Welcome to the first play of Shaketember 2023, Romeo and Juliet. I’m going to be very honest with you. I’ve been struggling with Romeo and Juliet since the first time I read it in April 2022 and this time round as well. Not struggling to understand the story or the language but struggling to understand why I don’t like it. Shocking I know. I don’t like it.
I’ve been thinking why I don’t like it. I’m still not 100% sure but at this point, I think it’s because the story is presented as a play. I completely get the feeling of being madly in love when I THINK about the story. But I don’t feel for them when I READ or WATCH the play. It’s really strange. I can imagine myself doing exactly what Juliet does when I think about it. But when I watch her or read what she says and does, I can’t help distancing myself from her and feeling that she and Romeo are completely over the top. But when I pause and think, why do you think them over the top, what would you do in their situation? My answer is I probably would do exactly the same things.
So I then ask myself why that is the case? If I would behave exactly like them, why do I find them over the top? I think it’s because personally, if I’m in love, I won’t tell the whole world about it. I know Romeo and Juliet do not tell the whole world about it because the whole point is that they couldn’t tell. But the nature of a play is that they have to tell the whole theatre about it. I agree with Jane Austen that comedy is better when it comes to theatre. I reserve the right to change my mind though! I’m still new to Shakespeare.
Just one example, when the nurse brings the news of Romeo’s banishment, Juliet says
That ‘banished,’ that one word ‘banished,’
Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts.
…
‘Romeo is banished’—to speak that word
Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
All slain, all dead.
I find the language over the top. I find all the raving and dying over the top. Because love and grief are private, those emotions are truer when felt than performed and watched. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not getting the vibe correctly or I haven’t watched a production that clicks for me. I read about a previous production that sounded wonderful. I’ll talk about that a bit later as well.
An unavoidable tragedy
I read and listened to the play a few times and I felt a bit different each time. At one point I thought, stop being so dramatic! Life goes on when you can’t live in the same city as your beloved. Consider the situation, take things slow, sort the mess out as best as you can. ‘I know it’s going to be difficult. You stare out of the windows, you lose sleep, you can’t eat, you shed tears, you do ridiculous things, you sigh from the bottom of your lungs, and there’s big chunk of your heart missing and bleeding, and no painkiller will ease the heartache. I understand and I’ve done it myself.’ But you live. I guess I take the same view as Friar Laurence when he says
FRIAR LAURENCE
Thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.
There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slew’st Tybalt: there art thou happy.
The law that threatened death becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile: there art thou happy.
A pack of blessings light upon thy back,
Happiness courts thee in her best array,
But like a mishaved and sullen wench,
Thou pouts upon thy Fortune and thy love…
Live in Mantua,
… till we can find a time
To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back
With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
Than thou went’st forth in lamentation. (Act 3 Scene 3)
That sounds like a perfectly good idea to me. The Friar has good sense, looks at things optimistically, and gives good advice. Things could work out! But by Act 5 Scene 3, even he has to admit that,
FRIAR LAWRENCE
A greater power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents. (Act 5 Scene 3)
The young couple has fought their fate valiantly, especially Juliet. She fights really hard against her prison. Do you notice throughout the whole play, she mostly appears in her bedroom, in her house, or she’s in Friar’s Laurence’s cell, and at the end she’s in a tomb. She’s always inside a confined, walled up space. The closest she gets to outside is the window or balcony where she speaks to Romeo who is in the garden. But even there,
JULIET
The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,
And the place death… (Act 2 Scene 1)
Juliet doesn’t stand a chance of a happy ending right from the beginning. I think they sense the inevitability of the tragic ending and know better than the Friar all along, that there’s something outside human power that’s against them. Romeo doesn’t want to go to the Capulet ball not because it’s in the enemy’s house. It’s because
ROMEO
… for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death. (Act 1 Scene 4)
A little earlier before that, he says
ROMEO
And we mean well in going to this masque, But ’tis no wit to go.
MERCUTIO
Why, may one ask?
ROMEO
I dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio interrupts him by saying,
MERCUTIO
And so did I.
And Romeo is one of those nice gentle guys who says,
ROMEO
Well what was yours? (Act 1 Scene 4)
… instead of saying, ‘shut up Mercutio I haven’t finished!’, so we never get to hear what’s in Romeo’s dream. I’m really curious what Romeo dreamt in his dream that made him think this Capulet ball is the beginning of a sticky end. I wonder if Romeo could go back in time to that point knowing what he knows, would he want his life to play out differently? Both Antony and Cleopatra wish that they’ve never met, we’ll talk about if they are serious about that another time. I think Romeo and Juliet would never wish that they’d never have met. They’d love, struggle and die again and again. All their energy is directed to one point but everything goes against them. Fortune is really not on their side. I almost get a Thomas Hardy vibe, the authorial violence thing. The story hurtles towards a tragic ending like a steam train.
Compared to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
When we go on to Antony and Cleopatra, I’m going to compare Antony and Cleopatra with Romeo and Juliet. But today, I’m going to compare Romeo and Juliet with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I read and watched last Shaketember. I compare Romeo and Juliet with A Midsummer Night’s Dream because they are written around the same time and both stories are about a young woman who is forced by her father to marry someone whom she doesn’t love while she tries to get together with the one she does love. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy. It’s like Shakespeare is experimenting what his genius can do.
