# Romeo & Juliet **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 4, 2002, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035 "2002-09-04T21:23:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![crazy4chaucer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5e925/32.png) [@crazy4chaucer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crazy4chaucer)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/1 "2002-09-04T21:23:31Z")
I’m taking a Shakespeare course this semester. The first play we had to read was “The Taming of the Shrew.” The second play is “Romeo & Juliet.” I HATE “Romeo & Juliet”!!! To pass my professor’s quizzes, I have to read the play at least twice, and watch it at least twice. I have to make sure I know all the characters and how they interact. I have to know any little odd bits of trivia that I can pull out of the play. I’d rather clean the toilet. I’d rather go to the dentist. I’d rather read “Antony & Cleopatra” (the only other play of his that I dislike). My sister just got cast as the female lead in “The Water Engine,” and at the end her character dies a most unpleasant death. I told her that before she was mutilated and murdered, she was tortured by having to read R&J. She hit me. I wonder if I can talk him into dropping our lowest quiz grade, and then I can skip reading it. Nah. So if anyone has anything illuminating to say that might change my perception, I’d love to hear it. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/2 "2002-09-04T21:48:56Z")
Romeo’s an idiot and Juliet could have done much better. An appropriate retitling of this play would be “Hormones Run Amuck.” I hate this play and everyone in it, with one exception: Mercutio who was killed in the third act. Great play, Shakepeare. :rolleyes: Oh wait…you wanted me to _change_ your perception? Sorry. No can do. ---
**Author:** ![Jpeg\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/4bbf92/32.png) [@Jpeg\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jpeg_Jones)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/3 "2002-09-04T21:51:07Z")
Buy a CD of Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet ballet music. Maybe something musical will jumpstart your creativity. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/4 "2002-09-04T22:11:31Z")
I fell for the whole “star crossed lovers” tripe for a long time until I sat down and really thought through this whole play. Two 13 year olds meet each other and decide they’re madly in love after 5 minutes together. So they decide they’re going to kill themselves rather than be seperated for even one single solitary second. But they’re 13 year olds. If they had just waited another week, both of them would have been on new crushes and Romeo, when asked about his former wife, would have said “Juliet who?” But they didn’t. They died. Do you see the tears welling up in my eyes over this tragedy? Do you? Tell your teacher to read Hamlet. It’s better than this crap. Damnit, I was supposed to convince you R&J was good, huh? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/5 "2002-09-04T23:15:26Z")
Actually, I think it’s a great play for exactly the reasons people are knocking it. No, it ain’t about star-crossed lovers; that shallow characterization dogs the play and creates much ill will toward it, because on that level, it doesn’t work at all. Rather, I think the play is about the stupidity of being governed by fleeting passions, which just about everybody in the story is. The tragedy, to me, is not that these two young lovers were perfect for each other, and the big bad world conspired to destroy them; I think the tragedy is that the town of Verona is populated by hotheads who act rashly before thinking. Sort of the opposite of the Hamlet problem, in other words. As just one example, let’s look at some excerpts from Act 4, Scene IV. > [@](#): > > _The Nurse has just completed her bustling-around-Juliet’s-room speech and is about to discover her “dead.”_ > > **Nurse** > What, dress’d! and in your clothes! and down again! > I must needs wake you; Lady! lady! lady! > Alas, alas! Help, help! my lady’s dead! > O, well-a-day, that ever I was born! > Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! my lady! > > _[Enter LADY CAPULET]_ > > \*\*LADY CAPULET \*\* > What noise is here? > > **Nurse** > O lamentable day! > > **LADY CAPULET** > What is the matter? > > **Nurse** > Look, look! O heavy day! > > **LADY CAPULET** > O me, O me! My child, my only life, > Revive, look up, or I will die with thee! > Help, help! Call help. > > _[Enter CAPULET]_ > > **CAPULET** > For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come. > > **Nurse** > She’s dead, deceased, she’s dead; alack the day! > > **LADY CAPULET** Alack the day, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead! > > **CAPULET** > Ha! let me see her: out, alas! she’s cold: > Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; > Life and these lips have long been separated: > Death lies on her like an untimely frost 30 > Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. > > **Nurse** > O lamentable day! > > **LADY CAPULET** > O woeful time! > > **CAPULET** > Death, that hath ta’en her hence to make me wail, > Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak. > > _[Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS, with Musicians]_ > > **FRIAR LAURENCE** > Come, is the bride ready to go to church? > > **CAPULET** > Ready to go, but never to return. > O