Episode 242 - Transcript
So Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Many of you were probably FORCED to read this when you were in high school. And little did we know back then how much philosophy there was underneath the events of the play.
See this is one of those STORIES…where I think to understand the significance of a lot of the stuff that happens in it…you gotta know about a scene that goes on at the very END of it FIRST.
Cause once you know the ENDING of this…then all the stuff BEFORE IT in the play… starts to take on a whole new meaning.
I’m talking about the scene where there are three people lying dead inside of a tomb in a churchyard.
Two of these people are teenagers, who have taken their own lives, named Romeo and Juliet. The other is a guy named Count Paris who’s been stabbed to death by Romeo just hours before.
Outside of the tomb…there’s a Friar from a local church named Laurence, who’s pleading with the authorities of the city. He’s confessing to how all of this that went ON here…is PARTIALLY his FAULT…that he had HELPED Romeo and Juliet PLOT the things that have LED to them being in this place.
Meanwhile, the fathers... of BOTH Romeo and Juliet…are standing close by the tomb, mourning the loss of their children.
They look over at each other…and as two people that have LONG HATED one another, they say you know what ENOUGH of all this. Let’s shake hands right now, call a truce…because LOOK at what this FIGHTING between our families has LED us to…TWO of our children are now DEAD.
By the end of the episode today we’ll understand how all these people GOT to this place. And we’ll understand a bit more about what Shakespeare wanted to get across when he WROTE this play.
See, because something cool about THIS play in particular, that makes it different from some of Shakespeare’s other work…is that we actually CAN, reasonably take a guess as to the stuff he wanted to put a focus on here.
You know USUALLY it’s not very smart, to assume ANYTHING Shakespeare was thinking if we don’t have him explicitly TELLING us about it… but the great thing about THIS play is that Shakespeare didn’t write the original STORY of Romeo and Juliet.
No, he reWROTE this story, that he FIRST saw in a POEM someone ELSE had written thirty years BEFORE. And even THAT poem he was DRAWING from, was HEAVILY building on details from stories that came before IT. This reimagining of a story by the way, where you PUT new things in, MAKE it your own…this was standard practice in the industry back in the 1590’s when Shakespeare’s WRITING this.
Anyway what this means is that it becomes UNIQUELY POSSIBLE with this play…for scholars to consider the original sources we KNOW he was BUILDING the story off of…and then we can KNOW where his HEAD was at…because we can look at what he chooses to ADD to the story. What he ADDS becomes a STATEMENT… of what he thought was important to include in HIS version of it.
And from the very BEGINNING…in a story that’s TYPICALLY remembered by people as one of the most beautiful LOVE stories ever written, there’s gonna be multiple LAYERS to what Shakespeare DOES in this play when he makes VIOLENCE…a central THEME as well.
He’s gonna give violence the TREATMENT things receive in a tragic play where again…we try to consider it with complexity, the right amount of ambiguity, and we try not to give into the temptation… of demonizing violence, OR idealizing it.
The first scene of the play opens up with two families fighting in the streets of Verona, Italy. You have the Montague family on one side…and the Capulet family on the other.
Now, the FEUD between these two families… has been going on for generations in this town. Grandpa Capulet COULDN’T STAND Grandpa Montague. Their kids hate each other. EVEN their DOGS hated each other. Used to be a lotta BARKIN in this neighborhood. You better not come peeing on THIS side of the fence or you’re gonna find out what happens to you.
So act one begins with the SERVANTS from these families getting into a scuffle in the street. And then once THEY’RE fighting… this ESCALATES into OTHER members of the families that start jumping in as well: there’s Tybalt, who’s a Capulet, sort of the big brother figure in that family, NOT a guy you really wanna mess with. And he jumps in and gets into a fight with Benvolio, who’s one of the older boys on the Montague side.
And the PEOPLE of the town, are standing around helplessly on the sidelines… watching as people go from verbally arguing, then they start getting loud, now SWORDS are getting drawn…and the FEUD between these two families is once again… making living in this neighborhood an incredibly scary thing for all these people. I mean who wants to walk outside their house… and watch someone get STABBED to death in their front yard.
So the fight gets interrupted… by a local, peacekeeping, militia. And these people HAD to intervene in the fight because it took FOREVER for the ACTUAL authorities to get there: the guy in CHARGE of the town…named Prince Escalus.
