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The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet_intro_essay_4.html
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<p>To read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is to enter a world of sex and danger and violence. It is a world in which parents force their thirteen-year-old daughter to marry; in which attending a party without being invited can get you killed; in which a single gesture ignites a deadly street-fight. Blood pools in the streets and smears everyone’s hands. “You men, you beasts,” screams Prince Escalus, the ruler of Verona, as men stab and gut each other in a public square-</p><blockquote><p>You men, you beasts,<br />That quench the fire of your pernicious rage<br />With purple fountains issuing from your veins!<br />On pain of torture, from those bloody hands<br />Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground<br />And hear the sentence of your moved prince.<br />(Act 1, Scene 1, LINE #’s from e-text)</p></blockquote><p>So horrific is this violence that, in a desperate attempt to keep the peace, the Prince issues the death-penalty to anyone who provokes another fight: “If ever you disturb our streets again / Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace,” he tells the mob. But enforcing the law cannot stem the blood that bursts and gushes like something out of a Renaissance Kill Bill. Three times throughout the play violence explodes and blood coats the stage, and each time the Prince arrives after the bodies have fallen, in time only to lecture the survivors. This uncontrollable violence is the result of an ages-old feud between two rich families, the Montagues and the Capulets, who together dominate Veronese society. Thanks to the enmity (one of Shakespeare’s words) between these families, Verona’s citizens can’t so much as step out of their homes without a firm grip on their swords. Everyday life in Verona is about survival, about picking one’s way through piled bodies-or slitting someone’s throat to save your own.</p><p>But let’s not forget about the sex. Between the explosions of violence, there’s a lot of it. In fact, the sex and the violence often occur at the same time. Of course, we’re not talking about actually getting it on on stage-remember, Shakespeare wrote his plays for a public theater, and his cast was all male-but sometimes Shakespeare cuts it pretty close: in one scene (Act 3, scene 5), we see Romeo and Juliet just after they get out of bed, and for much of the play, the two lovers can barely keep their hands off of each other. But more than the magnetic attraction between the two stars, the play is charged with sexual energy in its language-the way characters speak. From the very beginning of Romeo and Juliet, almost every character indulges in sexual puns (double entendres). A pun, you remember, is an expression that has more than one meaning; Shakespeare’s sexual puns are innocuous, everyday expressions that, interpreted literally, have no sexual meaning-but when understood fully, are often extremely explicit, “hard-core” references to sexual acts. Through double entendres, everyday conversation in Romeo and Juliet becomes pregnant with an undercurrent of barely controlled sexual energy. No topic of discussion is too mundane-or too elevated-to elicit sexual language. (When Lady Capulet asks the Nurse to tell her Juliet’s age, the Nurse can count the years only by recalling a dirty joke her husband made about the infant Juliet [1.3].) In Verona, sex is on the brain.</p><p>Violence and sex are the two dominant forces in Veronese society. In fact, in Shakespeare’s Verona, it’s hard to separate the two. From the very beginning of the play, violence and sex seem to be interchangeable. Both are releases of energy requiring not thought, but rather a surrender to a powerful, sensual urge. But in Verona, the connection runs deeper than that. In the first scene of act one, Sampson and Gregory, loyal servants of the Capulets, eagerly discuss the feud with the Montagues. But as they boast of the Capulets’ superiority and their own bravery, their conversation is drawn, as if by magnetic force, towards sex:</p><blockquote><p><strong>Sampson</strong>. I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s. [I.e.: “I will take the best place on the sidewalk from any Montague.”]<br /><strong>Gregory</strong>. That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes to the wall.<br /><strong>Sampson</strong>. ‘Tis true; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust<br />to the wall. Therefore I will push Montague’s men from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall.