Gender and honour

The play opens on two Capulet servants working up to a fight, and their first jokes join violence to sex: Montague's men are to be pushed from the wall and his women ‘thrust to the wall’. Their manhood is a show, and a calculated one: Sampson wants the Montagues to ‘let them begin’, checks the law, disowns his insult when it is against him, and dares them only once a kinsman is in sight: ‘Draw if you be men’. Within twenty lines of the dare the code has climbed from servants to Tybalt, who hates the very word ‘peace’, to two old fathers calling for their swords, and the play's first two women first speak to hold their husbands back. This is AQA's June 2017 extract (1.1.34 to 52, aggressive male behaviour): read the bravado as performance, then follow the code up the ranks to 3.1 and the tomb.

• women, being the weaker vessels,¹ are ever thrust² to the wall. Therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall³ and thrust his maids to the wall.

  The servants' first joke already holds both of the theme's codes: men are measured by whom they can push from the wall, women by which house they belong to. Gender and the feud enter the play in the same sentence.

  In the exam

  Use it to argue from the first scene that gender in this play is about men as much as women, and that the two are defined together.

• My naked weapon¹ is out. Quarrel, I will back³ thee.²

  In 'Quarrel, I will back thee' the code's first promise is loyalty between men: the same loyalty makes Mercutio take up Romeo's quarrel in 3.1, and Romeo kill for Mercutio.

  In the exam

  On the June 2017 question, use it to start a thread from the servants' bond to 3.1, so that the comic extract leads straight to the play's first deaths.

• Draw¹ if you be men.²

  The brawl begins only when 'man' is put in question: the servants have insulted and denied, and it is the dare that draws the swords. Every later argument about what a man is starts from this one.

  Key word: ‘men’

  The dare is plural: Sampson challenges a group, in public. In this street a man is made by the verdict of other men, which is why a man who has been dared in front of witnesses cannot easily refuse.

  In the exam

  On the June 2017 question, start a 'who defines a man?' thread here.

• A crutch, a crutch!¹ Why call you for a sword?²

  The first woman's voice in the play is raised against a sword, and in public: the wives can see the code from outside, and mock it, but they cannot stop it.

  In the exam

  On an aggressive-behaviour question, use the old fathers to show the code is not only young men's: Capulet wants his sword, and his wife offers him a crutch.

The daughter's code opens in the next two scenes, and it is kept in the language of value. Paris answers a father's caution with what other girls are, ‘Younger than she are happy mothers made’; Capulet, for now, puts her consent first: ‘My will to her consent is but a part’. Specimen 1 printed this exchange (1.2.6 to 19): on a gender question, set Paris's custom against Capulet's caution, and follow the father to 3.4's tender. Juliet's first scene is all about her worth as a bride. Her mother, who cannot talk to her without the Nurse, does ask, ‘How stands your disposition to be married?’, but brushes the careful answer aside for Verona's custom and sells Paris as a handsome book and a fortune; the Nurse turns every word into a joke about the body. Juliet speaks seven lines, answers her mother's summons with ‘What is your will?’, and promises nothing. AQA has never printed 1.3, but its middle (1.3.75 to 105) is the passage for any question on what is expected of women: two women with two ideas of what a wife is for.

• It is an honor¹ that I dream not of.²

  Juliet's first word for marriage is the one Tybalt will swear by at the feast: for a man, honour is fought for in the street; for a daughter, it is married into.

  In the exam

  Use it to show the tactic a daughter has when she cannot refuse: the dutiful word that promises nothing, which she turns on Paris in 4.1 ('It may be so').

• Well, think of marriage now.¹ Younger than you / Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,² / Are made already mothers. By my count / I was your mother much upon these years³ / That you are now a maid.

  The pressure to marry early reaches Juliet first from her mother, not her father: the daughter's code is kept by women as well as men.

  In the exam

  On an expectations-of-women question, show the expectation passed from mother to daughter, then set it against Capulet's own warning that girls married so young are 'too soon marred' (1.2).

