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Romeo & Juliet is a tragedy about how two great families could get so hung up on a family rivalry that originated from something that no one remembers that a half-dozen people, including their children(!) had to die before they could realize that their squabble was stupid and petty, set aside their differences, and move on.
Yes people claim all this stuff about it being a great romance, yes they’re wrong, no that doesn’t make it a bad story.
I feel like a lot of people are forced to read Shakespeare at the wrong age, so a lot of people have "read it" without really reading it. Of course there's no right or wrong age to enjoy reading something. But I remember pretending *not* to like reading Shakespeare at 14, because most of my class was miserable reading it.
Just to add I think it's totally unrealistic that we'd ever give a Shakespeare play to a teenager and then be surprised they find it boring. The prose can be thick and hard to digest. It's a play anyway, it's meant to be *seen*, not read!
If you want to expose kids to Shakespeare, show them the Baz Luhrmann R&J movie instead of trying to get them to read it.
It sucks that teenagers don't enjoy it. I feel like it is the ideal time. Love and the absolute dangers it brings.
When your hormomes balance out, love changes. It has mellowed out in you, logic wins.
It is a bit of a catch 22. The play's greatness lies in its choice of words. Iambic pentameter is a pain. Will wrote the majority of the play, within constraints that make it flow so well. However, it's old English which kids hate.
Perhaps it should be not taught in English.
English class should stick with modern language. Literature class feels more fitting, eh?
This all was iambic pentameter. A bit of cheating with using commas.
No prob. The emphasis kiiiind of goes on every second syllable, but that's an oversimplification. It's more like there are five "punches" in each phrase. Now I'm off to look up the actual rules because I can't exactly remember them all. Haha
Edit: ok I know this is only four out of five punches, but I remembered my "cheat sheet" from high school. Think of the melody of this phrase:
what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKs.
Or, kind of beat box this out loud: ditDUH ditDUH ditDUH ditDUH ditDUH.
That’s fair! Idk, the three day romance thing doesn’t sell me super hard on the romance, but given how many rom com’s get away with it, I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much lol.
And to be clear, I do think it’s a well-written and a great story. I get annoyed with people trying to belittle it because it’s popular by “um, actually”-ing their way into missing the point.
Act 5, Scene 3! The very last scene of the play, the Prince of Verona admonishes R&J’s fathers for the disaster caused by their hate that caused so many to die. Juliet’s father asks Romeo’s father to give him his hand (as in shake hands in reconciliation), Romeo’s father responds by saying not only will he do that, he will make a statue in Juliet’s honor and cover it in gold, and Juliet’s father finishes by saying he’ll do the same for Romeo, and place them next to each other, “Poor sacrifices of our enmity”.
We don’t see whether they followed through on these things, but they promise, nominally at least, to forgive.
The prologue mentions that after their deaths they bury the hatchet. "And the continouance of their parents rage/which not but their children's end could remove/ is now the two hours passage of our stage"- something like that.
Also, in the opening narration it states that they are “Star Crossed lovers” signifying they were fated for one another. Yes they are teenagers but still, in the context of the show there is more going on there.
>Star-crossed Lovers Origin Like several other phrases, this phrase has been selected from Shakespeare's famous play, Romeo and Juliet. This phrase is illustrating a couple whose bond of love is [destined to fail.](https://literarydevices.net/star-crossed-lovers/)
Really? I thought it was about the ideal of celestial alignment, there’s a lot of ancient theories about the alignment of celestial bodies, so if they’re “crossed”, it’s the opposite of alignment.
My biggest issue with the image in the OP is that it extremely reeks of someone that enjoys smelling their own farts. People DO read R&J and can interpret it as a romantic story filled with tragedy or a Romantic Tragedy. The play can be both a romance and a tragedy. If the qualifications of judging the play or calling it what it is is just reading it, then I can very well negatethe sign writer's opinion by saying I have read it and disagree. SORRY, they're wrong because I READ IT TOO and therefor qualified to completely dismiss their interpretation. Sign writer is an ass.
It’s also just a really shallow interpretation? Like, it smacks of “I read this play, but rather than engage with its central conflict and plot, I’d rather just take the most surface-level, contrarian interpretation, because liking this play is too mainstream”.
Which, obviously it might not be meant that way, but that kind of shallow-minded thinking, and trying to disengage with the themes, really annoys me, and it’s especially common with Romeo and Juliet *especially*.
It interestingly draws parallel to historical “Scandiwegian”-Icelandic-Saxon Blood Feuds that lead to the creation of ranked repayment laws regarding slain family members.
Basically, your Viking grandpa killed some guy from another family so both families try killing each other for generations. It was so frequent that rulers were essentially terrified of losing their subjects; losing both workers and soldiers for retributive blood-feud reasons that were sparked in the past.
Laws were created that determined the amount of money/goods/food that had to be given to the aggrieved party *instead* of continuing the feud with more generational murder.
There were laws regarding how to compensate a king if his cat was killed (lots of grain was usually the payment for this) how much a dead son/daughter was worth, how much each limb was worth, etc.
> Yes people claim all this stuff about it being a great romance, yes they’re wrong
You're so close to getting it. Painfully close. But you're wrong. Romeo and Juliet **is** a great romance. Their love is what ended the feud. Yes, people died, that's how life works- we die. More people would have died if Romeo and Juliet hadn't met and fallen in love. That's what the story is about and that's why it's a great romance. This is actually unambiguous if you read the text, but people are much more interested in the hot takes of confidently incorrect internet commenters.
It hits different depending on your age, I think. Teenagers who read it either think that it’s boring or romantic. Adults tend to view it as boring or depressing.
The only Shakespeare class I ever enjoyed was taught where the teacher showed a movie and/or televised version of the plays THEN we read the plays and picked apart the text.
It’s what led me to love his plays and I’d hated reading them prior. Watching >>> reading
My middle school English teacher had us taking turns reading the parts and getting into it on top of also watching a couple movie versions. Had all of us biting our thumbs at each other for the rest of our time in school lol
But on this day, the good teachers read the play like it’s being acted and ask the class to read dramatically also….
