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Romeo and Juliet
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Group Classics Read - August 2016 - Romeo and Juliet - SPOILERS ALLOWED
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Wow. I didn't realize the group was reading this masterpiece. Don't know where I was (possibly dealing with a death in the family). I haven't read it lately but I know the work quite well, have acted in a production of it and done many scenes from it, so I've read it again and again and have many portions of it committed to memory. To say "like" is rather pitiful when dealing with The Bard. But I do find it interesting that my father, who like me, read all of Shakespeare's cannon, didn't like it because he said that Romeo was not in love with Juliet but rather, in love with "love".While I'd admit that it is the quintessential passion of the idealist adolescent, I think it is an archetype of sorts: most of us have that feeling for the "ideal", including the ideal love or the "love of one's life", and no one has, in my opinion, captured that better, or even come close.
Besides, the poetry is magnificent, the story gripping and anyone's who's seen the Zefferelli film with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, knows that it moves one like nothing else.
While Shakespeare has his name put to some he probably wishes weren't, I would read and re-read anything by him.
Do we really need a no spoilers thread for this one? :-)
Glad to hear you're an expert on this cos I expect I'll have many questions. :-)
I read the story written again as prose maybe a month ago. I came to the conclusion that they are all completely nuts.
Tytti wrote: "I read the story written again as prose maybe a month ago. I came to the conclusion that they are all completely nuts."Fair enough.
Worth reading for the beauty of the language alone, but a little more histrionic than I remember from my school reading ...I guess it makes a difference being older, and hopefully wiser than the characters
Tytti wrote: "I read the story written again as prose maybe a month ago. I came to the conclusion that they are all completely nuts."Just one thought. I suggested you'd like Wuthering Heights, but if you didn't like R&J, I doubt you'd like WH. They're all crazy, too.
Well there are different levels of nuttyness. A mother saying that a 13-year-old is old enough to get married and have children is pretty nuts. (I read that part at our BC meetup and it made everyone laugh.) And that the people are killing each other left and right are pretty high up there, too. I don't mind crazy people if they are at least somewhat realistic.
Hmm. Might it be a little in that direction to judge a story from the 16th century by modern standards?
I don't think it would have been that realistic then, either.
Actually, it was the norm. When life expectancy was about 35 to 38 years and roles for women quite restricted, marrying for love, and against parents wishes was quite revolutionary. Additionally, even secondary education was rare at that time. People grew up fast. As a matter of fact, there are societies today that have arranged marriages. I knew a couple from India whose marriage was arranged. In much of Arabia and South Asia, girls are betrothed when they're much younger than Juliet was.
No, not really. Well maybe in some countries and in certain classes but not among the ordinary people in all the countries. Even so, having children at the age of 13 is dangerous to a girl, and I am not sure most girls could even get pregnant at that age and in those times. And an adult woman should know this. Secondary education was rare even among my grandfather's time, he started working at the age of 13, but he couldn't have got married before being confirmed when he was at least 15. For centuries the church had demanded that you knew how to read and also knew the Bible before letting you get married, and the confirmation was a rite of passage after which you were considered an adult. (Even in the early 20th century there was a tradition in some places that girls who were confirmed could have their boyfriend sleep in their room but everyone knew it meant just sleeping.) Many people married when they were already 20-30 years old and had worked for years and had some possessions, too.
The life expectancy was so low because of the high child mortality (diseases and such) and also because women died of child birth. If people (women) survived all that, they could live quite old, to their 50s and 60s, even older.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valpuri...
There's a good academic article here discussing why Shakespeare chose to make Juliet (and Romeo) so young.http://www.fps.chuo-u.ac.jp/e/JJPC/jj...
In my opinion R and J have to be young and sexually innocent for the story to work at all. Their love is that teenage infatuation, based on no real knowledge of each other, and their impulsive actions only believable because of their age. A bit like teenage girls throwing themselves screaming at boy bands!
Actually reading the play this time I found them irritating ( I found myself in sympathy with the Friar as he tuts at Romeo's claims to be hard done by - Act 3 Scene 3) and had to consciously try to rewind in my mind to a time when I had a huge poster of Donny Osmond on my bedroom wall and listened morosely to 'Puppy Love' to be able to empathise at all with their feelings!
