The Sun and Moon are widely known as the quintessence of division; one is visible during the day, the other at night. However, every 18 months, the light from the Sun is obscured and it is united with the moon in a total solar eclipse. Similarly, Shakespeare uses the light of Romeo and Juliet’s affairs to bring attention to the devastating hatred between the Capulets and Montagues and uniting them, casting a shadow on the ongoing feud. Only by seeing how the two can come together, were they able to disintegrate their quarrels. In this passage, Friar Laurence demonstrates how two opposing qualities may unite in one with unification and division. 

Friar Laurence’s speech emphasizes the unification of good and evil qualities. He pairs every two consecutive lines together with a rhyming word and never ends a thought in between the two rhyming lines. In lines 17 and 19, the two beginning words, “For nought,” and “Nor aught”, share the same music, uniting the good and bad and showing how they are related to one another. By doing so, he expresses the possibility of good used for evil by “being misapplied” (2.3.21) and of evil actions being used for good “by action dignified” (Shakespeare 2.3.22). Specifically, “the infant rind of [a] weak flower” that the Friar mentions, referring to the young, blossoming interactions of a seemingly insignificant or “weak” relationship of Romeo and Juliet, contains both poison and medicinal power. This means that the outcome of their relationship was a poison to the families, meaning that they both lost people who were important to them, yet it was also a medicine to their long feud, finally uniting them after years of seperation.

Friar Laurence takes advantage of the rhyming by starting a new thought between every pair of rhyming lines, showing how overarching the individual rhymes is the broader division between the two families. When Shakespeare writes, “the worser is predominant,” (2.3.29) meaning though the hatred from the feud that came first and, “the canker death eats up that plant,” (2.3.30) these two rhyming lines foreshadow Romeo and Juliet’s death. Although in evil there is a chance for good, when the hatred comes first, it will eventually catch up and be enough to kill, or divide the two lovers. Along with this separation, the first pair and last pair of the passage are both near-rhymes. They do not sound similar, yet they look similar. However divided the families seem to be, when looking at it from an outer perspective of the audience, the feud seems foolish.

This passage encapsulates the blurred lines between division and unification and how one can lead to another. The Friar uses metaphors of plants and herbs to emphasize how good and evil properties are only good or evil if they are used in that way. His speech foreshadows the eventual death of Romeo and Juliet and all the evil that follows in the play. Within these 16 lines, Shakespeare perfectly states the situation that the two lovers are in, the Friar’s thoughts on the feud, and reinforces the play’s theme: division and unification.