History Fridge / RomeoAndJuliet

* Upon reading ''Romeo and Juliet'' expecting something romantic, if sad, and instead wound up reading about two teenagers (barely) who "fall in love" and make a series of really, really bad decisions and selfish choices before they die. It was several months later before realizing that Shakespeare had not even intended to write a romance, despite popular belief, but had actually been TRYING to warn against impulsiveness.

** Both close, but not quite. ''Romeo and Juliet'' is a GenreDeconstruction of the bawdy romances that were popular in Shakespeare's day. It proceeds according to the associated romantic comedy tropes for the first half, then SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome with Mercutio's death and things quickly get out of hand. This is the reason for the prologue, something rare in Shakespeare- the audience has to be ''told'' what the play is going to be about, otherwise they'll get miffed at the [[MoodWhiplash sudden switch from romance comedy to tragedy.]]
** When rereading ''Romeo and Juliet'' for a class and was delighted to find how many of the other characters ''mock the hero and heroine'', particularly the Friar, who wryly comments on Romeo's obsession with Rosaline and his complete meltdown after he's been banished (although that reaction might be warranted).
** It's always been heard it called a love story, but if it's about love, this play sucks. Until it's told "It's not a love story, it's a hate story." And it's so much easier to like the story that way--because all the "love" seeing to appear it to be horniness and stupidity, but there's plenty of random, unexplained hate that exists because generations ago someone did...something, we're not sure what, and now it's so out of hand that people who should've gotten off lightly for being stupid youths are dead.
** Further FridgeBrilliance: Romeo and Juliet are ''teenagers'', of course they're going impulsively fling themselves into really intense relationships that can't work in the long term. That's what teenagers do. What makes the play tragic is that instead of losing interest after a month and breaking up, they instead die in a double suicide. This is a direct result of the feud between the adult Capulets and Montagues, ''who are just as immature and impulsive in their hatred as Romeo and Juliet are in their love, despite the fact that they're adults and should know better.''
* There used to be a disliking of ''Romeo and Juliet''. No, practically despised it. There was a convincing that it glorified teenage angst and falling in love at the drop of a pin and then acting like an idiot afterwards. Compared to shows like ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew'' and ''Theatre/AsYouLikeIt'', the romance seemed more about hormones than anything deeper. Then reading it again in college and realized that, while Romeo still comes off as a lovestruck teen, Juliet comes off much better. She's the one who makes plans and follows through with them. She's the one who sets up the scheme at the end for them to be together. Only at the end, after both the love of her life and the arranged husband that she agreed to "look to like if looking liking lead" are dead does she succumb to despair and turn to the dagger. Of course, there's also the suspect that the high school version may have had all the good bits pulled out of it for space and {{bowdlerization}}.
** It's amazing how easily people overlook the fact that ''Romeo and Juliet'' is about war and violence as much as it is about love; or more accurately, it's about the way they influence and interact with each other. Didn't realize this until watching the Zeffirelli production. This is not the kid-friendly lovey dovey show people seem to think it is- for god's sake, the opening scene is two of the Capulets talking about raping and/or decapitating the women of their enemy's house. And the famous lines- ''what's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor any other part belonging to a man''- are actually a profound moment of political awakening for Juliet, the moment she realizes that there's a vast gulf between the labels attached to a person and their fundamental humanity. Vonnegut, consummate cynic though he was, mentions ''Romeo and Juliet'' in the prologue to ''Literature/BreakfastOfChampions'' as an example of something sacred, and there's this suspection there's a reason he chose this play, out of all of Shakespeare's: That man understood war.
** More ''Romeo and Juliet'' issues abound here; when reading a teen, some will initially hate it, convinced Romeo was just a fickle teen -- evidenced by how quickly he switched his affections from Rosaline to Juliet -- and was unable to feel any sympathy at all for the idiot. Coming back to it years later, some will now see that Rosaline was put in so the audience could see the difference between Romeo-with-a-crush and Romeo-experiencing-true-love. There still won't be any sympathy for the idiot, but at least it now finds his love for Juliet convincing.
*** Some see Rosaline's presence in the play as a way of introducing ambiguity. Romeo's initial infatuation with Rosaline could mean one of two things: Either that he's an unintentional manskank who falls for women easily and is a slave to his infatuations when he does, or that his love for Juliet was the real deal- real enough to pull him out of his funk and make him recognize his crush on Rosaline as the petty infatuation it was. Which makes the burying of the parents' strife all the more powerful- not only does Shakespeare illustrate that love can be a real political force, but that it's a better way than violence even in it's dumbest and most adolescent forms.

