Was Beyoncé Channeling Nurse Capulet?

       At first read, successfully comprehending the language of "Romeo and Juliet" proved quite challenging for me. However, following Tuesday's class discussion, I dove into acts III and IV feeling better equipped to analyze the cultural implications of Shakespeare's play. What I find most intriguing are the gender codes set up among the characters. Every page I turned, someone was setting up an expectation for what it means to be/what is expected of a man or a woman (Romeo or Juliet). 

       Shakespeare characterizes love as a weak, feminine emotion. In act III, Romeo jumps between Tybalt and Mercutio to stop their fighting. Now that he is in love, Romeo finds no reason for violence (unlike the other men in the story). He resists it, discrediting its effectiveness, its manliness. He proclaims, "Gentlemen, for shame! forbear this outrage!" (III. 1. 86). However, once Mercutio is slain by Tybalt when Romeo jumps in to stop their feuding, he snaps back from his gentle, peaceful state of mind when he says, "O sweet Juliet,/ Thy hath made me effeminate/ And in my temper softened by valor's steel!" (III. 1. 112-114).  To become effeminate is to become unmanly, womanly. Thus, Romeo blames his love for Juliet for having "softened his temper" to that of a woman's. In doing so, the possibility for men to be madly in love without acquiring a weak, womanly temper is shut down. This paints women as the inadequate of the two sexes, limiting men to a rigid expectation of having a fearless, unsympathetic disposition.

       Furthermore, these male gender codes foreshadow today's stereotypes of young men. In discussing how Romeo created such irony in killing Tybalt after being so sweet with Juliet, the nurse professes, "There's no trust,/ No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured,/All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers" (III. 2. 85-87). To be "perjured" or "forsworn" is to knowingly and willingly tell of things that aren't true. In the instance of "Romeo and Juliet" these truths would be of the love Romeo swore he had for Juliet. To be "naught" is to be worthless, zero, and to be a "dissembler" is to be a liar. Therefore, the nurse limits all men to being untrustworthy, faithless, dishonest, liars - a conventional image of young men today. A perfect example of this would be Beyoncé's "If I Were A Boy," in which she, as I posted in a previous blog, "critiques today's stereotypical young adult male: unthoughtful, insincere, and egocentric when it comes to women and relationships" (4 Feb. 2009).

       Overall, the similarities between the gender codes/expectations of men and women during the time of Shakespeare and those prevalent in today's society surprised me. Although some of those expectations have changed, such as women gaining equality, many have remained the same for centuries. -- Interesting!