📜 Finished reading: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 📚 ★★★★ 4.5/5
Last time I read this was in high school, and we watched the Leo adaptation too, during which I took a long restroom break out of boredom and probably went to buy a cup of noodles.
Very romantic and filled with gorgeous moments that we often refer to and that feel cliché to us now, but truly are not. Juliet is the sun, for example.
But it’s not allll romance. It’s a tragedy! & Shakespeare packs a punch. There is much warning and wisdom here, but also so much wordplay and insane metaphors. No doubt Shakespeare is also playing with the idea that words can trap a lover’s fate. But I digress:
“Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ‘ay,’ / And that bare vowel ‘I’ shall poison more / Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. / I am not I, if there be such an ‘I’; / Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer ‘ay.'”
Lovers can’t escape language. Juliet hangs three meanings on one sound and a fourth sense that they are wrong, pushing the figurative language into catachresis! There is a whole scene in Act 2 where Romeo does wordplay with his friends. Shakespeare is letting metaphor and multiple meanings do a lot of work: predicative, ontological, and so on.
Now to the main course for me. There is so much wisdom in this play I obviously did not pick up on when I first read it at the bright age of 15 (still older than Juliet, though!).
Throughout the play there is a constant abdication of agency in Romeo’s actions, and in moments when he makes decisions he calls it fate, him being effeminate, blaming the stars, Juliet’s family, and so on. He misses mercy and wisdom at almost every turn. The friar literally spells out a plan to Romeo and tells him to man up (this could be a whole note on masculinity that I won’t go into), make a plan, and recognize he has more options than defeat. When Romeo finds out he has been exiled, he tries to kill himself, out of jealousy that other men will now see Juliet and because he can’t handle being away from her. The Nurse and the friar try to literally shake him straight and make him realize there is still a reality where he ends up with Juliet, and that he should be happy he is still married and alive. Of course, he wallows more. This whole play takes place over four-ish days, and Romeo fails to heed any wisdom from his friends, his father, and the friar to slow down and be wise.
“Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.” — Friar to Romeo
May this be a warning to all the lovers who might let their passion burn everything around them! Mercy and patience.
“But I received mercy for this reason, that… [I] might display [Jesus’] perfect patience…” — 1 Tim 1:16