• So shall you share all that he doth possess¹ / By having him,² making yourself no less.³

  Lady Capulet sells the match by what Juliet will gain: a share of everything Paris owns, at no cost to herself. A wife's worth is measured by her husband's property.

  In the exam

  On the 1.3 practice question, use it as the end of the speech's argument, and ask what it offers Juliet that is not Paris's.

• No less?¹ Nay, bigger.² Women grow³ by men.

  The Nurse turns her mistress's promise of status into a joke about the body, and nobody in the room objects: a girl not yet fourteen is being talked about as a future mother by her mother and her nurse.

  In the exam

  On the 1.3 practice question, use it to show the expectation agreed by every adult in the room, that a wife grows through a man, while the girl it is about is asked only whether she can like Paris.

On the way to the feast Mercutio's Queen Mab sends soldiers dreams of ‘cutting foreign throats’ and teaches maids ‘first to bear’. At the feast both codes are at work in one room. Tybalt treats killing a guest as a duty to his family, and his uncle stops him by rank and calls him a boy. In the sonnet that follows, Juliet, cast as a still saint, decides when the kiss happens: ‘Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake’. In the same breath that tells Romeo whose daughter she is, the Nurse tells him her price. AQA's June 2019 extract (1.5.104 to 122) is the sonnet: on a gender question, ask who holds the power in it, and set it between Tybalt's oath and the Nurse's tip.

• Now, by the stock and honor of my kin,¹ / To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.²

  This is the motive the servants never state: honour belongs to a family, so an insult to the house is a wound any of its young men must avenge, even on a guest.

  In the exam

  Use it to say what motivates male aggression, as the June 2017 report asked: a duty to the family name that makes violence feel righteous to the man who commits it.

• He shall be endured. / What, goodman boy?¹ I say he shall. Go to.² / Am I the master here or you?³ Go to.

  Two men of the same house quarrel over who decides a man's honour, and rank beats the code.

  In the exam

  Use it to show that the code can be overruled but not ended: Tybalt obeys his uncle, withdraws, and by the next morning has sent a challenge to Romeo's father's house.

• I tell you, he that can lay hold of her¹ / Shall have the chinks.^2,3

  The Nurse, who loves Juliet more than anyone, sums her up to a stranger as a fortune: in this house even affection speaks of a daughter as wealth to be got hold of.

  In the exam

  On an expectations-of-women question, set it beside 'share all that he doth possess' (1.3): her mother and her nurse both speak of her marriage as money.

The Chorus states the inequality before the orchard: Juliet is as much in love as Romeo, ‘her means much less’. Then she uses the little she has. Romeo, fresh from Mercutio's bawdy jokes, still speaks as a worshipper. Juliet, overheard before she knew he was there, names the rules for a modest girl that she has already broken (she should have been ‘more strange’, must not seem ‘light’) and sets them aside: she asks him outright if he loves her, stops his oaths, is the first to name marriage, arranges the messenger and calls him back like a falconer. Next morning the Friar turns the usual blame round: ‘Women may fall when there's no strength in men’. AQA has printed this scene twice, both times on Romeo (Specimen 3, June 2022): on a gender question go to the half that has never been printed, from the ‘mask of night’ on.

• Thou knowest the mask of night¹ is on my face, / Else would a maiden² blush³ bepaint⁴ my cheek / For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight.

  Overheard, Juliet has lost the modest girl's chief defence, distance, so she makes honesty her defence instead: she would rather be thought too frank than be thought to be playing a game.

  In the exam

  On the November 2021 question, use it to define 'female' from Juliet's own words: the blush a maiden ought to show, and the frankness she chooses instead.

• If that thy bent of love be honorable,^1,2 / Thy purpose marriage,³ send me word tomorrow,⁴

  The word that sends men to fight becomes, in Juliet's mouth, a test she sets a man: an honourable lover is one who marries, not one who draws. She turns the street's word against the street's idea of a man.

