I do wonder if Shakespeare intended to evoke his much more famous character with this choice of name in Measure for Measure. She could hardly be more different in terms of her role in the story: she is present in three scenes, and only has lines in one of them. Only speaking to demurely give voice to the play’s most regressive fantasies about male control of women’s sexuality, we are left with very little to read in Juliet— except her unusual body, and her remarkable silence.
‘I got possession of Julietta’s bed’
The central conflict of Measure for Measure involves a wildly prudish official, Angelo, who comes to power in the absence of the Duke, and who institutes strict laws against fornication. This is bad news for Juliet, who has accidentally become pregnant by Claudio, who does intend to marry her but hasn’t yet. Under the strict new laws, however, the solution is not for them to just marry—it is for Claudio to be put to death.
Juliet is pregnant. It’s possibly Shakespeare’s first onstage pregnant woman (we’ll get to the question of the play Edward III eventually…), but not the last. We are invited to observe and analyze her pregnant body long before she ever speaks.
Juliet and Claudio first appear in the play in a kind of procession, the image at the top of this letter. Claudio enters complaining about being led to prison publicly, and is told that is part of Angelo’s order: to shame him. Juliet says nothing, and while Claudio is approached by a friend to discuss his predicament, neither of them comment on the fact that the woman they are talking about is standing right there. What Claudio laments as a public display of his shame instead becomes a public display of hers, as Claudio and his friend narrate the state of a body that is set on silent, unacknowledged display for the audience to stare at.
She is the only woman onstage in this scene, surrounded by armed men. The image at the beginning of this letter conceals her, but even that cloaked concealment is conspicuous. On a 17th century stage we can imagine the starkness of a single woman’s gown amongst a crowd of doublets and hose, a single boy actor amongst men, the surprise of a pregnant body led out for display on the fictional street.
This play infamously ends with a woman who is not given space to speak when we really feel like she should. But in Juliet we can see that it begins that way, too—our attention forcefully, deliberately drawn to a female character’s body and presence, and thus also to her silence.
‘Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?’
The absent Duke (disguised as a Friar—it’s a long story) asks Juliet this question—and her reply is yes. She confesses to loving Claudio, but makes no attempt to justify her actions or reject the Duke/Friar’s interpretation of what she and Claudio have done. There is no discussion of who this child will be or what will become of it: she carries only sin itself inside of her.
Though Claudio faces death for fornication, the Duke/Friar points out that because Juliet willingly slept with Claudio, “your sin is of heavier kind than his.” She agrees. But despite her docile replies to the Duke/Friar’s questioning, near the end of the scene, she suddenly interrupts him as he begins to lecture her about repentance, her first piece of dialogue longer than a single line. When he takes the hint and leaves, she bursts into a three-line coda to the scene—long, for her!—replete with broken verse lines and exclamation points, lamenting the newly-received knowledge that Claudio will die the next day.
It is one of several instances in the play when women seem to be bottling in their feelings until they are at last left alone onstage—or at least until male authority figures have gone away. The things they feel, the weight of what they are blamed for and responsible for and accused of, cannot be suppressed, but nor can they be expressed in the faces of the men who have wronged them. On a crowded stage, women must bear the consequences of other people’s choices silently.
‘...and there’s Madam Juliet.’
Inevitably for a Shakespeare play, the story ends with just such a crowded stage, as everyone gathers to reveal the misunderstandings and misdirections of a very grim play that is nevertheless structured as a comedy. The play’s climax revolves around pretending that Claudio has been executed when in fact he hasn’t, a frankly cruel scheme we won’t discuss now because Juliet is fortunately not there. She enters with a disguised Claudio as part of a group of three. The Duke demands to know the identities of the other two people—but once again, Juliet goes entirely unreferenced. No one mentions her for the few lines remaining in the play, but the Folio’s stage directions specifically note that she is present. It’s so striking, I had to go check to make sure.
Some modern productions choose to have her enter with a swaddled, presumably recently-born baby, a gesture no less attention-grabbing than her pregnancy. Perhaps her presence is simply an effort to gather every couple onstage for the play’s ending (though there are certainly plays where Shakespeare doesn’t bother with that). But the effect is to end the play with a trio of silent women—a wife, a nun, and a mother—who have been manipulated and tormented by Angelo and the Duke. While Isabella is implied to end the play with all of the characters’ eyes on her, waiting for a response that never comes, Juliet instead becomes something like the embodiment of an aside: noticed only by the audience, directed towards them, placed there purely for their benefit. In her presence in the scene, we are being asked to notice something that even the characters don’t. What that thing is, of course, Juliet cannot say.
Thank you so much for reading dramatis personae! This week sparked a lot of thoughts and questions for me that didn’t really seem to fit within the shape of the letter, and I hope the open-endedness of Juliet’s role is interesting to you, too. If you’d be interested in a second email later this week with some space for conversation, reply and let me know! And as ever, if you enjoyed this letter, do share with your friends.