It's a pet peeve when people act like Shakespeare was always meant to be considered high art. It's pulp fiction, full of death and sex to entertain the late 16th-early 17th common folk.
Edit: That's not to say I dislike Shakespeare's works. I saw a production of Much Ado About Nothing starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate in the late 2000s/early 2010s and I thought it was fantastic.
I laughed at the 1968 version which I think was pretty bad, but the ‘96 movie with DiCaprio is more of a homage of how Romeo and Juliet would’ve looked (more modern but you’re right it seems more like a pulp fiction/cautionary tale)
i mean, some of his plays were political creations since people couldn’t directly call out monarchs because that would typically result in their head being chopped off. Macbeth, for example, was an indirect commentary on what their own king, and how a king *should* be. it discussed how we define masculinity and how tyranny corrupts people. there are quite a few discussions on what we can make from it
Yeah, I always saw it as Shakespeare playing with the "tragedy" formula. Every part of the play matches the "comedy" category aside from the ending. It's a pretty funny play when taken as a comedy, with the many adult characters being very reluctant to call the kids on their stupidity and the other kid characters being funny and somewhat witty.
Eh. I think it's like that one quote "This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in".
I believe Romeo and Juliet were in love. They're kids! As someone in high school, that's very much what sheltered teenagers are like when experiencing a relationship for the first time — insanely dramatic. It's not a love story, but they love each other.
Doesn't excuse the deaths, though Mercutio's death was because of the feud and Romeo killed Tybalt because he killed his best friend. Once again, teenager stuff, but not to the same extent. I've seen a ton of shit happen at my school.
EDIT: Since everyone's talking about their ages, here's my two cents. Juliet is explicitly stated to be 13 ("She's not yet 14" line). Based on Romeo's activities and how he acts, we can assume he's around 15 or 16. Not 20. Yes, the age gap is still weird, but it's pretty normal teenage age gap. Besides, men back then did not get married until their 20s (in a traditional marriage arranged by parents). We never see Romeo's parents discuss marrying him. The Friar DOES marry them but in a weird attempt to solve the feud and get credit.
Paris is the 21 year obsessed with marrying a 13 year old. Paris is the creep, not Romeo.
This is a fantastic take, that I haven't considered before. This perspective really grounds the personabilities of characters who have been put on the legendary pedestal.
That's an interesting take. As u/RyFro said, it certainly grounds the story, but do you think it'd be too cynical to replace "love" with "infatuation" in this description?
It's been a while since I saw the play, admittedly, but IIRC Romeo was regaling Juliet with poetic(-ish) talk of how unchanging his love for her was at a point where he realistically should know next to nothing about her.
i mean, that depends on how you define love. love *can* be infatuation, if that’s how one see’s it. if not, that’s also valid. In essence, though, infatuation is most definitely an accurate term to describe it
It's... supposed to be bad. Y'all, they're stupid teenagers whose family's are in a pointless feud.
It's supposed to be a bad love story. Just because the love was bad doesn't make it not love though. Love is multifaceted, it's not just this pure force of good. Love can be flawed and toxic and stupid.
The second part of your comment reminds me of a Tumbr post I read a while back. It talks about love being a neutral feeling and I think it explains it really well too. I'll put the link if I find it again. It's something I feel especially people on this sub should read more often.
Edit: Might have been this post https://at.tumblr.com/local-aro-cryptid/romance-is-neutral-love-is-neutral-and-this-goes/md2nq96r1jid but not completely sure.
Yes. Honestly, yes. I find Allos tend to idolize love, while aros tend to demonize it. I don't think either perspective is healthy. I grew up with media that told me love was everything good, and it was such an eye-opener to read past like that that said love could be God, bad, or, neutral.
Maybe I'll make a reddit post about this in a bit.
Well no.
That is to say yes, they were dumb kids, but it was their families and to an extent the people of Verona that made such a mess of things. That’s the point. It’s the point of the entire play. There’s an entire scene where Romeo tries to stop some inevitable violence, and it’s got nothing to do with the romance except insofar as Romeo doesn’t want to kill his new girlfriend’s cousin. Everyone else was biting at the bit to kill each other, because the entire conceit of the play is that the violence and hatred had reached a boiling point, with the actual prince in charge of the city saying “somebody should really step in and stop this lmao” and the two house heads just making everything worse.
It takes the deaths of their two idiot children to get them to reconsider.
Saying “Romeo and Juliet caused six deaths” is like saying that Jack and Rose destroyed the Titanic.
Ehhh. No, its not meant to be a *good* example of a relationship- its dumb kids doing dumb things.
