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Rather Watch Them posted:William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet. Antiquated dialogue (by even Shakespeare's standards), obnoxious flowery descriptors, and one hell of a reach in terms of a moral. So much so, loving everyone in grade school thought it was true love until they heard Shakespeare wrote it to be against the precepts of young love, specifically that it makes you blind enough to commit suicide if things don't go like you want them to. Shakespearean literature is kinda my thing and while I agree that R&J is one of his poorest plays, I'm actually going to defend old Shakesy for a brief moment! The play itself is largely based on The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke which predates Shakespeare's adaptation by around 30 years, itself translated from earlier novellas. Shakesy's revision expanded the world of R&J somewhat (Mercutio, for instance, was nothing more than a dinner guest at the Capulet feast in Brooke's original and only spoke a small handful of lines!) and made slight alterations to the course of several minor characters in the play. The main point I'd like to make though is in regards to the rationale that Shakespeare "wrote it to be against the precepts of young love" ^^. In my view, this is an oversimplification of Shakespeare's objective. Consider the work in its historical context - Catholicism dictated that one who commits suicide surrendered themselves to hell, and yet Romeo and Juliet are undeterred by such a fate. Their suicide is out of passion for one another - their love exists outside of the bounds of religion. Why? Well, without going into a neverending derail, there is an astounding amount of evidence throughout Shakesy's folio that would suggest that he is greatly skeptical on the subject of religion (for one, many of his most evil/duplicitous characters are unequivocally religious eg. Macbeth). I actually believe that Shakespeare in fact sides with, and has some admiration for, Romeo and Juliet's 'suicide pact'. When Juliet declares "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath, there rust, and let me die" the association between the act of love/sex and death is, for mine, anything but incidental. Shakespeare does not intend to banish the lovers to hell so much as he aims to spare them from a Christian 'heaven' in which such love is forbidden. Knowing how Shakespeare typically operates, this interpretation resonates more closely with the idea of 'tragic love' - as opposed to the rather simplistic explanation that R&J symbolise the apparent dangers of two young lovers who think the world revolves around them. e. I should contribute a terrible thing that I used to love! I'm going to go with retro videogames that I used to think were awesome but actually were just real bad. Examples being the original Street Fighter games, the early Earthworm Jim/Rayman games, the entire Mortal Kombat series on SNES/N64, dumb shooters like Turok/Doom/Contra, most of the Need for Speed series, and any sports game that EA Sports has ever made (except the SSX series which kinda rocks). Homestar Runner has a new favorite as of 03:03 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 09:52
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:03 |
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