</p></blockquote><p>The boasts have turned ugly. By “thrust his maids to the wall,” Sampson doesn’t just mean “push the maids against the wall”-he means that he will rape them. Perhaps, sadly, it is not too surprising that a male discussion of superiority in fighting veers towards a (perverted) discussion of sexual prowess. But when the talk veers back to fighting, something strange happens. Still referring to the Montagues’ maids, Sampson boasts about the size of his, ummmm … endowment:</p><blockquote><p><strong>Sampson</strong>. Me they shall feel while I am able to stand [i.e., while I have an erection];<br />and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh [”piece of flesh” means penis].<br /><strong>Gregory</strong>. ‘Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor-John.<br />Draw thy tool! Here comes two of the house of Montagues.</p></blockquote><p>As Gregory responds to Sampson’s crude male boast about “how big” he is, two of the Montague men arrive on the scene-and so Gregory, eager to pick a fight, tells Sampson to draw his sword. But Gregory doesn’t say, “Draw your sword!”-rather, he exclaims “Draw your tool!” The word tool, especially in the context of their conversation, has strong sexual overtones-here, it becomes a pun referring both to a sword and to a penis. Through the double-meaning of a pun, the language of fighting and violence has become the same as the language for sex. Sampson’s response to Gregory confirms the merging of the vocabularies of sex and violence:</p><blockquote><p><strong>Sampson</strong>. My naked weapon is out. Quarrel! I will back thee.</p></blockquote><p>Sampson clearly understands Gregory’s pun on “tool”-for with “naked weapon,” Sampson refers not only to his sword, but also to his penis. (Of course, Sampson doesn’t expose himself on stage-the punning is figurative, not literal.) Sex and fighting become interchangeable: the penis becomes a weapon just as the sword becomes a sexual organ. For these men, it’s impossible to think of fighting without thinking of sex-a brutal and debased sort of sex-and it’s just as impossible to think of sex without thinking of fighting. Sex becomes a contest of “thrusting against the wall,” of violence; and violence involves the same sort of thrill, the same pleasure, as sex. In the world of Verona, the feud between the Montagues and Capulets continues because both sides find in it a pleasure akin to that of sex; indeed, when Romeo arrives after the opening fight, he recognizes just why the brawl broke out in the first place: “Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love” (1.1.lines). The Montagues and Capulets may hate each other, but they’ve grown to love hating each other-to love the rush and release of violence. In the true sense of the word, their Verona is a world of bloodlust.</p><p>What terrible kind of world is this? And why should we care about it? Well, for one, it’s the kind of place that Hollywood loves to put on the big screen. While it’s very much a play written by a Renaissance dramatist for a Renaissance audience, Romeo and Juliet offers the same sort of scenario that has driven many a blockbuster to box-office success: violence, drugs (well-a sleeping drug and some poison), and sex….and, for good measure, throw in a dose of teenage angst, overbearing parents, and parties. It’s like CSI:Miami-meets-American-Pie. Or at least that’s the take of director Baz Luhrmann, who, in his loud and ludicrous William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, starring then-teen-hunk Leonardo di Caprio and the doe-eyed Claire Danes, does his very best to reduce Shakespeare’s drama into Bad Boys III. Luhrmann’s basic idea-setting the play in a 1990’s riot-stricken Florida beach-city (”Verona Beach”) and casting teen heartthrobs in the title roles-might have worked, but for one tiny problem: he chose to keep Shakespeare’s script.</p><p>With a glitzy Miami-like backdrop, and in the mouths of actors who don’t really know how to say them, Shakespeare’s words stick out like a helicopter in Renaissance Italy. Sometimes a modern setting for a play of Shakespeare can help to make the play relevant to us, or can help to emphasize certain themes (Ian McKellen’s 1930’s-era Richard III, for instance); but the universe of Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is not a realistic modern-day setting-it’s a caricature of a TV-set, with lead actors (especially di Caprio) who speak with about as much panache as soap-opera stars. Luhrmann would have done better to drop Shakespeare’s words-which seem, in this setting, like caviar and champagne served at McDonald’s-and replace them with modern slang. “Romeo, Romeo, why the heck are you Romeo?” Or: “But yo!