The prince stands up in front of everyone, looks at all the people that were just fighting…and he says look I’m TIRED of all you Capulets and Montagues making this town UNLIVABLE for people… so I’m gonna make this real EASY on you from here on out. If EITHER ONE of your families…GETS into another FIGHT like this…it’s gonna be punishable by death. I’m just gonna kill you. And if you’d like to find out if I’m joking about that…go ahead and TRY me!
The two families calm down, go back to their respective households. The townspeople all disperse. But importantly: there’s no real PEACE that’s been made here by the prince… or a feeling that ANY of this that just happened has been resolved whatsoever.
Now the violence in this first scene…is going to foreshadow a progression of more and more intense SCENES of violence, that are gonna go on throughout this entire play. Later on Tybalt is gonna challenge Romeo to a duel because he disrespected his family’s honor. Tybalt at another point KILLS Romeo’s friend by stabbing him. Then Romeo comes back and kills Tybalt as vengeance. After that Romeo will KILL Count Paris and yet ANOTHER person ends up dead.
Point is: this LEVEL of VIOLENCE…is not something that was IN the original STORY…so scholars over the centuries have made the case that there is something IMPORTANT about this violence…that Shakespeare wanted to put on display here.
The FIRST thing to say maybe…is that he wanted us to realize… that violent FEUDING between FAMILIES or GROUPS like this…the kind of stuff that MAKES a place scary for people to live in…this usually goes on… when there’s some authority out there…that is NOT doing their job properly.
In our modern world this could be that the authority is corrupted in some way. It could be that they’re not properly trained, or funded. Maybe the authority’s just turning a blind EYE to whatever’s going on for any NUMBER of reasons. Remember the prince doesn’t even show UP in the play until it’s far too late to do anything… and then when he DOES show up, DOESN’T really hand out real punishments that would be a deterrent.
So Shakespeare’s initial point is that IN the absence… of REAL authority or moral leadership to help mediate these things…everyday people, and usually men, WILL behave in this sort of way. They will create codes of HONOR that people need to live UP to…and then they’ll use VIOLENCE… as a way of solving the problems they HAVE with each other.
And this was really common back in the time of Shakespeare too by the way. Maybe you’ve heard of people from around this time where when they had a problem with someone…they would challenge them to a DUEL.
Where two people, in the name of their own honor, will pull out their weapons and have a fight to the death. And there are all sorts of GUIDES you can find from back then where gentlemen’s quarterly would write down the RULES for when you’re dueling someone, how and when to do it if you wanna remain civil. And this resembles ways that men still behave TODAY.
But whether it was back then or today…this DUELING culture’s said by guys to have a PURPOSE built into it. It helps to maintain ORDER, they say.
If a guy disrespects you…you FIGHT that person. And the silver LINING to this for SOCIETY is that people are not gonna go around disrespecting people if they’re gonna get punched in the face or KILLED as a consequence of it. So this is a CODE in other words, FORMED among the people… that SUPPOSEDLY makes the world a SAFER place…in the ABSENCE of real authority.
But Shakespeare’s trying to show in this play that this is NONSENSE at some level. That this isn’t ACTUALLY how these codes of honor work AT ALL in practice.
There’s a great piece written by Jill Levenson, BIG name in the Romeo and Juliet space, that MAKES this CLAIM about the violence that we see in the play. The idea is that Shakespeare knew how BACKWARDS all these honor codes really WERE:
First of all, think of the genius FLAW… that’s built into the entire LOGIC there.
Somebody disrespects your honor, so now you gotta beat em up. But now whoever gets beat up…has had THEIR honor disrespected…and now they gotta beat somebody ELSE up, to make THAT whole situation right.
And you got these idiot guys that’ll be like naw that’s not how REAL men do it. REAL men fight, and then win or lose they dust each other off, shake hands and they actually become FRIENDS afterwards! It’s like, okay, not saying that’s NEVER happened before, but what happens MORE OFTEN, in this world we live in? I mean, look AROUND you. Somebody gets beat up… and they come back with a group of their friends. Or with a gun. The whole LOGIC of this setup is just STUPID.
