle source, Arthur Brooke’s Romeus & Juliet, a long poem published about 30 years before his own (1562 and 1595, respectively). Right now, scholars consider Shakespeare’s revisions to be relatively few and insignificant. In this series, I try to show that his changes are both numerous and massively consequential, amounting to an altogether different story.

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Then wheresoever Phaeton did chance to cast his view, 
The world was all on flaming fire

—Ovid’s Metamorphoses

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In Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet, Juliet is generally forbearing, patiently suffering the vicissitudes of Fortune.

By contrast, Shakespeare’s is impatient.

For example, she’s impatient for her wedding night.

How impatient?

So impatient she’d let the sun itself crash to the earth and cause mass destruction—if it meant the day would end and she could be with Romeo sooner.

Which may sound hyperbolic on my part. And isn’t at all.

Rather, this is precisely what she implies when, in a soliloquy in Act 3, Juliet wishes it were not Phoebus but his reckless son Phaeton who was driving the horse-drawn chariot of the sun across the sky.

“Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, / Towards Phoebus’ lodging,” Juliet instructs the wagon-pulling horses, exhorting them to run faster—indeed as fast as possible. She continues,

Such a wagoner 
As Phaeton would whip you to the west
And bring in cloudy night immediately. (3.2.1-4)

And he would indeed. And that’s clearly her wish. And that’s about as shocking and selfish wish as is conceivable.

Why?

Because, as you know if you’ve read the original story, Phaeton quickly loses control of the vehicle. Lacks the skill to control the horses. Lacks the strength. And, as a consequence, destroys entire regions of the earth, setting them aflame.

The devastation’s so extensive it’s delineated for over 100 lines. For page after page of text.

Towns, cities, forests, lakes, mountain ranges—all go up in flames.

Phaeton himself at one point looks about and sees fire and only fire. As the narrator says, 

Then wheresoever Phaeton did chance to cast his view, 
The world was all on flaming fire. (2.290-1)

A global conflagration. An intercontinental inferno. Everything. Everywhere. Ablaze…

And the world’s only saved—because Jove himself intervenes, hurling a lightning bolt at the boy and knocking him out of the sky…

But back to Juliet. She wants what?!

For Phaeton to take up the reins once again. To take pop’s sky-car out for another apocalyptic, earth-scorching excursion.

And so that what? So that she can be with her boy. And be with him now. So she doesn’t have to endure an afternoon alone…

Thoughtless, egomaniacal, institutionalizable. I don’t know. Are there words for this?

And the crucial point’s this: the wish is entirely and uniquely Shakespeare’s. No prior Capulet girl commanded the horses to run like mad, oblivious of or indifferent to the Armageddon-like fallout.

No prior Capulet endangered everyone and everything in order to expedite her own amatory meetup.

None said let the world go to hell, literal hell, I want my lover right. this. second.

None expressed such extreme impatience. Such willfulness. Such disregard. Such destructiveness. Such solipsism.

Is it becoming clear? Do you see what Shakespeare’s up to? Not re-romanticizing the lovers. Systematically de-romanticizing them.

Yet somehow our romanticization has persisted unchecked. 

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