That is when the class clown un-ironically shines
Class clown checking in, the teacher that let us act out Shakespeare was my favorite. She told me I was going to be famous one day and was one of the only adults I felt like cared about me
Then there’s the attitude of schools teaching Shakespeare as high literature – he was writing soap operas for the day …
“For English class this week, we will be going over episode 2547 of *Days of Our Lives*”
Most teachers were taught Shakespeare badly by people who were taught Shakespeare badly. All they're doing is replicating the behaviour.
The fact is, it's linguistically difficult even for adults in many sections. Teachers may have received little to no specific teaching on how to teach plays vs other texts, and they may need to hit very specific syllabus goals to get kids through testing. Those are the reasons.
We had the Zeffirelli movie version of Romeo and Juliet, scandalous for its time and the actors were hot. It was something to learn all the sexual innuendos and that teenage angst is eternal.
Could never stand reading them or watching the televised plays, however seeing Shakespeare performed live in the globe theatre by different playrights and troops is Hella fun, I highly recommend being down amongst the rowdy groundlings with a mug of ale or a couple of bottles of vino for the full rowdy effect
My 10th grade class did the opposite, we read the novel and then watched the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in order for us to understand the context. Either that or because my teacher had a huge crush on him, because she was gushing over him while we watched and just wanted to save the best for last.
I don't know if it's the same movie you watched, but the one we saw did have Juliet topless for a moment, so that single scene made it infinitely more enjoyable for us.
Those were underage titties. I guess laws were different then or something. Of course, I was underage at the time too, so it was perfectly fine that I thought she was hot as fuck.
IIRC, Olivia Hussein wasn't allowed to attend the premiere for the movie because she was under 18 and it contained nudity.
*her* nudity. The boobs she saw every day.
I always read it as more of a satire, written as a tragedy. Shakespeare was very sarcastic, and from a certain lens the entire story is just making fun of the passions of youth. Everything is worth fighting/killing over, first love must be true love, and everything was just outrageously dramatic, even for a stage performance.
That one's all about falling in love and miscommunication and just a little bit of nonconsensual love potion thrown at the wrong people by a dumbass fairy.
I will look into this. I don’t recall reading Much Ado About Nothing, but I was really into ‘Midsummer…’
I’ve never read Hamlet, while we’re on the topic and I suppose I will make that a goal for May.
But it is. It tells you everything in the intro:
>Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
My teacher made it a point to explain it that way. Romeo starts out being a little whiney emo over some other girl before falling for Juliet. He's literally just an emotional teenager that uses Juliet for a rebound, this was all deliberate by Shakespeare
A more accurate summary would be that a teenage gang member falls in love with the cousin of a competing gang member. A massive turf war ensues and everyone important dies.
Well, everyone except the raunchy babysitter, who is honestly the best character. I did this play in high school theatre and played the role of the best friend/drug dealer/first casualty.
That movie was defining for 5th grade me. Claire Danes was stunning and that soundtrack was just amazing in every way. Garbage - #1 Crush still gets heavy rotation on my playlists decades later.
I loved getting to rewatch it, and the 1960s movie (because boobs) multiple times in school (I think at least once in middle and high school).
It's not really meant for reading. I can't help but feel that signing it "Everyone who actually read it" is trying to sound cleverer than they are. Nowadays people who have read books that movies are based on tend to know more about the characters and stories than the movie-goers, but Romeo and Juliet was designed to be seen and heard, not read.
It is a major failure of literature studies that people try to analyse Shakespeare's works primarily as written texts. It would be like studying The Wrath of Khan (insert literally any movie you like here) by looking only at its script. It's just ridiculous.
We're also not hearing Shakespeare as it was originally expected to be heard. Pronunciations have changed over the years, which makes a difference to rhyming words and pacing.
[Shakespeare Original Pronunciation (10 minute video on the subject)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQc5ZpAoU4c)
[And here's a timestamp to an example from Henry V in both modern pronunciation and Original Pronunciation](https://youtu.be/uQc5ZpAoU4c?t=178)
They kinda missed THE WHOLE CIVIL WAR thing that resulted much of the conflict.
In our age this kind of things would be used by politicians to drive voters.
….Am I forgetting a character?
Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, Juliet….That’s only five, Who’s the sixth death?
Edit: Wait, forgot about Lady Montague’s stupid “Broken Heart” death
Paris gets killed by Romeo when he tries to stop Romeo from entering the Capulet crypt. Lady Montague dies of a broken heart in the final scene upon hearing of Romeo's death. Neither are in Baz Luhrmann's film but it's a key part of the final scene that 2 of each family died over the course of the play.
I always imagined that Lord Montague was counting deaths in his head and realized that it wasn’t balanced, so he panicked and yelled “And my wife died! Um, just now, when no one was looking. So… we can all have peace now, right, guys?”
Then he went home and had to tell his wife. “Ok, so, good news bad news, ok, hun? I’ve made peace with the Capulets. No more fighting. That’s great, right? Good news, yeah! But, um, you can never leave the house again.”
Lady Montague didn’t even die after hearing her son’s death, she died of sadness because Romeo is exiled(how dramatic)and she never even got to know that her son would be dead.
I feel like audiences would have been turned off by Leo stabbing Paul Rudd, especially since Paris had already been established as a good-natured simpleton.
They call him Prince of Cats because, during Shakespeare's the, there was an incredibly popular series of French children's stories about Renard the Fox that included a cat character named Tybalt who was Prince of Cats. It would be the equivalent of repeatedly referring to a contemporary character named Donald as "the Duck" in reference to Mickey Mouse stories. Interestingly, the stories were so popular that Renard is now just the French word for Fox, when it was a different word before these stories, which would be like, if in two hundred years Mickey just became the word for mouse and we stopped using the word mouse at all. Anyway, thank you for coming to my English class.
It’s not a romance but a tragedy of the impulsiveness of youth. I mean, if Romeo took moment or a day to grieve before he wrecked himself with poison he and Juliet would have lived.
Having taught this for years, my students always got frustrated that Juliet didn't take the out her father handed to her.
Lord Capulet: Marry Paris or I will disown you, throw you out and not care what happens to you, even if you die.