  Key word: ‘honorable’

  In Tybalt's oath honour was his family's name; in 1.3 it was the rank a good match brings. Juliet makes it a condition she sets, a word she uses to judge a man rather than one that others use to judge her.

  In the exam

  On a 'how far is Juliet powerful' question, use it as the first time she sets terms a man must meet, then ask whether she ever does so again in public.

• Hist,¹ Romeo, hist! O, for a falc'ner's voice² / To lure this tassel-gentle³ back again!

  For one moment the hunter's part belongs to the girl: she has the call, and Romeo answers it. In the next breath she names its limit, the 'Bondage' that makes her whisper: her power is real, and it works only at night and in a low voice.

  In the exam

  On a 'how far is Juliet strong' question, use it as the height of her private power, then set it against 3.5, where reasoning spoken openly to her father is mocked as 'Chopped logic'.

Later that morning Mercutio puts the street's question as a joke: a lovesick Romeo is ‘already dead’, so ‘is he a man to encounter Tybalt’? He mocks the duellist who ‘fights as you sing prick-song’, and in 2.5 the Nurse teases Juliet, ‘You know not how to choose a man’. AQA's June 2024 extract (2.5.1 to 18, the difficulties faced by Juliet) sits here: on a gender question, read Juliet kept waiting on an old servant's legs as the Chorus's ‘her means much less’ in action. Romeo never tells Mercutio about the wedding, so when Tybalt calls him a villain within the hour and he answers with love, his friend sees only shame. Mercutio draws, is fatally hurt under Romeo's arm, and Romeo, alone, lets the code speak in his own voice: love has made him ‘effeminate’. Within ten lines he chooses ‘fire-eyed fury’ and kills Tybalt. AQA has not printed 3.1 in any confirmed paper, but every answer on male behaviour needs it: the joke of 2.4 is answered here with swords.

• And is he a man¹ to encounter Tybalt?²

  The pressure on Romeo comes from his friends as well as his enemies: Tybalt has sent a challenge, and Mercutio's joke ranks a lover below a fighter.

  In the exam

  On the Romeo and Mercutio practice question, start the friendship here: Mercutio mocks the lover behind his back and asks the question 3.1 will answer.

• Boy,¹ this shall not excuse the injuries² / That thou hast done me. Therefore turn and draw.³

  Romeo has offered a reason for peace, and Tybalt answers that no reason counts: in the code an insult is a debt, and only a fight can pay it.

  Key word: ‘excuse’

  Romeo had said his reason to love Tybalt 'Doth much excuse' the anger such a greeting deserves; Tybalt throws the word back. The two men use one word in two systems: for Romeo an excuse is a reason, for Tybalt nothing but a fight can excuse anything.

  In the exam

  On the June 2017 question, link it back to the servants' thumb-biting: the same logic of insult and payment, now between gentlemen, and now fatal.

• O calm, dishonorable, vile¹ submission!² / Alla stoccato³ carries it away.

  Mercutio takes Romeo's refusal as a dishonour to himself: in the code a friend's peace shames the whole group, so the man who draws is not the man who was insulted.

  In the exam

  On the June 2017 question, use it as the extract's logic made fatal: the servants' insult was 'disgrace to them if they bear it', and now a gentleman will not let his friend bear one.

• Thy beauty hath made me effeminate¹ / And in my temper² softened valor's steel.³

  Alone, with no one left to shame him, Romeo shames himself: the street's verdict now speaks in his own voice, the code at its most powerful because it no longer needs an audience.

  Key word: ‘valor's’

  Valour is the soldier's virtue, and the Friar takes the word up for both lovers: Romeo in 3.3 is 'Digressing from the valor of a man', and Juliet in 4.1 must let nothing 'Abate thy valor'. By Act 4 the only person asked for a man's valour is a girl.

  In the exam

  On a male-behaviour or 'what is a man' question, use it as the turn: the one man who refused the code now speaks its verdict on himself, and within ten lines chooses fury.

