Annotated list of all appearances and all mentions of Seeing Abraham and Balthasar, Sampson says to Gregory, "quarrel, I will back thee" (1.1.33-34), but when they approach the Montague servants, Abraham turns out to be a cool customer. Sampson bites his thumb, and Abraham asks, "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" (1.1.44), which makes Sampson back off somewhat. Balthasar does not speak. -- As a matter of fact Balthasar probably does not even appear. Not until 1709 did editors start identifying Abraham's partner as "Balthasar," and Balthasar (as we see him late in the play) appears to be too sensible to get himself mixed up with Abraham, Sampson, and Gregory. [Scene Summary] When he is telling the Nurse the plans he has made to wed Juliet, Romeo says that "Within this hour my man shall be with thee / And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair; / Which to the high top-gallant of my joy / Must be my convoy in the secret night" (2.4.188-191). The Nurse asks if Romeo's "man" can keep a secret, and Romeo replies, "I warrant thee, my man's as true as steel" (2.4.198). Balthasar's name isn't used, but there's no reason to think that Romeo is describing anyone but Balthasar. [Scene Summary] In Mantua Romeo expects joyful news from Juliet, but Balthasar brings him the worst possible news. Seeing Balthasar, who has just arrived from Verona, Romeo asks -- without giving Balthasar a chance to answer -- if he brings letters from the friar, how Juliet is doing, and how his father is doing. Then again he asks, "How fares my Juliet? that I ask again; / For nothing can be ill, if she be well" (5.1.15-16). Balthasar swiftly delivers the blow to Romeo's happiness: "Then she is well, and nothing can be ill: / Her body sleeps in Capel's monument, / And her immortal part with angels lives" (5.1.17-19). Balthasar goes on to say that he saw Juliet laid into the tomb, and then apologizes for bringing such bad news. Romeo instantly decides that he will go and commit suicide at Juliet's side, though he doesn't tell Balthasar of his decision. He orders Balthasar to fetch him ink and paper, and to hire horses for the return journey to Verona, which he will make that very night. Balthasar protests that Romeo's looks are "pale and wild, and do import / Some misadventure" (5.1.28-29), but Romeo brushes him off, and asks again if there aren't any letters from Friar Laurence. Balthasar says there aren't and goes to do as he is told. [Scene Summary] Romeo and Balthasar come to Juliet's grave. Romeo says to Balthasar, "Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron" (5.3.22), then stops himself, remembering that he has something else to take care of before he opens the grave: "Hold, take this letter; early in the morning / See thou deliver it to my lord and father" (5.3.23-24). The letter is not to be delivered until "early in the morning" because Romeo wants to be sure that he is dead before his father receives the letter explaining why he died. However, Romeo doesn't let Balthasar know what is in the letter or give a hint of his intention to kill himself. As a matter of fact, Romeo wants Balthasar out of the way, so he won't interfere. To get Balthasar out of the way, Romeo says, "Whate'er thou hear'st or seest, stand all aloof [far away], / And do not interrupt me in my course" (5.3.25-27). Romeo also lies about what he's up to, saying that he has come to Juliet's grave mainly to retrieve a ring that he needs. Then Romeo threatens Balthasar, telling him that if he comes back to find out what Romeo is up to, he'll tear him apart. Suitably impressed, Balthasar says, "I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you" (5.3.40), whereupon Romeo gives him money, saying, "Take thou that: / Live, and be prosperous: and farewell, good fellow" (5.3.41-42). Romeo is saying goodbye to Balthasar as though he will never see him again (which he won't), and Balthasar, a good servant, says to himself, "For all this same, I'll hide me hereabout: / His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt" (5.3.43-44). In saying "his looks I fear" Bathasar isn't expressing a fear of Romeo, but a fear for him; Balthasar rightly guesses that Romeo is going to do much more than take a ring from Juliet's finger. After Balthasar withdraws, Paris tries to arrest Romeo. Romeo kills him, and then thinks he remembers something that Balthasar told him about Paris: "What said my man, when my betossed soul / Did not attend him as we rode? I think / He told me Paris should have married Juliet: / Said he not so? or did I dream it so?" (5.3.76-79) Later in the scene, a moment after Romeo dies, Friar Laurence appears in the churchyard, and is met by Balthasar, who tells him that Romeo is at Juliet's grave, and has been there for half an hour. Friar Laurence asks Balthasar to go with him to the grave, but Balthasar is afraid to disobey Romeo's command to stay away, so Friar Laurence goes on alone, but with a foreboding of "some ill unthrifty [unlucky] thing" (5.3.136). As Friar Laurence goes towards the monument of the Capulets, Balthasar says, "As I did sleep under this yew-tree here, / I dreamt my master and another fought, / And that my master slew him" (5.3.137-139). Perhaps Balthasar is lying; he might want to avoid responsibility for doing nothing when he saw the fight between Romeo and Paris. Or perhaps Balthasar actually had that dream and is reminded of it by the Friar's mention of "some ill unthifty thing." In any case, the Friar doesn't seem to be listening, and Balthasar's speech only serves to remind us of what the Friar is about to discover. A few minutes later, just after Juliet's suicide, the watchmen detain Balthasar and Friar Laurence. Then Prince Escalus arrives on the scene. The Prince demands an explantion from Friar Laurence, and after Friar Laurence has finished, the Prince turns to Balthasar for his testimony. Very briefly, Balthasar tells his story, starting with "I brought my master news of Juliet's death" (5.3.272). As he speaks, Balthasar mentions that he still has the letter that Romeo wrote to his father. Prince Escalus takes the letter from Balthasar, reads it, and sees that it confirms what Friar Laurence and Bathasar have said. [Scene Summary]
Act 5, Scene 1
In exile, Romeo wakes up after having a dream in which he dies and is kissed back to life by Juliet. His confidante, Bathalsar, arrives to tell him the sad news: Juliet is dead (Balthasar is not in on Juliet’s plan). Devastated, he decides to head back to Verona immediately. He plans to commit suicide at Juliet’s grave. He’ll procure a deadly poison from an apothecary and drink it in Juliet’s tomb. After buying the potion, Romeo leaves for Verona.
