ABSTRACT
As an indirect entry to Romeo and Juliet let me dwell for a moment on Shakespeare's management of vows, since vows are especially good indices of a dramatist's conception of language in addition to having a strong bearing on character, motive, even dramatic form. In Titus Andronicus Shakespeare saw in the vow a formal principle of Senecan revenge tragedy. Vows are equally significant in Love's Labour's Lost. In vowing themselves to life of Academe the scholars rely on the autonomy of words, not as they function in society but as defined, purified, and sworn to by themselves. Such scattered examples remind us of how its recurrent attraction to the pure and ideal leads lyric toward seclusion from the ruck and reel of time, action, and the world. In Shakespeare's protection of the lovers Mercutio plays a crucial role, for although Juliet rejects the false purity of Romeo's Petrarchan style she never has to encounter the rich impurity of Mercutio's speech.
