Romeo & Juliet: Love or Stupidity?

[Dori]

I've read Romeo & Juliet only twice in my life, once in my freshman year of high school and, coincidentally, two weeks ago in my first semester of college.

In high school, I'll admit, I didn't really read it. That is to say we read it as a class and my attention was strictly cursory. I also watched the Baz Luhrmann film production.

Sadly, I thought Romeo & Juliet was all lovey-dovey-oh-poor-Romeo!-and poor-Juliet...

My college professor shattered that interpretation. She taught us about Petrarch and what the play was actually about. Romeo is a moron, and Juliet isn't much better.

[Beewulf]

If, as your post suggests, the characters of Romeo and Juliet behave in ways that deserve only our scorn and ridicule, then that implies Shakespeare was writing an anti-tragedy, prefiguring Brecht's use of alienation in play's like Mother Courage. However, while Romeo and Juliet do things that are tragically ill-chosen, it's difficult to imagine that Shakespeare's intent was to make them unlikeable. Perhaps what has happened is that your professor dislikes the characters and/or play, and has succeeded in passing on that disdain to you.

It's possible to paint any tragic character as moronic or inept: Hamlet is just dithering mamma's boy, Lear is a nothing but a angry duffer, Oedipus is an arrogant egomaniac, Antigone a stubborn whiner with a death wish, and so on, reductio ad absurdum.

I'm skeptical of the value of using Petrarch as a key to unlock the meaning of Romeo and Juliet. Yes, Petrarch turned his "love-at-first-sight" rock-stare of Laura into fabled poetry, and Romeo is similarly smitten by Juliet,but it was human nature that invented that device, not Petrarch, and we have no conclusive evidence that Shakespeare was imitating Petrarch or just his own personal experience. As a point of literary history it is interesting to compare Petrarch's adoration of Laura with Shakespeare's portrayal of Juliet, but Laura is a transcendent figure of personal devotion to the poet, while Juliet is a dramatic character with faults and weaknesses, created by Shakespeare to explore the destructive nature of unbridled passion in a play with characters who, like Juliet, are characteristically human in their propensity to do the wrong thing.

Certainly Petrarch is one of the great figures of the Renaissance and continues to deserve our study and admiration; however, his background, character, education, purpose, and audience were entirely different from Shakespeare's. Nevertheless, I would be interested in learning more about the Petrarch/Shakespeare analysis, and I'm open to having my mind changed. Could you share some of the criticism or analysis from your class?

[xman]

Many (maybe all) of Shakespeare's lovers act foolishly for the sake of their love. This does not necessarily make them morons. Romeo is indeed a very righteous individual.

Friar: But come, young waverer, come, go with me,
In one respect I'll thy assistant be;
For this alliance may so happy prove,
To turn your households' rancour to pure love.

Romeo: O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.

There are, of course many other passages I cold site where Romeo expresses his understanding and support of love and the goodness it can bring to people.

[Lokasenna]

I've read Romeo & Juliet only twice in my life, once in my freshman year of high school and, coincidentally, two weeks ago in my first semester of college.

In high school, I'll admit, I didn't really read it. That is to say we read it as a class and my attention was strictly cursory. I also watched the Baz Luhrmann film production.

Sadly, I thought Romeo & Juliet was all lovey-dovey-oh-poor-Romeo!-and poor-Juliet...

My college professor shattered that interpretation. She taught us about Petrarch and what the play was actually about. Romeo is a moron, and Juliet isn't much better.

THANK YOU!

At last, someone who shares my opinion that R&J is a load of codswallop. I can't find it in myself to identify with these nitwits - whenever I watch a production, my inner monologue is just shouting at them to grow up and get over it.

I've read most of Shakespeare's plays, and I can honestly say this ranks at the bottom of my personal list...

[Scheherazade]

Romeo & Juliet: Love or Stupidity?

Potato, potato!

[Janine]

Many (maybe all) of Shakespeare's lovers act foolishly for the sake of their love. This does not necessarily make them morons. Romeo is indeed a very righteous individual.