I'm a big Shakespeare fan but I don't find this one of his best plays. The humorous sections aren't funny and I wish instead we'd seen a bit more of either Romeo and Juliet together, or each of them soliloquizing about the other. There are some lovely lyrical passages - I've only just had it pointed out to me that when R and J first meet their speech is a shared sonnet - but as a whole I don't rate this play with A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing etc.
Tytti wrote: "No, not really. Well maybe in some countries and in certain classes but not among the ordinary people in all the countries. Even so, having children at the age of 13 is dangerous to a girl, and I a..."Could, yes, but rarely did. And I've done considerable research on the period. Girls were then considered of marrying age as soon as their menstrual cycle started. I'm not saying it's advisable, but it was quite common.
Well, 12-13 would have been quite young even for that, their diet wasn't as good then as it is today. And like Joy's article mentioned, just because it was legal didn't mean it happened that often.
Well, I think we've debated this to death. Don't know how much of Joy's article you read, but it does say that in wealthy families, that was the tendency.
Best Answer: As soon as the girl was able to have children....although many were married before this time and went home to live with their parents...or the grooms parents until this time.... Many children were 'betrothed' at birth..especially females of a noble or royal family...to males of other royals and nobles...it was a matter of political necessity rather than any other reason.... Usually the groom or 'betrothed' was quite a bit older than the bride....
"For most of European history, marriage was more or less a business agreement between two families who arranged the marriages of their children. Romantic love, and even simple affection, were not considered essential. Historically, the perceived necessity of marriage has been stressed"
"The women in the medieval times had limited opportunities open for them. The women in rich class had two opportunities in life-marriage and nunnery. The fathers of bride and groom generally arranged marriages to safeguard or increase the family wealth. Child brides were frequent and the maximum number of girls got married at the age of 14."
"For a girl belonging to a low or peasant class, marriage was a difficult issue to deal with. Her father was not a free man to decide about her marriage. Her fate was hard as they need to take permission from the feudal lord for the marriage. In some countries, the feudal lord enjoyed the main right to decide and even to sleep with the bride for the first wedding night."
Source(s):
But luckily there were no feudal lords in all countries, and people were more or less free to decide for themselves, especially when there really wasn't much wealth that could be increased.
However Verona, where the play is set, was definitely a feudal society at that time!I think a more interesting question is what effect the young ages of the lovers has on the drama.
Yes, true. But de gustibus non est disputandem. I think this is one of the great works in literary history. But then I'm nuts, too. If you see the Zefferelli film you can see how powerful a work this is, and how their young age (and not just Romeo and Juliet, but Tybalt, Mercutio, Benvolio, et al) is crucial. It's love idealized (and feuding idealized, my family idealized; their family idealized as the focus of evil), as young people tend to do. But I think we all have that sense of the ideal, just as we get older, we see that the ideal love, ideal society, ideal leader, etc is a goal to shoot for, never expecting it to be realized completely.
Mercutio's Queen Mab speech is interesting. I wonder if Shakespeare wrote it, liked it and decided to insert it even though its very long for a minor character and not especially relevant ( though full of brilliant imagery). I also wonder if Shakespeare was already mulling over ideas for A Midsummer Night's Dream (thinking not just of this fairy passage but also of Pyramus and Thisbe and their similarities to R and J.)
In the Zefferelli version it's made very pertinent. "Peace, Mercutio, peace/ Thou talkest of nothing. True, I talk of dreams / Which are the children of an idle brain." Romeo is a dreamer. The love of R&J is like a dream, impossible to sustain in the real world, but beautiful in the abstract, nonetheless.
Joy wrote: "There's a good academic article here discussing why Shakespeare chose to make Juliet (and Romeo) so young.http://www.fps.chuo-u.ac.jp/e/JJPC/jj...
In my opinion R and J have to be you..."
Thanks for linking that article, it was really interesting.
Things to consider:
1. Did you like the book?
2. Did you like or dislike the main characters?
3. Do the characters develop?
4. What did you think of the plot and the ending of the story?
5. Do you have any particular favourite quotes or scenes?
6. Would you read anything else by this author?