Romeo and Juliet: The Death Speech

The Death Speech Through Shakespeare’s use of metaphors, personification, and foreshadowing, he creates a dark tone in Romeo’s final speech before he commits suicide in the name of love. As Romeo is speaking he says many metaphors the set the scene in the soliloquy to pronounce his sorrow and pain. Romeo says, “Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide” as an expression of calling the poison to kill him (Shakespeare). This metaphor helps create the dark tone in this soliloquy because Romeo is talking about the poison coming to him. It is standing for the dark and low point Romeo is at, and now he is ready to make the final move and “join” Juliet in the afterlife. The use of this metaphor is an example of showing how Romeo has fallen to the evil side of humanity for choosing suicide. This literary device makes the reader feel the gravity of the situation that the entire cast of characters would come across later in the act. The use of personification in Romeo’s last speech adds to the dark tone with this example “Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,” (Shakespeare). This is personifying death, saying that it came in quietly and manually took away Juliet’s beauty and sweetness. This adds to the tone because it creates sadness in the scene and builds towards the ending which is even sadder. Shakespeare does this to play with the readers’ emotion and to make everything seem worse than it is in the end. This then affects the reader by making their emotions wild and erratic and in the end much more confusing and powerful. Finally, the use of foreshadowing throughout the entirety of the soliloquy creates the dark tone, an example is “Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace” (Shakespeare). This foreshadows Romeo’s soon coming death. This ends up making the scene feel dark and sad for the readers and adds to the sense of evil because Romeo is finally committing the ultimate sin. This ends up affecting the reader because the reader finds themselves wrapped up in the world of tragedy and love of the story of Romeo and Juliet. There is no good side and bad side to the story, it is just the people are perceived that way by the choices they make. The character can make choices that gain your sympathy or not, but it affects the readers perspective on the soliloquy and the minor characters of the play who may seem insignificant. Shakespeare wrote the apothecary into the act the way he did, so the reader could understand what went on in the time Shakespeare wrote this tragedy. The cultural environment that is presented in Romeo and Juliet is the entire backing to the plot of this play. Without these hardships Shakespeare saw in his lifetime he would not have been able to write Romeo and Juliet the way he did. Thus, the dark tone given to Romeo in his last words reflects what Shakespeare has seen in the laws, the church, and the people.