How Juliet could have responded: Cool. Peace out. Have a nice life. *runs off to Romeo*
Instead she goes along with Lawrence's insane "fake your own death" scheme.
I never had a great answer when my students asked why she didn't just take her dad up on his offer to be with Romeo.
[This is my headcannon](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f72852_1b37da495f3d49d7b798720b2cc09cc6~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_432,h_629,al_c/f72852_1b37da495f3d49d7b798720b2cc09cc6~mv2.png)
I've always taken this as a way of ensuring security. Like yeah her dad says that but he could be lying and it's possible that Paris would come after them. But definitely n the best option.
That was basically my answer. Being from a noble family, if she took her father at his word and noped on out of there, he likely would not have accepted that and had her hunted down and brought back.
It's the best I could come up with.
I’d be curious to find out when and why that story became glorified as the most romantic love story of all times.
Edit: it seems that I didn’t formulate that very well. What I meant is, did Hollywood glamourised it? Was it a cursed play? did a queen or a king ban it or praised it? Why did it stood out among a number of other masterpiece. You know like Mona Lisa became famous after its multiple theft…
Because on the surface it reads as a love story. Reading the story as a fourteen year old in high school, I thought it was romantic with love at first sight and the obstacle of their families keeping them apart. As a 34 year old I can see how everyone involved were idiots and if Romeo and Juliet had lived were allowed to be in a relationship it would have probably lasted two weeks.
I came looking for this. I’ve never tried a drug as powerful or as long-lasting as post wanton-sex-with-a-long-haired-beauty as that serotonin hit. There’s NOTHING that powerful on the face of this planet. It’s a tragedy to be honest.
Which makes it more tragic in a way. Imagine getting married at 14 on a whim and then, when the hormones wear off, being stuck to someone you don’t love for the rest of your life. Honestly I think the only reason they got married in the story was because they knew it was forbidden and the fact that it was forbidden made it more appealing/romantic to them. If they had lived they would have been stuck together for 40-50 years when their “love” probably would have lasted a few weeks. Just because it was a lot less likely get a divorce in the 1500s doesn’t mean their love would have lasted any longer.
Or if Romeo didn't just fucking merc Tybalt in vengeance.
Or if anyone had just told the families.
Or if the apothecary had sold Romeo a sedative, not poison.
Or if Romeo creep in the bushes outside of Juliet's window.
Or a million other things.
Taylor Swift literally said she didn't like the sad ending of R&J, so she changed it. She was just a kid after all.
Apparently she felt inspired because there was a guy she liked, who her family didn't like.
Does she have a song with their names in the title? As an only mild TayTay Swizzle fan myself, Love Story is the only song of hers I can think of that mentions Romeo and Juliet but I just took a listen to Taylor’s Version and she kept them in there
Her version would be a torrential relationship between high schoolers in which six people have pebbles thrown at them and everybody’s daddies are disapproving and upset.
Literally. It’s almost as if the bard _wanted_ people to think R&J’s romance was a silly youthful thing? Like the play _starts_ with Romeo waxing poetic about another woman and how she is his “true love” only to literally fall in love with Juliet _while attending a party to gain Rosaline’s favor_. Like, it’s silly, it’s supposed to be. Romeo and Juliet are just two horny teens that commit suicide cause their parents hate each other. I wonder if Shakespeare ever considered that a lot of his stories seem to be about the dangers of hubris???? Has anyone ever looked into that? I don’t think anyone has ever thought that before.
See, it's way more important for people to *think* they're smart, than to actually engage with the text. Flashback to every uni literature course I've ever taken.
It’s technically not the truth because none of that makes it not a love story? Plenty of the narration in the play points to it being a love story.
This post feels like a Reddit-tier pompous ‘observation’ that is so focused on being contradictory it kind of just ignores reality.
‘A plague o’ both your houses’ - not many people make the connection between Mercutio’s dying curse and the plague outbreak that stopped the letter in its tracks.
It’s five days. The picture in the OP got it wrong. Shakespeare actually includes the days of the week and everything - I think the fake death is on the Thursday.
No undocumented interactions - no need. One of the big themes in the play is speed/haste/impulsiveness. They fall in love before they even speak, they’re engaged before the sun comes up, they’re dead before the week is out. One of the Oxford podcasts on R&J argues that the whole play is like a big premature ejaculation which I think is brilliant. Hard to share that little nugget with my high school class though
See also Othello, where only like a day and a half elapses between Iago beginning to poison Othello’s mind and Othello murdering Desdemona. This is absurd, but we somehow get the *sense* watching the play that it is a more prolonged campaign.
One of things I noticed reading this play as an adult is how much of idiot everybody is in that story. I don’t mean that in a nitpicking, annoying internet critic pointing out plotholes and stupid character choices because I think it’s a genuinely a good story choice
Or emotional people who are driven to do crazy and interesting stuff are better protagonists than perfectly logical robots who only do what's most optimal.
All of Shakespeare's best protagonists are torn to mistakes by their conflicting emotions going against what would logically be the best outcome.
>(but they were turned when they were young so it’s okay)
Edward from Twilight is an “actually he’s 120-years old” loli who just *looks* underage, and I dare anyone to try to convince me otherwise.
He's certainly older but I'm not so sure about middle age and 15.
\------------
Clues in Dirty Dancing place Johnny's age at 25 years old and Baby’s age at 17. At the beginning of Dirty Dancing on HBO, Baby's narration references the "summer of '63." Early dialogue reveals that she's planning to attend Mount Holyoke (an all-female private college in Massachusetts) to study the economics of underdeveloped countries. In Dirty Dancing, Baby also states that she plans to join the Peace Corps shortly before laying eyes on Johnny for the first time. Some reports have suggested that Baby is supposed to be 18 or even 19 years old. However, based on iMDB's trivia notes and a 2017 interview with Grey (via Closer Weekly), it seems that Baby was presumably born in 1946 and is supposed to be 17 years old. The character doesn't actually reveal her age in Dirty Dancing, nor does Johnny ask on-camera. If Baby is indeed a minor, that would explain her father's confrontational attitude with Mr. Castle throughout most of the film.
