ROMEO AND JULIET: A SHAKESPEAREAN FAIRY TALE
(Thanks to @giuliettaluce for her contribution to this essay's development)
@ardenrosegarden @princesssarisa @angelixgutz @gravedangerahead @sabugabr @superkingofpriderock @notyouraveragejulie @chansondefortunio @faintingheroine
I have recently started to think that Romeo and Juliet could be analized as an example of what i am calling a Shakespearean Fairy Tale, rather than as a realistic drama.
When i started researching fairy tales in general, those are the main characteristics i found in common between them, with some variations from one story to another:
*Not feeling the need to give a deep explanation about every fantastic detail, and magic not being allowed as an universal explanation.
*A simple narrative, not worried very much about the small details.
*A world that avoids being too grounded in reality, where a little escapism is key.
*An air of mystery is kept to the reader/listener, who always feel as if there is something more happening off the limits of the story.
*Usually young, domestic heroes, who are motivated by small scale events, like finding their one true love, surviving hunger and poverty, wanting to cure the illness of a relative, escape their abusive home, etc., while having to deal with obstacles imposed by a world bigger than them and that they don't understand.
*Those stories mostly originate from archetypical characters that were created in myths of the oral tradition.
Now, leaving a bit the generalization, and going to specifically Shakespeare, what makes a Shakespearean Fairy Tale?
Well, with the exception of his History Plays (and even they must be take with a grain of salt because his sources were Historical Chronicals Written by Winners and as such tooked lots of freedoms with real places, people and events), Shakespeare's other plays usually borrow the NAMES of Real Places, but they aren't a FACTUAL DESCRIPTION of Real Places, nor their climate, nor their geography, nor their culture, nothing, only NAMES.
And as such you can have an Old Britain and a Medieval Scotland that Adores Greek-Roman Deities (King Lear, Macbeth), an Athens characters with English Names like Botton, Snowth, Flute and German-Celtic Fair Folk (A Midsummer Night's Dream) , a Forest in France with African Lions (As You Like It), a Cold Sicily and a Bohemia with a Beach (The Winter's Tale), etc.
As an englishman who likely never travelled to other countries (and yes, i know there is a theory that he may have travelled at least to Italy during his so called Lost Years, but that is a whole other discussion), for Shakespeare and his compatriots those places were like imaginary, fantastical once upon a time kingdoms.
And then comes his portrayal of Verona and Mantua in the play Romeo and Juliet.
When it comes to a basis in mithology and oral tradition, the tragic star-crossed lovers trope has been used in multiple places around the world, creating their own versions. The most famous of which in the Western Literary Canon was from Ovid's Metamorphosis with the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, also referenced by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Later the story of Pyramus and Thisbe would find an echo in the tale of two lovers from enemy families who died together that was shared from one ear to another by italian people, and would be collected to paper by three italian authors: Masuccio Salernitano, Luigi Da Porto and Matteo Bandello.
While still having a foot on the fantastical melodrama, Da Porto's retelling was the closest to be grounded in a specific socio-historical-cultural reality when specifically setting the tale during the rule of the aristocrat Bartolomeo della Scala, who had famously met the author Dante Alighieri. In his Divine Comedy, Dante had putted in Purgatory two fielding families: Montecchi and Capuletti. Da Porto borrowed the names of those figures, setting his retelling around the 13th to the 14th Centuries.
Later the english poets William H. Painter and Arthur Brooke learned of this italian tale and made their own retellings, (Brooke's version more infamously being a moralizing tale against parental disobedience).
And then, finally, the playwrighter of Stratford comes into contact with the Brooke version of the story, and rewrites it into a play that asks us to look at the world trough the lover's eyes and empathize with them.
And how Shakespeare of Stratford portrays the land of Verona?
As a land that is presented to the audience by a Chorus, a fancy way to refer to the stage version of a Narrator. A Storyteller.
As a land where people have italian names (Mercutio, Romeo, Benvolio), as well as english names (Tybalt, Peter, Sansom, Gregory, Laurence, Juliet), and no one bets an eye to this.
A land where two families field for centuries, but nobody knows why.
A land where the main conflict involves two youths who just wanted to discover the sweetness of romance with another, but arbitray rules pre-established by their families way before they were even born forces them apart.
A land where people like Mercutio tell about having vivid dreams with celtic fairies like Queen Mab and atribute the control of their fates to Greek-Roman deities like Jupiter, Venus and Cupid.
A land where a Catholic Priest (when Catholicism gained the fame of a mystical religion to the audiences and readers of now Protestant England) knows how to make a sleeping potion that the origins must remain mysteryous to audiences.
And of course, there is the way events happen in what feels as a short time for audiences: people falling in love, dying, grieving, in the course of days, that feel like whole intense years to them.
Just like when once upon a time one thousand years passed in a sleep...
Time to those characters doesn't pass the same way as for us.
Unlike the versions of the story that were told by his predecessours, Shakespeare's play isn't bound to a specific time and place as 13th to 14th Century Italy.
In his life time, the actors had to tell the story with the clothes they had access to. They dressed as elizabethan english people. Merry England was their Fair Verona.
In the 1960s, Zeffirelli's film brought a Verona of 1968 rebel youths dressed in the clothes of 16th Century Renaissance.
In the 1990s, we had a brazilian group retelling the story in the scenario of an 18th Century Comedia dell'Arte Circus, placing Verona in a Veraneio 1974 funerary car...
...and an australian director who retold the tragedy in the aesthetics of 1990s videoclips.
Since the 2000s we have an european pop rock opera musical where Verona's characters dress as Renaissance Punks.
And in the 2010s we got a brazilian jukebox musical where a Romeo dressed in silver and a Juliet dressed in gold picked roses from the sky while singing the romantic songs of Marisa Monte.
So maybe, when analizing this story, and those characters, we should open more our minds, and instead of tying ourselves to realism, reason and logic, that cinically dismisses love at first sight as impossible and absurd, and asking for acuracy to a specific time and place, we should see Romeo and Juliet for what they really are: they are characters played by actors in different stages from around the world.
Of course the actions you are seeing are not real.
When the Chorus starts to say:
"Two howseholds both alike in dignity
In Fair Verona where we lay our scene"...
"Once upon a time in a far away land"...
Its the invitation to, for at least two hours, suspend your disbelief, and start believing in love at first sight, in Queen Mab, in the power of a sleeping potion that makes Juliet appear to be dead...
Do you know what else are actors called?
All they ask you is to come play with them.
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
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