-is that a light in Juliet’s window? No!-it’s Juliet! And she is glowing, man!” Rather than making Romeo and Juliet modern and relevant, Luhrmann makes it ridiculous-and the inclusion of Shakespeare’s language, as powerful and beautiful as it has been for four hundred years, simply makes Luhrmann’s soap-opera antics all the more ridiculous.</p><p>But for all the histrionic excesses of the movie, it does make us realize one important point: for all his fiddling-frenetic film editing; making the “Prince” into Captain Prince of the police force; an awful revision of the play’s ending-Luhrmann doesn’t fundamentally change the basic structure of the play. In other words, he layers some pretty ugly mascara onto the play-and with the revised ending, he gives it a nose-job-but, ridiculous as it looks in the make-up, it’s still, somehow, Shakespeare’s play. What we realize is both that Shakespeare’s drama does lie close enough to the recipe for a Hollywood blockbuster that Luhrmann can put it on the big screen without performing anything more than minor plot- or character-surgery; and also that, despite Luhrmann’s soap-opera-on-crack treatment, something in Shakespeare’s play remains untouched by the gimmicks.</p><p>So what we really need to ask is: given the blood and the sex-which make Romeo and Juliet pretty much on par for a typical Hollywood summer flick-what elevates this play above the blockbuster? Why have people all around the world, and for over four hundred years, found in Romeo and Juliet the ultimate expression of romantic love?</p><p align="center">***</p><p> My own love for Romeo and Juliet-and for Shakespeare-grew out of a sense that Shakespeare’s characters are very, very real; in fact, that somehow, these characters are more real even than we are. Let me explain a bit.</p><p>I first came to Romeo and Juliet-and to Shakespeare-as a freshman in high-school. There’s a story here. My English teacher, a twenty-year veteran of the high-school classroom, cleverly decided to introduce our reading of Romeo and Juliet by showing us Franco Zeffirelli’s very traditional 1968 movie of the play. Although watching a movie was a treat that everyone in the class relished, no one was too excited about the prospect of a 138-minute, G-rated 1960’s film of a play by Shakespeare. (Okay; I was excited, and so were one or two of my friends….But most of the class, anticipating a nice opportunity for some shut-eye, arranged their binders to serve as pillows.) From the beginning, I was riveted; but my classmates, especially some of the boys, quickly dozed off. Our teacher sat at her desk, back to the TV, grading papers, trying-in vain-to make sure that all of us stayed awake. Only a few of us were actually watching by the time, getting towards the end of the play, that Romeo and Juliet enjoy their one night together as a married couple. At one point, Romeo and Juliet are lying in bed together (the guy behind me was snoring softly, so the bedroom setting seemed quite apt), swaddled in white sheets. Our teacher still had her back to the TV. Then it happened: Juliet went topless. Very briefly. But it had happened. Only three or four boys were awake; but you can be very sure that, within seconds, every male in the classroom had his eyes glued to the TV. Juliet kept her clothes on for the rest of the film-but everybody (or at least, every guy) remained wide awake.</p><p>Perhaps the close attention everyone paid to the rest of the film was merely in hopes of another glimpse of bare breasts; but I’d like to think that the nude scene had a deeper significance than as an illicit thrill. Seeing Juliet-and Romeo, too, for that matter (we see his bare backside)-without their clothes had an impact beyond the salacious. Beneath the Renaissance costumes, Romeo’s and Juliet’s bodies were no different from ours. Take away language, take away clothes-at the most basic level, the human body is what we all share. While the immediate impact of a nude scene is to make us think of sex, after a moment, an exposed body attains a dignity and a certain fragility that render it uniquely and indelibly human. What is exposed is not just the body, but also the naked human soul. An illicit thrill is what makes us sit up and take notice at the beginning of the scene; what makes us keep watching is a sense that the person we see has suddenly become more dignified, more fragile-has become human. Seeing Romeo and Juliet naked made them more real to me. As I watched the rest of the film, my hormones hoped that Juliet might again go topless; but my mind and heart sensed, beneath the intricate costume, the dignified, fragile, naked Juliet.