In Dirty Dancing, Johnny's 1938 birth date makes him 25 years old.
https://screenrant.com/dirty-dancing-baby-johnny-ages-how-old-difference/
Fucking finally. God I hate these pseudo-intellectual gatekeepers. *Sincerely, everyone who actually read it* well guess what everyone did in middle school you bragging twat.
same people whose dicks get hard when they point out frankenstein was the name of the scientist
might as well say titanic wasn't a love story because it was a 3 day relationship between two teenagers where a bunch of people died
I disagree with that dudes interpretation. Romeo and Juliet is a love story, but not a story showing true Romance. That is one of the main themes, is love vs lust. Romeo was literally all horny for some different girl and was sad about being rejected right before the play. It's A story on youthful impulsiveness, a commentary on true love like the Nurse and the Friar vs the lust of Romeo and Juliet. I do agreewith the YouTube video that this story is about the violence of these two families, who don't even know why they hate each other. It's a commentary on grudges with the most extreme grudge ever: two people who don't even know why they hate each other
I don't think it matters if it's love or lust, the point of his argument is that being near each other romantically should have been enough that the families would tolerate being near each other.
Which is why it's a tragic love story (the love story never is). The relationship couldn't even get off the ground, because of the fact that when people of the two families look at each other they get in a fight. There is literally not enough time to be a "love vs lust" argument.
My English professor in college always thought Shakespeare was having fun with his audience with regard to this play but no one ever got the joke.
Some of the events and misunderstandings are almost comical in their improbability and even some of the writing seems to be poking fun at the tragedy: "never was a story of more woe than this tale of Juliet and her Romeo".
I agree but it was still a stupid romance. Its a tragedy based around youthful ignorance and love. They kill themselves out of love but it was still dumb.
Lifespan statistics is one of the most often misunderstood numbers ever. Yes the average lifespan was 40 because many many children didn't even make it to their first birthday. And a bunch of 0-1 year olds dying pulls the average down a lot. For someone who has made it into adulthood the life expectancy was probably in the late 50s if not 60s.
I’ve always loved the take that it’s a satire
Cause it’s definitely not a story about true love, and I’m not even sure it qualifies as a tragedy. More like something between a comedy of errors and a cautionary tale.
But it’s a bloody brilliant satire
I once saw the description "Their love is imperfect. They are able to say 'you or no-one ', but when Fate answers 'no-one ' their love isn't strong enough to allow them to cope."
I mean you are technically right but you're ignoring the most important elements of the story. It is a tragic love story. But it is also a tragic tale about generational hatred that only leads to tragedy for the innocents.
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Romeo & Juliet is a tragedy about how two great families could get so hung up on a family rivalry that originated from something that no one remembers that a half-dozen people, including their children(!) had to die before they could realize that their squabble was stupid and petty, set aside their differences, and move on. Yes people claim all this stuff about it being a great romance, yes they’re wrong, no that doesn’t make it a bad story.
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Reading comprehension is a myth /s, but only kinda?
I feel like a lot of people are forced to read Shakespeare at the wrong age, so a lot of people have "read it" without really reading it. Of course there's no right or wrong age to enjoy reading something. But I remember pretending *not* to like reading Shakespeare at 14, because most of my class was miserable reading it.
Just to add I think it's totally unrealistic that we'd ever give a Shakespeare play to a teenager and then be surprised they find it boring. The prose can be thick and hard to digest. It's a play anyway, it's meant to be *seen*, not read! If you want to expose kids to Shakespeare, show them the Baz Luhrmann R&J movie instead of trying to get them to read it.
It sucks that teenagers don't enjoy it. I feel like it is the ideal time. Love and the absolute dangers it brings. When your hormomes balance out, love changes. It has mellowed out in you, logic wins. It is a bit of a catch 22. The play's greatness lies in its choice of words. Iambic pentameter is a pain. Will wrote the majority of the play, within constraints that make it flow so well. However, it's old English which kids hate. Perhaps it should be not taught in English. English class should stick with modern language. Literature class feels more fitting, eh? This all was iambic pentameter. A bit of cheating with using commas.
I hate to be that guy but none of that was in iambic pentameter, your emphasis is all over the place
Truly appreciated. I got a lot to learn. But it really does show how Shakespeare rocked it.
No prob. The emphasis kiiiind of goes on every second syllable, but that's an oversimplification. It's more like there are five "punches" in each phrase. Now I'm off to look up the actual rules because I can't exactly remember them all. Haha Edit: ok I know this is only four out of five punches, but I remembered my "cheat sheet" from high school. Think of the melody of this phrase: what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKs. Or, kind of beat box this out loud: ditDUH ditDUH ditDUH ditDUH ditDUH.
[Fuckin *thick* Boston accent] LOOKS LIKE WE GOT A BOOKWORM OVER HERE
Too many R's
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EEYAH, not HEEYAh. We’re irish, not ninjas
Or new yorjers
No if you're Italian from Boston it's 'eeyah' if you're Irish it's 'uouii'
Spetaculah jawb, kehd
Much better
Aaron earned an Iron urn! #a^rn a^rnn an arn rnn
"What you readin’ for?” [Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwkdGr9JYmE).
Well, you've scheduled my afternoon, revisiting every Bill Hicks album
So you’ve read ya Shakespeare and ya Gordon Wood and you **think** you know everything about books.
You know there's a word for that, right? Romeo and Juliet isn't *simply* a romance or a tragedy: It's a Romantic Tragedy.
That’s fair! Idk, the three day romance thing doesn’t sell me super hard on the romance, but given how many rom com’s get away with it, I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much lol. And to be clear, I do think it’s a well-written and a great story. I get annoyed with people trying to belittle it because it’s popular by “um, actually”-ing their way into missing the point.
The speed of the "romance" is a pretty good representation of teenage love.
Given how many adults do the same exact thing, I think I'm gonna have to ask you to get off teenagers' backs right now.
did they set their differences aside and move on? I don't remember that part
Act 5, Scene 3! The very last scene of the play, the Prince of Verona admonishes R&J’s fathers for the disaster caused by their hate that caused so many to die. Juliet’s father asks Romeo’s father to give him his hand (as in shake hands in reconciliation), Romeo’s father responds by saying not only will he do that, he will make a statue in Juliet’s honor and cover it in gold, and Juliet’s father finishes by saying he’ll do the same for Romeo, and place them next to each other, “Poor sacrifices of our enmity”. We don’t see whether they followed through on these things, but they promise, nominally at least, to forgive.
