oh god are you one of those people who reads romeo and juliet as a romance rather than a tragedy
I thought I was gonna go to bed early tonight but I guess not
hey friend you just unleashed my nerdy wrath buckle up
short answer: no, I know r&j is a tragedy and I read it as such. Shakespeare didnât write âromancesâ, at least not in the sense you mean (some people call his later stuff thatâs harder to put into a genre âromancesâ, such as the winterâs tale and the tempest)
so no Iâm not a moron thanks
hereâs the long answer:
I presume youâre âone of those peopleâ who likes to count themselves as the Specialest Snowflake In All The Land because they donât buy into the fake cheesy idea of //romance// that everyone else so blindly believes
maybe you like to talk about how romeo and juliet were âjust horny teenagersâ, how they knew each other for three days, how romeo so loved rosaline thirty seconds before spotting juliet, so clearly heâs fickle and silly. they werenât actually in love, they were just teenage idiots. because only stupid girls buy that stuff. youâre more mature than that. am I right?
well, hereâs the thing, sunshine- you arenât special. I hear this same damn argument right down to the last word every time I mention my love of this play and it ENRAGES me every time because 99% of the time this is coming from /other teenagers/. other young people talking about how this isnât a story to be taken SERIOUSLY. itâs silly and frivolous and unrealistic. they donât realize that this play is dedicated to them.
and itâs criticizing people just like you.
while I do believe that these two young people were soul mates (Iâll get to that later), I donât really think this is a story about love. itâs a story about /passion/- how love and hate are only a hairâs breadth apart and their overwhelming capacity for healing or for destroying. the emotion that drives mercutio to defend romeo from tybalt. what drives mercutio to be killed at his hand. what pushes formerly docile, dreamy romeo to slay his cousin in law: it all begins to seem like the same continuous passion, enflaming the same group of people on the hottest day of the year.
as a result, love isnât a pretty thing in this play. itâs linked inextricably to death, to murder, to chaos. love is presented as the most dangerous force in the universe. it leaves five bodies in its wake, and then at the end (people forget this) itâs what finally brings the ancient feud to an end. itâs not silly. itâs not frivolous. o brawling love, o loving hate.
and who are the conductors of this unstoppable force? who sets verona burning and then rebuilds it better in under a week?
people with a shitty understanding of this play who love to dismiss it and downplay it like to call it a âcautionary taleâ- why you shouldnât think with your dick, why you should grow up and not be so rash, be sensible.
I agree with part of this. it is a cautionary tale. but itâs directed at YOU.
you, who devalue youth. you, who underestimate teenagers and what theyâre capable of, who wave off their every thought or feeling with âjust a kidâ. who think that love is a pretty little silly thing and that no one under the age of 25 is capable of really experiencing it. that the kids donât MATTER.
capulet thought it- he dismissed tybaltâs rage during the party as dumb kids throwing a hissy fit. he wrote juliet off as a child who should be seen and not heard, shuffled from her father to her husband, guided by the wisdom of those older and wiser than her.
in the world presented in the play, age has NOTHING to do with wisdom. the adults range from careless (montague) to helpless (lady capulet) to blithering (the nurse). the wisest character, the most eloquent and intelligent one with the most beautiful poetry, is fourteen year old juliet. (go back and read it. whose speeches are the most beautiful, sophisticated, complex? Julietâs.)
okay, fine, you say. but they didnât love each other, they just saw each other and got hot and bothered and wanted to jump the otherâs bones! anyway, what about rosaline?!
Iâll address rosaline first:
shakespeare likes making fun of the poets of old (take for instance his âmy mistressâ eyesâ sonnet, a deliberate parody of the Petrarchan model of frilly love poetry). heres another example in romeo. when we first meet romeo heâs mooning over a girl in the frilliest, stalest, most formulaic verse imaginable. we get the feeling heâs enjoying himself, basking in his misery.
notice, though, that we never see rosaline on stage. she represents romeoâs vague infatuation with the //idea// of love, the pretty image he made up in his head from reading old poems. this not only creates an incredible arc in his character, but makes his love for juliet obviously the real deal by comparison. he meets juliet and his world goes into free fall; heâs rash and violent and impulsive, and the verse that was so stale and ingenuine before shifts into some of the most famous passionate poetry in the english language. in his first scene, he asks âis love a tender thing?â he falls in love with juliet- REAL love, not the kind in poems- and comes to answer his own question: no. no it fucking isnât.
but, you say. but they CANT have loved each other! you donât fall in love just by LOOKING at someone!
yeah, I know you donât.
but hereâs the thing. if you arenât willing to suspend some modicum of disbelief, you wonât get anything from shakespeare. period.
weâre already assuming that these people just happen to walk around speaking in blank verse and rhyming couplet. the plot of hamlet relies on the existence of a ghost, a midsummer nightâs dream on fairies, macbeth on witches, the tempest on magic, measure for measure on the friggin /bed trick/- is it SUCH A HORRIBLE STRETCH FOR YOUR CYNICAL POSTMODERN MIND TO MAKE that characters can identify their soulmates with a look? have we reached that level of lazy cynicism as a society that magical love flowers and vengeful ghosts are believable, where a woman can turn into a boy by shoving a hat over her hair and statues spring to life as deceased loved ones, but love at first sight (a very very common Elizabethan plot device; itâs /everywhere/ in shakespeare) is just too much of a stretch?
no one rolls their eyes at hamlet because âghosts arenât real. are you one of those people who believe in ghosts?â no- they take it for the plot device that it is in order to get to the message of the play as a whole, and the truths of the human conditions it reveals, with the help of some purely theatrical elements.
but kids in love. thatâs far too silly.
itâs really fucking sad.
and questions like yours, anon? those make me really, really fucking sad.
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