Romeo and Juliet
Symbols
Friar Laurence's potion
The distilled liquid that Friar Laurence gives Juliet in a vial in Scene 1 of Act IV: drunk in bed, it makes the body seem dead for forty-two hours, so that Juliet is taken to the family tomb while a letter warns Romeo. He is announced earlier, in Scene 3 of...
Light and night
The opposition between light and darkness that the play distributes among torches, sun, moon, stars, and in the song of the lark and the nightingale. The lovers meet at night, and the day brings the feud, the law and the parting.
The Capulet tomb
The Capulet family monument, which Friar Laurence calls the old tomb and which Juliet, in Scene 3 of Act IV, describes as the receptacle where, for hundreds of years, the bones of the ancestors have rested. It is there they take the bride who seems dead, and...