*** As one Renaissance Professor has told it, "Marriages happened when women were younger but not that younger." However, more to the relevant point, Juliet's father is actually creeped out by Paris ''in the play'' and wants to put it off for a couple more years at least. He even comments that girls shouldn't become wives and mothers at Juliet's age ('And too soon marred are those so early made'). It's only when he thinks she's emotionally devastated by her cousin's death that he agrees.
** You get an entirely different look on the works of William Shakespere, once you realize the man wasn't trying to create ''Fine Art'', but was just writing and directing plays as a job, adapting historical tales (Macbeth, Richard III, the Death of Caesar, etc) and writing "stock" drama, comedy and romances, not for scholars and kings, but for the commoners who routinely attended his shows. This makes William Shakespere the Elizabethan equivalent of a Hollywood director, and his most famous plays are the period's Blockbuster movies. So, whenever you see Hollywood rip off Shakespere's plays to make a movie, keep this in mind: He'd probably have approved.
*** He seems to have regarded his poetry (Lucrece, Sonnets and so on) as his serious work - published in his lifetime with dedications to prominent noblemen - and his plays as being commercial hackwork that he did to provide for his family. (You'll notice that the first official edition of the plays was published ''after'' Shakespeare's death by a couple of actors from his old company.)
** When first reading this play in 10th grade, and it wasn't really until college that realizing it's not about star-crossed romance, as teachers had suggested, but about the futility of keeping feuds going. The moral isn't "Don't be a doofus about falling in love", it's "Look at what you can destroy with your anger if you let it blind you". Half of both the families are dead at the end of the play, and the people who had a chance at happiness die tear-jerking deaths solely because they had to sneak around about their love.

** There's the appreciation of ''Romeo & Juliet'' as a tragic love story when reading at a young age. It takes re-reading it once past puberty to understand that there's also a satirical edge to it. Romeo and Juliet fall in love with each other in an instant and are married within a few days, following a princely sum of two whole conversations, despite the fact that one was virtually engaged to someone else (and Juliet didn't love Paris, but she didn't have a problem with him before she met Romeo) and the other was crazy about someone else. The whole thing is a wry look at young love, and the inherent drama that goes along with it - they're all supposed to be teenagers, after all, and the play is constantly full of characters either getting into fights or falling in love on a whim, both of which crop up in your life when your hormones start going haywire. Friar Lawrence spends half the play basically staring at them and doing a FlatWhat. It's even explicitly stated that the only reason he goes along with Romeo and his dreamy bullshit is because he's hoping that the pair of them getting together might force their parents to resolve their feud, a feud which is getting people killed - people Friar Lawrence has probably had to be involved in funerals for. It can't be easy seeing young men murdered for no good reason, no wonder he's trying to stop it. That's why he doesn't call shenanigans on the whole thing earlier.

** Whilst everything is open to interpretation, it's meant more on the face of it to mean if he's married, she won't be able to marry him, and therefore she may as well be dead as marry anyone else. Which is another Aesop you can take from this play - Teenagers Are Dramatic.
* You know how, after being stabbed, Mercutio called down "A plague on both your houses!"? Well, the tragic ending only happened because Friar John couldn't deliver the letter explaining Juliet's plan to fake her death to Romeo in time- and he couldn't deliver it in time because of a ''plague quarantine''. Mercutio's DyingCurse really did come to pass!