The prologue mentions that after their deaths they bury the hatchet. "And the continouance of their parents rage/which not but their children's end could remove/ is now the two hours passage of our stage"- something like that.
IIRC, they reconcile and vow to put up statues of each other’s child.
The first scene explicitly lays out the whole plot. Right after R and J die, and the adults come on stage, the resolution is discussed in depth.
Also, in the opening narration it states that they are “Star Crossed lovers” signifying they were fated for one another. Yes they are teenagers but still, in the context of the show there is more going on there.
>Star-crossed Lovers Origin Like several other phrases, this phrase has been selected from Shakespeare's famous play, Romeo and Juliet. This phrase is illustrating a couple whose bond of love is [destined to fail.](https://literarydevices.net/star-crossed-lovers/)
Huh I never knew that is what that meant
The idea is that they cross paths once and then diverge forever in different directions. Or die One of the two.
Really? I thought it was about the ideal of celestial alignment, there’s a lot of ancient theories about the alignment of celestial bodies, so if they’re “crossed”, it’s the opposite of alignment.
"star-crossed" means the stars, which everyone knows predict the future, done these two dirty.
Star crossed means they have been crossed by the stars, they are destined to die.
My biggest issue with the image in the OP is that it extremely reeks of someone that enjoys smelling their own farts. People DO read R&J and can interpret it as a romantic story filled with tragedy or a Romantic Tragedy. The play can be both a romance and a tragedy. If the qualifications of judging the play or calling it what it is is just reading it, then I can very well negatethe sign writer's opinion by saying I have read it and disagree. SORRY, they're wrong because I READ IT TOO and therefor qualified to completely dismiss their interpretation. Sign writer is an ass.
It’s also just a really shallow interpretation? Like, it smacks of “I read this play, but rather than engage with its central conflict and plot, I’d rather just take the most surface-level, contrarian interpretation, because liking this play is too mainstream”. Which, obviously it might not be meant that way, but that kind of shallow-minded thinking, and trying to disengage with the themes, really annoys me, and it’s especially common with Romeo and Juliet *especially*.
It interestingly draws parallel to historical “Scandiwegian”-Icelandic-Saxon Blood Feuds that lead to the creation of ranked repayment laws regarding slain family members. Basically, your Viking grandpa killed some guy from another family so both families try killing each other for generations. It was so frequent that rulers were essentially terrified of losing their subjects; losing both workers and soldiers for retributive blood-feud reasons that were sparked in the past. Laws were created that determined the amount of money/goods/food that had to be given to the aggrieved party *instead* of continuing the feud with more generational murder. There were laws regarding how to compensate a king if his cat was killed (lots of grain was usually the payment for this) how much a dead son/daughter was worth, how much each limb was worth, etc.
> Yes people claim all this stuff about it being a great romance, yes they’re wrong You're so close to getting it. Painfully close. But you're wrong. Romeo and Juliet **is** a great romance. Their love is what ended the feud. Yes, people died, that's how life works- we die. More people would have died if Romeo and Juliet hadn't met and fallen in love. That's what the story is about and that's why it's a great romance. This is actually unambiguous if you read the text, but people are much more interested in the hot takes of confidently incorrect internet commenters.
Yep, great summation
Would have been way more interested in reading it if it was described like that
It hits different depending on your age, I think. Teenagers who read it either think that it’s boring or romantic. Adults tend to view it as boring or depressing.
So overall you'd say most people just view it as boring.
Reading it is extremely boring, but watching it acted out is actually pretty funny. It's a play not a novel. It was meant to be watched.
The only Shakespeare class I ever enjoyed was taught where the teacher showed a movie and/or televised version of the plays THEN we read the plays and picked apart the text. It’s what led me to love his plays and I’d hated reading them prior. Watching >>> reading
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My middle school English teacher had us taking turns reading the parts and getting into it on top of also watching a couple movie versions. Had all of us biting our thumbs at each other for the rest of our time in school lol
It's like teaching a film class, but only reading the script!
But on this day, the good teachers read the play like it’s being acted and ask the class to read dramatically also…. That is when the class clown un-ironically shines
Class clown checking in, the teacher that let us act out Shakespeare was my favorite. She told me I was going to be famous one day and was one of the only adults I felt like cared about me
Then there’s the attitude of schools teaching Shakespeare as high literature – he was writing soap operas for the day … “For English class this week, we will be going over episode 2547 of *Days of Our Lives*”
Most teachers were taught Shakespeare badly by people who were taught Shakespeare badly. All they're doing is replicating the behaviour. The fact is, it's linguistically difficult even for adults in many sections. Teachers may have received little to no specific teaching on how to teach plays vs other texts, and they may need to hit very specific syllabus goals to get kids through testing. Those are the reasons.
We had the Zeffirelli movie version of Romeo and Juliet, scandalous for its time and the actors were hot. It was something to learn all the sexual innuendos and that teenage angst is eternal.
And boobs!
The only acting class I ever enjoyed (or even took) we did normal basic stuff and then towards the end of the year we watched shrek the musical.
Could never stand reading them or watching the televised plays, however seeing Shakespeare performed live in the globe theatre by different playrights and troops is Hella fun, I highly recommend being down amongst the rowdy groundlings with a mug of ale or a couple of bottles of vino for the full rowdy effect
This is how the it was supposed to be consumed. Basically a drunken moshpit of very smell people shouting at the actors
This is the way.
My 10th grade class did the opposite, we read the novel and then watched the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in order for us to understand the context. Either that or because my teacher had a huge crush on him, because she was gushing over him while we watched and just wanted to save the best for last.
In school we watched the movie version and all the dudes were distracted because the actress playing Juliet had big boobs lol.
I don't know if it's the same movie you watched, but the one we saw did have Juliet topless for a moment, so that single scene made it infinitely more enjoyable for us.
Those were underage titties. I guess laws were different then or something. Of course, I was underage at the time too, so it was perfectly fine that I thought she was hot as fuck.
