Now before we persuaded our teacher to let us study this play I loved it! I thought it was so romantic and we also persuaded her to let us watch the movies … yes movies there are two.

Side note: have you watched the old 1968 movie? Romeo in that looked so much like Zac Efron we were convinced he was his ancestor or grandfather or something. 

Back to the play, it ain’t that romantic. For one thing Romeo is fickle. He starts the play in love with Rosaline and that’s why he goes to the ball. However when he’s at the ball he falls in love with Juliet. So within one day he goes from being heavily in love with Rosaline, to the point where he’s depressed, to being heavily in love with Juliet. Yeah he’s fickle.

Second of all, Juliet is only 13 in the play. Romeo is older but still young, I can’t remember exactly how he was. But really, girl are you sure you’re ready? However this play is set in another time where people got married at a younger age so I can’t be too mad about that. Perhaps I’m looking at it with too modern eyes.

Another thing I didn’t like is that I feel he only married her so that he could have sex. She states that she doesn’t want to have sex before marriage which makes sense considering the time. So then he says let’s get married. That’s when I hit pause as I was reading. It was a red flag. But I carried on and she did resist a bit but he convinced her he really wanted to marry her and they got married the next day. The next day!

The speed in which they get married and how he proposed I found suspect. I honestly don’t think they were in love. They knew nothing about each other and it all happens so fast! Plus they were egged on by their families saying, “No you can’t marry him/her” or  “You will marry this guy”. Rather than being love I think it was more lust that they mistook for love and they rushed into something too soon. Imagine if their plan had worked and they had ran off together, would their marriage have survived? I mean a TV show that addresses such themes of quick love is Dharma and Greg and even they encountered very big issues when they realised they didn’t know each other.

The play only lasts a week. I feel like Mercutio was the realest in the play. He highlighted the problems with both the houses and his monologue or speech before he died was telling. I especially liked the adaptation of this character in the 1996 film version.

It annoyed me how it was so obvious that she wasn’t dead but Romeo still killed himself. He goes on about how there’s colour in her cheeks and I’m like “Yeah she ain’t dead”. It was tragic and that’s exactly what the play is, a tragedy. So why do we see it as romantic?

There’s nothing in there that I would want to teach young lovers. In fact I would use this play as a cautionary tale which is what I feel it was anyway. The only thing that I think is a good love lesson is the whole “What is in a name” thing. What is in a name? Having such a bitter feud was pointless and it took the deaths of their children for them to see that. To disallow love because of name, that’s silly.

Romeo and Juliet are really tools to get the families of Montague and Capulet to stop fighting. Through their deaths they’re able to bring peace to the two Verona families.

When you look at it as a tragedy it’s a good play but when you look at it as a romance, no it’s not good. I shudder to think I ever wanted a romance like Romeo and Juliet. I’m glad we persuaded our teacher to let us study it as it opened our eyes to the true themes of the play.

What did you think about Romeo and Juliet?

This is a repost as I have deleted my secondary site. I am slowing releasing the posts I liked from there here. It’d be much for me and you if I just dumped them here all at once.