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3.5 AVERAGE
3.5 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Its beautiful in a weird meaningless teen love way
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Romeo and Juliet is considered one of, if not the, greatest romance and/or romantic play ever written in the English language, if not the world. It is the romantic story. All star crossed lovers owe their existence to the title characters. West Side Story wouldn’t exist without Shakespeare’s work.
And yet, to see Romeo and Juliet as a romance, and solely as a romance, dismisses the rest of the play.
Most of the romance of the play lies in the language. The play showcases beautiful and awe inspiring poetry. Every time Juliet opens her mouth, we want her to keep talking and to never stop. She is seconded by Mercutio whose Queen Mab speech causes everyone to fall in love with him. Even Romeo, for all his flaws, speaks brilliantly. We fall for the young lovers because we want them to always speak beautiful sonnets to one another.
The high language of the noble characters is matched by the crassness of the low caste compatriots, such as the Nurse. While the nobles disguise lust as poetry, their servants present lust as humor, and herald, by a several hundred years early, Monty Python. It is an interesting contrast that starts right in the first act when the Chorus gives way to the bravo of the serving men. This twofold look at love and lust counters the true love aspect of the play that everyone heralds and never looks beyond. Further, when the lust/love examinations are combined with the compressed time of the play (the action occurs over a span of four days), something far more complicated reveals itself.
This is most easily revealed in the character of Romeo, or Romeo the Smuck, as I like to call him.
Instead of presenting the reader with the standard would-be lover, Shakespeare gives us an entirely different character.
At the very beginning of the play, Romeo is sick with love for Rosalind. Rosalind seems connected to the Capulets, but she has refused Romeo because she wants to devote herself to God. (Or so, Romeo says, for another story check out [b:Weird Tales from Shakespeare|128983|Weird Tales from Shakespeare|Katharine Kerr|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/416VhTN1kmL._SL75_.jpg|124223]).
It is here that Romeo strongly resembles Duke Orsino from Twelfth Night. Romeo seems to be more in love with love than with Rosalind. One could even argue that Romeo is in love with the idea of the hard to obtain, or unobtainable women. Perhaps this is an extension of the far out of fashion idea of courtly love. It is important to remember that Romeo goes to the Capulet’s party simply to catch a view of Rosalind, not as Benvolio would have it to compare her beauty to the other ladies. (So Rosalind is the party going nun).
Once at the party, almost the minute he gets his foot in the door, Romeo sees Juliet. Cue the wolf whistle.
Romeo, at the very least, is inconstant.
It is perhaps unjust to say that Romeo is in love with the idea of the unobtainable women; after all he didn’t know who Juliet was when he started speaking poetry about her. Let’s look at the circumstances. Romeo loves Rosalind, who has a connection (perhaps is a relative) to the Capulets. Romeo goes to a Capulet party. He sees a strange woman. What would the chances be of her not being connected to the Capulets in some way?
Worse, Romeo is ineffectual. When Benvolio interrupts a fight, no one gets hurt. When Romeo tries to stop a fight, two people die.
Romeo is selfish. First, he bullies an apothecary into giving him poison, then he kills Paris for no good reason, and finally, he leaves a suicide note, letting everyone know where he got the poison.
Romeo becomes so caught up in the idea of love that he can see no pain, love, or fear but his own. This is seen in the beginning of the play, in the middle of the play, and in final act of the play.
It is unfair to blame Romeo entirely, for Juliet forms half of the couple. Juliet is equally as rash, impulsive, and, strangely, manly. She is far less inconstant, however.
And she is thirteen.
That’s a 1 followed by a 3. 13.
Shakespeare tells us this not once, but twice.
While women married young in Shakespeare’s time, they didn’t marry that young (or at the very least, they didn’t consummate the marriage. See Greer and Sutherland.
How old is Romeo? He’s young. He’s a good young man, even Capulet says so, but how old is young? Shakespeare is strangely quiet on the subject.
Juliet’s errors can easily be attributed to her age, and from the fact that she seems to have been far more sheltered than Romeo. Yet, despite her age and inexperience, she knows enough to reject the Nurse’s dangerous counsel of marrying Paris, despite her relationship with Romeo. The mercenary Nurse would have her charge trade up. While Juliet refuses primary out of love, honor too plays a role.
