In the balcony scene of Shakespeare’s most famous love story, Juliet confesses to the dark night her love for the man she’s just met. Little does she know, Romeo is there in the bushes, gazing up at her with heart also blazing. In the scene that follows, the surprised Juliet elaborates a theory of love that has been interpreted for centuries as naïve and idealistic. What happens if we take seriously the model of love articulated by this young girl from Verona? What if love is an economy that operates not on scarcity but on abundance?
Blame teenage insecurity, blame the patriarchy, blame his aching heart still reeling from Rosaline’s refusal, in any case, Romeo’s model of love is grounded in a traditional economy of exchange. He wants to receive and give in equal measure, at an agreed-upon time. Love is trade, and the trade must be fair.
When Juliet tries to leave, saying that this is all happening too fast, Romeo stops her, saying like so many men before and after him: “O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?”
“What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?” asks Juliet
“The exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine,” he says.
She laughs at his pedantry: “I gave thee mine before thou didst request it!”
Juliet needed no guarantees before she confessed her love. She required no certainty of exchange. She gave because there was nothing else to do with her overflowing love but give it – to the night sky, to the vision of Romeo she held in her heart, to whoever was listening in the garden.
“And yet I would it were to give again.” She continues.
This worries Romeo: “Wouldst thou withdraw it? for what purpose, love?”
“But to be frank, and give it thee again.” Juliet knows that it isn’t the having or the getting of love that is the most pleasurable, but the giving of it. She wants to give, and give again; reaping repeatedly the pleasure of the gift.
She laughs again (at least in the production in my head): “And yet I wish but for the thing I have.”
There is nothing stopping her from giving her love endlessly. She need not await exchange. She need not play coy with her devotion until she’s received certainty that he will give his back.
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”
In Juliet’s economy, there is no scarcity. Giving love only generates more.
Just a thought, but if Juliet truly believes in a theory of love that is boundless, why does she stab herself when she discovers Romeo dead? Couldn't she find love again (after a suitable period of grieving of course)? I know in a sense we're suppose to view the suicide as an act of love, a desire to join him in the afterlife. But I wonder to what extent Juliet truly understands love as infinite or whether she simply feels that way toward Romeo in particular, giving her love unconditionally to him not because there is no fear of scarcity but because she can't help but feel that way toward him. Perhaps the boundlessness of her love is person-specific and doesn't reflect any overarching theory. On the other hand, perhaps she does subscribe to a view of love that is limitlessness and the naive part is in her belief that Romeo and only Romeo can be the cause of those feelings. (Also hi Joy!)
ReplyDeleteloving - or giving love - is already an exchange. love is outward, it radiates to far lands, borderless. love feeds on itself, not on the promise of its echoed return. juliet is right: love is infinite, in grandeur, in substance. let it surprise us!
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