‘Deny Thy Father and Refuse Thy Name’: Juliet’s Speech-Act of Love and Subversion

This article reconsiders the tragic form of Romeo and Juliet by challenging the dominant critical paradigm that locates the play’s central tension in the opposition between erotic desire and social constraint. While such readings account for the lovers’ suffering, they struggle to explain how the play’s sequence of events coheres into a unified tragic form. Focusing on the balcony scene, this essay argues instead that Juliet’s utterance, ‘Deny thy father and refuse thy name’ (2.2.34), creates a pivotal linguistic and dramatic tension that redirects the play’s trajectory. Engaging with speech act theory, it explores the subversive potential of Juliet’s utterance and examines how it comes to direct Romeo’s actions and alter the course of the drama. Juliet’s speech is more than a romantic expression of love and desire: it contests the legitimacy of names and the procedures that authorise them. This utterance, together with the dramatic actions it initiates, destabilises the symbolic order and the law of the father.