Category: Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet remains popular due to its tragic love story, relatable characters, and universal themes of love, fate, and the clash between youth and age. Its enduring popularity is also attributed to its poetic language and captivating storytelling, as well as its numerous adaptations and cultural references. The play has been adapted countless times in film, theatre, and literature and continues to be studied and performed worldwide, making it one of Shakespeare’s most beloved works.

Browse the text of Romeo and Juliet entire play here.

Best Opening Line?

~ duane ~ 20 Comments

So I saw this Entertainment Weekly article about 2o Classic Opening Lines in Books.  For the curious, it stretches 20 pages for 20 lines, includes Harry Potter and does not include Orwell, Camus or Kafka. Of course there’s no Shakespeare, since it’s always up in the air whether someone counts his work among “books”.

So I thought we’d do our own.  What were Shakespeare’s best opening lines? I suppose Richard III’s “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York” might be the most infamous, given how frequently it is misquoted.

I like Romeo and Juliet’s “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.” Not just because it’s one of the greatest story introductions ever, but because it contains an important clue that most modern adapters seem to forget : both alike in dignity.  Everybody always wants to tell the story along racial or economic lines, putting a gigantic obstacle between the two young lovers and hitting the audience over the head with “Here’s why they can’t be together.”  I don’t think by “ancient grudge” Shakespeare meant reparations for slavery. Who else has ideas?

Romeo and Thisbe? Pyramus and Juliet?

~ duane ~ 2 Comments
Anybody that knows Midsummer Night’s Dream will recognize the parallels between the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, as portrayed by Bottom and his fellow mechanicals, and Romeo and Juliet.  Two lovers who can not be together because their families hate each other. A misunderstanding about the death of one leads to the real death of the other, which in turn leads to the real death of both of them.  The families realize the error of their ways and the wall that parted them comes down, happily ever after.  There’s even a prologue to explain the story ahead of time.

I’ve always assumed that there was some sort of connection, but never knew what it was.  Apparently neither did Mr. Asimov
(who I am now trying read for research into my wedding project), who speculates that either Shakespeare was working on the comedy version and decided to try his hand at telling a more serious version … or that he’d written the serious version and now wanted to poke some fun at himself.  Once Mr. Asimov has answered a question (in this case as being unanswerable) I no longer have motivation to waste time trying to answer it myself :).

But it does offer up a place for opinion.  What do you think the relationship is between the two plays, in Shakespeare’s mind?  Was he working on them both at the same time? Which came first, and fed the other? Or are they really independent and the overlap has more to do with the common source material he drew from, nothing more?

Personally I like to think that he did R&J first and then satirized himself in Dream. But I have no evidence to back that up one way or the other.

Alfa Romeo Giulietta

~ duane ~ 6 Comments

http://www.prestigeway.com.au/news/Uma_Thurman_to_star_in_Shakespeare_s_Romeo_and_Giulietta-1328 Took me a second to figure out what this was all about when I saw a headline that said “Uma Thurman to star in Romeo and Giulietta” (which is the fancy way of saying Juliet, for those not getting it).  New movie?  Foreign? Even weirder.  Seems that the car manufacturer Alfa Romeo is debuting a new model called the Giulietta! Uma Thurman is a major part of the new ad campaign, playing five different roles in the commercial.

The substance of the new Giulietta is further confirmed by the pay-off which counterbalances the Shakespeare quote: "Without heart we are only machines".

I’m sorry, where’d Shakespeare say that?

Free Shakespeare In Bits : Romeo and Juliet Edition !

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Shakespeare Geek, in conjunction with Shakespeare in Bits, is pleased to announce our new contest where we’re giving away *10* copies of their new interactive Romeo and Juliet software (the new standard in multimedia Shakespeare) for PC or Mac!

We reviewed the product a few weeks ago. Highlights:

  • The complete, unabridged, original text, with comprehensive study notes, analysis, plot summaries, and SIB’s unique in-line translation system.
  • Almost three hours of top-quality audio, brought to you courtesy of Naxos Audiobooks, with Kate Beckinsale as Juliet, Michael Sheen as Romeo, and Fiona Shaw as the Nurse.
  • Three hours of original, engaging animation, covering every word of the play.

Contest Rules

1) Become a fan of Shakespeare Geek on Facebook. (They’ve since changed to just calling this a “like” now.)

2) Become a fan of Shakespeare in Bits on Facebook.

3) On either wall (or both, if you like!) post something about Shakespeare. We’d like “What Shakespeare means to me” or “My best Shakespeare experience”, but quite frankly the content is up to you because of step #4 …

4) Share your story with your friends! Get your friends (and strangers, why not?) to “like” your post. So if you want to win, post something good 😉

5) At the end of the contest, we’ll choose the 10 top stories that have the most “likes” to each win a free copy of Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare in Bits. Posts will be chosen from both walls, so if you post on both you’ll get two entries in the contest (though you can win only once).

6) In the event of a tie, remaining prizes will be given away by random drawing from all entries. So just posting something, even without campaigning to get it liked, gets you good odds of winning too.

7) Contest ends on midnight EST on April 22, so we can announce the winners on April 23 in honor of Shakespeare’s birthday.

8) Shakespeare Geek is based in the USA while Shakespeare in Bits is based in Ireland, so we are not restricting the contest to a particular geography. The prizes will take the form of registration keys to unlock the downloadable product, which is available for both PC and Mac.  (iPad and iPhone/iTouch versions on the way.)

UPDATE April 23, 2010 : This contest has ended.  Thanks for playing!

Any questions? Get posting!  (Teachers, this software is perfect for a classroom setting so motivate your students to support your entry!)

Does Memorizing Do More Harm Than Good?

~ duane ~ 11 Comments

I’m not talking about actors who memorize as part of their job, or geeks who memorize just by experiencing the same passages over and over again.  I’m talking about the legions of school-age children who stop by, having been tasked with memorizing the balcony scene or a sonnet or even a passage of their choice, just for the sake of memorizing it.

As I work my way through Playing Shakespeare I’m becoming a convert to the “there are clues in the text about how Shakespeare wanted you to play it” school.  Why is this word emphasized while this one is not? Why is there a comma here, or a line break? When do we breathe, and what does that mean? I wonder, outside of theatre school, does any teacher bother mentioning any of that to the students when assign the memorize assignment?  Or, to the hapless pupil, is it all just a stream of words on the page?

What I fear is that even after memorizing a passage, if you asked most students what it means they’d say “I have no idea.”  Maybe, hopefully, I’m wrong.  But I know that I listen to my children learn how to read and it’s very important to work on the comprehension part, because it is not just a given.  It is quite possible to read a stream of words and then come to the end with no understanding at all of what happened.  I can totally see that happening with Shakespeare.

So instead, what if we made students act it out? What if instead of reciting the balcony scene just to prove you can, what if your homework was to actually become Romeo and deliver the speech as he did? To pay attention to the stresses and pauses, maybe not as deeply as a professional actor might, but enough to get an idea for how you might play the character?  Maybe Romeo is still the overdramatic boy from the earlier scenes, tripping over himself to find the right phrase.  Maybe he’s impatient (read: horny) that he can’t just be with Juliet right now. Maybe angry, that he’s fallen in love with his enemy? I don’t expect the performances would be anything to write home about.  But I bet that if you gave those kids a quiz about what’s going on in that scene, the discussion would be far more interesting.

Thoughts?  Where my teachers at?  Am I projecting a memory from 20 years ago of how this stuff used to be taught, and nobody’s doing that anymore? Are we all about the performance now? Getting the words up and off the page?