Romeo and Juliet is a Black Comedy, Not a Romantic Tragedy

Cafe Society
1

I recently downloaded what I thought was a song called Romeo and Juliet. It turned out to be a southern storyteller’s version, by all people, Andy Griffith. It was a humorous telling of the story told in a thick Carolina drawl but I soon realized that essential story elements remained the same. Once you strip off the flowery language, it is obvious that the story is a black comedy rather than a romantic tragedy like it is originally told.

Romeo and Juliet were young teenagers in the story. Even though it was acceptable for such young people to marry in those days, it is unlikely that young teenagers didn’t have about the same level of maturity that they do today. Shakespeare seems to be making fun of them rather than romanticizing their relationship.

The story opens with Romeo chasing other tale with no success. Only after he doesn’t succeed, he changes focus to Juliet he instantly lusts after. The story is a mad-capped comedy focusing on two very sheltered, immature people that believe they have found instant, true love. The family feuds provide a nice comedic backdrop and the story then escalates into fake death that is over-the-top dramatic followed by actual deaths with much unnecessary drama.

There is nothing special about Romeo and Juliet that we don’t see in junior highs and high school today. Shakespeare knew that and was poking fun at teenage love that goes horribly wrong in the typical dramatic way. The story isn’t a true love story because the characters barely knew each other and their immaturity prohibited such a thing anyway.

Instead of claiming that people in the past were completely different than they are now, we should realize that biology and cumulative life experience dictate that they were probably much the same and Shakespeare has seemed to pull the ultimate inside joke on most people that interpret the play.

2

I don’t think it ever made me laugh. The humor ought to shine through nevertheless.

But if it’s a cynical observation regarding youth culture, then perhaps “satire” is more appropriate.

3

The problem is that you’re not using traditional definition of “comedy” and “tragedy.” A comedy has traditionally simply meant that there is a positive resolution to the protaganist’s problems and at tragedy was where there was a negative resolution. It’s only more recently the comedy has taken on the definition of something that is satirical or funny, even if the protaganists wind up failing.

So with the classical definition in mind, “Romeo and Juliet” is indeed a tragedy and not a comedy.

4

I can agree with that although I don’t see why we have to be constrained by classical definitions. They seem rather limited and I would like to think we have evolved better terms that are more descriptive than a binary categorization. Calling it a simple tragedy doesn’t convey the nuanced meaning and simply reaffirms the joke that has been played on most actors, directors, and audiences over the years. A retelling of the story in storytellers folk language makes it clear that it isn’t a true love story.

I can go along with saying it is a satire rather a black comedy although the distinction can be fine here. I am very serious when I say that it isn’t a classical love story that simply incorporates tragedy to make it more powerful. It is making fun of the main characters and the over-dramatic mess that they get themselves into.

5

Okay, but if we’re talking about the play written by William Shakespeare, you’re limited to discussing the play written by William Shakespeare, what his intent was, and the fact that he wrote it in English.

Shakespeare did not write “Satires,” in the sense we understand them today. His plays have satirical elements, but when he wrote R&J he was, at leat to my eyes, clearly out to write a tragedy.

But the characters getting themselves into a mess is part of it being a tragedy. Every Shakespearian tragedy has a tragic hero, and what makes the hero tragic is his tragic flaw. That’s the whole point of an Elizabethan tragedy; a protagonist with whom we’re supposed to sympathize is inevitable undone by his singular flaw. In the case of Romeo, it’s his dramatic impulsiveness. (In the case of Othello, his jealousy; in the case of Macbeth ambition; in the case of Lear, his ego, etc. etc.

That’s not to say Shakespeare wasn’t aware that Romeo was a jackass. I’m sure he was, but that doesn’t take away from Romeo being a tragic hero. He’s supposed to be a jackass, that’s the tragic point. And after all, we’re all jackasses when we’re teenagers; the audience was supposed to watch Romeo and Juliet and say, “Yep, I was like that when I was a kid.”

6

We don’t necessarily have to be, but we have to acknowledge what the genre definition were when the play was written. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy because the protaganists have a “tragic flaw” and experience a decline in their fortunes at the end. The main reason that simply binary definition of comedy vs tragedy is that it make analysis easier - you have two simple classifications that everyone understands and agrees on. Within that basic framework, you can go into deeper analysis and acknowledge the satirical elements.

I would agree and I think a great many literature folks would agree with you. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone claim that Romeo and Juliet is a classical love story that simply incorporates tragedy to make it more powerful except you. So I think you’re setting up a strawman there.

7

Shagnasty - Is there any hope of a link to that recording to let the rest of us hear it so we can see you point of view?

8

So . . . a comic comes along and gives a comic twist to a non-comic tale, and you suggest that means the original was, actually, comic? Then what made the twist necessary?

You know how you can tell that Shakespeare was not, in fact, “making fun of them rather than romanticizing their relationship”? By reading it.

And saying “once you strip off the flowery language” from a Shakespeare play, is kinda like saying “once you strip the color away from a Monet” . . .

A Shakespeare play is as much about the journey as the destination. Stripped to its bones, its not Shakespeare.

9

The meaning of R&J was discussed in this recent thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=358794&highlight=romeo

Isaac Asimov, in Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, posited a theory I’ve never seen elsewhere: The play is really about the folly of romanticism. Several clues indicate the Montague-Capulet feud is on its last legs and only a few psychos like Tybalt are keeping it alive. Viz., the scene where Romeo crashes Capulet’s party, Act I, Scene 5:

In the next moment, Romeo sees and falls for Juliet. He probably could go to her father and sue openly for her hand. But she is all excited about having a secret forbidden romance between star-crossed lovers from two houses at variance, and Romeo foolishly indulges her, with tragic consequences.