The differences between them are also fascinating.
- Romeo and Juliet only has one storyline. It focuses on this one couple. A Midsummer Night’s Dream manages to include four couples, plus a separate storyline about the rude mechanicals.
- There’s the interference of the potion. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the potion brings love and life. In Romeo and Juliet, the potion leads to death.
- Like I said earlier, Juliet is cooped up inside all the time, but Hermia and Helena run away to the wood.
- Juliet and Romeo are both lonely. The play emphasises that they are both the only child of their family. And after Mercutio is killed, Benvolio interestingly never comes back to Romeo’s side but just quietly disappears. But Hermia and Helena are friends, they are literally like twins. Lysander and Demitrius are rivals, but it’s better to have human rivals than raging and despairing against a greater power.
Would they have a happy ending if Juliet runs away from her house? She comes and goes to Friar Laurence’s cell as she pleases on her own. It’s not like she hasn’t got the chance. Why doesn’t she? Would they have a happy ending if Juliet has a sister or if Romeo has a good friend? I wonder if these factors make a comedy or a tragedy.
The merest school girl has Shakespeare to speak for her
Quoting Jonathan Bate, quoting Virginia Woolf, ‘The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare, Donne, Keats to speak her mind for her’. I find Shakespeare’s ability to capture the experience and feeling of falling in love incredible. It’s about ordinary everyday things and they’re completely true to life, but he makes it so beautiful and fresh.
Just one example, when Juliet says goodnight to Romeo, it takes them 70 lines from the first goodnight to when she finally goes to bed. I can’t read all of it out, but briefly, after they proclaim they love each other, she says ‘Goodnight, I hope we’ll meet again, goodnight, goodnight, sleep well.’ Romeo says, ‘Is that all? Are you going to leave me like this?’ Juliet says, ‘What more do you want?’ Romeo says, ‘say you love me.’ This bit is very cute, I’ll read it out. Romeo says,
ROMEO
Th’exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.
JULIET
I gave thee mine before thou didst request it:
And yet I would it were to give again.
ROMEO
Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?
JULIET
But to be frank and give it thee again.
Then she says goodbye and goes into her bedroom but immediately says ‘don’t go just yet!’ She comes back and says ‘I’ll just say one more thing and then goodnight indeed. Let me know when is our wedding going to be tomorrow.’ So yes they have just met this evening at the ball for the first time and they’re going to get married tomorrow. She then goes into her bedroom, with ‘A thousand times goodnight’. And before he moves a step she appears again and calls him back, asking what time should she send her messenger to him about their wedding. He says 9 o’clock. Then she says,
JULIET
I will not fail: ’tis twenty years till then.
I have forgot why I did call thee back.
ROMEO
Let me stand here till thou remember it.
JULIET
I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
Remembe’ring how I love thy company.
ROMEO
And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget,
Forgetting any other home but this.
JULIET
’Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone,
And yet no further than a wanton’s bird,
That lets it hop a little from his hand,
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
And with a silken thread plucks it back again,
So loving-jealous of his liberty.
ROMEO
I would I were thy bird.
JULIET
Sweet, so would I:
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
Then she’s FINALLY gone. It’s kind of over the top but it captures the feeling so exactly, so true to life. I know I have to let you go, it’s late, it’s almost morning, we need to sleep, and we have to get up early because we have work tomorrow plus we’re not even talking any sense. I love the line when she says I have forgot why I did call thee back. I need to be sensible but at the same time, I don’t want to let you go, loving-jealous of your liberty.
The androgynous mind of Shakespeare
Another thing that struck me about the play is how real Romeo and Juliet are. I’m in awe how Shakespeare can think and speak as a man as well as a woman. How does he know what a woman would say in certain circumstances when he’s not a woman himself? The lovely goodnight scene earlier for example, has Shakespeare experienced it and seen it happen, like the film Shakespeare in Love suggests? Or does he make it up?
Virginia Woolf talked about the unity of the mind and that Shakespeare was androgynous in A Room of One’s Own. I’m not sure if this is what Virginia Woolf meant. I wonder if Virginia Woolf knew what she was talking about when she wrote it. Because she wrote, ‘Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous’. Virginia Woolf was guessing Coleridge’s meaning. I’m just guessing Virginia Woolf’s meaning. That’s just a small aside.
I want to recommend the RSC edition, in addition to the interview with Michael Attenborough who directed the play in 1997, there are also an interview with David Tennent who played Romeo and Alexandra Gilbreath who played Juliet in Michael Boyd 2000 production.
I learnt so much by hearing them talk about how they understand the story, the relationship between characters, what setting they imagine would suit the story best, the impact of the temperature and the light of the place have on the overall atmosphere of the play, what kind of ‘ancient grudge’ is this, is this story actually about love.
There’s so much understanding and imagination from the director and the actors. It’s absolutely fascinating and I now really want to watch a live production. I would love to watch the two productions mentioned in the interviews but I don’t know if they were recorded. I think that’s another thing that’s precious about a theatre show. So much of the good stuff was not recorded and we can now only hear about them, we’ll never be able to watch them and experience them first hand again. They are beautiful things like fireworks, they bloom and sparkle and they’re gone.
A Day of Small Things 