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All Site ContentRomeo and JulietAct 5Scene 3
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“a lantern … full of light”
Imagery
Act 5,
Scene 3
Lines 83-87

The imagery of a lantern explained in myShakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3.

Romeo

I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave.
A grave — O no, a lantern, slaughtered youth,
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light.
[Laying Paris in the vault]
Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred.

Romeo is going to place Paris’s corpse in the Capulet tomb which he describes as a lantern (a small vertical structure on the roof of a large room like a dining hall designed to let in light).  Romeo is imagining Juliet’s beauty as a source of light illuminating the Capulet’s burial vault like a lantern.