![]() Juliet’s ‘You kiss by th’ book’ (110) is a response to all of this and especially to Romeo’s elaborate and ritualised wooing style: the poetic language, the elaborate metaphors, and rationale for getting a kiss from her. Also, it’s clear that Romeo has taken Juliet’s comment as a maidenly request when he says that it is ‘sweetly urged’: she’s given him a modest and acceptable courtly reason that they can kiss again. It’s a ‘trespass’ because they’ve been setting up the idea that kisses are sins (at least for the duration of this role play). This is a veiled hint that Romeo ought to kiss her again, and he takes it as such, purportedly kissing her in order to take back the sin that he’s left on her lips: ‘Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! / Give me my sin again. But Juliet playfully responds that if she’s taken his sin from him, then her lips now have his sin on them: ‘Then have my lips the sin that they have took’ (107). ![]() The idea is that, because she’s a saint, she can purge his sins. Setting Juliet up as a saint (or the statue of a saint that a pilgrim is visiting), Romeo kisses her and says ‘Thus from my lips by thine my sin is purged’ (1.5.106). The rhyme is part of it, but this line is part of the elaborate pilgrim/saint role play metaphor that Romeo and Juliet are playing with during their first encounter.
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