The same afternoon the news reaches both lovers. In her wedding song Juliet, a bride frank about her desire, asks night to ‘Hood my unmanned blood’ (a falconer's word: blood like an untrained hawk, and a bride not yet with her husband; it has nothing to do with being unmanly); when the news comes she calls Romeo ‘an honorable villain’, and when the Nurse curses all men she crowns him with honour instead. In 3.3 the same word, banishment, throws Romeo to the floor in tears, and three ideas of a man compete over him: the Nurse's ‘Stand an you be a man’, for Juliet's sake; the Friar's rebuke, which finds him ‘Digressing from the valor of a man’; and Romeo's own dagger, drawn on himself. AQA has printed 3.2 three times, and its November 2021 extract (3.2.79 to 104) asked how far Juliet is a female character with strong emotions. 3.3 has never been printed, and it holds the play's fullest argument about what a man is.

• O, I have bought¹ the mansion² of a love / But not possessed it, and, though I am sold,³ / Not yet enjoyed.⁴

  Juliet's freest moment in the play comes minutes after the audience has watched her husband kill her cousin: she speaks as a wife choosing her own desire, not knowing that the men's code in the street has already doomed the marriage she longs to complete.

  In the exam

  On the November 2021 extract, use it to place the passage: the oxymorons come minutes after this wife longing for her wedding night, so measure the strength of her feeling by how far the news throws her.

• Beautiful tyrant,¹ fiend angelical!²

  The 'strong emotions' of the November 2021 question are here, violent and divided; but each charge is answered within the same line, as if a court were sitting in her head. The feeling is strong, and so is the mind weighing it.

  In the exam

  On the November 2021 question, define 'strong' twice, strong feeling and strong judgement, and let this line prove the first before her defence of Romeo proves the second.

• Blistered be thy tongue¹ / For such a wish! He was not born to shame.² / Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit,³ / For 'tis a throne where honor may be crowned⁴ / Sole monarch of the universal Earth.

  The Nurse condemns men as a sex; Juliet refuses the generalisation and answers for one man, her husband. It is her first open choice of husband over cousin, made aloud to the woman who raised her.

  In the exam

  Use it to show Juliet's strength as judgement: she rejects the Nurse's verdict on all men, as she will reject her advice in 3.5, and decides for herself.

• Hold thy desperate hand!¹ / Art thou a man?² Thy form cries out thou art. / Thy tears are womanish;³ thy wild acts denote / The unreasonable fury of a beast.⁴

  The Church answers the street with the street's own weapon, shame: the Friar wants Romeo to live, and the only language he has for it calls tears a woman's.

  In the exam

  On the 3.3 practice question, make it the extract's centre and ask how far the Church differs from the street: the Friar's aim is a life saved, not a fight won, but his test of a man is the same.

• Unseemly woman in a seeming man,¹ / And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!²

  The Friar sorts Romeo into man, woman and beast, and puts him in all three at once. His man is defined only by what he must not be, a woman in tears or a beast in a rage, so the Church's idea of a man rests on scorn for the other two.

  In the exam

  On the 3.3 practice question, use it to test whether any adult in the cell offers Romeo a man not built on that scorn: the Nurse's 'for Juliet's sake' is the nearest.

On the lovers' only night together the bargain is struck between two men: Lady Capulet means to learn her daughter's mind in the morning, but her husband stops Paris at the door and offers Juliet's love with neither woman asked. At dawn Juliet refuses her mother, answers her father in his own words and kneels to him. He answers with names (baggage, wretch, carrion), a threat to strike her and one either-or: marry his friend or die in the streets. He silences his daughter, then the Nurse when she defends her, and brushes off his wife's ‘You are too hot’. Her mother will not speak to her, the Nurse advises a second marriage, and Juliet ends the scene alone with a plan and a last resort. AQA has printed this scene twice (June 2018, 3.5.142 to 162; June 2025, 3.5.187 to 210), both times on relationships: from either, ask what the father's names and threats expect a daughter to be.

