Skip to main content

In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, what does Lord Capulet mean when he says to Tybalt, "More light, more light" (1.5.84)?

During this conversation, Lord Capulet is actually chastising Tybalt for Tybalt's failure to obey him.  Tybalt has identified Romeo Montague, the son of Capulet's great enemy, in the crowd at their party, and he is enraged.  He wants to go after the young man and make him pay for what Tybalt sees as an insult to the Capulets' honor.  Lord Capulet yells at him, telling him that to make such a scene would ruin the party, endanger his guests, and compel them to leave.  Tybalt, however, feels that Romeo's presence is a sign of terrible disrespect to them.  Lord Capulet says to him, "You are a princox, go. / Be quiet, or—More light, more light!—For shame! / I’ll make you quiet" (1.5.85-87).  Thus, he calls Tybalt a punk, basically, and orders him to be quiet.  When he calls for more light, he is actually speaking to one of his servants; it helps to see that those four words are set off by dashes, and this is because they are sort of an interjection to someone else.  Then, he returns to Tybalt to tell him that he should be ashamed of himself.  Therefore, this one part of his line isn't actually addressed to Tybalt.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.