Juliet has an excuse, does Romeo?
Perhaps Romeo’s excuse is Friar Lawrence. While it is unclear whether Romeo and Juliet’s marriage would be binding, Lawrence doesn’t seem concerned with this fact. He seems to have his eye on the prize. He wants peace, and sees in the young lovers a way to make peace happen. Notice that he moves from chiefly Romeo for his changeable affections to helping bring about the marriage. Yet, he performs entirely in secret, and even when he could, and should, tell someone about the marriage, he keeps his tongue. He keeps his tongue when the revelation of the marriage will no longer be a guarantee to peace, and incidentally, to do admit to his role would be harmful to him. When he finally admits to his part, he has no choice. He’s been caught, after trying to free and leaving Juliet by herself (after trying to her to be a nun). All of Lawrence’s plans go awry, and he has not thought to even consider a plan B. He is as ineffectual as Romeo. He only confesses when he must.
In Romeo and Juliet very few of the characters are constant. Benvolio is, Paris seems to be, the Nurse, bless her ribald soul, is in her fashion. But most of other central characters are not. Romeo changes lovers as easily as clothes. Lawrence moves from councilor to conspirator without a wink. Juliet, very close to constantly, overthrows family obedience because of love. Her father violates his own words, instead of allowing Juliet time to grow and choice as he says in the early part of the play, he wants to rush the marriage to Paris. In many ways, the play is about changeable hot temper, inconstant feeling, and rash action.
It is a play that ends not just on a tragic note, but on dire one. Who will be punished? The Montagues? The Capulets? Or perhaps, the apothecary and Friar Lawrence? Will the Nurse lose her dangerous and over worked tongue? The Prince says “Some shall be pardon’d and some punished”. He doesn’t say who. Is it the two warring families who have now sworn peace, or those who aided and abetted the young lovers, leading them to a marriage of questionable legality that resulted in their death?
Rashness and passion exists in many of the characters. It leads to the downfall of Tybalt, it runs in the otherwise, steady Old Montague and Capulet who call for swords and not canes, who came admit the good in the younger generation but cannot let go of the old well worn passionate hatred. Romeo has it in spades. Juliet has it. Mercutio has it, and it contributes to his heart breaking death.
Benvolio doesn’t have it. He stands out because he lacks rashness and his passion is under control. How different would the play have been if it had been Benvolio and Juliet? A far happier ending no doubt, but the greatness might be missing.
Shakespeare himself trips on the pages. Ann Hathway, Shakespeare’s wife, has been much attacked, maligned, and abused because of her marriage to the younger Shakespeare. (For a wonderful defense read [b:Shakespeare's Wife|1740851|Shakespeare's Wife|Germaine Greer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187640348s/1740851.jpg|2031227]). Hathway is the old shoe that was left on the shelf too long, so she seduced Shakespeare and forced him into a marriage that he did not want. This play, some critics say, illustrates such passion and its dangers. Yet there is no single seduction. Romeo and Juliet seduce each other. While one can cast doubt on the staying power of Romeo’s attraction to Juliet, neither wishes the other harm. They seek, as much as they are able, to do things the right way. If they had been better served by their elders, perhaps things would have gone better. And elders mean more than just fathers. It means Nurse and Lawrence. The young lovers have a reckless passion, true, a passion that burns; but it is not the dangerous passion in the play.
Is this a defense, to a degree, like Donne’s “The Cannonization” was a defense of his marriage?
Does Shakespeare foreshadow himself in the character of Old Capulet? The Bard of Avon did not like, understandably so, the man his youngest daughter, Judith married. (Incidentally, no one says Shakespeare’s daughters were too old when they married, yet they married at a close or older age than their mother, even the sainted Susannah).
Romeo and Juliet is much deeper than a simple tragic love story. The hot passion that runs though the play isn’t love. It’s passion, be it love or hate, and how that passion can destroy. The strong emotion in the play, the double sided coin, is what controls the action. Neither the lovers nor their warring families are the ideals. Both lack tempering. Both need it. To ignore the presence of rash passion and focuses simply on love rejects the most important part of the play.
