Ah, Romeo and Juliet, We Meet Again

It’s funny how some things, even a Shakespearean play, come full circle.  The first time I read this play was in eighth grade and I hated it.  I had no idea what I was reading and why it was considered one of the most iconic pieces of literature.  I swore I would never read it again.

Then sophomore year of high school we had to read it.  This time it was a little more bearable.  I had an amazing teacher who made learning and understanding the language of the play fun.  But I still swore I was never going to read it again.

Now here I am, my junior year of college, reading the play for the third time.  I must say though, I am much more open-minded about reading it this time than I was in the past.   Maybe it’s because I’ve matured in my English major-ness or maybe it’s because I’m excited to discuss something in class that I actually have a good amount of knowledge about.

I’m a little more than halfway through reading the play again and I’m proud to say that I understand 90% of what their saying.  This is huge for me.

For one, I’ve never been a huge fan of the play.  For years I’ve been indifferent to it all, but now that I’m older and can fully appreciate the story as a whole, I’m really starting to dislike it.

Honestly, I don’t think that it’s a love story at all.  I see it as being more of a lust story.  Two teenagers, both under the age of 18 get married and then kill themselves because they think they can’t be together.

To me it’s all a bunch of rubbish.

Romeo and Juliet are two of the most immature characters I’ve ever experienced in all of the literature that I’ve read.  They drive me insane.  To top it all off, you have the Nurse and Friar Lawrence who willingly enable and encourage these kids to make terrible mistakes that will eventually end their lives.

In relation to pop culture, I have no idea why this has grown to be so popular.  Perhaps it’s the notion of forbidden love or “star crossed lovers” that makes everyone swoon.  But in reality, there is nothing to swoon about.  They both die in the end.

I decided to watch the Baz Luhrman version of the movie last night and let’s just say it was an interesting experience.  I had only ever seen the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version of the movie, which I really enjoy.  But the Baz Luhrman movie was way out of my comfort zone when it comes to Romeo and Juliet.

The beginning sequence of events is what really threw me off.  The cinematography was really weird, the acting was a little strange, and I just wasn’t convinced that the story could be told from a modern day perspective. 

The movie did have some funny moments though, especially when they managed to incorporate lines from other Shakespearean plays into the dialogue.  During the beginning scene when the Montagues and Capulets and fighting at the gas station, someone (definitely a Montague) says, “Double, double toil and trouble,” referring to Macbeth.

I think the movie made the sequence of events easier to understand, and I have to give credit to Luhrman for taking on such an ambitious project, but I really hated the whole thing.  The fact that the dialogue stayed true to the original play but the setting was modern day really made me hate the movie even more.  I think any play by Shakespeare should be performed within the time period it was written.

Okay, I think I’m done bashing/ranting about Romeo and Juliet for now. 

With that being said, I’m looking forward to discussing both the play and the movie with everyone in class!   

King Arthur for Children

Growing up, the most exposure I had to King Arthur was through children’s shows. Go figure. I watched Disney’s “The Sword in the Stone,” but not often enough to remember it for class. I’ll have to watch it soon. I vaguely remember an episode of Wishbone with the adorable dog in chain mail, though that may have been the Joan of Arc episode. There was a book, so I’m sure they made an episode of it. 

And I remember an episode of Arthur where they go to a Medieval Fair with contests and a sword in a stone. (I have found the episode!)

Sidenote: In class this past Tuesday, I realized that most of my knowledge about classic literature comes from Wishbone: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (by far the best and scariest episode there ever was), King Midas, Don Quixote, and Rip Van Winkle, among many more. If anything, I desperately want to watch the episodes that I have now read the books they were based on to see if they were done justice. I think shows like Wishbone were a great way to introduce children to literature, and maybe it played a part in my English Majorness. We need more television shows like this. It is also interesting to look at how certain books were adapted to be fit for television and children and to star a dog. It’s a pretty amazing example of crossing over. Like our discussion about Star Wars Uncut: Is it still Star Wars? With Wishbone, are those stories still those stories? Perhaps it’s a little different. But, with any adaptation it’s important to think about these things. We’ll be reading and watching various forms of Romeo & Juliet; are those still Romeo & Juliet? Adaptations are my favorite thing to study because there are so many variations for so many things. How far can we stray before it is no longer considered the same story? 

King Arthur. The first King Arthur reading I did was Geoffrey of Monmouth for British Literature. I was excited because, as we said in class, everyone (or almost everyone) knows the names King Arthur and Excalibur. We could probably throw in Lancelot and Merlin, too. After Geoffrey, I wanted to read more, but I didn’t until this class. I was surprised by how little Merlin was featured in our passages and by how much face time Lancelot received. I expected it to be about King Arthur and not the Knights of the Round Table. There is so much of King Arthur that doesn’t get show through other texts. I can’t say I’m surprised that these things are left out, but there is so much I did not know. Reading Malory’s accounts of King Arthur was enlightening. I would definitely like to read the rest. I also feel the need to power through the last few episodes of Merlin. I know. But, I like it. At least the earlier seasons.