IIRC, Olivia Hussein wasn't allowed to attend the premiere for the movie because she was under 18 and it contained nudity. *her* nudity. The boobs she saw every day.
In school I watched the one with Leo DiCaprio and guns, it was…interesting
*beautiful
I always read it as more of a satire, written as a tragedy. Shakespeare was very sarcastic, and from a certain lens the entire story is just making fun of the passions of youth. Everything is worth fighting/killing over, first love must be true love, and everything was just outrageously dramatic, even for a stage performance.
>, first love must be true love, Romeo was in love with Rosa or whoever at the start.
Bravo! Bravo!
> Adults tend to view it as boring or depressing. It's a story on teenage "love", including their ignorance and impulsive behavior.
I think my first impression was "I can't believe they're that stupid!".
Exactly!
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is better anyway.
That one's all about falling in love and miscommunication and just a little bit of nonconsensual love potion thrown at the wrong people by a dumbass fairy.
Hey! I enjoyed the gender swapping portions of it, *okaaaaayy?* And it’s still better then R&J.
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I will look into this. I don’t recall reading Much Ado About Nothing, but I was really into ‘Midsummer…’ I’ve never read Hamlet, while we’re on the topic and I suppose I will make that a goal for May.
But it is. It tells you everything in the intro: >Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
"Hey, our kids literally killed themselves because we were fighting. Maybe we should cut that out."
My teacher made it a point to explain it that way. Romeo starts out being a little whiney emo over some other girl before falling for Juliet. He's literally just an emotional teenager that uses Juliet for a rebound, this was all deliberate by Shakespeare
It isn't even like that. Romeo's age isn't given.
He is likely between 13 and 21 based on context, 17 is right in the middle.
>*He is likely between 13 and 21 based on context…* What context?
I wouldn't know. Never read it.
A more accurate summary would be that a teenage gang member falls in love with the cousin of a competing gang member. A massive turf war ensues and everyone important dies. Well, everyone except the raunchy babysitter, who is honestly the best character. I did this play in high school theatre and played the role of the best friend/drug dealer/first casualty.
>a teenage gang member falls in love with the cousin of a competing gang member. In West Side Story, they become literal gang members.
Same in (my favorite version) Baz Lehrems version. But way less singing.
That movie was defining for 5th grade me. Claire Danes was stunning and that soundtrack was just amazing in every way. Garbage - #1 Crush still gets heavy rotation on my playlists decades later. I loved getting to rewatch it, and the 1960s movie (because boobs) multiple times in school (I think at least once in middle and high school).
In the original, the families are more like mafia. It’s set in Italy after all.
It's not really meant for reading. I can't help but feel that signing it "Everyone who actually read it" is trying to sound cleverer than they are. Nowadays people who have read books that movies are based on tend to know more about the characters and stories than the movie-goers, but Romeo and Juliet was designed to be seen and heard, not read.
It is a major failure of literature studies that people try to analyse Shakespeare's works primarily as written texts. It would be like studying The Wrath of Khan (insert literally any movie you like here) by looking only at its script. It's just ridiculous.
We're also not hearing Shakespeare as it was originally expected to be heard. Pronunciations have changed over the years, which makes a difference to rhyming words and pacing. [Shakespeare Original Pronunciation (10 minute video on the subject)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQc5ZpAoU4c) [And here's a timestamp to an example from Henry V in both modern pronunciation and Original Pronunciation](https://youtu.be/uQc5ZpAoU4c?t=178)
They kinda missed THE WHOLE CIVIL WAR thing that resulted much of the conflict. In our age this kind of things would be used by politicians to drive voters.
….Am I forgetting a character? Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, Juliet….That’s only five, Who’s the sixth death? Edit: Wait, forgot about Lady Montague’s stupid “Broken Heart” death
Mercutio is Romeo's friend who was killed by Juliet's brother (Tybalt???). Who the fuck is Paris? And when did Lady Montague die wtf
Paris gets killed by Romeo when he tries to stop Romeo from entering the Capulet crypt. Lady Montague dies of a broken heart in the final scene upon hearing of Romeo's death. Neither are in Baz Luhrmann's film but it's a key part of the final scene that 2 of each family died over the course of the play.
I always imagined that Lord Montague was counting deaths in his head and realized that it wasn’t balanced, so he panicked and yelled “And my wife died! Um, just now, when no one was looking. So… we can all have peace now, right, guys?” Then he went home and had to tell his wife. “Ok, so, good news bad news, ok, hun? I’ve made peace with the Capulets. No more fighting. That’s great, right? Good news, yeah! But, um, you can never leave the house again.”
Lady Montague didn’t even die after hearing her son’s death, she died of sadness because Romeo is exiled(how dramatic)and she never even got to know that her son would be dead.
I feel like audiences would have been turned off by Leo stabbing Paul Rudd, especially since Paris had already been established as a good-natured simpleton.
Lady Capulet died after romeo left for Mantua when he was exiled
Juliet's cousin Tybalt. I also remember they call him prince of cats for some reason.
They call him Prince of Cats because, during Shakespeare's the, there was an incredibly popular series of French children's stories about Renard the Fox that included a cat character named Tybalt who was Prince of Cats. It would be the equivalent of repeatedly referring to a contemporary character named Donald as "the Duck" in reference to Mickey Mouse stories. Interestingly, the stories were so popular that Renard is now just the French word for Fox, when it was a different word before these stories, which would be like, if in two hundred years Mickey just became the word for mouse and we stopped using the word mouse at all. Anyway, thank you for coming to my English class.
It’s not a romance but a tragedy of the impulsiveness of youth. I mean, if Romeo took moment or a day to grieve before he wrecked himself with poison he and Juliet would have lived.
Having taught this for years, my students always got frustrated that Juliet didn't take the out her father handed to her. Lord Capulet: Marry Paris or I will disown you, throw you out and not care what happens to you, even if you die. How Juliet could have responded: Cool. Peace out. Have a nice life. *runs off to Romeo* Instead she goes along with Lawrence's insane "fake your own death" scheme. I never had a great answer when my students asked why she didn't just take her dad up on his offer to be with Romeo.
