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What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
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In the first proper scene from the play, we’re introduced to the feud between the Montagues and Capulets via some low-level characters and even lower-level sexual punning, before the more important characters (Benvolio, Tybalt, and later Old Montague and the Prince) join in.
Later, we meet Romeo for the first time, and we’re shown his deep, unrequited love for a Capulet girl: not Juliet, at first, but Rosaline.
It’s a high-octane scene that sets the tone for the rest of the play: punning fighting, authority, heartbreak, in that order.
Are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push
Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids
To the wall. William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 1
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
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Women are the second sex and take in laying down. Montague’s men may as well be women, and he’ll take them to the wall the same way he’d do any other woman.
This line begins a serious of pretty lowbrow puns over the next 15 lines:
“thrust”
“cut… heads”
“maidenheads”
“take it in sense”
“stand”
“piece of flesh”
“fish”
“tool”
“Naked weapon”
For further explanation of these, check out The Dramatic Use of Bawdy in Shakespeare by E. A. M. Coleman (1974).
Mills & Boon has NOTHING on Shakespeare!
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“Loins” refers to the genitalia of Romeo and Juliet’s parents. We still use the phrase “the fruit of one’s loins” to mean “children” today. Actually, in Original Pronunciation, the word “loins" is a homophone of “lines,” as in the respective genealogical lines of Romeo and Juliet.
Loins was also a pun; in the pronunciation of the day “lines” would have been pronounced the same way as “loins”, thus the pun was that the two lovers are from the literal loins, and also the blood or genetic lines of their respective parents.
Fatal means deadly, while loins means vitality and proliferation; Shakespeare reinforces the idea that fate was against Romeo and Juliet with a near-oxymoron.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
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What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
At this point, everyone is tired of the Capulets and the Montagues fighting.
Clubs, bills and partisans are all kinds of weapon (the last two are forms of halberd).
Here, they’re used to refer to the people who carry them, as in “Halberds, this way!”.
You can see the social distinctions in the weapons. The nobles and their retainers all carry swords. The common citizens wield street brawl arms (clubs) or infantry weapons (bills and partisans).