Star Crossed Lovers cause Family Feud; W. Shakespeare to adapt the screenplay

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

Fact follows fiction

@Bill The Poet

Juliet: How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,
And the place death, considering who thou art,
If any of my kinsmen fine thee here.

Romeo: With love’s light wings did I o’perch these walls,
For stony limits cannot hold love out:
And what love can do, that dares love attempt:
Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.

Juliet: If they do see thee, they will murder thee.

Romeo: Alack, there lies more peril in thine eyes
Than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet
And I am proof against their enmity.

Juliet: I would not for the world they saw thee here.

Romeo: I have night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes.
And but thou love me, let them fine me here;
My life were better ended by their hate
Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.

Okay, it was just an excuse to post some Shakespeare; hence, mindless and pointless. Still, what are these people thinking?

Stranger

[Zakalwe]

Semi-off topic, but I’m going to see Romeo and Juliet this weekend at the FSU Theater. Just thought I’d share.

[Homebrew]

@the linked article

“All this started because they were dating,” said Melva Ortiz, Miguel’s mother. “I tried to tell him to leave the girl, but you know how kids are.”

This started because your families are dipshits. Two kids dating doesn’t cause a shootout. Being ignorant, violent imbeciles does.

[lieu]

Sometimes you feel like a nut…

[Kythereia]

For never was there a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

[Tracy_Lord]

Oh, Kythereia no way can you just post the last couplet and leave it at that!

@Escalus

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Despite its not being one of my favorite plays in the Shakespeare canon, I think Romeo and Juliet has some of the most beautiful speeches of any of them. To wit:

@Juliet

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus’ lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway’s eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy’d: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks
But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.

(just an excuse to post some Shakespeare, you say? Tut, tut.)

@Mercutio

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight,
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O’er ladies ’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail
Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she–

[Cosmopolitan]

Great timing - I’m teaching Romeo and Juliet to my ninth graders! We’re going to do the balcony scene on Wednesday, I hope.

[MacSpon]

@Kythereia

For never was there a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Ever since I saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company in action, I’ve never been able to see this line without thinking of their version, as applied to another play:

For never was there a story of more woe
Than this of Othello and his Desdemono.