And Levenson makes the point that Shakespeare’s trying to show how not only do these honor codes not ACTUALLY, maintain the order of a society…but that violence like this, even has a PROGRESSIVE element to it… that makes it something that actively works AGAINST keeping things ordered.
That when THIS is how you solve your problems…you’re left with a world like the one we see in the play…where even the SERVANTS of the Capulets and the Montagues…have to fight each other… ON SIGHT. DUELS are being thrown down, people are KILLING each other out of vengeance for OTHER killing that’s gone on. THIS is the kind of world that this strategy produces.
So if what’s going on here…is NOT this FANTASY of theirs…where we’re maintaining ORDER…Shakespeare’s getting us to consider: what END… is all of this violence really in service of then?
Well if you pay attention… it MOSTLY just serves… the pride and ego of the people that are doing the fighting.
It makes the montagues or the Capulets feel GOOD about THEMSELVES…and only THEN once their PRIDE is secured do they hide behind this OTHER story…of how this is GOOD for anyone else. And this is a very dangerous TRAP for people to fall INTO for William Shakespeare.
Because whenever a society has a problem that needs to be solved…notice how violence…can be a really EASY way to SOLVE whatever it is… that doesn’t require that much creativity.
Violence, then, at just an ABSTRACT level, becomes a REALLY easy thing to ADD ON to a culture…where then once it’s THERE, EMBEDDED into the way people SOLVE things…it’s always FAR more difficult to REMOVE it than it was to ADD it.
Reminds me of that point people make about protecting freedoms. Very easy to GIVE UP freedoms you have, to SOLVE some temporary safety issue. But that those freedoms... are MUCH HARDER to get BACK once you’ve given them UP. Well violence becomes something similar here.
And as you’re reading or watching this play…and you’re seeing all the VIOLENCE that is going on…understand that there’s a bigger QUESTION that shakespeare wants to get us thinking about.
This is a point made originally by Elizabeth Frazer, she’s a philosopher at Oxford…she says a REAL QUESTION that Shakespeare gets us considering…is what kind of an authority out there, if ANY… can actually END this violence going on between these two groups that are fighting each other?
And she thinks WHAT he shows us… is that it’s not the police that can stop fighting like this, or the authority of the state more generally. The prince in the play always shows up too late… and then doesn’t actually follow through with the punishments, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the members of these ELITE FAMILIES. They ALWAYS seem to get away with it.
It’s not the moral leadership of the CHURCH that can stop this fighting…all the stuff THEY’VE used to try to bring the families together, they fail horribly as well.
So what ELSE is there out there as an authority?
Well, for Shakespeare, MAYBE you’re someone who thinks these people just gotta take the GHANDI route to all this…where look, all these people REALLY need to be able to come together… is the authority of LOVE in their life, that LOVE ultimately is the CURE for all the violence in the world.
Well as he shows in the play: even the intense love of romeo and juliet we’ll talk about soon…is nowhere NEAR enough to actually bring these families together…the ONLY THING…that FINALLY BRINGS an end to the violence between these two groups…is a catastrophe.
It is Romeo and Juliet… TAKING their own lives… in an event that SHAKES these families at their core.
As bleak of a picture as this may paint about the world…for Shakespeare it seems the ONLY WAY to get ANY semblance of PEACE… between these groups that otherwise are so OBSESSED with their own pride…is for some catastrophe to strike… that gives us at least a temporary break from it all. Point is: despite this MOSTLY being seen as a play that’s about a LOVE story…this point about VIOLENCE…MAY be one of the MAIN messages Shakespeare wanted to send people with this play.
Anyway, the story IS about LOVE though at a very important level. So let's get back into the story a bit, so we can talk more about it.
Because after the prince threatens the families with the death penalty, you know once everyone’s moved on with their day after the fight…a relative of the prince named Count Paris, pulls aside the father of one of these families, Lord Capulet, and he asks him if he can have a word with him in private.
He says, Lord Capulet… you HAVE a daughter don’t you. Her name is Juliet I’ve heard.
Well its your lucky day today. I, as a member of this ROYAL FAMILY that’s in CHARGE of the city, I have a proposition for you. I wanna marry your daughter, make her my wife, merge YOUR family into this more ROYAL family I’m a part of…what do you say to that whole possibility?