son! the night before thy wedding-day > Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies, > Flower as she was, deflowered by him. > Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir; > My daughter he hath wedded: I will die, > And leave him all; life, living, all is Death’s. > > **PARIS** > Have I thought long to see this morning’s face, > And doth it give me such a sight as this? > > **LADY CAPULET** > Accursed, unhappy, wretched, hateful day! > Most miserable hour that e’er time saw > In lasting labour of his pilgrimage! > But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, > But one thing to rejoice and solace in, > And cruel death hath catch’d it from my sight! > > **Nurse** > O woe! O woful, woful, woful day! > Most lamentable day, most woful day, > That ever, ever, I did yet behold! > O day! O day! O day! O hateful day! > Never was seen so black a day as this: > O woful day, O woful day! > > **PARIS** > Beguiled, divorced, wronged, spited, slain! > Most detestable death, by thee beguil’d, > By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown! > O love! O life! not life, but love in death! > > **CAPULET** > Despised, distressed, hated, martyr’d, kill’d! > Uncomfortable time, why camest thou now > To murder, murder our solemnity? > O child! O child! my soul, and not my child! > Dead art thou! Alack! my child is dead; > And with my child my joys are buried. At this point, the Friar enters and cuts short all the wailing and breast-beating. Now, call me crazy, but if I ever get the chance to direct this play, I’m going to try the scene above as _comedy._ Dark comedy, yes, but still comedy. Shakespeare’s characters normally are blessed with extraordinary literary gifts at their moments of highest emotional crisis; but in this scene, they just go on, and on, and on, “Oh, poor us, boo hoo,” and so on. It’s quite atypical for Shakespeare to give his characters over to unbridled lamentation, and it means something. And note that the tail end of this scene is the mysterious “musician’s argument,” in which the house band, having witnessed the family’s display, bickers about whether or not it would be a good idea to play something happy to cheer people up, and comes close to getting into a fight (“Then will I lay the serving-creature’s dagger on your pate!” / “Pray you, put up your dagger, and put out your wit”). This scene is almost invariably cut when the play is produced, because it’s a bunch of minor characters who don’t do much else in the story, and most people have no idea why it’s even there. For my part, I think it underlines what I see as the major theme of the play: This horrible tragedy just happened, and even the servants can’t help but get into a fistfight over it. More evidence: Romeo pines for Rosaline at the beginning of the play. Then he sees Juliet, and Rosaline is forgotten. The star-crossed-lovers interpretation says that Rosaline was a fling, and Juliet is the real deal; I say Juliet is just the latest obsession for a 15-year-old gadabout. (When Romeo confesses this to the Friar, the Friar famously responds, “Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! / Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear, / So soon forsaken? young men’s love then lies / Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.” And later in the scene, he calls Romeo “young waverer.”) In a subsequent scene, the Friar informs Romeo that he’s been banished, and Romeo, to put it kindly, freaks out. The Friar tries to calm him down, and says, “This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.” Par for the course for the young hellion, no? And later in that scene, after the Nurse comes with news of Juliet (note her description: “O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; / And now falls on her bed; and then starts up, / And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries, / And then down falls again” – how is that not hilarious?), the Friar yells at Romeo for his inability to pay attention: “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! / Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! / Thou hast amazed me: by my holy order, / I thought thy disposition better temper’d.” And what’s the very first line in the play? “Two households, both alike in dignity,” which is to say, with irony, no dignity at all. And the scene that follows, the first actual scene in the play, is about testosterone-fueled thugs attacking each other like animals in the street. Seriously, I suggest you read the play again, and take note of how many people are incapable of flying off the handle at the least provocation, and cannot master their emotions. If nothing else, I guarantee you a unique angle for the inevitable term paper or class discussion, and there’s nothing a teacher likes more than a new approach to a much-hashed-over subject. ---
**Author:** ![InternetLegend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/internetlegend/32/13154_2.png) [@InternetLegend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InternetLegend)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/6 "2002-09-04T23:25:40Z")
The “star-crossed lovers” angle isn’t, in itself, the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet. The tragedy is the pig-headedness of the Capulet and Montague families, and the suicide of their children is the climax of that tragedy. Um, and there’s some really cute, if archaic, flirtatious wordplay in the costume party scene. My 12-year-old daughter, who is still firmly in the “Eww, boys?” stage, is being forced to read R & J as well. I don’t know why teachers are so fond of the thing - because it’s short, maybe? ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/7 "2002-09-04T23:26:10Z")
