LET US SUPPOSE (because everything is mere supposition) that before Friar Lawrence married Juliet and Romeo, they had the following curious conversation:
JULIET: One person?
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Yes, child, and as soon as I have made one person of the two of you, no power on earth can separate you. Come, now, let us hasten to the altar, the candles are being lit. (They leave the cell and walk down the passageway.)
ROMEO: Why do we need candles? Give us your blessing here. (He stops beside a window.) Why do we need an altar and candles? The sky is our altar, and it won’t be long before the angels light the eternal stars, although the sky is an altar even without stars. Besides, the church is open to all, and someone might see us. Come, give us your blessing here.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: No, let us go into the church. It won’t be long before everything is ready. But you must keep your head bowed, child, so that you will not be seen by any prying eyes, should there be any.
ROMEO: A vain hope, for there is not in the whole of Verona a figure to equal that of my lovely Juliet; no other lady could ever be mistaken for her. What’s wrong with this spot here? The altar is no better than the sky.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: But it is more effective.
ROMEO: How so?
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Everything blessed at the altar endures. The candles you will see burning there will sputter out long before the bride and groom and the priest who is about to unite them in matrimony; I have seen infinite numbers of candles die; but the stars . . .
ROMEO: What about them? They will still burn; indeed, they were only lit to make the heavens as beautiful as the Earth. Yes, my divine Juliet, the Milky Way is like the luminous dust of your thoughts; all those distant, lofty jewels and lights are here embodied in your person, because the placid moon is merely an imitation of your benevolence, and Venus, when it shines, is like the fire of your imagination. Marry us here and now, Father. What other formality need you ask of us? We need no outward formality, nor anyone’s consent. Only love and desire. We are separated by the hatred of others, but united by our love.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Forever.
JULIET: Yes, unite us—forever. What more do we need? Your hand will stop the hours. In vain will the sun pass from one sky to another, in vain will it come and go, for it will not take with it the time that lies at our feet like a tame tiger. Friend and father, repeat those lovely words.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Forever.
JULIET: Forever! Eternal love! Eternal life! I swear to you that I know no other language than that. I swear to you that I do not even understand my own mother’s language.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: It may well be that your mother didn’t understand her mother’s language, either. Life is a Babel, child, and each of us is a nation.
ROMEO: Not in our case, Father. She and I are two provinces of the same language, which we intermingle in order to say the same prayers, with the same alphabet and but one meaning. Nor is there any other meaning worth having on Earth. Now, who taught us that divine language, neither of us knows; perhaps it was a star. Look, maybe it was that star up there, the first to appear in the sky tonight.
JULIET: What celestial hand lit that star? Perhaps the Archangel Raphael’s or yours, beloved Romeo. O magnificent star, will you be the star of my life, you, who mark the moment of my marriage? What is that star called, Father?
FRIAR LAWRENCE: I know nothing of astronomy, my child.
JULIET: You must know. You know both the divine and the human languages, the very herbs that grow, those that kill and those that cure. Tell me, tell me . . .
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Ah, eternal Eve!
JULIET: Tell me the name of the celestial torch that will light my nuptials, and marry us here and now. The stars are far superior to any earthly torches.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: No, they’re not. You ask me what that star is called. I don’t know. My astronomy is not like that of other men. (After a pause for thought.) I know what the winds told me, though, the winds that blow from here and there, from above and below, from one age to another, and they know a great deal, because they see everything. They remain united when dispersed, and find constancy in change.
ROMEO: And what did the winds tell you?
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Harsh things. Herodotus describes how, one day, Xerxes wept, but that is all he says. The winds told me the rest, because they were standing next to Xerxes, and caught every word . . . Listen, they’ve begun to grow agitated; they must have heard us speaking and are murmuring . . . Howl, friendly winds, howl as you did in your young days at Thermopylae.
ROMEO: But what did they tell you? Quick, tell us.
JULIET: No, Father, speak when you feel ready. We will wait for you.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Gentle creature. Learn from her, my boy, learn to tolerate the excesses of an old lunatic. What did they tell me? It would be best not to repeat it, but if you insist on me marrying you here, by the light of the stars, I will tell you the origin of the one star that appears to rule over all the others. Come, we still have time, the altar awaits . . . No? How stubborn you are. I will tell you, then, what the winds told me, the winds blowing around Xerxes when he came to destroy Hellas with his countless troops. The troops marched ahead of him, under the lash, because that crude man was particularly fond of the lash and used it often, without hesitation and without remorse. Even the sea, when it dared to destroy the bridge he had ordered to be built, received three hundred lashes. This was perhaps fair punishment, but, wishing to be not only fair but brutal, Xerxes ordered the beheading of all those who had built the bridge and failed to make it indestructible. The whip and the sword; beatings and blood.
JULIET: Brutal indeed!
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Brutal, but strong. Strength has its value, and the proof is that the sea ended up accepting the yoke imposed on it by the great Persian. Now, one day, on the banks of the Hellespont, curious to see the troops he had gathered there, on sea and land, Xerxes climbed a sacred hill, from which he could enjoy a clear view in all directions. Imagine how proud he felt. He saw countless people, the sweetest milk drawn from the Asian cow, hundreds of thousands alongside hundreds of thousands more, different squadrons and different peoples, diverse colors and diverse clothes, all mixed up together, arrow and sword, crown and helmet, goat’s hair, horse’s hair, panther skin, an infinite clamor of things and men. He saw and he laughed; he could sense victory. What other power could possibly oppose him? He felt invincible. And he stood there laughing and looking with greedy, happy eyes, a bridegroom’s eyes, like yours, my young friend . . .