* One more thing about Romeo and Juliet is - it is a comedy, as it ticks all the boxes of the genre: dressing up, match-making, authority figures (AKA parents) scorned... but back then there was a very strict rule: nobody could die in a comedy. Therefore, for the viewers of the time, Romeo and Juliet would have been pretty close to a mindfuck.

** Isaac Asimov thought so, too (''Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare''), and thought the whole "secret marriage" thing is unnecessary and comes from Juliet's romantic delusions. One can disagree on that. Capulet is very, very much attached to his plan to give Juliet to County Paris - he gives an angry and heartless speech about how he's throwing her out into the street if she doesn't marry the man he's promised to give her to. And given that he's portrayed as quite choleric...no, anyone can't see him swallowing his pride, telling Paris it's all off so he can give her to his enemy's man and try to patch things up. (That's why perhaps Paris is ''highly'' necessary to the plot; and the situation really would be enormously different if he weren't there.) Also, in this play, Shakespeare stereotypes almost all the Italians as proud and hot-blooded...so that it takes a heartrending tragedy, and not just a reasoned speech by somebody, to make them lay down their feud. (The Zeffirelli film gets this aspect exactly and brilliantly right.)
*** Asimov is wrong. Why would Shakespeare -- who was a master of his craft, of both characterization and ConservationOfDetail -- have our first impression of Lords Montague and Capulet be of two old men sporting for a fight, egging on their servants instead of calling them off, and dueling in the street, only for his intention to be "they're harmless old geezers, their blood has cooled off, looking for a reason to end the feud"? This is an EstablishingCharacterMoment. The Prince, a ReasonableAuthorityFigure if ever Shakespeare wrote one, doesn't say that they must discipline their servants, he says that ''they'' will be put to death if ''they'' continue the feud. The Feud is alive and well, and the pressures against Romeo and Juliet's relationship are very real.
*** If Friar Laurence's plan had ''worked'' the families might not have patched it up at all. Each would've felt disgraced by the actions of its own child and their wounded pride might've driven them to attack each other even more - after disowning both children, just as Capulet has threatened to do to Juliet, and maybe even having them murdered. And at long last it's why Paris has to die, a point which has been confusing for many years. If Paris lives, Capulet is more concerned about family pride and disgrace ("Sorry, I promised her to you, but I'm so weak a patriarch that she managed to get hitched to someone else without my knowing it"). That would have kept him in a fighting mood (wounded pride is best cooled in blood). Paris being dead, that isn't in play, and Capulet is left only with his grief - which is great enough to make him lay down the feud for real. Since all that just occurred, it's opening that fridge too often.

* Figured out the actual aesop: extremes of anything, whether extreme love or extreme hate, are stupid, because they cause you to lose sight of reality in favor of zealotry.

** Technically, "dignity" here is used to denote the Montagues and Capulets as wealthy, noble families - hence the arrangement between Paris and Juliet. But in terms of moral dignity? See above. It would hardly be out of character for Shakespeare to play on both meanings of the word.

* You know how, after being stabbed, Mercutio called down "A plague on both your houses!"? Well, the tragic ending only happened because Friar John couldn't deliver the letter explaining Juliet's plan to fake her death to Romeo in time- and he couldn't deliver it in time because of a ''plague quarantine''. Mercutio's DyingCurse really come to pass!

* There used to a disliking of ''Romeo and Juliet''. No, practically despised it. There was a convincing that it glorified teenage angst and falling in love at the drop of a pin and then acting like an idiot afterwards. Compared to shows like ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew'' and ''Theatre/AsYouLikeIt'', the romance seemed more about hormones than anything deeper. Then reading it again in college and realized that, while Romeo still comes off as a lovestruck teen, Juliet comes off much better. She's the one who makes plans and follows through with them. She's the one who sets up the scheme at the end for them to be together. Only at the end, after both the love of her life and the arranged husband that she agreed to "look to like if looking liking lead" are dead does she succumb to despair and turn to the dagger. Of course, there's also the suspect that the high school version may have had all the good bits pulled out of it for space and {{bowdlerization}}.