7:38 Romeo and Juliet

Day 7 of 38:38
Romeo and Juliet

I actually think Romeo and Juliet gets the worst rap of all Shakespeare plays. Hear me out. It is the most commonly done, which means that most people in their lives will have seen a bad production of Romeo and Juliet. I had only ever seen bad productions until I was an adult, with the result that I didn't understand how great this play was. Then one day a couple years ago I was looking for monologues from Shakespeare. In an anthology I ran across Juliet's Gallop apace monologue. I read it and thought "Wow. That is an incredible piece." So then, despite the fact that I had always protested not to like Romeo and Juliet and specifically not to like Juliet, I decided to re-read the play. And I made a conscious decision to ignore everything I thought I knew about it and read it fresh, without any expectations. And boy did the play surprise me. It's a damn good play. And Juliet is an amazing character. She is strong, and courageous, and she goes after what she wants without worrying about the consequences (perhaps unfortunately). She is a person who LIVES. This is demonstrated so well in her verse, as she has so many trochaic inversions. (I.e. instead of a line of verse starting da-DUM it starts out DUM-da. Trochaic inversions launch you speedily into a line of verse.)

An interesting fact about Romeo and Juliet is that the Prologue does not appear in the first folio. It is in the Quarto edition. This brings about the question whether the Prologue was written originally as part of the play, or whether it was a later addition once the play was well known. The Prologue tells us exactly what will happen, and I've heard it argued that maybe without it, the play was more exciting, because the audience didn't know what was going to happen. I'm not sure that argument holds up, given the fact that the play probably would have been advertised as a tragedy. One title page calls it "An excellent conceited tragedy of Romeo and Juliet." Another, "The most excellent and lamentable tragedy of Romeo and Juliet." And seeing how the Chorus pops up again before Act two in both the Folio and the Quarto, I think it seems likely that the exclusion of the Prologue was a mistake in the Folio.

And then there is this small speech of Romeo's in Act 1, Scene 4 that also lets the audience know what they are in for

... my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels, and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

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Favorite Female Character:
Juliet
Favorite Male Character:
Mercutio

"That's what she said!":
Samson: when I have fought with the men, I will be civil with the maids -- I will cut off their heads.
Gregory: The heads of the maids?
Samson: Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maiden heads.

Oh, misogyny:
Friar Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art;
Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote
The unreasonable fury of a beast.
Unseemly woman in a seeming man,
And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

Down with the Patriarchy:
Nurse There's no trust,
No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured,
All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.

Favorite Moment/Line:
3.2 is an amazing scene, and I had thought that Gallop apace would be my favorite speech, but I think the end of the scene is even better
Juliet Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name
When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?
But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have killed my husband.
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring.
Your tributary drops belong to woe,
Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.
My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain,
And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband.
All this is comfort. Wherefore weep I then?
Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death,
That murdered me. I would forget it fain,
But oh, it presses to my memory
Like damnèd guilty deeds to sinners' minds:
"Tybalt is dead and Romeo banished."
That "banishèd," that one word "banishèd,"
Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death
Was woe enough if it had ended there;
Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship
And needly will be ranked with other griefs,
Why followed not when she said "Tybalt's dead,"
"Thy father" or "thy mother," nay, or both,
Which modern lamentation might have moved?
But with a rearward following Tybalt's death,
"Romeo is banished." To speak that word
Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
All slain, all dead. "Romeo is banished."
There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
In that word's death. No words can that woe sound.