Juliet touches on one of the play's major themes with these famous lines. She has fallen in love with Romeo without knowing that he is a Montague. What he is, a Montague, proceeds who he is. Much like the play which is defined as a tragedy before it even begins, Romeo is defined as a Montague before Juliet even meets him. Thus her love, though pure when it began becomes prodigious, or unnatural and monstrous, because of Romeo's predetermined identity.
From the prologue we know that this statement is actually true. While Juliet says it to emphasize her great love for Romeo, the audience hears it as a grim foreshadowing of the end of the play and a reminder to pay attention.
By this Romeo means that his life is now owed to his foe, as he has devoted his life to Juliet, a Capulet. Notice the monetary language used in the exchange between Romeo and the Nurse. The Nurse speaks of Juliet as a prize that will give her husband "the chinks" or money; Romeo talks about his own life in terms of "account" and "debt." The rhetoric about their love has gone from grand images of saints and sin to very real monetary calculations, transporting their love at first sight back into the real world.
Juliet's line completes the iambic pentameter in Romeo's preceding line. "Give me my sin again you kiss by the book" makes a full line of iambic pentameter and completes the ABAB rhyme scheme beginning with line 112.
Notice that the Nurse interrupts a second sonnet from being created. The proceeding four lines make up a quatrain - four lines in a sonnet with an ABAB rhyme scheme - of a new sonnet. While the sonnets occurred in a metaphorical space that played with religious and Biblical authority, the Nurse's interruption signals a return to the real world in which parental authority rules the lovers and their rhetoric.
This is a colloquialism that means to do something expertly. It employs a double meaning though as "the book" also refers to the Bible. Juliet here references Romeo's ability to "kiss by the book" in order to erase the sin metaphors into which they had fallen. Rather than the kiss being something sinful, the kiss becomes something that is sanctioned by "the book" or the Bible. In turn this marks their forbidden love as something that is good and lawful rather than sinful.
The kiss has moved from being compared to a prayer to a sin. Romeo transferred his sin to Juliet by kissing her and now must kiss her again to take the sin back onto his lips. Notice how the religious imagery has moved the two lovers from a saint and a pilgrim to mortals passing sin back and forth.
Notice how Juliet uses Romeo's metaphor in order to deny him his request to kiss her. She reshapes his rhetoric and continually forces him to reframe his desires.
Juliet corrects Romeo's statement that his lips could kiss her as palmer's kiss saints and instead makes the metaphor more literal. She says that pilgrims and saints put their palms together; this is how they kiss, not with the lips. In this way Juliet can be seen as educating Romeo on how to court her.
Notice that the metaphor functioning within this sonnet compares Juliet to a saint and Romeo to a pilgrim worshiping at her shrine. This metaphor conflates the ethereal world of religious belief with the earthly reality of two people kissing. Romeo and Juliet's love here is metaphorically elevated to a space occupied by religion and God.
In the sonnet tradition, the poet would describe his love using the poetic blazon. In this poetic technique, the poet would fragment his love into her parts in order to emphasize the perfection of each part of the woman's body. He would describe her lips as red as cherries or skin as white as snow rather than describing her as a whole person. However, here Romeo reverses this tradition and instead applies the poetic blazon to himself. Juliet remains whole in his gaze while he becomes fragmented by his love for her.
The first lines that Romeo and Juliet speak to each other make up a perfect sonnet, 14 lines of iambic pentameter with an alternating rhyme scheme that ends in a couplet. Beginning with Petrarch's sonnets to the unattainable Laura, the sonnet tradition signifies the quintessential expression of love in the Early Modern period. Romeo and Juliet's ability to speak a sonnet to each other the first time they meet symbolizes their real love for each other. Unlike Rosaline, whom Romeo loved from afar, Juliet is able to engage in his love.
"Choler" is a reference to the humor believed to cause anger. Tybalt's threat to seek revenge comes directly before the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet. Notice how violence and love are interlaced throughout this scene as they are throughout the play.
This phrase means to act without restraint. From this exchange we see that Capulet acknowledges Tybalt's hotheadedness. Despite the feud, Capulet seems to understand the rules of social decorum while Tybalt cares only about the feud. This foreshadows Tybalt's part in bringing about the play's tragic resolution.
It is interesting that in this first speech, Romeo emphasizes Juliet's purity and ethereal nature. He speaks of her the way sonneteers and poets speak of their unrequited loves, and situates his love outside of the real world. Since we know that Romeo and Juliet do not have a chaste love, this could be understood as a mentality that Romeo will grow out of over the course of the play.
Notice that Romeo's first speech about Juliet occurs in heroic couplets, a poetic form used by epic and narrative poetry. Heroic couplets give a sense of poetic closure or finality. The rhyme scheme of these lines suggests that Juliet's beauty is absolute and Romeo perceives his love for her as something complete or perfect.
In the Christian tradition, the Pentecost is the day that Christ descended from heaven after his resurrection to revisit his apostles. The apostles received the spirit by speaking in tongues and were transformed from fearful men to men able to accept martyrdom. This statement essentially means let the days go by as fast as they want.
Capulet reflects on his own youth when he would have been able to wear a mask and charm a young lady. This statement becomes ironic as this is exactly what will happen to his own daughter at this party. This reminiscing also comes across as haunting after the Prologue to this play. While Capulet can reflect on his youth because he has grown old, Romeo and Juliet will never be able to do so; in dying for their love and their parent's strife, they will forever be preserved in their dancing days.
"Makes dainty" is a colloquial phrase that means to hesitate. Here he implies that any woman who does not want to dance has corns, hardened layers of skin on the feet caused by wearing shoes that were too small. Corns were associated with witches and old age much like warts and hairy moles, and would have been something a young lady would want to hide. Notice that while he entreats the men to dance, he shames the women into dancing.
To "have a bout" is to dance with you. Capulet here directly addresses the gentlemen in the room entreating them to dance. This demonstrates Capulet's misogynistic view of both relationships between the sexes and courtship and foreshadows his negative reaction to Juliet defying his wishes.
A "trencher" was a wooden serving platter. Scene five begins with servants clearing away the dinner plates to signal that Romeo and his friends missed dinner. They have arrived just in time for the dance. Notice how Shakespeare uses dialogue to signal location, time passing, and events not figured on stage without directly stating them.