Whats In A Name That Which

Juliet speaks these lines from her window in the famous "balcony scene" of Act II, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet (c. 1594–1596), lamenting that Romeo happens to be a Montague — the family her own Capulet family is feuding with. Her argument is that a name is merely a label and bears no relation to what a thing truly is: Romeo would be the same person whatever he were called. The scene establishes the central tension of the play, in which social identity and inherited enmity are set against the lovers' private, name-transcending bond.