• Sir Paris, I will make a desperate¹ tender² / Of my child's love. I think she will be ruled / In all respects by me.³ Nay, more, I doubt it not.⁴

  Capulet pledges his daughter's heart as a man pledges his word to another man, so from this moment her refusal will break his promise to Paris as well as defy his will.

  In the exam

  On either 3.5 extract, bring it in to explain the rage, and test whether Capulet is angrier at the disobedience or at being made to break his word to another man.

• Now, by Saint Peter's Church, and Peter too,¹ / He shall not² make me there a joyful bride!

  Juliet's first open refusal of a parent is spoken to her mother, not her father: she tries the woman of the house first, and the woman passes it straight to the man ('Tell him so yourself').

  In the exam

  On either 3.5 extract, use it to place the passage: by the time her father enters Juliet has already refused once, so his rage meets a decision, not a mood.

• How, how, how, how?¹ Chopped logic?² What is this?³

  This is the hinge of the father's half of 3.5: from here he stops answering what his daughter says and starts naming what she is, and within a dozen lines the names are 'carrion' and 'baggage'.

  In the exam

  On the June 2018 extract, use the contrast between her balanced line and his broken one (the mark scheme names it) to show where power sits and where self-command sits.

• Hang thee,¹ young baggage,² disobedient³ wretch!

  She kneels and asks to speak one word, and he answers with names that strip her of worth and of the one virtue a daughter is allowed, obedience.

  In the exam

  From either 3.5 extract, use 'disobedient' to name the duty she is charged with, then follow it to 4.2, where she repents 'the sin / Of disobedient opposition' and is blessed.

• An you be mine,¹ I'll give you to my friend.² / An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets³

  This is the street's dare turned on a daughter: an either-or with one acceptable answer, put by the head of the house. 'Draw if you be men' becomes 'An you be mine': prove you are a daughter by obeying, or be nothing.

  In the exam

  On the June 2025 extract, which prints this line, set 'An you be mine' against the scene's last couplet, 'myself have power to die': his either-or leaves her only one power of her own.

• I'll to the Friar to know his remedy. / If all else fail,¹ myself² have power³ to die.

  In the street men proved themselves by being ready to die; here a daughter claims the same readiness, alone, as the one power her father's either-or has left her. From now on her courage is measured in the soldier's terms the Friar will use.

  In the exam

  On a 'how far is Juliet powerful' question, use it as the turn from argument to action: she stops trying to be heard and begins to act alone.

Act 4 has no fights and no Romeo, and the code of manhood is now applied to Juliet. In the Friar's cell Paris claims ‘Thy face is mine’, and she answers in double meanings that give nothing away. Alone with the Friar she shows him a knife, ‘with this knife I'll help it presently’, and claims for a wife the ‘true honor’ men fought for: until now the blades in this play have belonged to men. He answers in the street's form of words, ‘if thou darest’. Then she goes home and acts the dutiful daughter so well that her father calls her ‘reclaimed’ and brings the wedding forward a day. AQA has never printed Act 4: from any Juliet extract, come here for the strength that has to be acted.

• It may be so,¹ for it is not mine own.²

  These are Juliet's last words to Paris while either of them is alive, and she leaves him believing he owns her face: in Act 4 she wins only by letting men think they still own her.

  In the exam

  On a 'powerful character' question, use it to show power exercised through wit: she cannot refuse Paris openly, so she makes his own claim say what she means.

• If no inconstant toy¹ nor womanish fear² / Abate thy valor³ in the acting⁴ it.

  Everything now hangs on a test the code says women fail: the Friar makes 'valor' his plan's one condition and warns against fear as if he expects it. The young woman's escape depends on the soldier's virtue.

  In the exam

  On the 4.1 practice question, take it from later in the same scene: the plan needs the very courage the code denies women, so follow that test into 4.3.

• Henceforward¹ I am ever ruled by you.²

  The line is pure performance, and its power over Capulet shows what he wanted all along: not his daughter's reasons or her happiness, only this sentence.

  In the exam

  Pair it with her refusal in 3.5, 'I will not marry yet': the true sentence brought curses and the false one brings a blessing, so her power in Act 4 depends on not meaning what she says.