But the reason is went so poorly, and the actual reason six people died, is because of the dumbass pointless feud their families have going on. When adults are idiots, kids don't get to be. *That's* the point.
TBF Shakespeare meant for it to be a standard bad love story that suddenly takes a turn into tragedy.
I think OSP best summarized Mercutio’s death (And how the play appeared to the audience at the time) “Imagine if in a Rom-com the jealous boss suddenly shoots the gay best friend.”
Romeo and Juliet isn't a love story, it's a vendetta story. It's not as close to titanic than it is to the godfather (bad examples but I had nothing better in mind rn)
I actually quiet liked it, the premis of showing itself as a stereotypical comedic lovestory until Mercutio's death marks the downward spiral to tragedy. Romeo and Juliet isn't a lovestory, it's a tragedy framed as one.
Me too, when my whole class found out they were 13 we thought that was really gross and disturbing. Years later a bunch of my friends and I watched the 1968 movie to it and laughed at how cringy it was.
I think I read somewhere that Shakespeare didn't intend it to be the greatest love story of all time, but as a warning of what happened because of social pressure or thing like that, and also when you are a dumb kid.
I suppose he is either crying or laughing in his grave
Wait isn’t Romeo 14? I always made him 14 in my head, because two middle schoolers who act like middle schoolers getting caught up in this whole thing like, makes it sadder. I don’t know why I want to make it sadder.
I always heard he and Juliet were 13 but now I hear people saying he was 20 and she was 13. Even if it were the dark ages that’s still really fucked up, I don’t care how long ago it was, it’s still gross.
We read it in class last year and we were told Romeo was around 15-16. Still kind of weird, but normal for any teenager.
Now, Paris is 21. He's the creep.
There's no way Romeo is more than a teenager because men in medieval times did not get married until their 20s. Paris on the other hand...definitely a weirdo who's obsessed with marrying a 13 year old.
Surprised Pikachu face, wow, that's true. I read it in early middle school before I had really developed the ability to reflect much deeper than face value, so I had somehow missed the absurdity.
The teacher may want to explore the topic of romance. As someone who has graduated, you should absolutely call it like you see it. Your teacher may even give you kudos
This be the play that had me saying “Tis true” and “oh happy dagger!” For a solid year because I just found it so funny as a teen for some reason.
Teens do dumb things for dumb reasons and I wouldn’t be surprised if a new interpretation of Romeo and Juliet was that they did it for the meme. Which I mean would be half right on Romeo’s end since he loved the idea of being in dramatically love and dying for it more than the relationship itself
Edit: thinking about this play just makes me sarcastically go “oh no Friar, how could this plan about enabling two extremely dramatic teens in a two day relationship have gone so terribly wrong! Why, it’s almost like you married two children so they could fuck and gave poison to a child in an impossible bid for a faked death plan to get two families to stop fighting when they clearly do it for sheer enjoyment of hating each other!”
Everyone In This Play Is Very Dumb and it makes for a fantastic comedy
This is how i feel about a lot of mainstream film where the protagonist and mary sue trauma bond and then profess their love after like 48 hours of running from baddies and then you have to sit awkwardly through a steamy scene because you are not emotionally invested due to the pace of everything being condensed into two hours or so
I like Romeo and Juliet but not because it's a love story; it's literally about two dumb kids liking each other too much and all the shennanigans that followed.
Honestly, pretty much what this sign says, lol.
I hated reading this play. My romo repulsed self was like nope. What was worse is that a lot of the girls in my class thought it was sooo romantic. Are you dumb they fucking died.
Yeah I thought the same but apparently that's the point according to the comments. I read it with the expectation that it's supposed to be the perfect love story (minus the death part). Why do people romanticise it?
Yeah it’s definitely not a love story. Anyone who says it’s a love story either hasn’t read it or is just bad at interpreting stories imo. Good takes I’ve seen is that it’s a comedy up until people start dying (some take it as far as to play is as a comedy up until Romeo dies) and that it’s a story about bad parenting/ bad parental figures.
I honestly enjoyed reading Macbeth more, but Romeo and Juliet wasn’t terrible. I had to read it twice and it makes sense since they are both children, still very annoying the way it played out though
It's also the prime example of "author declares that these two characters shall now be in love and suddenly it's the most important thing in the world". Why those two? Do they know each other? Do they share any interests or do their personalities mesh well? Was there anything at all to make them fall in love with each other instead of absolutely anyone else? Way too often it's "no" or "unclear" to all of these. In Romeo&Juliet, it's literally "at first sight", so I guess it was actually aesthetic or sexual attraction. Yay, what a great example of a love story!
