YMMV / Romeo and Juliet

• Accidental Aesop: Messenger services need to be fast and reliable. The Downer Ending happened because Romeo didn't get the memo about the faked death on time.
• Adaptation Displacement:
  • Though Shakespeare's play is the most famous version of the story, variations on it existed prior to said play. See also Older Than They Think below. Notably, the poem The Tragical History of Romeus & Juliet had the lovers being slightly older, and the events unfolded over a period of several months.
  • Thanks to the more famous film adaptations, people are often shocked to discover that Juliet is only thirteen in the text. Most adaptations give her an Age Lift to be around fifteen or sixteen. Ironically the adaptations are more in line with the source material, where Romeo was twenty and Juliet eighteen. Shakespeare made her younger.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Academics and tropers are split over the play. Either Romeo and Juliet were in love, but died due to rushing into things and a lot of bad luck, or Romeo just wanted to get into bed with her, or Juliet was looking for a way out of marrying someone she doesn't like and out of her controlling family and Romeo happened to be that way. As far as most of the modern audience is concerned, it's the first one. It could also be argued that what Romeo and Juliet thought was true love was in fact just romantic infatuation intensified by Forbidden Fruit.
  • Rosaline rejecting Romeo due to having "forsworn to love". But was Rosaline genuinely choosing to be chaste or was she, a Capulet, saying that as a means to deter Romeo, a Montague, from pursuing her in order to keep herself safe from the son of her family's enemy?
  • And perhaps a factor in both their suicides is not just the death of the other partner, but the fact that they've had to grow up in an environment where people are regularly killing each other in the street, and simply looking at Juliet with starry eyes is enough to provoke Tybalt to violence. Romeo may want to die not just because he thinks life is worthless without his beloved, but because he's killed two people (his soliloquy before he takes the poison even has him saying he's punishing himself for killing Tybalt) and lost one of his best friends (both if you go by the Quarto that Benvolio dies too) - as well as being banished from his home and family for the former. Juliet likewise lost her cousin and was about to be forced into a marriage she didn't want, and felt betrayed by her parents and the Nurse (who was her confidant re: Romeo as well). Perhaps dying young seemed preferable to the hellhole that Verona seemed to be descending into.
  • Furthermore, after Romeo's death Juliet's plans to run away with him are scuppered and she would now have to explain to everyone how she's actually still alive and why a member of a rival family is lying dead in her tomb. Considering the amount of grief and stress she's already under – and possibly fear of potential repercussions from either the Montagues or her own family – maybe committing suicide rather than having to face that seemed like a better option to Juliet? Her future was likely ruined as well; in the absolute best case scenario, she'd end up in a convent. It's unsurprising she chose to die. Perhaps she also felt some guilt for making her family think she was dead All for Nothing now that Romeo had died too, and felt this was a fitting punishment for herself?
  • Friar Lawrence. Is he a kindly man of God, trying his best to help the two lovers live happily ever after? Or a Manipulative Bastard who knows full well how dangerous his plans are, but wants peace in his city and is willing to risk two children's lives for the greater good?
  • Tybalt is the closest thing the story has to a main antagonist, but in the Zeffirelli version, when his friends drag him away from his fight with Mercutio, you can see clear shock on his face as he realizes he has actually stabbed Mercutio, suggesting that most of his villainy was nothing more than posturing and that he never meant to really hurt anyone.
  • In the 1978 BBC Television Shakespeare version, following Romeo's line "Good Capulet, whose name I tender as dearly as mine own, be satisfied", Tybalt just turns and starts walking away without so much as a taunt or laugh. This effectively shifts much of his culpability for the ensuing fight onto Mercutio's shoulders, making the latter come across as something of an Asshole Victim.
  • Paris can vary in characterization depending on how the production presents him. Some will show him as a Jerkass to justify Juliet fleeing her proposal, while others could show him just as yet another victim in the feud. Notably his role in the play is to be an obstacle preventing the lovers from being together, yet not out of any maliciousness of his own. Of course since he's especially keen to marry the thirteen-year-old, there's another possibility...