I think most people get off on the wrong foot with R&J because they think it is a love story. It’s not (as has been stated above). It’s a story of two kids who think they are in love. Try approaching it that way and watch its validity. Shakespeare does a great job of capturing the reality of a pair of teens (it is especially true today where we let teens think they can be in love before they lose their baby teeth) who are in love with the idea of being in love and are not necessarily in love at all. Look at Romeo at the beginning of the play. He his wandering around mumbling about this girl he is hopelessly in love with and can’t possibly live without. Is it Juliet? No, of course not. She hasn’t even hit the stage yet. Romeo is ga-ga over Roxanne, a girl who wants nothing to do with him because he is so childishly obsessed with her. His friends and even Friar Lawrence give him grief about this, but does he listens to them? Nope! He’s convinced he knows what love is about, and it’s all about Roxanne - well, at least until he happens across another girl at a badly lit party. As for Juliet, she is a bit more rational than Romeo at least early on, but in the long run, she too is caught up in Romeo’s pretty words and even prettier ideas. Don’t go at it as a love story. Go at it as an inditement of the stupidity of teens and their posturing so effectively that they convince themselves they know what they are doing, and given the chance will completely screw up any situation (I mean Friar Lawrence’s plan really would have worked if Friar John would have got the word to him - but did Romeo check with Lawrence. Nope, typical teen). Does Tybalt really have a conflict with the house of Montague, or is he just posturing to show off to his teenage friends? The only person who is mildly together is Mercutio and most agree he’s either mildly mad or pretty drunk (or both). On second thought Benvolio is pretty together. But of course, absolutely no one listens to him at any time in the play - not Tybalt, not Romeo, not Mercutio, not the servants. I’m amazed he can get a drink at a local tavern. He must feel like Charlie Brown or something. Really, going at it in this direction can make it down right fun and not half so smarmy. TV ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/8 "2002-09-05T00:43:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by TV time \* > \*\*Don’t go at it as a love story. Go at it as an inditement of the stupidity of teens and their posturing so effectively that they convince themselves they know what they are doing, and given the chance will completely screw up any situation (I mean Friar Lawrence’s plan really would have worked if Friar John would have got the word to him - but did Romeo check with Lawrence. Nope, typical teen). > \*\* But it’s not like the adults in the play are any wiser – I mean, who do you think started the feud? Sure, it’s the younger generation that keeps it going (Tybalt does more than anyone to maintain it, and according to the text he’s the son of _Lady_ Capulet’s brother, and hence not a blood relative of the Capulets at all!), but they had to learn it somewhere… **rereads thread** Erm, yeah. What **Internet Legend** said. I actually love the play – it was the first Shakespeare I read, and you never forget your first – even if I have to admit that I’m now in the middle of studying it for the fourth time and consequently am beginning to tire of it a bit. But there’s some great stuff in it, and some positively beautiful language: _My bounty is as boundless as the sea; My love as deep: the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite._ Incidentally – I don’t think this is the language of teenage infatuation. Although I’ve got a class to go to and can’t go on about that at length. BTW, Shakespeare’s main source for R&J was a ponderous poem called _The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet,_ translated from the Italian by Arthur Brooke. Brooke’s preface to the poem says something very similar to what **Cervaise** says – he calls it a cautionary tale. Although the poem itself (what I’ve read of it) doesn’t overtly present itself as such at all, so it may partly be the translator apologizing for his material. ---
**Author:** ![Giselle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Giselle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giselle)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/9 "2002-09-05T02:09:36Z")
I generally stop reading **Romeo and Juliet** after Mercutio and Tybalt are killed, being that they are, in my opinion, the most likeable characters in the entire play. Tybalt is just interesting in terms of his motivations and prejudices. He’s a nice character study. I always was able to relate fairly easily to Mercutio. He is at once philosophical and witty. He has a full range of emotions. He seems the most real to me, I guess. And the Queen Mab speech kicks ass and takes names. Heh. But on the opposite end of the scale [quality-wise] . . . **Hamlet** is fabulous. It’s definitely one of Shakespeare’s best works. Up there with **Titus Andronicus**. Not like I’m morbid or anything. Heh. ---