Friar: But come, young waverer, come, go with me,
In one respect I'll thy assistant be;
For this alliance may so happy prove,
To turn your households' rancour to pure love.

Romeo: O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.

There are, of course many other passages I cold site where Romeo expresses his understanding and support of love and the goodness it can bring to people.

xman, I am totally in agreement! Romeo and Juliet are young lovers and yes, foolhardly and quick to error at times. But, the young love they share is universal and immortal and the families learn from their tragedy at the end...that's the whole point. Dori, I would never go by Baz Luhrmann's production. I simply hated it, and I like other films he has done. I would perfer you watch the older Zefferelli film...it's stunning and a lot closer to the original in tone and ideas, text as well. I recently bought it to keep; but I have seen it tons of times before; firstly in the movie theater when it was released.

[Homers_child]

I've never held the opinion that what R&J had was true love. I think it was story of two young teenagers who were rebeling against their parents, or were infatuated with the idea of love. To me, Romeo was more infatuated with the idea of love, and Juliet was rebelling against her parents wishes. I see examples of this all throughout the text. I just can't be convinced that it was true love or that Shakespeare intending it to come across as true love.

Romeo loved the idea of love. This was reinforced with the fact that he was love-sick for Rosaline in the beginning and then quickly got over her when the willing Juliet came along. Mercutio and Friar Lawrence are continual voices of reason on this subject and speak to Romeo of his fleeting romance. Why point that out if not to inform the audience of the superficiality of Romeo's love?

Juliet was rebelling against her parents. We get introduced to Juliet and almost immediately find out that she is destined to be married to a man she does not love and has barely met. We know that she doesn't desire this, she wants the chance to love someone of her own free will. And Romeo comes along. A perfect chance for her to choose.

The fact that their families are feuding only fuels their passion for each other because they are a forbidden romance. I doubt if they had no reason to stay apart, they most likely would have tired of one another once their infatuation faded, as most infatuations do.

I don't think the play is stupid, I think its one of Shakespeare's greatest for a reason, and I certainly enjoy reading it over and over again. People are obviously free to interpret it as 'true love' if they wish, but to me, the evidence to the contrary is too strong. Just my thoughts and interpretation.

[Janine]

I've never held the opinion that what R&J had was true love. I think it was story of two young teenagers who were rebeling against their parents, or were infatuated with the idea of love. To me, Romeo was more infatuated with the idea of love, and Juliet was rebelling against her parents wishes. I see examples of this all throughout the text. I just can't be convinced that it was true love or that Shakespeare intending it to come across as true love.

Romeo loved the idea of love. This was reinforced with the fact that he was love-sick for Rosaline in the beginning and then quickly got over her when the willing Juliet came along. Mercutio and Friar Lawrence are continual voices of reason on this subject and speak to Romeo of his fleeting romance. Why point that out if not to inform the audience of the superficiality of Romeo's love?

Juliet was rebelling against her parents. We get introduced to Juliet and almost immediately find out that she is destined to be married to a man she does not love and has barely met. We know that she doesn't desire this, she wants the chance to love someone of her own free will. And Romeo comes along. A perfect chance for her to choose.

The fact that their families are feuding only fuels their passion for each other because they are a forbidden romance. I doubt if they had no reason to stay apart, they most likely would have tired of one another once their infatuation faded, as most infatuations do.

I don't think the play is stupid, I think its one of Shakespeare's greatest for a reason, and I certainly enjoy reading it over and over again. People are obviously free to interpret it as 'true love' if they wish, but to me, the evidence to the contrary is too strong. Just my thoughts and interpretation.

Good points you bring up here...I think you are absolutely right. It was young infatuation and not true love...or if it was love, it was innocent love; not mature love.

[xman]

I've never held the opinion that what R&J had was true love.

You're quite within your modern sensibility rights to interpret it that way, but Shakespeare certainly didn't intend it that way. The sonnet was the highest form of amorous expression to Elizabethans and the fact that R&J share one is conclusive about how they felt toward each other.