ROMEO: There’s no comparison. Even the greatest despot in the universe is a miserable slave if he is not the master of the most beautiful eyes in Verona. And the proof is that, despite all his power, he wept.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Yes, he did weep, you’re right, the moment he stopped laughing. His face suddenly clouded over, and great, irrepressible tears poured forth. An uncle of the warrior standing nearby was shocked and asked him the reason for his tears; Xerxes replied sadly that he was crying at the thought that, in a hundred years’ time, not one of those thousands and thousands of men at his command would exist. That is as far as Herodotus goes, but listen now to the winds. The winds were astonished. They were asking each other if that proud, cruel man had ever cried before in his life and had concluded that this was impossible, since he knew nothing of compassion, only injustice and cruelty. And it was compassion that was filling the tyrant’s tears and filling his throat with sobs. They roared their amazement, then gathered up Xerxes’s tears. What would you have done with them?
ROMEO: I would have dried them so as not to dishonor human pity.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: They chose not to do that; instead, they gathered up all his tears and flew off into space, calling out: Look, look! Here they are, the first diamonds from the barbarian’s soul! The entire firmament was in uproar; for a moment, everything stopped. Not a single star wanted to believe the winds. Tears from Xerxes? Impossible! Such a plant could never grow in such stony ground. But there they were for all to see; the winds showed them around, telling the curious story about the laughter that had provided the shell for those pearls, those words; then the constellations had no choice but to believe that hardhearted Xerxes had indeed wept. The planets gazed for a long time on those unlikely tears; there was no denying that they contained both the bitterness of pain and the salt tang of melancholy. And when they considered that the heart that had shed those tears was particularly fond of the lash, they cast a sideways glance at the Earth, as if wondering at such contradictions. One of them told the winds to return the tears to the barbarian, so that he could drink them, but the winds refused and paused to deliberate, for it is not only men who disagree with each other.
JULIET: You mean the winds do too?
FRIAR LAWRENCE: They do. The north wind wanted to turn the tears into violent, destructive storms, like the man who had shed them; but the other winds could not accept this idea. Storms always pass, and they wanted something lasting, a river, for example, or a new sea. Unable to reach an agreement, they went to talk to the sun and the moon. You know the moon, don’t you, child?
ROMEO: She herself is the moon; as I said just a while ago, good father, both she and the moon are the serene image of compassion and love.
JULIET: No, don’t believe anything he says, Father; the moon is my rival, the rival who lights from afar the handsome face of gallant Romeo, lending him an opalescent glow when he walks down the street . . .
FRIAR LAWRENCE: You are both right. The moon and Juliet could be the same person, which is why they both love the same man. But if you are the moon, my child, you should know what she said to the winds.
JULIET: I’ve no idea.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: The winds went to see her and asked what they should do with Xerxes’s tears, and her response was the most compassionate response you can imagine. Let us crystallize these tears, said the moon, and make of them a star that will shine down all the centuries with the light of compassion, a place where all those who left the Earth will reside, finding there the perpetuity that eluded them in life.
JULIET: Yes, I would say the same thing. (Looking out of the window.) Ah, eternal light, cradle of renewal, world of continuing, infinite love, we were just hearing your lovely story.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: No, no, no.
JULIET: No?
FRIAR LAWRENCE: No, because the winds also went to talk to the sun, and, while you may know the moon, my child, you do not know the sun. The winds took Xerxes’s tears to the sun, explained their origin, and told him what the moon had advised, and they spoke of how beautiful that special new star would be. The sun listened to them and replied, saying, yes, they should, indeed, crystallize the tears and turn them into a star, but not the kind of star the moon had asked for, nor one with the same purpose. It must be bright and eternal, he said, but if you want compassion, there’s quite enough of that in the moon and her sickly sweet poetry. No, that star made of tears prompted by a proud man’s realization of the brevity of life will hang in the sky as the star of irony, where it will shine down on all the multitudes passing by, believing themselves to be immortal, and on anything built in defiance of time. Wherever weddings sing a hymn to eternity, it will send down one of its lightning bolts, one of Xerxes’s tears, to scribble a message of extinction—instant, total, and irremissible. Every epiphany will receive that same sarcastic note. I don’t want melancholy—the faded roses of the moon and her ilk—I want irony, uttered by hard, cold, sardonic lips . . .
ROMEO: You mean, that splendid star . . .
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Exactly, my child, and that is why the altar is better than the sky. On the altar, the blessed candle burns quickly and dies before our eyes.
JULIET: What a lot of hot air!
FRIAR LAWRENCE: No, no, it isn’t!
JULIET: Or a lunatic’s horrible dream. An old lunatic, you said a little while ago, and that is what you are. An empty, nasty dream, like your winds, and your Xerxes, and your tears, and your sun, and that whole parade of imaginary figures.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: My child . . .
JULIET: Father, you clearly do not know that there is at least one immortal thing, which is my love, and another, too, which is the incomparable Romeo. Take a good look at him, and tell me if you see in him one of Xerxes’s soldiers. No, you don’t. Long live my beloved, who was not at the Hellespont, who paid no heed to the ravings of those night winds, unlike you, a friar, who is both friend and enemy. Be but our friend and marry us. Marry us wherever you like, here or there, before the candles or beneath the stars, be they ironic or compassionate, but marry us, marry us, marry us . . .