What is dismal about the hypothetical happenings Juliet
imagines in Act IV, Scene III, is that they are all quite morbidly pessimistic. She imagines that the potion could be
poison. She wonders if she’ll suffocate
in the tomb before she awakens and before Romeo comes for her. She wonders what it would be like to awaken in
the tomb before Romeo comes to her and where Tybalt is decomposing and wonders
if there will be ghosts. And, the last
hypothetical situation she ponders is whether or not she’ll go crazy in the
tomb, pull Tybalt’s corpse out of the burial garb and beat her brains out with a
relative’s bone. In addition to being
pessimistic, this is all quite dismal.