To which Mr. Capulet says aye, but she’s “not yet fourteen”, so he says “let two more summers wither in their pride ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.”
In other words Count Paris, he’s saying probably not a good idea right this second: Juliet is only 13 years old. And I’d PREFER it PERSONALLY he says…if you’d wait two years before any of this you’re talking about happens. In two years she’ll be fifteen, FULLY ready to be married at that point. And in the MEAN time, look we’re having a big party tonight, EVERYBODY’S gonna be there. If this is REALLY what you want to DO…you can COME over tonight, INTRODUCE yourself to Juliet…and get STARTED on that long wooing process, that let’s be honest is probably BETTER if it goes ON. Count Paris AGREES to this and says he’ll be there.
We cut away to a different scene now in the play…where one of the sons of the Montague’s, young man named Romeo, is moping around COMPLETELY upset talking to his two friends. He’s MOPING…because he’s just been rejected… by a woman that he professed his love to.
Her name was Rosaline. And Romeo loved her more than life itself. He’d just met up with her and TOLD her about all these feelings he was having. But Rosaline JUST didn’t feel the same way. You know the timing is horrible here, but I was JUST thinking as you said all that that I should be taking a vow of chastity soon. Sorry Romeo, not happening.
Disappointed, his friends are trying to cheer him up… when they GET the idea that Romeo should go to this PARTY that the Capulets are having that night. After all they say: there’s gonna be tons of eligible bachelorettes there…and what better way to get over Rosaline…than to COMPARE her to OTHER potential partners in real LIFE!
Romeo just wants to go because Rosaline will BE there…and at least he’ll get to SEE her for a few minutes. Nonetheless he agrees to GO.
So he SHOWS up at this party…and from the moment he GETS there, he KNOWS he’s gonna have to sneak around when he’s in one of the houses of the Capulets. I mean anybody catches wind that there’s a Montague at this party, there’s GOING to be problems for him.
He’s looking around, scanning the room for some trace of Rosaline, and then out of the corner of his eye he sees someone else…and while he has NO idea who she is…he knows she’s the most beautiful person that he’s ever seen in his life, he says “It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, like a rich jewel in an ethiope’s ear, beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!” ... and it turns out SHE kinda thinks he’s alright too.
To call what happens between Romeo and Juliet here… love at first sight…almost fails to describe something important about it. These two kiss each other before they even know each other’s names. They INSTANTLY start speaking in their own kind of poetic VERSE to each other, like they’ve BEEN together for years. By ten minutes in…the two of them are AS in LOVE… as two people can POSSIBLY be.
Juliet of COURSE at this point doesn’t care about Count Paris. Romeo has forgotten all about Rosaline, Rosa-who? And at the end of the party BOTH of them talk about the other one to the nurse that works in the Capulet house who’s CLOSE to Juliet…and the two of them realize at this moment… they have just fallen in love with the ONE person that should be their mortal enemy.
Is it right to LOVE someone…where everything about them runs CONTRARY to what your family believes? Also, regardless of how they both FEEL…is it even REALISTIC to hope that they could ever be together?
These questions obviously run through their heads…but BOTH of them can’t ignore what they experienced that night at the party. So after the party ends Romeo, who can’t stop thinking about Juliet, lurks in the bushes outside of her balcony, and overhears her talking to herself about how much she loves HIM.
He comes out of the bushes and calls OUT to her…and what follows is the famous balcony scene from the play where they profess their love for each other…and agree to get MARRIED the following day.
Their families of course can’t KNOW about any of this. So Romeo goes to a local Friar named Laurence, and asks if he’d be willing to marry them in secret.
He agrees to, then he marries them. And now Romeo and Juliet are left to deal with the fallout, of how their love for one another… is going to IMPACT everything else in their lives.
So to pause again for a second… I can just imagine Shakespeare writing this play…KNOWING that the ACTIONS of Romeo and Juliet were going to spark some pretty heated discussions between people.
Cause depending on who you are… you could VIEW of all this that just HAPPENED in the story in any NUMBER of different ways. Let’s talk about a FEW of them.
One obvious, VALID perspective that we should probably start with that Shakespeare definitely would’ve appreciated…is that Romeo and Juliet…are clearly WRONG, for what they’ve done here.
