Last year, on January 30, I wrote an article about how Romeo & Juliet is overrated. I went on a rant on how Romeo & Juliet is a terrible play and how Shakespeare is terrible at writing romantic love interests.
I changed.
I grew to understand, and my friends told me that Romeo & Juliet isn’t about how I made it up to be. I now respect the play and I think it is a decent love story, although I still do think there are some problems with the play.
Nevertheless, it is not as bad as I used to think it was.
As I wrote, “But the main problem with this story is that the main characters are bad. Romeo at first is a reasonable man and a bit of a troublemaker, but when he sees Juliet he only thinks about her. His entire personality is based on Juliet, and Juliet bases her entire personality on Romeo. There is a short arc about her cousin. After Romeo kills Tybalt, Juliet is in a moral dilemma. Should she accept Romeo killing Tybalt or hate him for killing Tybalt? This part is good, but she forgets about it when Romeo goes into exile.”
This is not true. Juliet has her individual personality. Juliet is in the middle of maturity and immaturity. She doesn’t blindly follow Romeo; she is obedient, especially to Romeo. She loves Romeo but she also criticizes his rash and stupid decisions of killing her cousin. Juliet is a much stronger protagonist than Romeo.
“O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb” (Act 3, Scene 2).
We see Juliet actively criticizing Romeo in this line. She isn’t blinded by love, like Romeo, but love overpowers her.
In my original article, I continued, “Juliet comes up with a brilliant plan… This defining character moment feels so forced. Romeo could just wait for Juliet to get up, but no, he is blinded by love to the point it becomes an obsession. It is not like true love because true love isn’t about killing yourself for someone else. But Romeo is so obsessed with Juliet that he kills himself after seeing Juliet in a deep sleep. Juliet does the same as Romeo, which is a stupid decision. This feels unreasonable and forced just to make the audience sad.”
The plan could work out, but unfortunately, it doesn’t. First-time readers of Romeo & Juliet may actually think the plan would work out. When it doesn’t, we feel a sense of shock. Nevertheless, I can’t judge a plan only on its outcomes. I should’ve taken the time and analyzed the plan in and of itself.
I also wrote, “Back in the day, relationships were different. Now, we see this as creepy, but back in the day, this was seen as cute. Stalking is a big issue, and no one likes to be stalked, but Shakespeare makes stalking like a romantic thing. It is not romantic to see a stalker stalking someone just because he loved her. That is a problem. It never gets addressed throughout the play.”
This is the worst take I had for Romeo & Juliet. I completely miss the point that Shakespeare was writing about. He was writing about how young, immature love is dangerous and how it blinds rationality. Shakespeare isn’t romanticizing it but criticizing the love Romeo has for Juliet. The reason why we think they are romanticizing stalking and all that stuff is because of culture. Romeo & Juliet often gets misrepresented because it seems like a typical love story that Hollywood writers superficially executed.
There are some things I said in my original article that I still agree with, like how the story happens in three days instead of a month or so.
I argued, “This love story doesn’t feel developed because it was three days. Three days isn’t a lot of time. How can you develop a love story in three days? You can’t. Romeo and Juliet create a messy story that is dramatic for the sake of being dramatic.”
Though I exaggerated it, I still believe that three days is a bit too short. I feel like the story takes a week at minimum. The impact of Romeo and Juliet’s love doesn’t feel as heavy because three days is too short. If it was a month, then that would be deep. In a month, we can fully develop Romeo, Tybalt, Juliet, and other characters. Nonetheless, I also have to understand that this is a play. A month will be confusing for the audience and drag out the story even more.
As I originally wrote, “The characters in this play are either forgettable, or they are just bad. Tybalt is a flat character. All he wants is bloodshed. He never thinks about the consequences that will happen because of fighting because at the end of the day, the story takes only three days. Tybalt gets no backstory or flashback. When Romeo kills Tybalt, the audience can’t feel anything because he wasn’t developed.”
Now I see that Tybalt is an underrated character — he as a justified motive for preventing Romeo from causing any more havoc. Nevertheless, the fact Shakespeare didn’t flesh him out was a missed opportunity. I want to know his real motive and his desires, but instead, he comes out as a shallow character and I wish Shakespeare gave him more depth.
A year ago, I wrote a really terrible article about how Romeo and Juliet was overrated, but I was a victim of the simplifications of Hollywood. Talking to people and understanding the real meaning behind Romeo and Juliet, I grew to understand the real meaning behind this play. I grew to like it, and I hope other people do as well.