10

The meaning of R&J was discussed in this recent thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=358794&highlight=romeo

Isaac Asimov, in Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, posited a theory I’ve never seen elsewhere: The play is really about the folly of romanticism. Several clues indicate the Montague-Capulet feud is on its last legs and only a few psychos like Tybalt are keeping it alive. Viz., the scene where Romeo crashes Capulet’s party, Act I, Scene 5:

In the next moment, Romeo sees and falls for Juliet. He probably could go to her father and sue openly for her hand. But she is all excited about having a secret forbidden romance between star-crossed lovers from two houses at variance, and Romeo foolishly indulges her, with tragic consequences.

11

I always thought that most people did or at least that is the way it was taught in my high school and it is the interpretation of every lay-person I have talked to about it. People always seem to think it is a dead-serious love story in my experience.

I have been to Verona, Italy and people seemed to take it pretty seriously there although that place is all cheese-balled out in a historical European way.

That interpretation just dawned on me after hearing it in storyteller form although I am obviously not the first person to see it that way. I did some googling and there are people including academics that consider it a widely misinterpreted satire although it still seems to be a fringe opinion albeit a persuasive one.

People seem to think that teenage maturity was just normal for the times. I disagree. They may have had more life experience but these two were from rich families and presumably pampered just like spoiled kids today. The would likely have not even gotten very far into puberty and kids today go through puberty much earlier than they would have. Kids may have been forced into different social positions than some today but they can’t defeat simple physiology to become actual adults before their bodies are ready.

12

I don’t think I can. It is a part of Andy Griffith’s old albums and I didn’t even mean to download it. I am pretty sure it is copyrighted.

The general idea is that he goes through the story without changing any essential parts but he changes some of it to Southern storytelling language presenting Romeo as a mischievous and desperate boy lust-ridden boy.

What if audiences in Shakespeare’s day understood it in the same type of way because they were used to the language rather than a more labored and academic read that we use today?

13

I will partly agree and partly disagree.

In the thread linked by BrainGlutton, I represented the argument of my classical-text instructor that the scene in which the Capulet family discovers Juliet’s so-called corpse works best when played as dark comedy:

But I also argued for the play’s overall tragic structure:

In general, I think it’s a complicated play that’s usually presented with a simplistic, and therefore unsatisfying, interpretation.

RickJay’s point warrants your attention. If Shakespeare intended this to be a pure comedy, there would be no body count. Likewise, lissener is correct that a deconstruction or reinterpretation of a given narrative is not the same story as the original, and analysis of the new version may provide, at best, tangential illumination of its source. Just because Andy Griffith made an unalloyed comedy out of the material doesn’t mean Shakespeare’s play is also a comedy.

That said, I do agree that there is a lot of merit in considering the comedic and satiric elements of the original material, and that the play stands up solidly to such analysis. R&J is a better play than people give it credit for, as long as you’re willing to entertain the depth and complexity that I think it contains.

14

“cheese-balled”? :confused:

15

I can see how that term would be confusing to someone that lives in America’s Dairyland. It means tacky, overly touristy, and fake in this context.

Verona is a nice town with other good stuff but they have Romeo and Juliet references all over the place. They have Juliet’s house that you can take a tour of as well as her tomb and a bunch of other stuff. Glossy “histories” can be had for some cash as well and there are plaques to mark important points in their lives. Seeing as how they weren’t real people, much of this caused my great cognitive dissonance to me although I went along.

After you get done with that, street vendors will sell you all the R&J stuff you never hoped for.

16

[Shakespeare, via Hamlet, via Polonius, Act II, scene 2]

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the
liberty, these are the only men.
[/Shakespeare]

17

This is the key observation, IMO. Romeo and Juliet isn’t just a story told in “flowery language”; it’s a play, and it has to be analyzed as such. You can take the same sequence of events and tell a pretty different story with it, but in that case it’s not R&J.

18

Some part of me wants to say that the original intention doesn’t matter that much. If Romeo and Juliet was meant to be a satire, then that certainly didn’t come across well. With the exception for some academics, performers and literary know-whats, but that’s to be expected from a play that well-known.

But what we do have is a piece that is generally concidered *the *defining tragic love tale. If we face it, as a satire it was possible funny only to Shakespeare himself. As a love tale, it’s a huge success.

19

Like a lot of people here, I accept that the play isn’t a straight-up romantic tragedy. But a black comedy? No. The portrayal of Juliet in particular is just too sympathetic.

20

I don’t know whether it’s a satire, or what we would call a comedy. But one thing it’s definitely not is a love story. Yes, many people think it is, but that doesn’t mean that Shakespeare failed: It just means that most folks don’t actually have any real familiarity with Romeo and Juliet. Consider the episode of The Simpsons, where Milhouse is lamenting a relationship gone sour: “It started off like Romeo and Juliet, but now it’s ending in tragedy!”. While most people do at least know that R&J ends in tragedy, they still don’t know about that other girl Romeo is lusting after at the start of the play (Rosalyn?). The fact that he’s able to so abruptly shift his obsession from one girl to another should right there tell you that the relationship between Romeo and Juliet is not an enduring love for the ages. It’s a rebound and a teenage rebellion, and the way the play ended is the only possible way they could have “loved” each other for life. Had it gone any other way, I’d have given them three months, tops.