Summary: Act 5, scene 1On Wednesday morning, on a street in Mantua, a cheerful Romeo describes a wonderful dream he had the night before: Juliet found him lying dead, but she kissed him, and breathed new life into his body. Just then, Balthasar enters, and Romeo greets him happily, saying that Balthasar must have come from Verona with news of Juliet and his father. Romeo comments that nothing can be ill in the world if Juliet is well. Balthasar replies that nothing can be ill, then, for Juliet is well: she is in heaven, found dead that morning at her home. Thunderstruck, Romeo cries out, “Then I defy you, stars” (5.1.24). He tells Balthasar to get him pen and paper (with which he writes a letter for Balthasar to give to Montague) and to hire horses, and says that he will return to Verona that night. Balthasar says that Romeo seems so distraught that he is afraid to leave him, but Romeo insists. Romeo suddenly stops and asks if Balthasar is carrying a letter from Friar Lawrence. Balthasar says he is not, and Romeo sends his servant on his way. Once Balthasar is gone, Romeo says that he will lie with Juliet that night. He goes to find an apothecary, a seller of drugs. After telling the man in the shop that he looks poor, Romeo offers to pay him well for a vial of poison. The Apothecary says that he has just such a thing, but that selling poison in Mantua carries the death sentence. Romeo replies that the Apothecary is too poor to refuse the sale. The Apothecary finally relents and sells Romeo the poison. Once alone, Romeo speaks to the vial, declaring that he will go to Juliet’s tomb and kill himself. Read a translation of Act 5, scene 1 → Summary: Act 5, scene 2At his cell, Friar Lawrence speaks with Friar John, whom he had earlier sent to Mantua with a letter for Romeo. He asks John how Romeo responded to his letter (which described the plan involving Juliet’s false death). Friar John replies that he was unable to deliver the letter because he was shut up in a quarantined house due to an outbreak of plague. Friar Lawrence becomes upset, realizing that if Romeo does not know about Juliet’s false death, there will be no one to retrieve her from the tomb when she awakes. (He does not know that Romeo has learned of Juliet’s death and believes it to be real.) Sending for a crowbar, Friar Lawrence declares that he will have to rescue Juliet from the tomb on his own. He sends another letter to Romeo to warn him about what has happened, and he plans to keep Juliet in his cell until Romeo arrives. Read a translation of Act 5, scene 2 → Analysis: Act 5, scenes 1–2The sequence of near-misses in this section reveals the inescapable work of fate. There is no reason for the friar’s plan to go wrong. But an outbreak of plague forces Friar John into quarantine and prevents him from delivering Friar Lawrence’s letter to Romeo, while Balthasar seeks out Romeo with news of Juliet’s death. Just as the audience senses an inviolable fate descending on Romeo, so too does Romeo feel trapped by fate. But the fate the audience recognizes and the fate Romeo sees surrounding him are very different. The audience knows that both Romeo and Juliet are bound to die; Romeo knows only that fate has somehow tried to separate him from Juliet. When Romeo screams, “Then I defy you, stars,” he is screaming against the fate that he believes is thwarting his desires (5.1.24). He attempts to defy that fate by killing himself and spending eternity with Juliet: “Well, Juliet,” he says, “I will lie with thee tonight” (5.1.34). Tragically, it is Romeo’s very decision to avoid his destiny that actually brings fate about. In killing himself over the sleeping Juliet he ensures their ultimate double suicide. Read more about fate as a theme. Through the irony of Romeo’s defiance rebounding upon himself, Shakespeare demonstrates the extreme power of fate: nothing can stand in its way. All factors swing in its favor: the outbreak of the plague, Balthasar’s transmission of the message of Juliet’s death, and Capulet’s decision to move Juliet’s wedding date. But fate is also something attached to the social institutions of the world in which Romeo and Juliet live. This destiny, brought about by the interplay of societal norms from which Romeo and Juliet cannot escape, seems equally powerful, though less divine. It is a fate created by man, and man’s inability to see through the absurdity of the world he has created. Read more about the inevitability of fate. Now, in this scene, we see Romeo as the agent of his own fate. The fortune that befalls Romeo and Juliet is internal rather than external. It is determined by the natures and choices of its two protagonists. Were Romeo not so rash and emotional, so quick to fall into melancholy, the double suicide would not have occurred. Had Juliet felt it possible to explain the truth to her parents, the double suicide might not have occurred. But to wish someone were not as they were is to wish for the impossible. The love between Romeo and Juliet exists precisely because they are who they are. The destructive, suicidal nature of their love is just as much an aspect of their natures, both as individuals and as a couple. In the character of the Apothecary, once again, Shakespeare provides a secondary example of the paradoxical and pressing social forces at work in the play. The Apothecary does not wish to sell poison because it is illegal, banned by society. But it is the same society that makes him poor and that insists on validity of the differences between rich and poor. The Apothecary is pushed to sell the poison by external forces that he, like Romeo, feels completely unable to control. Read more about how Romeo convinces the Apothecary to sell him the poison. |
What happens in Balthasars dream in Romeo and Juliet?
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