In 4.3 Juliet sends away the women who have managed her all her life, lays a knife beside her in case the potion fails, and plays her part alone. Next morning the Friar names what her parents wanted for her: a rise in rank. Then the theme falls silent: in 5.1 and 5.2 nobody speaks of what a man or a daughter should be. It returns in the tomb for each code's last word. Romeo begs a young man not to make him fight, then kills him with the street's word on his lips; Juliet refuses the Friar's convent, stays, and stabs herself with Romeo's dagger. Over the bodies her father calls the peace ‘my daughter's jointure’, and Montague promises her a statue in gold: a daughter valued to the last. No AQA extract has come from these scenes, so bring them from memory.

• My dismal¹ scene² I needs must³ act alone.⁴

  In a play where men's honour needs an audience, Juliet's bravest act has none: the courage the Friar feared a woman might lack is shown with nobody watching, and nobody to praise it.

  In the exam

  On the November 2021 question, bring it in from Act 4 for the 'how far': here the strong emotion is terror, and she masters it with no one watching.

• The most you sought was her promotion,¹ / For 'twas your heaven she should be advanced;^2,3 / And weep you now, seeing she is advanced / Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?

  The daughter's code is named at last, and by a priest: the Church that spoke the street's code ('womanish') is also the voice that says what the daughter's marriage was for.

  In the exam

  On an expectations-of-women question, use it to bring Act 4 in: the expectation set in 1.3 is still there over her body, named by someone outside the family.

• Good gentle youth, tempt not a desp'rate man.¹ / Fly hence and leave me.² Think upon these gone.³ / Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth, / Put not another sin upon my head⁴ / By urging me to fury.⁵

  Set 'Put not another sin upon my head' against Tybalt's 'To strike him dead I hold it not a sin' (1.5): the code called killing no sin, Romeo at the tomb counts it as one, and still kills.

  Key word: ‘gentle’

  'Gentle' means both well born and mild. Capulet used it of Paris when he sent him to woo ('woo her, gentle Paris'), and it is the mildness Mercutio scorned in Romeo's peace. Romeo asks a young man to stay gentle, and cannot stay so himself.

  In the exam

  On a 'what is a man' question, pair the two lines to measure how far Romeo has left the code's morality, and how far he still acts by it.

• Wilt thou provoke me?¹ Then have at thee, boy!²

  Both men at the tomb door think they act for Juliet (Paris guards her body from a Montague, Romeo comes to lie beside his wife); neither knows the other's claim, and the code settles it with a sword.

  Key word: ‘provoke’

  'Wilt thou provoke me?' makes the fight Paris's choice, as Sampson wanted the Montagues to 'begin' in 1.1 so that the law would be on his side. Even at the tomb the code lets a man fight with a clear conscience only if the other man starts it.

  In the exam

  On a male-behaviour question, use the plea and this challenge together as the play's last test of whether a man in Verona can refuse a fight, and judge what has changed since 3.1.

• Go, get thee hence,¹ for I will not away.²

  The Friar offers her a daughter's other destination, a convent, and she refuses both the place and the man who would put her there. He has already said he dares not stay, so her order does not drive him out: what it settles is that she stays, where every adult since 1.3 has tried to move her.

  In the exam

  Pair it with 'What is your will?' (1.3) to close a Juliet answer: from a will that waits for orders to one that gives them, in a play where her father once called her 'self-willed' as an insult.

• O, happy¹ dagger,² / This is thy sheath.³ There rust,⁴ and let me die.⁵

  One reading: her last act settles who owns her, not the father who will call the wound 'mis-sheathèd', as if a Montague blade had strayed into his property, but herself and her husband, so the daughter's code closes on the one choice nobody made for her. Others see a girl left with no adult and no way out.

  In the exam

  On a 'how far is Juliet powerful' question, use it for the final judgement: weigh the reading of a last choice of her own against the reading of a girl left with no way out, and say which the lines of 5.3 support more.