**Author:** ![Savaka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/858c86/32.png) [@Savaka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savaka)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/10 "2002-09-05T07:36:38Z")
Alternatively, you could consider a more psychological interpretation: that _Romeo and Juliet_ is a cautionary tale about trying to reconcile disparate aspects of one’s psyche (male and female, spirit and body, or what have you) before you have achieved spiritual maturity and brought some degree of peace to your internal contradictions. Although an impulsive union may be exhilarating, it can also be very dangerous. The Latin American folk tale _La Llorona_ has a similar theme, as I’m sure do the folk tales of many other cultures. ---
**Author:** ![crazy4chaucer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5e925/32.png) [@crazy4chaucer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crazy4chaucer)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/11 "2002-09-05T12:10:26Z")
You guys rock! Thanks for giving me some other aspects to focus on as I wade my way through it. Honestly, I recognize and appreciate the beauty of the poetry in this play. But I’ve always been so sickened by the rest of it that it’s been very much a chore for me to get through. Cervaise, I love your idea about directing it as a comedy! You’ve given me a lot to think about. Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/12 "2002-09-05T18:21:10Z")
> [@](#): > > I think most people get off on the wrong foot with R&J because they think it is a love story. It’s not (as has been stated above). It’s a story of two kids who think they are in love. Try approaching it that way and watch its validity. I’m afraid I must respectfully disagree – the play _can_ come across that way to a modern audience, but that’s because we have fundamentally different ideas about teenagers and love. Shakespeare’s contemporaries were much less suspicious of “love at first sight” than we are now – most Renaissance love poetry treats the idea completely seriously. While teenaged marriages weren’t the norm in Shakespeare’s England, they did happen, and it seems likely that the original audience would have felt that Romeo and Juliet were old enough to know their own minds. Still, what the play says to us _now_ is at least as important as what it would have said to people then, so I won’t say the interpretations in this thread are _wrong_; just realize that the Elizabethans wouldn’t necessarily have seen it that way. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/13 "2002-09-05T18:36:30Z")
Quoth **Giselle** : > [@](#): > > Hamlet is fabulous. It’s definitely one of Shakespeare’s best works. Up there with Titus Andronicus. Y’know, when you’re trying to be sarcastic, it helps to include a smilie. You _were_ trying to be sarcastic, right? I was about to use _Titus_ to prove that R&J wasn’t, in fact, Shakespeare’s worst play. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/14 "2002-09-05T21:08:10Z")
Oh come on, **Chronos.** _Titus_ is sort of fun in a lurching, leering _grand guignol_ sort of way. If I were to name Shakespeare’s worst play – or, in my mind, the play that scores the lowest on the combined entertainment/importance scale – I’d go for a trifle, like _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ (written at the request of the Queen, who loved Falstaff; and people say the influence of the box office is a new thing :rolleyes: ), or an abandoned train wreck, like _Timon of Athens._ ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/15 "2002-09-05T22:25:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Cervaise \* > **More evidence: Romeo pines for Rosaline at the beginning of the play. Then he sees Juliet, and Rosaline is forgotten. The star-crossed-lovers interpretation says that Rosaline was a fling, and Juliet is the real deal; I say Juliet is just the latest obsession for a 15-year-old gadabout. (When Romeo confesses this to the Friar, the Friar famously responds, “Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! / Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear, / So soon forsaken? young men’s love then lies / Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.” And later in the scene, he calls Romeo “young waverer.”)** According to one of the people who taught this to me, when Romeo is pining for Rosaline, he uses cliche. Cliche after cliche after cliche after cliche after cliche of how people in love are supposed to sound. When you compare it to the words he uses for Juliet which are fresh and extemporaneous and not merely repetitions of what he’s heard before. It supposedly shows the difference between how he felt with Rosaline and how he feels toward Juliet, and this is of course lost to us as his words to Juliet have now, 400 years later, become cliche. But I’m not sure I buy it and still don’t really like the play. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/16 "2002-09-05T22:26:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Cervaise \* > \*\*or an abandoned train wreck, like _Timon of Athens._ \*\* Then again, any play might be redeemable if you rewrite it with [dachsunds](http://www.chill.org/csss/engl/dach). (Why yes, I was waiting for a chance to use that link. Thank you for noticing.) ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/17 "2002-09-05T23:03:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Cervaise \* > \*\*If I were to name Shakespeare’s worst play – or, in my mind, the play that scores the lowest on the combined entertainment/importance scale – I’d go for a trifle, like _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ (written at the request of the Queen, who loved Falstaff; and people say the influence of the box office is a new thing :rolleyes: ), or an abandoned train wreck, like _Timon of Athens._ \*\* You know, Harold Bloom would probably agree with you on _Merry Wives,_ since his chapter on it in _The Invention of the Human_ is mostly devoted ranting about “pseudo-Falstaff.” (Though I’ll also mention his point that it can’t be entirely worthless, as it inspired Verdi’s _Falstaff,_ which is a terrific opera. 🙂 Also, I don’t think the story about the queen’s request to see Falstaff in love is true.) Now, if you’d mentioned _Henry VI_ among Shakespeare’s worst we’d have an argument brewing. 😉 (Although, as those plays were very likely Shakespeare’s first you can’t say they’re not important!) And count me among those who like _Titus Andronicus_. It’s a fascinating play. My personal least favorite (not counting the ten or so I haven’t read, of course, and acknowledging that “least favorite” != “worst”) is _Julius Caesar,_ but that’s more a matter of personal taste: I know it’s not a _bad_ play, but I don’t really enjoy it (although I saw a production a few years ago that I really liked). BTW, the link to the dachschund Timon doesn’t work – I’ve seen it before, and it’s a great site, and I’d rather like to see it again. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2002, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/18 "2002-09-05T23:09:27Z")
Welp, that didn’t work, let’s try it again! [http://www.chill.org/csss/eng/dach/](http://www.chill.org/csss/eng/dach/) Failing that, Google: “timon of athens + dachsunds”. ---
**Author:** ![SparrowHawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@SparrowHawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SparrowHawk)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/19 "2002-09-06T03:20:38Z")
_Romeo and Juliet_ is not about lurve. It’s about sword fighting. 😃 Our group of SCA rapier fencers has gone to The Offspring’s school more than once to demo the different fighting styles used in that period, with notes on Shakespeare’s references to same. Each character has a style to fit his personality. Tybalt, cat-like, who “fights by the numbers”, a “slayer of buttons”, apparently uses the cerebral and meticulous Spanish style. (Boo, hiss!) Mercutio, mouthy, spoiling for a fight, uses the low and aggressive Italian style. Romeo, the hero and the Great Lovair, uses the flamboyant and passionate French style. Benvolio, the Voice of Reason, fights like a proper gentleman should, in the English style, of course. It’s great fun. As to the incidental mushy parts: ‘tis true, as the **Porpentine** observes, that there was no concept of “teenagers” at the time, but I’m not sure about the attitude to “love”. I’m not familiar enough with Renaissance love poetry to derive an opinion from it, but I do know that the cult of Courtly Love which preceded it concerned itself with very stylized expressions of devotion and did _not_ advocate giving in to ill-considered passion. I wouldn’t be surprised if, while treating the idea of “love at first sight” seriously, it nevertheless expected the expression of it to be “pure and chaste from afar.” So, while R & J would have been considered _old_ enough to know their minds, their passion put them _out_ of their minds. I agree that the general message appears not to be “Ain’t love grand?” but “’Ware passion. ‘Twill kill you.” ---
**Author:** ![SparrowHawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@SparrowHawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SparrowHawk)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035/20 "2002-09-06T03:25:47Z")
_Romeo and Juliet_ is not about lurve. It’s about sword fighting. 😃 Our group of SCA rapier fencers has gone to The Offspring’s school more than once to demo the different fighting styles used in that period, with notes on Shakespeare’s references to same. Each character has a style to fit his personality. Tybalt, cat-like, who “fights by the numbers”, a “slayer of buttons”, apparently uses the cerebral and meticulous Spanish style. (Boo, hiss!) Mercutio, mouthy, spoiling for a fight, uses the low and aggressive Italian style. Romeo, the hero and the Great Lovair, uses the flamboyant and passionate French style. Benvolio, the Voice of Reason, fights like a proper gentleman should, in the English style, of course. It’s great fun. As to the incidental mushy parts: ‘tis true, as the **Porpentine** observes, that there was no concept of “teenagers” at the time, but I’m not sure about the attitude to “love”. I’m not familiar enough with Renaissance love poetry to derive an opinion from it, but I do know that the cult of Courtly Love which preceded it concerned itself with very stylized expressions of devotion and did _not_ advocate giving in to ill-considered passion. I wouldn’t be surprised if, while treating the idea of “love at first sight” seriously, it nevertheless expected the expression of it to be “pure and chaste from afar.” So, while R & J would have been considered _old_ enough to know their minds, their passion put them _out_ of their minds. I agree that the general message appears not to be “Ain’t love grand?” but “’Ware passion. ‘Twill kill you.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeo-juliet/127035.md?page=2)