Monday, September 26, 2011

Young Love: True, Tragic, or Silly?

Today I want to start with a question.  Many of you have heard of Shakespeare, and many of you have read him, and some of you have understood some of what he has written.  So I want to ask if there is a point to his Romeo and Juliet, and if there is a point – what that point is.
I have read and watched this play multiple times, and I love it.  Being a romantic, I think it is terribly sad and fulfilling at the same time that Romeo and Juliet die because of their love for one another. 

A friend cannot stand Romeo or Juliet.  They seem too fickle to her, to young (which they certainly are) to be mature enough to make a life-time commitment like marriage mean anything.  My friend loves to point out that this play was meant as a comedy, that it was comical how Romeo and Juliet fell so deeply in love so quickly . . . but they were star-crossed lovers.
Perhaps I’m overthinking this and there is no deeper meaning – maybe it’s “just a play.”  But there have been so many remakes of Romeo and Juliet: West Side story, Romeo + Juliet, and hundreds of books which seem to follow the same or a similar plot line. 
Listen to Romeo and Juliet's tragic story from the Ambling Books audiobook player - reliving their heart break or hearing it for the first time – and make your own decision.

1 comment:

  1. I know Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, but every time I read it I want to manipulate it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if just once Romeo didn't drink the poison?
    Wouldn't it be great if Romeo and Julie were to come out of the crypt together hand in had. Wouldn't that make for yet another wonderful story. Probably couldn never happen. Even when reading Huckleberry Finn one finds that family feuds live long. Even when no one remembers who did what the families tend to side up and fight it out.
    Too bad. It could be a very interesting story.

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