</p><p>Shakespeare has no nude scene in his play. Like Luhrmann, Zeffirelli exercised his power as director to shape Shakespeare’s drama; but unlike Luhrmann, Zeffirelli’s choice is to use the unique advantages of his artistic medium-the film-to draw out and emphasize themes that Shakespeare encoded in his play. For the enduring greatness of Romeo and Juliet, what has made it the greatest love-story in Western culture, lies in Shakespeare’s ability to make Romeo and Juliet stand naked before us. Exposed to our eyes are the most intimate secrets and hopes and sensations and fears of a boy and girl discovering love, life, and, ultimately, death. Romeo and Juliet may wear clothes, but their humanity-flawed as all humanity must be-is made naked to us.</p><p align="center">***</p><p> How does Shakespeare do it? Words, words, words. Sculptors sculpt in clay or stone; painters paint in oils or watercolors; writers write in words. All that remains of Shakespeare’s plays is their scripts; so whatever we draw from Shakespeare is drawn from the language he composed four hundred years ago. And just as art-critics examine the smoothness or roughness of a sculpture, or the direction and size of brush-strokes in a painting, we, as attentive and critical students of Shakespeare’s plays, must examine the qualities of Shakespeare’s words-the images they evoke, their patterns, their sounds, their sense.</p><p>In Romeo and Juliet, as in his other great plays, Shakespeare’s words retain the power to shock, stun, and startle. These are words remarkable not so much for their beauty (though at times they can be very beautiful), but rather for their strangeness. Listen, for instance, to these words, Benvolio’s advice to Romeo about Rosaline, the girl Romeo likes (but who doesn’t like him). Try reading this passage out loud:</p><blockquote><p>Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by,<br />Herself poised with herself in either eye;<br />But in that crystal scales let there be weighed<br />Your lady’s love against some other maid<br />That I will show you shining at this feast,<br />And she shall scant show well that now seems best.<br />(1.2.lines)</p></blockquote><p>Benvolio is telling Romeo that Rosaline only seems pretty because Romeo hasn’t compared her to any other girls; at tonight’s party, Benvolio says, Romeo will be able to find a girl so pretty she’ll make Rosaline look unattractive. Well-that’s what Benvolio means. But how does he say it? First, he uses a metaphor for Romeo’s eyes-he calls them crystal scales. “Scales” is an Elizabethan term for the balance-scale (you’ll remember this device from high-school science, I’m sure). What a very strange image!-Benvolio says that Romeo’s eyes are balance-scales made of crystal. How does this metaphor work? In a figurative sense, Benvolio can call Romeo’s eyes scales because they judge beauty, and the scales of justice are a traditional symbol of impartial judgment. But this metaphor is strangely mixed: by adding the qualifying adjective crystal, Benvolio makes reference not merely to the figurative balance-scale of Justice, but rather to the literal appearance of human eyes. As soon as we realize that the figurative metaphor of scales-of-justice for eyes-as-judging-beauty also has a literal dimension-crystal scales for white eyes-we realize that the literal dimension of the metaphor is, in fact, more fully developed than the figurative. Before he introduces the image of crystal scales, Benvolio says something a bit odd: “you saw her fair, none else being by, / Herself poised with herself in either eye.” What Benvolio means is that the image of Rosaline-”herself”-appeared in both of Romeo’s eyes (imagine looking closely into someone’s eyes so that you can see your reflection in both eyes); but the verb he uses, “poised,” means balanced. Benvolio’s description of the two images of Rosaline balanced in Romeo’s eyes thus anticipates and makes literal the metaphor of the eyes as crystal scales: just as a balance-scale has two trays in which one places two objects to determine which is heavier, on Romeo’s face there are two eyes in which are placed two Rosalines. And although by “herself,” Benvolio figuratively means “image of Rosaline,” his language is actually very literal-”Herself poised with herself in either eye,” as though two Rosalines are actually standing in Romeo’s face. Suddenly, Romeo’s eyes become crystalline scales with women standing in them. Shakespeare’s language metamorphoses the human eyes into objects strange, alien, almost unrecognizable.