The Civil Mutinies ofRomeo and Juliet

Abstract

While civility is often understood to be identical to aristocratic courtesy in early modern culture, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet reveals the significance of a subordinate and even insubordinate civility. The play figures this civility as an aspect of defiance and disruptive disaffection with aristocratic authority, but also adumbrates a more positive vision in which civil insubordination and forms of non-deferential mutuality enhance each other. The play imagines that civility offers a sense of agency and self-esteem for women and servants, linking their subordinate civility to urban citizenship. Shakespeare's civility is not a sedentarizing force, but rather approaches a kind of virtuous activity with transformative power. In Romeo and Juliet, as in other humanist texts, civility accompanies and reinforces non-deferential emotions and is understood to work in the interests not only of the Prince, but of subordinates. The play suggests that the transformative socio-political power of civility is sustained by its compelling affective force. (G. C.)