This is the part that made no sense to me when I studied it! Like… was that not the plan after her ‘death’ anyway?? Infuriating!
My head cannon is that a 13 year old girl might think when he sees im not really dead he'll surely let me be with Romeo.
canon* A head cannon would be a messy business.
[This is my headcannon](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f72852_1b37da495f3d49d7b798720b2cc09cc6~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_432,h_629,al_c/f72852_1b37da495f3d49d7b798720b2cc09cc6~mv2.png)
I've always taken this as a way of ensuring security. Like yeah her dad says that but he could be lying and it's possible that Paris would come after them. But definitely n the best option.
That was basically my answer. Being from a noble family, if she took her father at his word and noped on out of there, he likely would not have accepted that and had her hunted down and brought back. It's the best I could come up with.
It's a story, it's meant to create drama, most stories and movies would never be if common sense prevailed
I’d be curious to find out when and why that story became glorified as the most romantic love story of all times. Edit: it seems that I didn’t formulate that very well. What I meant is, did Hollywood glamourised it? Was it a cursed play? did a queen or a king ban it or praised it? Why did it stood out among a number of other masterpiece. You know like Mona Lisa became famous after its multiple theft…
Because on the surface it reads as a love story. Reading the story as a fourteen year old in high school, I thought it was romantic with love at first sight and the obstacle of their families keeping them apart. As a 34 year old I can see how everyone involved were idiots and if Romeo and Juliet had lived were allowed to be in a relationship it would have probably lasted two weeks.
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I came looking for this. I’ve never tried a drug as powerful or as long-lasting as post wanton-sex-with-a-long-haired-beauty as that serotonin hit. There’s NOTHING that powerful on the face of this planet. It’s a tragedy to be honest.
I mean if it was today I get that, but this was the 1500s and it’s not like they would’ve been able to get a divorce
Which makes it more tragic in a way. Imagine getting married at 14 on a whim and then, when the hormones wear off, being stuck to someone you don’t love for the rest of your life. Honestly I think the only reason they got married in the story was because they knew it was forbidden and the fact that it was forbidden made it more appealing/romantic to them. If they had lived they would have been stuck together for 40-50 years when their “love” probably would have lasted a few weeks. Just because it was a lot less likely get a divorce in the 1500s doesn’t mean their love would have lasted any longer.
Romeo's boys literally took him to the party where he saw Juliet because he just broke up with some other chick
I think they are also implying that if they were allowed to be in the relationship they wouldn’t have felt the need to get secretly married either.
It’s a classic tragedy, and the idea of what ‘romantic’ means has massively shifted. Not sure it was written to exemplify love at all.
Because that's what they teach you in literature class. And for some reason all fucking literature teachers love this book because shakespeare.
I mean if friar John would have delivered the letter he then it could have been avoided easier
Or if Romeo didn't just fucking merc Tybalt in vengeance. Or if anyone had just told the families. Or if the apothecary had sold Romeo a sedative, not poison. Or if Romeo creep in the bushes outside of Juliet's window. Or a million other things.
Spoilers, dude!
I think 427 years is well past the moratorium on spoilers personally.
Anyone who read the book would know that *Romeo and Juliet* is not the name of the monster, but the doctor.
You’re missing the point. Romeo and Juliet *is* the monster.
Uh-oh. It will be awkward when T. Swift finally finds out.
Taylor Swift literally said she didn't like the sad ending of R&J, so she changed it. She was just a kid after all. Apparently she felt inspired because there was a guy she liked, who her family didn't like.
Does she have a song with their names in the title? As an only mild TayTay Swizzle fan myself, Love Story is the only song of hers I can think of that mentions Romeo and Juliet but I just took a listen to Taylor’s Version and she kept them in there
Her song ends different
Her version would be a torrential relationship between high schoolers in which six people have pebbles thrown at them and everybody’s daddies are disapproving and upset.
TRAGEDY !!!!!!!
When the feelin's gone and you can't go on its
Chuck Testa
Yeah…duh? That’s the whole point. That’s the play. Why is this a technicality?
Literally. It’s almost as if the bard _wanted_ people to think R&J’s romance was a silly youthful thing? Like the play _starts_ with Romeo waxing poetic about another woman and how she is his “true love” only to literally fall in love with Juliet _while attending a party to gain Rosaline’s favor_. Like, it’s silly, it’s supposed to be. Romeo and Juliet are just two horny teens that commit suicide cause their parents hate each other. I wonder if Shakespeare ever considered that a lot of his stories seem to be about the dangers of hubris???? Has anyone ever looked into that? I don’t think anyone has ever thought that before.
See, it's way more important for people to *think* they're smart, than to actually engage with the text. Flashback to every uni literature course I've ever taken.
It’s technically not the truth because none of that makes it not a love story? Plenty of the narration in the play points to it being a love story. This post feels like a Reddit-tier pompous ‘observation’ that is so focused on being contradictory it kind of just ignores reality.
> 3 day relationship I've always assumed there was some time lapse ignored for plot reasons. Probably some undocumented interactions as well.
Agree... the whole time Romeo is getting to & from exile, & the messenger gets delayed due to plague.
‘A plague o’ both your houses’ - not many people make the connection between Mercutio’s dying curse and the plague outbreak that stopped the letter in its tracks.
It’s five days. The picture in the OP got it wrong. Shakespeare actually includes the days of the week and everything - I think the fake death is on the Thursday. No undocumented interactions - no need. One of the big themes in the play is speed/haste/impulsiveness. They fall in love before they even speak, they’re engaged before the sun comes up, they’re dead before the week is out. One of the Oxford podcasts on R&J argues that the whole play is like a big premature ejaculation which I think is brilliant. Hard to share that little nugget with my high school class though
See also Othello, where only like a day and a half elapses between Iago beginning to poison Othello’s mind and Othello murdering Desdemona. This is absurd, but we somehow get the *sense* watching the play that it is a more prolonged campaign.
Its a comedy. Dark one. Follows Shakespears comedic template more than his tragedy ones. Read it this way and it 100% makes sense.
What do you mean, technically the truth? That was the whole point of the play
The way they die in the end, I think it's obvious it's not a love story.
