The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet #

The Source of the plot was borrowed from Arthur Brooke’s long poem “The Tragicall Hystorye of Romeus and Juliet (1562).

While Shakespeare unashamedly borrows his story lines, he imbues them with so much life or vitality that they outshine the original sources and therefore become immortal or at least timeless classics.

Originality was not important in Elizabethan times. It is Shakespeare’s skill in story telling, character portrayal, dialogue and enlivening his scenes by rich, concise or crystal language that helped to bring this story to life for all time.

Romeo and Juliet is renown for its COMPRESSION OF TIME, DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTERS, PLOT CONSTRUCTION, ATMOSPHERE, THEME, STYLE WITH LANGUAGE and DRAMATIC IRONY.

Modern settings can make Shakespeare, our best playwright, relevant to old and new audiences

Overview #

Shakespeare gives expression to moments of strong emotion in the play. He is versatile and can project his voice into distinctive characters, changing modalities whenever it suits him. …… Shakespeare begins Romeo and Juliet with a Prologue summarizing the entire play:

Chorus.

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-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught 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.

This prologue must rank as one of the ultimate spoilers in storytelling. We learn, even before the characters appear, that the two lovers take their own lives. If the play is purely for entertainment, with no intended meaning (as some critics contend), why does Shakespeare ruin the suspense of the ending even before the tale begins? This prologue is therefore evidence that Shakespeare does intend a deeper meaning.

The prologue reveals the ending because Shakespeare does not want us to focus on what will happen at the end. He directs us to focus, instead, on the reason for this tragic end. That is where the meaning of the play resides. The purpose of the Prologue is expressed in its closing lines:

“The which if you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.”

It informs us that the cause of the tragedy will be elaborated in the play and directs us to focus on this cause. The reason for the spoiler in the Prologue is thus to help direct our attention onto the central meaning of the play which concerns how the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets led to the tragic end of the young lovers.

For it is in Romeo and Juliet, that the dire consequences of our misperceptions of reality (as portrayed in Much Ado About Nothing), our error in mistaking labels as being inherently real (as demonstrated in The Comedy of Errors), and our flawed thinking that the roles we play define our identity (as illustrated in The Taming of the Shrew), are most keenly felt in a dramatic intensity that leaves a deep impression on our inner psyche.

The power of the emotional experience in Romeo and Juliet in conveying its profound meaning is astonishing, and—consciously or subconsciously—the play has already left a lasting archetypal impact upon us. It is nonetheless important that we also consciously acknowledge the meaning Shakespeare conveys through the play, for it is a message that the world, at this critical time, needs to understand.

Romeo & Juliet is perhaps the greatest piece of literature ever written that denounces conflict between factions. Shakespeare makes us experience the agony and suffering that arises from such a conflict. It is akin to learning by direct personal experience. This is the profound nature of Shakespeare’s art. In our world of nuclear weaponry, Shakespeare’s plea for us to realize our spiritual unity, and not be deluded by our misperceptions and our labels, may help save us from a nuclear catastrophe.