</p><p>I’ve spent a few moments discussing that metaphor to show you just how richly strange Shakespeare’s language is-how exciting and rewarding it is to probe that language. With language like this does Shakespeare give us the naked humanity of Romeo and Juliet-he captures, with all the transfiguring strangeness of his words, the unfathomable mystery of sexual awakening. Precisely how he does that is a question that can only be answered by reading the play-which you’re about to do.</p><p align="center">***</p><p> The richly strange language-the essence of Shakespeare-is also the greatest challenge in reading his plays. Some pointers as you begin to read: first, don’t be intimidated. Even professors find some difficulty in understanding every word written by Shakespeare; after all, he lived four hundred years ago. If parents sometimes have trouble understanding their children’s language (”instant messaging? huh?”), and vice versa (”gnarly?! huh?”), then imagine how many words and expressions have changed throughout the four centuries since Shakespeare lived. But one of the reasons that Shakespeare is often considered the greatest writer in the English language is that, despite the four-hundred-year age-gap separating him from modern readers, so much of his language-and his ideas-remain accessible to us.</p><p>Read Romeo and Juliet slowly, and you’ll probably be surprised by how much of it you can understand! When you encounter expressions that seem forbidding or completely alien, consult any standard printed edition of the play, where the editor will provide what’s called a “gloss”-an explanation of an obscure word or a re-statement in modern English of a difficult phrase. What you should always remember is that, just because Shakespeare remains the most famous writer in the English language, you shouldn’t think that every line he wrote is perfect. If you don’t like a phrase or sentence or line, try to articulate what qualities displease you; inversely, if you find a line beautiful or particularly powerful, ask yourself why.</p><p>It is indeed a good idea, as my wise English teacher realized, to watch the Zeffirelli film before you read the play: while Zeffirelli cuts out some of the action and makes a few very minor changes to the plot, the movie will give you a good idea of what actually occurs in the play. Then, when you encounter Shakespeare’s difficult language on the page, you won’t have to spend as much time figuring out what’s actually happening, and can spend more time marveling at the beauty and profundity and strangeness of Shakespeare’s words.</p><p>Finally, although you don’t need any reminder of this, here it is, anyway: Shakespeare is not easy. In fact, reading Shakespeare is about as hard as reading anything written in the English language. But if you’re persistent and patient, reading Shakespeare can also be more exciting than anything else-video games, movies, sports-you name it. I mean this seriously, and I hope you’ll come to see what I mean. So here’s a strategy that’s always helped me in reading Shakespeare, and I suggest that you try it, too. As you read a scene for the first time, try to figure out exactly what’s going on. The action can be fairly complex; so your first challenge will be to gain a mental image of who’s doing what, and how, and when, and where. (Again, watching the film can help.) Once you figure out what’s happening-which is usually pretty exciting!-you can start to think about what ideas Shakespeare is presenting, and why. This may not sound too exciting, but follow me!-and I think you’ll see just how thrilling reading Shakespeare can be.</p><p align="center">***</p><p> Earlier I asked, but never really fully or directly answered, these questions: What kind of a world is the world of Romeo and Juliet? And why should we care about it? In a universe where violence and sex feed off of each other in a perverted, brutal symbiosis, Romeo and Juliet-two adolescents discovering their own sexuality and, thus, what it means to be alive as human beings-promise to disrupt that vicious bond. Their love-sexual but not violent-will end the feud that fuses sex and violence; this love promises to replace the power of destruction with the power of creation. In his richly strange language, Shakespeare makes them and their miraculous, healing love as real to us as anything we will ever know.</p>