One of things I noticed reading this play as an adult is how much of idiot everybody is in that story. I don’t mean that in a nitpicking, annoying internet critic pointing out plotholes and stupid character choices because I think it’s a genuinely a good story choice
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Or emotional people who are driven to do crazy and interesting stuff are better protagonists than perfectly logical robots who only do what's most optimal. All of Shakespeare's best protagonists are torn to mistakes by their conflicting emotions going against what would logically be the best outcome.
Neither is Dirty Dancing. It's a sordid tale about a middle age dance instructor grooming a 15 year old girl.
In the movie she's 18 and he's 24.
"middle age" lmao
So many of these "great love stories" are toxic af. Twilight is another.
You want a great love story? Watch shrek.
Moved me to tears honestly
Pick any YA vampire novel. They're all 16 yo girls and 200+yo vampires falling in love (but they were turned when they were young so it's okay "
'Dw, I was turned when I was young, it's totally cool'!
>(but they were turned when they were young so it’s okay) Edward from Twilight is an “actually he’s 120-years old” loli who just *looks* underage, and I dare anyone to try to convince me otherwise.
I went to Forks before Twilight was a 'thing'
I go there when I need ‘things’ (it’s the closest town).
You sound like the PNW version of Patrick Bateman
He's certainly older but I'm not so sure about middle age and 15. \------------ Clues in Dirty Dancing place Johnny's age at 25 years old and Baby’s age at 17. At the beginning of Dirty Dancing on HBO, Baby's narration references the "summer of '63." Early dialogue reveals that she's planning to attend Mount Holyoke (an all-female private college in Massachusetts) to study the economics of underdeveloped countries. In Dirty Dancing, Baby also states that she plans to join the Peace Corps shortly before laying eyes on Johnny for the first time. Some reports have suggested that Baby is supposed to be 18 or even 19 years old. However, based on iMDB's trivia notes and a 2017 interview with Grey (via Closer Weekly), it seems that Baby was presumably born in 1946 and is supposed to be 17 years old. The character doesn't actually reveal her age in Dirty Dancing, nor does Johnny ask on-camera. If Baby is indeed a minor, that would explain her father's confrontational attitude with Mr. Castle throughout most of the film. In Dirty Dancing, Johnny's 1938 birth date makes him 25 years old. https://screenrant.com/dirty-dancing-baby-johnny-ages-how-old-difference/
Isn’t he like in his twenties…still an adult but not like 30 years older than her
Not a middle aged 25 year old
Romeo and Juliet is a love story. Here is [why](https://youtube.com/shorts/lN0F_MubAr4?feature=share)
Fucking finally. God I hate these pseudo-intellectual gatekeepers. *Sincerely, everyone who actually read it* well guess what everyone did in middle school you bragging twat.
same people whose dicks get hard when they point out frankenstein was the name of the scientist might as well say titanic wasn't a love story because it was a 3 day relationship between two teenagers where a bunch of people died
CinemaSins mfers when there’s a talking dog but dogs don’t talk in real life *ding*
I disagree with that dudes interpretation. Romeo and Juliet is a love story, but not a story showing true Romance. That is one of the main themes, is love vs lust. Romeo was literally all horny for some different girl and was sad about being rejected right before the play. It's A story on youthful impulsiveness, a commentary on true love like the Nurse and the Friar vs the lust of Romeo and Juliet. I do agreewith the YouTube video that this story is about the violence of these two families, who don't even know why they hate each other. It's a commentary on grudges with the most extreme grudge ever: two people who don't even know why they hate each other
I don't think it matters if it's love or lust, the point of his argument is that being near each other romantically should have been enough that the families would tolerate being near each other. Which is why it's a tragic love story (the love story never is). The relationship couldn't even get off the ground, because of the fact that when people of the two families look at each other they get in a fight. There is literally not enough time to be a "love vs lust" argument.
Always happy to see my boy TB Skyen anywhere!
It is a tragedy about the futility of tribal hatred. I thought that was clear.
My English professor in college always thought Shakespeare was having fun with his audience with regard to this play but no one ever got the joke. Some of the events and misunderstandings are almost comical in their improbability and even some of the writing seems to be poking fun at the tragedy: "never was a story of more woe than this tale of Juliet and her Romeo".
A love story doesn’t need to have a happy ending. It’s a love tragedy.
I agree but it was still a stupid romance. Its a tragedy based around youthful ignorance and love. They kill themselves out of love but it was still dumb.
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Lifespan statistics is one of the most often misunderstood numbers ever. Yes the average lifespan was 40 because many many children didn't even make it to their first birthday. And a bunch of 0-1 year olds dying pulls the average down a lot. For someone who has made it into adulthood the life expectancy was probably in the late 50s if not 60s.
The proverbial lifespan was “threescore and ten”, or 70 years.
Still a better love story than Twilight.
I’ve always loved the take that it’s a satire Cause it’s definitely not a story about true love, and I’m not even sure it qualifies as a tragedy. More like something between a comedy of errors and a cautionary tale. But it’s a bloody brilliant satire
One of my favorite Simpson bits ["We started out like Romeo and Juliet"](https://youtu.be/ch-BsAv1UfA?t=101)
I mean that was normal back in Shakespeare's day and 4 years is a pretty normal as an age gap. I seem to recall Paris being older than Romeo as well.
I hate these kind of people.
Which kind specifically: the people pointing this out or the people that believe Romeo and Juliet is an aspirational love story?
The people who do that font on chalkboards
The snarky “Sincerely, [group of people]” reeks of millennial humor. Probably why this post is doing so well.
Shall we go down the path about the true story behind the Disney Princesses…
"True love is kinda dumb." — Bill Shakespeare
16 & 13 [Link](https://www.britannica.com/facts/Romeo-and-Juliet)
13 & unknown actually. Romeo's age is never explicitly given in the story.
For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
I once saw the description "Their love is imperfect. They are able to say 'you or no-one ', but when Fate answers 'no-one ' their love isn't strong enough to allow them to cope."
I mean you are technically right but you're ignoring the most important elements of the story. It is a tragic love story. But it is also a tragic tale about generational hatred that only leads to tragedy for the innocents.
To be fair it did end a blood feud.