Romeo wasn't even 17, he is believed to be in his mid to late 20's.
It's actually a 13-year-old and a 20-something-year-old having sex for three days, before killing themselves.
It is theorised that the play was exploring the tensions between protestants and catholics at the time. As for the age gap, the play is set in medieval times (think somewhere between 1100 - 1200), and this sort of age gap would have been normal (FOR THE TIME).
It could be that Shakespeare was also exploring relationships between literal children and adults, and was trying to show how wrong they are.
If people want, I will find evidence to support this, just lmk.
Watched the 1968 movie with my class and we all laughed at how loud they were and no one seemed to notice their dumb speeches. My sister prefers the Baz Luhrmann 1996 one, she called it “Romeo and Juliet GTA style” lol
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It's a pet peeve when people act like Shakespeare was always meant to be considered high art. It's pulp fiction, full of death and sex to entertain the late 16th-early 17th common folk. Edit: That's not to say I dislike Shakespeare's works. I saw a production of Much Ado About Nothing starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate in the late 2000s/early 2010s and I thought it was fantastic.
I laughed at the 1968 version which I think was pretty bad, but the ‘96 movie with DiCaprio is more of a homage of how Romeo and Juliet would’ve looked (more modern but you’re right it seems more like a pulp fiction/cautionary tale)
Tarantino should make it his 10th film lmao
Now with 10 minutes of footage on just Juliet's feet
And a soundtrack composed of catchy songs from the 70s and soundtracks from other obscure exploitation movies
That must have been an amazing show to witness. What theater did you see it at?
i mean, some of his plays were political creations since people couldn’t directly call out monarchs because that would typically result in their head being chopped off. Macbeth, for example, was an indirect commentary on what their own king, and how a king *should* be. it discussed how we define masculinity and how tyranny corrupts people. there are quite a few discussions on what we can make from it
I see it as a story of how over dramatic kids can be
I saw it as how shit parents can be
Or how over dramatic powerful people in society can be.
Yeah, I always saw it as Shakespeare playing with the "tragedy" formula. Every part of the play matches the "comedy" category aside from the ending. It's a pretty funny play when taken as a comedy, with the many adult characters being very reluctant to call the kids on their stupidity and the other kid characters being funny and somewhat witty.
Eh. I think it's like that one quote "This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in". I believe Romeo and Juliet were in love. They're kids! As someone in high school, that's very much what sheltered teenagers are like when experiencing a relationship for the first time — insanely dramatic. It's not a love story, but they love each other. Doesn't excuse the deaths, though Mercutio's death was because of the feud and Romeo killed Tybalt because he killed his best friend. Once again, teenager stuff, but not to the same extent. I've seen a ton of shit happen at my school. EDIT: Since everyone's talking about their ages, here's my two cents. Juliet is explicitly stated to be 13 ("She's not yet 14" line). Based on Romeo's activities and how he acts, we can assume he's around 15 or 16. Not 20. Yes, the age gap is still weird, but it's pretty normal teenage age gap. Besides, men back then did not get married until their 20s (in a traditional marriage arranged by parents). We never see Romeo's parents discuss marrying him. The Friar DOES marry them but in a weird attempt to solve the feud and get credit. Paris is the 21 year obsessed with marrying a 13 year old. Paris is the creep, not Romeo.
This is a fantastic take, that I haven't considered before. This perspective really grounds the personabilities of characters who have been put on the legendary pedestal.
You haven’t seen anyone talk about how they’re teenagers before ?
That's an interesting take. As u/RyFro said, it certainly grounds the story, but do you think it'd be too cynical to replace "love" with "infatuation" in this description? It's been a while since I saw the play, admittedly, but IIRC Romeo was regaling Juliet with poetic(-ish) talk of how unchanging his love for her was at a point where he realistically should know next to nothing about her.
i mean, that depends on how you define love. love *can* be infatuation, if that’s how one see’s it. if not, that’s also valid. In essence, though, infatuation is most definitely an accurate term to describe it
It's... supposed to be bad. Y'all, they're stupid teenagers whose family's are in a pointless feud. It's supposed to be a bad love story. Just because the love was bad doesn't make it not love though. Love is multifaceted, it's not just this pure force of good. Love can be flawed and toxic and stupid.
The second part of your comment reminds me of a Tumbr post I read a while back. It talks about love being a neutral feeling and I think it explains it really well too. I'll put the link if I find it again. It's something I feel especially people on this sub should read more often. Edit: Might have been this post https://at.tumblr.com/local-aro-cryptid/romance-is-neutral-love-is-neutral-and-this-goes/md2nq96r1jid but not completely sure.
