A couple weeks ago I stumble across a mention of The Romeo and Juliet Effect in a book about motivation and will power.

Today among the various Shakespeare feeds I scan I spotted this 2008 Psychology Today article entitled, “Romeo and Juliet’s Death Trip: Addictive Love and Teen Suicide.”  

There are no great insights to be found.  The author pretty much skims the story for various death references and ties them all back to suicide, including the claim that Romeo is suicidal over Rosaline at the opening of the play.  I think that’s a bit much.  That’s not suicidal, that’s emo.  Not the same thing.

The article’s at least entertaining, though, and I appreciate that.  I wonder how far his tongue was in his cheek while writing it?

Father Laurence tries cognitive behavior therapy:

I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word:
Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy (read “psychology”),
To comfort thee, though thou art banished. . . .
rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;
There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slew’st Tybalt; there are thou happy too:
The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile; there art thou happy:
A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array.

But then (oy!!!) the good Father resorts to pharmacology: he gives Juliet a potion to make her appear dead.

So on my way to work this morning I’m listening to an audiobook in my car all about motivation, will power and stuff like that – how the brain works kind of stuff.  And in a chapter about how you can’t tell your brain “Stop thinking about X” I get to this:

This might explain what psychologists know as the well-known “Romeo and Juliet” effect, where love for another person only becomes stronger when it is forbidden.(*)

Ummm……huh?  I’m trying to decide if that’s psychobabble for “We are saying this *about* the characters of Romeo and Juliet”, in other words they fell that deeply in love precisely because they could not be together … or else if this is just a modern acknowledgment of a modern idea, and they’ve simply slapped a cliche onto it.

What do you think?  Am I reading too much into it, in the hopes of pulling a blog post out of it?  Or do you think that Romeo liked that girl at the party, and when he learned that she was a Capulet, only then did he think “I can’t live without her!”

Somehow I don’t think the text supports that.  Granted, I think that every 13yr old who thinks she is in love with the gangsta down the street and whose parents say she can’t see him anymore?  So she climbs out her bedroom window to go hang out with him?  That, I think, is the Romeo and Juliet effect.  And that’s not at all what Shakespeare was talking about.

(*) From memory, of course, so nobody pick on the book for any lapses in grammar – that’s my fault.

Coriolanus bringing out the boy to end the play last night is certainly not the first example of a director taking some license with the ending.  Does Romeo die knowing that Juliet is alive?  Baz Luhrman thinks so.  And then there’s that old example that I always forget to attribute properly where Fortinbras, “Go, bid the soldiers shoot” is actually a command to execute Horatio, the last survivor.  And speaking of Coriolanus, plenty of people were upset at just how differently the movie ended compared to the play.    (Related, I actually saw a neat Hamlet once where the ghost of Polonius came to walk the ghost of Ophelia offstage.  Great way to get the actress’ dead body offstage.  But we’re talking about endings here, and not middles.)

So here’s my question – what productions have you seen (stage or screen) where the director kept to the script, but decided to throw in a twist you weren’t expecting?  Of course, “kept to the script” is subject to interpretation since the whole play is already edited to the director’s vision.  In general, though, I’m talking about visual and action that happens in between the text.  Whether Romeo knows is based entirely on whether Juliet opens her eyes, and he sees it.  Stuff like that.

Thank Cookie Monster for this one, folks – it was his parody of the mind virus known as “Call Me Maybe” that produced the following.  Bardfilm is on vacation, so hopefully I’ve done a reasonable job at filling the void while he’s gone…

Hey, Coriolanus!
We know you’re angry.
Your mother asked nice,
So spare Rome, maybe?

I know that we just got here,
But it’s too early.
So let’s get back together
After the hurly burly.

Hey there, Desdemona,
You have deceived me!
Iago said so.
And he’s trustworthy.

Good evening Mr. Capulet.
My name is Romeo.
It’s been a lovely party,
But now we must go.

In some random bit of spammy email marketing I saw the term “hidden gem” (and subsequent discussion about how to use this term in your marketing :)).  Well, this week I learned that I like Coriolanus much more than I thought I would.  It’s easy to talk about Hamlet and Lear and Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet for years on end.  Something like Coriolanus doesn’t get nearly as much love.

So, let’s talk “hidden gems.”  Which of Shakespeare’s plays is not commonly known, that should get more love?  The Great Tragedies are off limits – everybody’s seen and discussed those a thousand times.   No Dream, no Much Ado About Nothing.  We all know about those gems.

What else ya got?