And yet, to see Romeo and Juliet as a romance, and solely as a romance, dismisses the rest of the play.
Most of the romance of the play lies in the language. The play showcases beautiful and awe inspiring poetry. Every time Juliet opens her mouth, we want her to keep talking and to never stop. She is seconded by Mercutio whose Queen Mab speech causes everyone to fall in love with him. Even Romeo, for all his flaws, speaks brilliantly. We fall for the young lovers because we want them to always speak beautiful sonnets to one another.
The high language of the noble characters is matched by the crassness of the low caste compatriots, such as the Nurse. While the nobles disguise lust as poetry, their servants present lust as humor, and herald, by a several hundred years early, Monty Python. It is an interesting contrast that starts right in the first act when the Chorus gives way to the bravo of the serving men. This twofold look at love and lust counters the true love aspect of the play that everyone heralds and never looks beyond. Further, when the lust/love examinations are combined with the compressed time of the play (the action occurs over a span of four days), something far more complicated reveals itself.
This is most easily revealed in the character of Romeo, or Romeo the Smuck, as I like to call him.
Instead of presenting the reader with the standard would-be lover, Shakespeare gives us an entirely different character.
At the very beginning of the play, Romeo is sick with love for Rosalind. Rosalind seems connected to the Capulets, but she has refused Romeo because she wants to devote herself to God. (Or so, Romeo says, for another story check out [b:Weird Tales from Shakespeare|128983|Weird Tales from Shakespeare|Katharine Kerr|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/416VhTN1kmL._SL75_.jpg|124223]).
It is here that Romeo strongly resembles Duke Orsino from Twelfth Night. Romeo seems to be more in love with love than with Rosalind. One could even argue that Romeo is in love with the idea of the hard to obtain, or unobtainable women. Perhaps this is an extension of the far out of fashion idea of courtly love. It is important to remember that Romeo goes to the Capulet’s party simply to catch a view of Rosalind, not as Benvolio would have it to compare her beauty to the other ladies. (So Rosalind is the party going nun).
Once at the party, almost the minute he gets his foot in the door, Romeo sees Juliet. Cue the wolf whistle.
Romeo, at the very least, is inconstant.
It is perhaps unjust to say that Romeo is in love with the idea of the unobtainable women; after all he didn’t know who Juliet was when he started speaking poetry about her. Let’s look at the circumstances. Romeo loves Rosalind, who has a connection (perhaps is a relative) to the Capulets. Romeo goes to a Capulet party. He sees a strange woman. What would the chances be of her not being connected to the Capulets in some way?
Worse, Romeo is ineffectual. When Benvolio interrupts a fight, no one gets hurt. When Romeo tries to stop a fight, two people die.
Romeo is selfish. First, he bullies an apothecary into giving him poison, then he kills Paris for no good reason, and finally, he leaves a suicide note, letting everyone know where he got the poison.
Romeo becomes so caught up in the idea of love that he can see no pain, love, or fear but his own. This is seen in the beginning of the play, in the middle of the play, and in final act of the play.
It is unfair to blame Romeo entirely, for Juliet forms half of the couple. Juliet is equally as rash, impulsive, and, strangely, manly. She is far less inconstant, however.
And she is thirteen.
That’s a 1 followed by a 3. 13.
Shakespeare tells us this not once, but twice.
While women married young in Shakespeare’s time, they didn’t marry that young (or at the very least, they didn’t consummate the marriage. See Greer and Sutherland.
How old is Romeo? He’s young. He’s a good young man, even Capulet says so, but how old is young? Shakespeare is strangely quiet on the subject.
Juliet’s errors can easily be attributed to her age, and from the fact that she seems to have been far more sheltered than Romeo. Yet, despite her age and inexperience, she knows enough to reject the Nurse’s dangerous counsel of marrying Paris, despite her relationship with Romeo. The mercenary Nurse would have her charge trade up. While Juliet refuses primary out of love, honor too plays a role.
Juliet has an excuse, does Romeo?
