May 17/2010 :: Romeo & Juliet are Not in Love

Day 115
Mood: Thrilled
Weather: gorgeous ~
Quote of the Day: "Alas poor Yorick!"

Today I visited Stratford-upon-Avon. It was the birth place of William Shakespeare and it is also his final resting place. It was a beautiful and quiet little city. My camera doesn't want to download pictures to my computer fast enough so instead of posting pictures and just breezing things over...I'm going to talk about something I think is important.

Shakespeare's most famous play, "Romeo and Juliet", is not a story about the passions of true love.

And the fact that most people see it as thus makes a mockery of the story itself. It is not a story about true love, it is the story of the stupidity of teenagers.

Let me start off by giving everyone a brief history lesson of the Tudor period. William Shakespeare was born into common life. He was not a noble, he was a common man. And common people had a very distinctive way of behaving and thinking. The marriage age of the Tudor couple was approximately 25 for women and 29 for men. This is because it was seen as beneficial to patiently wait until the man had a stable job and enough money for a house to properly support a family before marrying. The only people who married as remarkably young ages were the nobles. How foolish they must have looked to the commoners, marrying off mere children simply because they had the money to do so.

Marrying at the age of 14 and 21 was not seen to be 'true love'. It was seen to be irrational and far too quick. Real love was patient.

The other hints are in the story itself.

The setting is Italy, the period is the summertime. Italians were stereotyped as being 'hot-blooded'...that is, full of unnatural lust because of the heat. The English viewed their dreary weather as the perfect weather to keep the soul pure and clean. The hotness of Italy, in their opinion, created orgies and sexual wanderings.

Then we have our characters: Romeo, a man who (at the beginning of the play) pines for a girl named Rosaline...but as soon as he meets Juliet the other girl is forgotten. This is not true love. This is the fickleness of the young heart that cannot focus on one being for long. Juliet is a girl of 14 who is impatient with her family, not at all what a good Christian child would be. All children were taught to respect their elders. It was not a time when 'being yourself' was seen as a good thing. Respecting your parents was much more desirable to audiences.

Romeo and Juliet are not in love. They are in lust with one another. They are impatient children who cannot wait for sex. The reason for their hasty marriage is because Juliet refuses to have sex with Romeo without being married. Romeo is in lust with Juliet enough to agree to this sort of thing and Juliet is so clouded with feelings of 'puppy-love' to go along with things. She has a crush, he wants to do her.

Certainly doesn't look like a true love story to me. It doesn't fit the mood of the times and it certainly gives enough hints.

Problem is that current day feelings are almost the opposite of those of the Tudor period. Children are encouraged to be rebellious against controlling parents, passionate romance is desired and people rarely wait years for marriage.

But the point of the matter is that Romeo and Juliet is not a story about true love. It's a story about stupid teenagers who fell into lust so quickly they got themselves killed.


I think the lessons still stand.

:: Julianne ::

[sorry for a rather 'thoughtful' posting today...I'll be back to brainless picture posting soon enough~]