Romeo and Juliet---Act 2 Scene 3, Friar Lawrence?

What old themes and images does Friar Lawrence's opening soliloquy pick up and what new themes and images does it introduce? This is from line 1 to line 30. HELP!!

Here are the lines Friar Lawrence speaks:

The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,

Check'ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light;

And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels

From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels:

Now ere the sun advance his burning eye,

The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry,

I must upfill this osier cage of ours

With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.

The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;

What is her burying grave, that is her vomb;

And from her womb children of divers kind

We sucking on her natural bosom find:

Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some, and yet all different.

O mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities:

For nought so vile, that on hte earth doth give;

etc.

Romeo and Juliet---Act 2 Scene 3, Friar Lawrence?
Darkness/Light

Herbology

Fate
Reply:The main old theme picked up in this soliloquy is the use of daylight/morning as a metaphor for new hope. In Act II,ii, Romeo compares Juliet to the dawn ("it is the east, and Juliet is the sun"). Here, the Friar begins his speech with a passage about the sun chasing away the gloom of the night, with an intertwined metaphor for happiness ("smiles"/"cheer") chasing away sadness ("frowning night").



The comparison and contrast of day and night flow into a related passage contrasting birth ("nature's mother"/"her womb") and death ('tomb"/burying grave"). This segues neatly into the introduction of a new theme: the idea of opposing forces. Just as with light and darkness, happiness and sadness, and birth and death, the Friar now compares the properties of plants: that they, like all things in life, have two edges: the vilest plant has some benefit, and the sweetest plants, misapplied, can cause "vice".



The Friar uses this as an example for how opposing forces act in people as well as plants: that in a person, "grace" is opposed by "rude will". This is the point at which Romeo arrives, and this is no accident of timing. Romeo's youthful passion and impetuousness, which is capable of capturing the flower of Juliet's love, will be the very thing that later causes him to impulsively kill Tybalt and finally kill himself with poison in the final Act.