That this is a couple of dumb teenagers, that have NO idea what love IS, let ALONE what it takes to be MARRIED, and they have NO idea how much what they’ve just done COMPLETELY disrespects EVERYTHING that makes their “LOVE” for each other even possible in the first place.
A LOT of people throughout the play will TELL these two…that they should THINK a little harder about what they’re DOING here, CONSIDER the effects this is going to HAVE on things…and they will REPEATEDLY, IGNORE this advice from the people around them no MATTER who’s giving it to them, parents, friends OR the church.
In other words what’s HAPPENING here from one perspective…is that in service to some intense FEELING that they’re having…that they’ve had for all of about 24 hours together…they will BURN to the ground EVERY social institution and relationship that makes their lives even possible.
That party that they met each other at? Only possible through the sacrifice of MANY of the people around them that made it happen. That cutesy, romantic, iambic pentameter VERSE that they like to talk to each other in when they’re feeling real lovey? They pull that from a culture that they share, that PREDATES them, that makes ANYTHING they’re SAYING to each other meaningful.
See, there’s plenty of people that will READ this play as a cautionary tale about morality.
That it doesn’t matter HOW Romeo and Juliet FEEL in a MOMENT…EVERYTHING they DO in this play, is spoiled and irresponsible. To act on some intense FEELING that you have, where you REALLY REALLY WANT something…and to DO that flying in the face of your responsibilities and all the people that RELY on you in the world…whether you do this with a person, or any other form of VICE…you’re still in the WRONG. And this being about your ROMANTIC life doesn’t give you a free pass here.
Someone coming from this side of the argument might say: that MOST human beings that have ever LIVED on this planet…have NOT gotten MARRIED…based on some romantic CONNECTION that they HAVE to someone else. People have mostly gotten married for social mobility, for strengthening alliances, for securing an inheritance within a family.
And to the people that see marriage more along THESE lines…it’s wonderful if romantic love is THERE in a marriage…but that to DO what Romeo and Juliet have done, to BASE your marriage on these FEELINGS that you have for someone…is WILDLY irresponsible.
Precisely BECAUSE of how SUDDENLY these kinds of feelings can come ON…and how SUDDENLY they can go away. This kind of person would LOOK at something like the DIVORCE rate in societies that go the more romantic route…and they wouldn’t be at all surprised.
Now you can imagine you’re walking out of the theater, you JUST saw this play…and you can imagine that THIS is one of the perspectives someone could have.
But there’s ANOTHER take on all this that Shakespeare OBVIOUSLY wanted people considering as WELL…that is MUCH more on the side of Romeo and Juliet.
There’s a well-known article on this play published in 1961 by a guy named Paul Siegel. Specifically, he had a take on the way LOVE is depicted in this play… that’s become pretty famous in conversations ABOUT it.
Anyway, one of the points in his article…is that what Shakespeare’s DOING in this play…is giving voice, to a view of love that goes AGAINST to the traditional CHRISTIAN view of love…where Romeo and Juliet as characters, are representations of an almost cult-like RELIGION of love… that by the time this PLAY is released had been REFERENCED in ARTWORK, all throughout the middle ages and the renaissance.
So many EXAMPLES people give as EVIDENCE you can see OF this religion of love that emerges.
You’ll have poets TALK about love… in the extremely passionate way that Romeo and Juliet do in the play…where it sounds like this FEELING of love is something that CAPTIVATES them.
You have the love IMAGERY and MYTHOLOGY that’s been used over the years with figures like Cupid and Venus, BOTH of which are referenced in the play.
You EVEN have in this religion of love…a rival soteriology to Christianity. A soteriology is a view of what EARNS a person salvation. Where in this religion of LOVE from around this time…DYING…in the NAME of your romantic love for someone else…is the HIGHEST good that can be ACHIEVED. Some people EVEN thought if you DIED for someone you love, you would LIVE ON with them in a kind of LOVERS PARADISE after you were DEAD. This becomes a kind of SAINTHOOD that people try to live out as MEMBERS of this religion of love.
Siegel argues that Shakespeare clearly knew all ABOUT this…and that traces of ALL of these things show UP in Romeo and Juliet…some of it directly in their language… some of it just implied by how the play treats their deaths.