Perhaps Romeo’s excuse is Friar Lawrence. While it is unclear whether Romeo and Juliet’s marriage would be binding, Lawrence doesn’t seem concerned with this fact. He seems to have his eye on the prize. He wants peace, and sees in the young lovers a way to make peace happen. Notice that he moves from chiefly Romeo for his changeable affections to helping bring about the marriage. Yet, he performs entirely in secret, and even when he could, and should, tell someone about the marriage, he keeps his tongue. He keeps his tongue when the revelation of the marriage will no longer be a guarantee to peace, and incidentally, to do admit to his role would be harmful to him. When he finally admits to his part, he has no choice. He’s been caught, after trying to free and leaving Juliet by herself (after trying to her to be a nun). All of Lawrence’s plans go awry, and he has not thought to even consider a plan B. He is as ineffectual as Romeo. He only confesses when he must.
In Romeo and Juliet very few of the characters are constant. Benvolio is, Paris seems to be, the Nurse, bless her ribald soul, is in her fashion. But most of other central characters are not. Romeo changes lovers as easily as clothes. Lawrence moves from councilor to conspirator without a wink. Juliet, very close to constantly, overthrows family obedience because of love. Her father violates his own words, instead of allowing Juliet time to grow and choice as he says in the early part of the play, he wants to rush the marriage to Paris. In many ways, the play is about changeable hot temper, inconstant feeling, and rash action.
It is a play that ends not just on a tragic note, but on dire one. Who will be punished? The Montagues? The Capulets? Or perhaps, the apothecary and Friar Lawrence? Will the Nurse lose her dangerous and over worked tongue? The Prince says “Some shall be pardon’d and some punished”. He doesn’t say who. Is it the two warring families who have now sworn peace, or those who aided and abetted the young lovers, leading them to a marriage of questionable legality that resulted in their death?
Rashness and passion exists in many of the characters. It leads to the downfall of Tybalt, it runs in the otherwise, steady Old Montague and Capulet who call for swords and not canes, who came admit the good in the younger generation but cannot let go of the old well worn passionate hatred. Romeo has it in spades. Juliet has it. Mercutio has it, and it contributes to his heart breaking death.
Benvolio doesn’t have it. He stands out because he lacks rashness and his passion is under control. How different would the play have been if it had been Benvolio and Juliet? A far happier ending no doubt, but the greatness might be missing.
Shakespeare himself trips on the pages. Ann Hathway, Shakespeare’s wife, has been much attacked, maligned, and abused because of her marriage to the younger Shakespeare. (For a wonderful defense read [b:Shakespeare's Wife|1740851|Shakespeare's Wife|Germaine Greer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187640348s/1740851.jpg|2031227]). Hathway is the old shoe that was left on the shelf too long, so she seduced Shakespeare and forced him into a marriage that he did not want. This play, some critics say, illustrates such passion and its dangers. Yet there is no single seduction. Romeo and Juliet seduce each other. While one can cast doubt on the staying power of Romeo’s attraction to Juliet, neither wishes the other harm. They seek, as much as they are able, to do things the right way. If they had been better served by their elders, perhaps things would have gone better. And elders mean more than just fathers. It means Nurse and Lawrence. The young lovers have a reckless passion, true, a passion that burns; but it is not the dangerous passion in the play.
Is this a defense, to a degree, like Donne’s “The Cannonization” was a defense of his marriage?
Does Shakespeare foreshadow himself in the character of Old Capulet? The Bard of Avon did not like, understandably so, the man his youngest daughter, Judith married. (Incidentally, no one says Shakespeare’s daughters were too old when they married, yet they married at a close or older age than their mother, even the sainted Susannah).
Romeo and Juliet is much deeper than a simple tragic love story. The hot passion that runs though the play isn’t love. It’s passion, be it love or hate, and how that passion can destroy. The strong emotion in the play, the double sided coin, is what controls the action. Neither the lovers nor their warring families are the ideals. Both lack tempering. Both need it. To ignore the presence of rash passion and focuses simply on love rejects the most important part of the play.
Main characters are stupid but I guess that's the point: young people can be stupid in love
challenging
emotional
slow-paced