Why doesn't Romeo ever kill Paris in the movies?

Factual Questions
1

This thread is about Romeo and Juliet, that eternal inspiration to thousands of suicidal, sexually active teen gangbangers. Certainly I can appreciate old Will the Bard’s ability to tell a gripping yarn, but it seems to me that Romeo has been whitewashed through the years. Look, this guy was a street ruffian, schooled in juvenile delinquency by his homey Mercutio, who killed TWO people before he finally, mercifully smoked himself and ended a one-man crime wave.

Juliet was hardly any better, marrying her fella on the third date–and at age 14! If she were alive today, she’d be a heroin-shooting teenage welfare mom with three kids, and she never would have bothered to get married.

OK, the crux of the matter now. I don’t think I have ever seen a movie version that includes Romeo’s killing of Paris in front of Juliet’s tomb. It’s not in the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version. It’s not in the Leonardo di Caprio/Claire Danes 'Nineties version. Presto, just like that, literary history is changed and Romeo is only guilty of one murder. Why do the directors do that? I almost think they’d like to take out his killing of Tybalt too, but then they’d have to explain his exile from Verona and consequently his cluelessness about Juliet’s “death.”

Tybalt might make a good villain who deserves his death, but Paris is so inoffensive, Romeo almost seems like a villain for killing him. What’s the matter, can’t di Caprio do “evil”?

And while we’re at it, why didn’t they ever hang that creepy pedophiliac Friar Lawrence? He richly deserved it for his manipulative role in the tragedy! It would be interesting to get the backstory on Romeo and Juliet, that is if there is one and Will didn’t just make it all up out of whole cloth. If there was a real Romeo and Juliet, I hope the friar got hanged.

2

I take it that it’s been a while since you’ve seen or read the play?

Paris is hardly murdered in his sleep, or anything. Romeo notes that he, himself, is “desperate” and warns Paris to go away. He pleads that he loves Paris better than himself, but he has a task he must complete. When Paris advances on him, sword drawn, he accepts the challenge.
As to why the scene gets cut? Lots of scenes get cut in movies.

3

Tybalt is always portrayed as a villain but in rereading R&J recently I realized he’s not so bad. He’s keeping up the feud, true, but Mercutio is willing to fight him too. (Then Mercutio acts like he was driven to his death–“a plague on both your houses”, indeed.)

I’m not sure I see your point about Friar Lawrence. He makes sure Romeo and Juliet are married so that Romeo is no longer screwing around, and he does his best to get R&J together again.

4

I’m not exactly an expert historian, but I do seem to recall that duelling was not uncommon among “gentlemen” of the time. And teenage marriage was probably the norm in most of the world at the time. Heck, Henry V is proposing after five minutes alone with Katherine…

5

Dueling was not uncommon but it was still illegal.

6

In Harry’s case, the marriage was pre-arrainged with her father, the King of France. He was proposing out of politeness more than anything else - it’s not as if he needed her approval to marry.

7

Not only does the removal of Paris’ murder offend me, it ruins the incredible symmetry of the text.

Mercutio and Paris are both distant relatives of the Prince and they are killed by opposing factions. With both murders in, the prince is balanced in his hatred towards both families and the ending scene is more comprehensible.

What I REALLY HATE is when the directors remove the very first scene when Romeo is musing hormonally over another woman, named Rosiline or something like that. It’s like they are trying to make it a <sob> tragedy instead of two dorky children who come to an unhappy end.

BTW gigi, defender of Tybalt, I feel a need to point out that Tybalt is Lady Capulet’s nephew and has no real reason to continue the feud. By the patrilineal customs of the day Tybalt is of another family. He’s continuing the feud out of pure bloody-mindedness or because insulting Mercutio is fun. I don’t think Tybalt’s any more a jerk than some teenage boys, but I would not make him an innocent victim either.

8

Yes, but often not consistently prosecuted to the full extent of the law, even well into the 1800’s in some places (at least in the US, not sure about UK). It might even still be legal in some third-world countries for all I know.

Exactly… when was the last prearranged marriage for English royalty? Different times, different customs. The point is that one must take literature within its historical context.

9

Why is the closing scene of Monty Python’s Holy Grail coming to mind…

10

February 24, 1981?

11

(Well, that was the announcement. The marriage didn’t happen until July, of course.)