Point is: he’s saying this is REALLY what Shakespeare has in MIND when he creates these characters. He’s using a tragic play to present a TENSION…between a CHRISTIAN view of love, marriage and salvation…and this alternative view you find in this religion of love.
Now IF this is an accurate depiction of what Shakespeare was GOING for in the play, which many people assume it is…then one direction you could TAKE this…is to ask what makes SPECIFICALLY the characters of Romeo and Juliet, CHOOSE this religion of love, instead of the CHRISTIAN view that is all around them?
And one ANSWER to that could be…that people in general, are far more likely to IDEALIZE…EROTIC, ROMANTIC LOVE for another PERSON like this…when they DON’T feel like the world AROUND them…TAKES their existence very SERIOUSLY.
Consider how Juliet, at TIMES is just a PAWN in some marriage scheme between her father and some OTHER guy she doesn’t even know. What SHE wants, doesn’t even MATTER to them that much.
Consider how the FEUD between their two families…that NEITHER Romeo or Juliet even CARE much about…DOMINATES aspects of their LIVES in ways that they’re just supposed to have unquestionable RESPECT for.
Consider how both of them as TEENAGERS…are thought of MOSTLY as just extensions of their PARENTS.
I mean remember the OTHER perspective we just TALKED about that says what does a TEENAGER understand about love ANYWAY? And this is USUALLY TAKEN by people to be a good point. That any FEELINGS a young person like this may be having… are not MATURE enough to be CONSIDERED a fully legitimate experience.
But a point Shakespeare’s making is: what if when we WRITE OFF the EXPERIENCE of people like this for WHATEVER reason…if the very WORLD they LIVE in doesn’t even seem to legitimize the experience they HAVE…then romantic LOVE like this…where there is an UNDENIABLE OBSESSION, that someone HAS for another PERSON…that can FEEL to somone… like THE MOST REAL THING, that has EVER existed for them.
Consider how this might apply to someone living TODAY…in a world where a lot of people out there are struggling with meaning. Someone may LOOK out at the WORLD they live in…they get TOLD that they’re a really important PIECE in all this that’s going ON…but the world they actually SEE… is a world that doesn’t really CARE about them. Corruption everywhere. Alienated from everyone.
In a setup where a person’s whole existence feels like an afterthought…romantic LOVE can feel like a borderline RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE to that person.
And who is ANYONE to TELL that person, or Romeo and Juliet…that what they’re FEELING there isn’t REAL?
So YES this may SEEM like a really naive move by them, that FLIES IN THE FACE of everything that constitutes their life. But from another angle: what are they really burning to the GROUND there? A bunch of people that don’t really consider or care about them anyway…people WRAPPED UP in their own pride, honor duels, marriage schemes, and their whole brand of religious nonsense.
Maybe another way to VIEW Romeo and Juliet… is that they aren’t irresponsible teenagers…they’re JUST people that have the courage to ACT on the thing that feels the most REAL to them. That this is what ANY courageous person might do. That their real CRIME here if ANY is just being people who aren’t COWARDS.
And this is ANOTHER point that’s often made about Shakespeare’s depiction of love in the play.
You know, it’s been hundreds of years since this play came out…and GENERATIONS of people have SEEN it, from a LOT of different cultural BACKGROUNDS.
And the funny thing IS…people don’t usually leave the theater after having SEEN this play…and think the TAKEAWAY of it all… is that these two kids are a couple of MORONS.
No, this is generally REGARDED by people as one of the greatest LOVE stories ever written. Why IS that you gotta ask.
There’s another great article on this very point…written by Natasha McKeever and Joe Saunders. And their THEORY on this…is that Romeo and Juliet in their TEENAGE romance…EMBODY something important about what REAL LOVE IS…that we value when it DOESN’T go on in a teenage romance.
They say it’s easy to MISS this about the play…because MOST theories about love… talk about it as something that’s either RATIONAL…or A-RATIONAL.
Meaning, love is talked about as something that we do for RATIONAL reasons…I love someone because I’ve thought about it a lot and they check certain BOXES for me.
OR love is talked about as A-RATIONAL…that it’s something that falls OUTSIDE the bounds of rational and irrational altogether.
