You kiss by the book

Sonnets are a girl's best friend

My dear lover, body and soul, has of late importuned me with love in Shakespearean fashion... meaning, he's sent me emails full of poetry. Appropriately, a few of them have been Elizabethan sonnets, which, as all the boys should know, are still a surefire means of winning any girl's heart. Or at least a girl whose hobby is memorizing Hamlet and King Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing and what-not.

But he has also been bugging me (in the most delicate and nerdy ways possible) to join him in memorizing some more Romeo and Juliet. The first fourteen lines the titular characters speak to each other form a sonnet, and represent a most romantic (if not ultimately auspicious) meeting of souls. It's a semi-cheeky dance of phrasing and it speaks to both of these kids' abilities to charm and evade with nought but words. Comparing Juliet to a holy shrine, Romeo implores she grace his "unworthy" lips with a touch of hers, so that he, the pilgrim, be blessed. She is convinced, eventually, and sin is purged by their pure kisses.

So yeah, OF COURSE I'd love to add this to my repertoire! If only because it would be our repertoire in the end, which will probably grow as time progresses. Given our mutual adoration of all things Shakespeare (and many other beautifully geeky things), I anticipate the day we recite this to each other will be exciting enough that it will inspire us to continue the tradition. Possibly with some Macbeth, and definitely some Benedick and Beatrice banter. Oh, the possibilities.



Romeo and Juliet, Act I Sc. V

ROMEO	[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
	This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
	My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
	To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET	Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
	Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
	For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
	And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO	Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET	Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO	O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
	They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET	Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO	Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. (kisses her)
	Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET	Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO	Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
	Give me my sin again. (they kiss)
JULIET	You kiss by the book.