12

tomndebb, PLEASE tell me you looked that up, and didn’t have that information in your head. :smiley:
Sua

13

Seriously, Chuck and Di weren’t pre-arranged in the same sense, were they? I have to think that either of them could have nixed the deal had they wanted to. I doubt most princesses had the same freedom of choice in the 1400’s.

14

I asked about dramatic choices and directorial prerogatives. Seriously, has ANY doper out there heard or read something, or seen an interview with a film director of Shakespeare in which the director explained why Paris’ murder was cut out?

What’s Harry Branagh’s take on all this? Has he ever directed a version of R&J? Do you think he would cut out that scene?

Also, I had a question about whether R&J was based on anything factual or was made up out of whole cloth.

15

Rosaline. Who is also a member of the Capulet family, by the way.
**

It should also be noted that when Tybalt tells the head of the Capulet family, Juliet’s father, that a Montague has crashed their party, Lord Capulet does not react in anger and praises Romeo’s reputation. The feud, such as it is, was clearly dying out.

No, princesses of that time did NOT have the freedom to marry who they chose. But it is true at least some princesses had a say in the matter.

In the case of Henry V, when his father first took the crown from Richard II, he proposed that Richard’s former queen marry his eldest son, the future Henry V. I don’t recall if the French took up an official position on the matter, but the ex-queen loved Richard and refused to have anything to do with Henry IV, or his son.

Interestingly enough, the ex-queen was an elder sister of Princess Katherine.

It also should be noted that some of these marriages were set up while both parties were still children. The marriages were often not official ones, but rather betrothals. Said betrothals could be broken, but these betrothals were more often broken when the marriage alliance dissipated (loss of power, change in alliance, etc) as opposed to one of the betrothed deciding “I just don’t want to marry that ugly creature.”

Harry Branagh? Do you mean Kenneth Branagh? I don’t know.

As to whether Romeo and Juliet was based on anything factual, it isn’t, to the best of my recollection. Issac Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare doesn’t mention any factual basis (and he does in cases where it exists, eg., Macbeth, Julius Caesar, etc.).

16

don’t watch the Olivier version of “Hamlet”, which omits two characters named Rosencratz and Guildenstern! :eek:

17

Adapting any book into a Hollywood film, or any film, nowadays requires mandatory trimming, not only by the director but by the producers who know that the general moviegoer’s attention span is shorter than a Hollywood marriage.

Also, there may be budget problems. Films are expensive, especially Shakespeare movies.

18

Like a great many of his plays, the storyline of Romeo and Juliet is not original to Shakespeare. There were at least two British works, The Tragical History of Romeo and Juliet, a poem by Arthur Brooke, and a short story included by Painter in his collection Palace of Pleasure. Those stories (like several of Shakespeare’s others) were based on a series of Italian novellas from earlier in the sixteenth century. I don’t know how close Shakespeare’s version is to the Italian, but A.L. Rowse claims that the play follows Brooke’s poem fairly closely.
Yes, Sua, I had to look up the date of the more recent royal engagement.

19

I watched Shakespeare In Love again recently and noticed that when Will and Viola are in the last scene of R&J, there’s a dead Paris lying near the edge of the stage.

I’d agree with you, DRY, that the feud is dying out among the older members of the clans, but the younger members seem to be keeping it up. I’ve often thought the feud was only being kept up by people (Tybalt, Mercutio, various hangers-on) who needed something to fight over, and were using it as an excuse.

20

It does, more or less. And of course it’s ultimately derived from the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe (wonderfully dramatised by the rude mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was written around the same time as R&J).

In defense of Friar Laurence (again) – the reason he agreed to marry Romeo and Juliet was to end the feud:

“In one respect I’ll thy assistant be;
For this alliance may so happy prove,
To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.”

It didn’t work, of course, but still…

Also, one of Shakespeare’s source materials says what happens to some of the minor characters – the Nurse was banished, the apothecary hanged, and Friar Laurence allowed to retire to a hermitage. This, I think, is what Shakespeare’s alluding to in the line “Some will be pardoned and some punished.”

Several people have remarked how the feud seems to be dying out among the older people, but the younger ones keep it alive – which is a vital component in the tragedy, I think. Good points. :slight_smile:

Indeed. And breaking one for reasons of personal choice could lead to all sorts of problems – cf. Henry VI-Margaret of Anjou) and Edward IV-Elizabeth Woodeville.