rfmcdonald (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rfmcdonald) wrote2005-08-20 07:40 pm
rfmcdonald) wrote2005-08-20 07:40 pm
[BRIEF NOTE] The Hidden Failings of Romeo and Juliet
I admit to being ambivalent about Shakespeare. I came out on this in my reaction to a recent High Park performance of Much Ado About Nothing last month, in my praising of the company and my criticism of Shakespeare's pacing. It's worth noting that although in a corresponding poll on that subject most of the respondents seemed to agree that Shakespeare was a good writer despite his flaws, almost a quarter of the respondents did believe that his had significant flaws which did undermine his reputation as the English-language dramaturge and poet par excellence. I am not alone.
Romeo and Juliet bothers me the most, out of his entire oeuvre. When I first read this play in Grade 10 English class, the simple fact that the two doomed protagonists were teenagers discredited Romeo and Juliet as a play that spoke to the ages about romantic love. If their overheated suicidal fantasy and lust was all that love was about, I wondered, why bother? I still feel that way, I admit. In fact, one reason I prefer Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film version (official website here) to Zefferelli's 1968 standard is that Luhrmann's transports the doomed adolescent lust-fuelled crush into a modern setting for all to appreciate.
What's been bothering me of late about Romeo and Juliet is its setting. Verona is a city in northern Italy, a place were, in the Middle Ages, sovereignty was contested, at the urban level between nobles and commoners, and at the broader scale between free cities and emperors like Frederick I. Northern Italy, Verona included, is a birthplace of the medieval commune, that early version of a mass-participation polity which opposes nobles and the Church against organized commoners. Romeo is the scion of the Montagues, Juliet is heiress to the Capulets, these two families are the major families and leading political figures of Verona, and the survival of Romeo and Juliet was critical to the plans of the two families.
How, I wonder, would the Veronese at large--to say nothing of the Montagues and the Capulets--react to the story, after the initial shocked reaction in Act 5, Scene 3? Friar Laurence himself recognized that his claims were improbable.
Montague and Capulet, struck by grief, only accepted these claims after the Prince agreed with Laurence's story. Did they really believe the two men, though? Or did they, separately or individually, believe that the situation might have been faked, or at the very least aggravated, by the unholy alliance of church and nobles against their two families, ending in the deaths of their children under conditions of mortal sin? How, I ask rhetorically, would the politically mobilized and decidedly violent families contesting political power have reacted to this? I suspect that bloodshed soon followed. It might not be a coincidence that Verona fell to Venetian conquerors in 1402.
In this, I believe, lies the potential for a powerful subversive reading of Romeo and Juliet. I'd pay to see this performance.
Romeo and Juliet bothers me the most, out of his entire oeuvre. When I first read this play in Grade 10 English class, the simple fact that the two doomed protagonists were teenagers discredited Romeo and Juliet as a play that spoke to the ages about romantic love. If their overheated suicidal fantasy and lust was all that love was about, I wondered, why bother? I still feel that way, I admit. In fact, one reason I prefer Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film version (official website here) to Zefferelli's 1968 standard is that Luhrmann's transports the doomed adolescent lust-fuelled crush into a modern setting for all to appreciate.
What's been bothering me of late about Romeo and Juliet is its setting. Verona is a city in northern Italy, a place were, in the Middle Ages, sovereignty was contested, at the urban level between nobles and commoners, and at the broader scale between free cities and emperors like Frederick I. Northern Italy, Verona included, is a birthplace of the medieval commune, that early version of a mass-participation polity which opposes nobles and the Church against organized commoners. Romeo is the scion of the Montagues, Juliet is heiress to the Capulets, these two families are the major families and leading political figures of Verona, and the survival of Romeo and Juliet was critical to the plans of the two families.
How, I wonder, would the Veronese at large--to say nothing of the Montagues and the Capulets--react to the story, after the initial shocked reaction in Act 5, Scene 3? Friar Laurence himself recognized that his claims were improbable.
I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me of this direful murder;
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excused.
Montague and Capulet, struck by grief, only accepted these claims after the Prince agreed with Laurence's story. Did they really believe the two men, though? Or did they, separately or individually, believe that the situation might have been faked, or at the very least aggravated, by the unholy alliance of church and nobles against their two families, ending in the deaths of their children under conditions of mortal sin? How, I ask rhetorically, would the politically mobilized and decidedly violent families contesting political power have reacted to this? I suspect that bloodshed soon followed. It might not be a coincidence that Verona fell to Venetian conquerors in 1402.
In this, I believe, lies the potential for a powerful subversive reading of Romeo and Juliet. I'd pay to see this performance.