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"O anything of nothing first created"
Allusion
Act 1,
Scene 1
Lines 168b-178a

An explanation of the phrase “O anything of nothing first created” in Act 1, Scene 1 of myShakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo

                                              O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.                           
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything of nothing first created,
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep that is not what it is.
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?

As the old proverb goes, "Nothing can come of nothing."  This line might also be an allusion to the first two verses of the Genesis, in which God begins to create our world from a formless and empty earth.

(The Creation of Adam, a scene from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling c. 1508–1512)