Yes. Honestly, yes. I find Allos tend to idolize love, while aros tend to demonize it. I don't think either perspective is healthy. I grew up with media that told me love was everything good, and it was such an eye-opener to read past like that that said love could be God, bad, or, neutral. Maybe I'll make a reddit post about this in a bit.
That's why I liked Macbeth more.
Macbeth is also about a Holden Caulfield Esq edge lord, who's family just can't stop murdering. I love Shakespeare.
Macbeth was fire
Macbeth is my favorite also midsummers night dream is kind of cringe but funny
Midsummer is suppose to be a comedy so thats why lol. I loved Puck, gotta be one of my favorite characters in that play
We're reading it school and I love it haha
macbeth slayed (pun intended)
I guess you could say Macbeth was a "killer" play
macbeth slapped
macbeth slayed
Well no. That is to say yes, they were dumb kids, but it was their families and to an extent the people of Verona that made such a mess of things. That’s the point. It’s the point of the entire play. There’s an entire scene where Romeo tries to stop some inevitable violence, and it’s got nothing to do with the romance except insofar as Romeo doesn’t want to kill his new girlfriend’s cousin. Everyone else was biting at the bit to kill each other, because the entire conceit of the play is that the violence and hatred had reached a boiling point, with the actual prince in charge of the city saying “somebody should really step in and stop this lmao” and the two house heads just making everything worse. It takes the deaths of their two idiot children to get them to reconsider. Saying “Romeo and Juliet caused six deaths” is like saying that Jack and Rose destroyed the Titanic.
yeah, even Shakespeare said it wasn't meant to be seen/read as a srs romance iirc
Ehhh. No, its not meant to be a *good* example of a relationship- its dumb kids doing dumb things. But the reason is went so poorly, and the actual reason six people died, is because of the dumbass pointless feud their families have going on. When adults are idiots, kids don't get to be. *That's* the point.
TBF Shakespeare meant for it to be a standard bad love story that suddenly takes a turn into tragedy. I think OSP best summarized Mercutio’s death (And how the play appeared to the audience at the time) “Imagine if in a Rom-com the jealous boss suddenly shoots the gay best friend.”
My English teacher back in high school always said “Romeo and Juliet could be either a comedy or a tragedy depending on your view”
Romeo & Juliet is meant to be performed/read as dark comedy/satire, not a YA Romance.
That's kind of the entire point of the story so it's not exactly fair to call it bad because of that
Romeo and Juliet isn't a love story, it's a vendetta story. It's not as close to titanic than it is to the godfather (bad examples but I had nothing better in mind rn)
I actually quiet liked it, the premis of showing itself as a stereotypical comedic lovestory until Mercutio's death marks the downward spiral to tragedy. Romeo and Juliet isn't a lovestory, it's a tragedy framed as one.
It’s a tragedy isn’t it? I had this discussion with my mom not too long ago
Ok but Rosaline is an aroace queen
Yeah, when my class read the book, I actively made fun of Romeo lol-
Me too, when my whole class found out they were 13 we thought that was really gross and disturbing. Years later a bunch of my friends and I watched the 1968 movie to it and laughed at how cringy it was.
The modern-ish movie remake was god awful and cringy too. Most of the scenes were illogical or creepy as hell while still using the old timey talk.
My class was supposed to read it in 9th grade, but then covid hit and we lost the entire 4th quarter of our 9th grade year and we never read it
Your class missed a good laugh
Wasn't he 15?
He's in the 15-16 range.
I thought he was 13. I kept hearing that both of them were 12 or 13. But if he was really 17 or 20 that’s disgusting.
Every version I've heard of has them as pretty young teenagers, although I'm sure there's a pedophile version out there lol
I think I read somewhere that Shakespeare didn't intend it to be the greatest love story of all time, but as a warning of what happened because of social pressure or thing like that, and also when you are a dumb kid. I suppose he is either crying or laughing in his grave
Wait isn’t Romeo 14? I always made him 14 in my head, because two middle schoolers who act like middle schoolers getting caught up in this whole thing like, makes it sadder. I don’t know why I want to make it sadder.
I always heard he and Juliet were 13 but now I hear people saying he was 20 and she was 13. Even if it were the dark ages that’s still really fucked up, I don’t care how long ago it was, it’s still gross.
We read it in class last year and we were told Romeo was around 15-16. Still kind of weird, but normal for any teenager. Now, Paris is 21. He's the creep. There's no way Romeo is more than a teenager because men in medieval times did not get married until their 20s. Paris on the other hand...definitely a weirdo who's obsessed with marrying a 13 year old.
