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julshakespeare 's review for:
Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
reread. 5/5 stars still. repeat after me: romeo and juliet is not a bad play, I’ve just been overexposed to it and therefore undervalue it.
5/5
Honestly it would be rude of me to give this play anything but five stars. It has been my favorite Shakespeare tragedy for nearly a decade and was, in fact, the first of Shakespeare's plays I ever read in it's entirety. And while there are many more of his works I've yet to read, I feel fairly confident in saying this will probably remain my favorite tragedy. There are reasons this play is so iconic- the beautiful romantic language (stuff that puts his sonnets to shame), the forbidden romance, the brutal ending. I'm not one to put people down for having differing opinions from my own, but I've never bought into the "they're just stupid kids who think they're in love" argument about what makes this play "bad". In fact, the extreme haste of their relationship is part of what makes this story what it is- stopping to think everything through would make for a lame tragedy (and this can be applied to many of his other major works as well, so I don't know why this one always gets all the hate). Are Romeo and Juliet what one should aspire toward in a relationship? Of course not. The moral of the story isn't about their romance, it's about the two feuding families taking in the calamity their war has caused and finally deciding to work toward a better future together. The scenes between the lovers are beautiful, but in the end they're not the message. And frankly, I love both of those sides of the play and I don't feel like I should have to talk down the relationship between Romeo and Juliet in order to defend the work as a whole. I just really love this play.
5/5
Honestly it would be rude of me to give this play anything but five stars. It has been my favorite Shakespeare tragedy for nearly a decade and was, in fact, the first of Shakespeare's plays I ever read in it's entirety. And while there are many more of his works I've yet to read, I feel fairly confident in saying this will probably remain my favorite tragedy. There are reasons this play is so iconic- the beautiful romantic language (stuff that puts his sonnets to shame), the forbidden romance, the brutal ending. I'm not one to put people down for having differing opinions from my own, but I've never bought into the "they're just stupid kids who think they're in love" argument about what makes this play "bad". In fact, the extreme haste of their relationship is part of what makes this story what it is- stopping to think everything through would make for a lame tragedy (and this can be applied to many of his other major works as well, so I don't know why this one always gets all the hate). Are Romeo and Juliet what one should aspire toward in a relationship? Of course not. The moral of the story isn't about their romance, it's about the two feuding families taking in the calamity their war has caused and finally deciding to work toward a better future together. The scenes between the lovers are beautiful, but in the end they're not the message. And frankly, I love both of those sides of the play and I don't feel like I should have to talk down the relationship between Romeo and Juliet in order to defend the work as a whole. I just really love this play.