Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay’;
And I will take thy word: yet, if thou swear’st,
Thou mayst prove false; at lovers’ perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs.
-Juliet
Romeo And Juliet Act II, scene i, line 133
Okay, not only are we in the play Romeo and Juliet, we are in the balcony scene, the Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo scene. And not only that, but we’ve picked a line which, though a bit obscure, is perfectly understandable. So we’ve got a play, a scene, and a line that, no matter how little your Shakespeare knowledge is, you should be pretty good with. Right? Well I hope so.
Jove laughs. Just to be clear, Jove is Jupiter, and Jupiter is the chief of the gods in Roman mythology. I expect Jove laughs at a lot of things. Now, I could easily get back into the endemic thing again, since we are going to bed with it and waking up to it. And it would be easy to talk about Jove’s perspective on it. But let’s try to go somewhere else with today's Totally Random line. Let’s go back to the rest of Juliet’s words for today.
She wants Romeo to promise her that he loves her, and she’s going to believe him. But she’s also being realistic and saying that he wouldn’t be the first to go back on his word about loving someone. Well that’s for sure. But we do know that in this case Romeo will be true to his word. Though that doesn’t end up doing either of them much good, does it? No, it doesn’t.
This is a page from our Tempest retelling. I'm using this pic because in this scene it's Miranda asking the question of Ferdinand, 'Do you love me?' He answers yes and she doesn't question his answer one bit. And they end up living happily ever after. So maybe Juliet shouldn't have doubted? I'm just sayin'.
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