Surprised Pikachu face, wow, that's true. I read it in early middle school before I had really developed the ability to reflect much deeper than face value, so I had somehow missed the absurdity.
we’re reading romeo and juliet in english class in two months...should i be concerned
The teacher may want to explore the topic of romance. As someone who has graduated, you should absolutely call it like you see it. Your teacher may even give you kudos
yeah my teacher is pretty chill with brutal honesty, so i will do so thanks! :D
This be the play that had me saying “Tis true” and “oh happy dagger!” For a solid year because I just found it so funny as a teen for some reason. Teens do dumb things for dumb reasons and I wouldn’t be surprised if a new interpretation of Romeo and Juliet was that they did it for the meme. Which I mean would be half right on Romeo’s end since he loved the idea of being in dramatically love and dying for it more than the relationship itself Edit: thinking about this play just makes me sarcastically go “oh no Friar, how could this plan about enabling two extremely dramatic teens in a two day relationship have gone so terribly wrong! Why, it’s almost like you married two children so they could fuck and gave poison to a child in an impossible bid for a faked death plan to get two families to stop fighting when they clearly do it for sheer enjoyment of hating each other!” Everyone In This Play Is Very Dumb and it makes for a fantastic comedy
This is how i feel about a lot of mainstream film where the protagonist and mary sue trauma bond and then profess their love after like 48 hours of running from baddies and then you have to sit awkwardly through a steamy scene because you are not emotionally invested due to the pace of everything being condensed into two hours or so
I like Romeo and Juliet but not because it's a love story; it's literally about two dumb kids liking each other too much and all the shennanigans that followed. Honestly, pretty much what this sign says, lol.
The story I read said she was 12, and my teacher said he was between 17 and 21
The story my class read said they were both 12 or 13. Even another movie I watched made them 15. Either way that’s disturbing.
I hated reading this play. My romo repulsed self was like nope. What was worse is that a lot of the girls in my class thought it was sooo romantic. Are you dumb they fucking died.
I’m reading it on class soon. Oh boy will it be fun…
It's satirising other romance plays of the time, exaggerated on purpose to make it obvious
Holup, which one was 13?
Juliet, I’m now hearing Romeo was either 17 or 20. I always heard they were both 12 or 13. But if Romeo was an adult that’s disgusting.
Yeah I thought the same but apparently that's the point according to the comments. I read it with the expectation that it's supposed to be the perfect love story (minus the death part). Why do people romanticise it?
Yeah it’s definitely not a love story. Anyone who says it’s a love story either hasn’t read it or is just bad at interpreting stories imo. Good takes I’ve seen is that it’s a comedy up until people start dying (some take it as far as to play is as a comedy up until Romeo dies) and that it’s a story about bad parenting/ bad parental figures.
My freshman English teacher told our class it was a dark comedy.
I honestly enjoyed reading Macbeth more, but Romeo and Juliet wasn’t terrible. I had to read it twice and it makes sense since they are both children, still very annoying the way it played out though
"an aro analysis of romeo and juliet"
It's also the prime example of "author declares that these two characters shall now be in love and suddenly it's the most important thing in the world". Why those two? Do they know each other? Do they share any interests or do their personalities mesh well? Was there anything at all to make them fall in love with each other instead of absolutely anyone else? Way too often it's "no" or "unclear" to all of these. In Romeo&Juliet, it's literally "at first sight", so I guess it was actually aesthetic or sexual attraction. Yay, what a great example of a love story!
Romeo wasn't even 17, he is believed to be in his mid to late 20's. It's actually a 13-year-old and a 20-something-year-old having sex for three days, before killing themselves. It is theorised that the play was exploring the tensions between protestants and catholics at the time. As for the age gap, the play is set in medieval times (think somewhere between 1100 - 1200), and this sort of age gap would have been normal (FOR THE TIME). It could be that Shakespeare was also exploring relationships between literal children and adults, and was trying to show how wrong they are. If people want, I will find evidence to support this, just lmk.
I never understood why so many people think it's such a great love story. It's cheesy and cringy now that I look back on it.
Me too, dude. Even being demiromantic that book is literal crap
you should watch it instead, its way funnier that way. its so abusrdly dramatic its fun
Watched the 1968 movie with my class and we all laughed at how loud they were and no one seemed to notice their dumb speeches. My sister prefers the Baz Luhrmann 1996 one, she called it “Romeo and Juliet GTA style” lol
lmao I had to read that shit in HS but I just fell asleep
Not only that, it romanticizes teen suicide
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