For example, a SONG. What if someone asked you IS happy birthday, the SONG, rational or irrational in your opinion? It’s like there’s a sense that by ASKING that question…you’re committing some kind of a category error. That it’s just not the kind of thing that IS rational or irrational, so what are we even talking about. Well, so too with LOVE in some theories it’s said.
But the point that THEY make here…is that the reason audiences generally see Romeo and Juliet as a great LOVE story…is that there’s something partly IRRATIONAL about love, when it’s REAL…that we’re SENSING when we witness their relationship.
Think about the two of them at the party when they first meet. Mckeever and Saunders say it’s THREE irrational things that we mostly notice as an audience there:
WHO they choose to love is irrational…in that it’s instant, basically at first sight, there’s no real VETTING going on at all. How DEEPLY they fall in love is irrational…in that it’s at a level that is NOT emotionally safe, they go ALL IN with each other all at once. And lastly, how CENTRAL that love BECOMES in their life is irrational…where the two of them are willing to DIE in the NAME of their love for each other…when again, they’ve only KNOWN each other for all of a couple days.
The POINT they’re making is NOT that we should MODEL our BEHAVIOR after these two crazy kids. MOST likely you DO some ridiculous stuff like this that’s based on so little…you’re LIFE is LIKELY gonna end up in a really chaotic place.
Their POINT is: the REASON this feels like a LOVE story to us…the REASON the, say, FIFTY year old married couple who have BEEN together for thirty years, GO to the theater, SEE this play, and come away feeling like this is a great LOVE story…is because the LOVE that has endured for thirty years like that, has NO doubt had to have MOMENTS that INCLUDE these three forms of irrationality for it to be able to survive. These are people that understand at some level that the LOVE we most ADMIRE…for SOME REASON, HAS this kind of irrational ELEMENT to it sometimes…and that this is SOMETHING about how we view love, that SEEMS to transcend culture or time period.
Anyway a lot happens to Romeo and Juliet after they get married. Once Romeo returns back to town, Juliet’s cousin Tybalt challenges him to a duel for daring to come to their house party. Again, Tybalt kills his friend, Romeo kills Tybalt.
And you remember what the Prince said was gonna happen if either of these families ever fought again! Well, surprise surprise he DOESN’T actually carry out the punishment. He just BANISHES Romeo and says he can never come back.
Soon after Juliet’s family tells her she’s just GOING to marry Count Paris and that she doesn’t really have a SAY in the matter. She goes to Friar Laurence and asks what she can do to STOP this from happening and go and be with Romeo…and at this point the Friar…hatches maybe one of the worst plans that’s ever been CONCEIVED by a human being.
Friar Laurence gives Juliet a sleeping potion…where the plan is that it’s going to make her appear to be dead…and then once her family has MOURNED her loss and done the whole funeral proceeding she will WAKE up, sneak AWAY from the churchyard, and go and live with Romeo in a neighboring city. The friar also sends a LETTER to Romeo telling him this whole plan, which turns out never actually gets delivered to him.
So when Romeo hears rumors going around that Juliet is dead, and then he comes back and SEES Juliet seemingly DEAD LAYING in her family’s tomb…he STABS Count Paris who sees him there and thinks he’s come to desecrate the grave of a rival family member…and Romeo DRINKS a vial of poison…lays down next to Juliet and dies. Juliet, who wakes up just a few minutes later, SEES that Romeo has DONE this…and decides to take her own life as well so she can BE with him.
Now, there’s tons of conversations that have been HAD over the years about Friar Laurence as a character. That there’s a critique of Stoicism rooted in his character, an ALTERNATIVE stoicism at that. Sometimes people say what he was meant to show…is that this is what happens when people OVER estimate their expertise in an attempt to try to HELP someone and JUST end up doing more HARM.
EITHER way…the families finally come together after the death of their children…and the play ends with the town of Verona, Italy… looking FORWARD to a short period of PEACE.
Hope the whole discussion on love and violence in this play was helpful. Can’t wait to hear what many of YOU have to say about the play in the comment section on Patreon. I had no idea there were so many people in this audience that have TAUGHT Shakespeare in the past. Just the gratitude I feel to be around people like all you and be able to grow faster…just thank you. This is what I’m grateful for at Thanksgiving dinner.
Hope you have a great rest of your week. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.