(from Q2)
Ro. If I prophane with my vnworthiest hand,
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
My lips two blushing Pylgrims did readie stand,
To smoothe that rough touch with a tender kis.
Iu. Good Pilgrim you do wr~og your h~ad too much
Which mannerly deuocion showes in this,
For saints haue hands, that Pilgrims hands do tuch,
And palme to palme is holy Palmers kis.
Ro. Haue not Saints lips and holy Palmers too?
Iuli. I Pilgrim, lips that they must vse in praire.
Rom. O then deare Saint, let lips do what hands do,
They pray (grant thou) least faith turne to dispaire.
Iu. Saints do not moue, thogh grant for praiers sake.
Ro. Then moue not while my praiers effect I take,

[Beewulf]

I've seen many productions of R and J, and it's a play that's difficult to do well. But I think xman is right to take us back to the play itself, for if we are going to discuss the play's intent, rather than our personal reactions to what we've seen or heard, it's important to review what's in the text.

For example, the Prologue places the story of Romeo and Juliet within a world ruled by aggression, violence, and fate.

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;
Whole 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.

Despite Romeo and Juliet's uncharacteristic willingness to abandon their families' history of destructive violence and give themselves to the creative and harmonizing energy of love, that love is tainted by the world in which they live; their love becomes its polar opposite, it is "death-mark'd." Moreover, the Prolouge suggests Romeo and Juliet's suicides are not meant to be seen as true-love in action, but as a bloody demonstration that the uncivil and destructive aggression of the Capulet and Montague's corrupts everything, even initial the purity and beauty of Romeo and Juliet's love.

[mona amon]

It was love alright. Love at its purest and most intense. I think that's why Shakespeare chose such young people to be the lovers. And yes, they're stupid. Young love often is, or so it seems to me at my age. I once saw an old BBC production of the play, where the actress playing Juliet was forty years old if she was a day, and it just didn't work.

Unfortunately for Romeo and Juliet, they die before they get wiser, or more disillusioned.

[englover]

What most people tend to forget is that Shakespeare was heavily influenced by Aristotle's belief in regards to stage life. Aristotle argued that the stage was a representation of real life, that plays imitate action and are not to be taken as literal actions of real life. Romeo and Juliet are characters and therefore are representations of real life people, not people themselves. The fact that the play only takes place over a period of seven days serves to highlight the drama of them falling in love and killing themselves, not to prove the idiocy and fickleness of the characters. It is also silly to focus solely on age and innocence because at that time, Juliet is considered an adult, regardless of our society's view. Furthermore, I do not remember Shakespeare citing an age for Romeo, which if you take the evidence of the time period, was probably at least early to late twenties. The argument of whether or not it was true love or only infatuation becomes moot because it would not necessarily be the people who would be in love, but representations of love in life, and they are aspects of people in the world, not necessarily complete round characters on their own.

[RobinHood3000]

I think that in the context of the play, Romeo and Juliet are in love - love on stage and in film exists on a different time-scale than in real life, it's simply part of theatre convention. That said, I don't believe it should be interpreted as/considered a story in favor of young passionate love, as the fact that both main characters are done in by their rashness and immaturity seems to strongly suggest.

[maysays]

I completely agree with Homers_child. What they feel for each other is more likely to be lust than love.

[Beewulf]

What most people tend to forget is that Shakespeare was heavily influenced by Aristotle's belief in regards to stage life.

Actually, we don't know to the extent Shakespeare was influenced by Aristotle, and to say that Shakespeare was "heavily influenced by Aristotle" is a significant exaggeration. During Shakespeare's life, there were no English translations of Aristotle's Poetics available in England. While a version of the Greek original had been published, there's no evidence that Shakespeare had the chops to translate it.

On the other hand, elements in some of his plays suggest that Shakespeare had a passing familiarity with some Aristotelian concepts. But this have been acquired by talking to fellow dramatists who had either read Aristotle in Greek or had read Latin or Italian commentaries on the Poetics.

Ultimately, some critics contend that in plays such as The Tempest, Shakespeare was actively working against the neo-Aristotelian doctrines of his day. See for example, Sarah Dewar-Watson, Shakespeare and Aristotle, University of Oxford Press, 2004.