  • A good case can be made for the play's true villain being Lady Capulet. Lady Montague at least seems like she would rather the feud be over with, but Lady Capulet's spiteful reaction to Tybalt's death is to demand Romeo's death as well - ignoring that Tybalt killed a man himself (after he was warned by the Prince). She also gets a scene where she plots to murder Romeo herself via poisoning - suggesting she's happy to keep influencing the younger generation to keep the violence going. Not to mention that she's such a neglectful mother to Juliet, she pretty much admits she needs the Nurse there (as she understands Juliet better). Juliet tries to appeal to her to at least delay the unexpected marriage with Paris, but it falls on deaf ears - when she herself should know how horrible it was to be such a young mother.
  • Juliet's marriage to Paris is moved up right after Tybalt is killed. Considering the laws of England at the time (despite the Italian setting, it was a Purely Aesthetic Era in Shakespeare's case), the Capulets have no male heir to speak of; Juliet is the only direct descendant and, depending on how the estate is entailed, Tybalt may have inherited everything before Juliet as the closest male relative. So in the event of Lord Capulet dying suddenly (and since he tries to join the fight in the first scene, that's a very real possibility), the property could go to an even more distant male relative and leave his wife and daughter at the mercy of whoever that is. So after having lost one potential heir, Lord Capulet may have advanced the marriage out of panic (he's reluctant about it earlier on).
    • Another possible motive for this is to get himself and his family back in the Prince's good books after making him furious with yet another brawl that killed one of his own kin. (With one ceremony, they get an alliance with the Prince, the potential of a new heir for the family, AND get one up on the Montagues.)
  • Lady Montague is such a minor character that she can be interpreted in a few different ways too; some even painting her as the Only Sane Man compared to her husband. She dies offstage after the news of the double suicides. Is the death brought on by heartbreak at her son's banishment? Is it guilt that she couldn't do more to stop the feud? Or is she thinking of the poor Capulet girl who became her daughter-in-law and killed herself without her even knowing?
• Angst Dissonance: Hmm, you're thirteen and being married off to a man who's not only much older but you've never even met - and this marriage decides the fate of your estate and entire family, so there's no getting out of it? And then your cousin dies, and the boy you do like has to get banished because of it? Stupid girl should have just done what her parents ordered.
• Anvilicious: The two titular lovers are rushing into a relationship under the long shadow of their feuding houses, the Montagues and Capulets are pointlessly making their lives miserable over the sake of a petty feud, Romeo gets Mercutio killed when he won't just come out and say what's happened to Tybalt, and Poor Communication Kills is everywhere. Had anybody sat down and talked things out, there would be no play. But then again, There Are No Therapists and wars have been started over less in real life. However, that's the point; the main theme is about what happens when people allow their petty feuds to destroy those they care about, regardless of the sides they're on.
• Base-Breaking Character: While Mercutio is often considered the highlight of the play, you'll find just as many people who find him a painful vehicle for a showboat ham actor.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The Zeffirelli version's most famous scene is the Romeo and Juliet nudity - coming from a sex scene that is only implied in the play. Also is the urban legend that Olivia Hussey was refused into the premiere for being too young to see her own nude scene.^note This is likely a false story - as Olivia was sixteen by the time of the premiere and therefore of legal age to view movie nudity. And even if she had been underage, she could legally have seen the film if a parent or guardian were with her.
• Cliché Storm: Even when it was written, the story had been told in various other forms.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Tybalt sometimes receives this treatment. Especially when he's portrayed by a sufficiently attractive or charismatic actor. In the Zeffirelli version, he's played by a young Michael York and given an Adaptational Nice Guy, where he is shocked to have actually killed Mercutio. Alan Rickman has also played the role. In the 1978 version, almost literally, as he's dressed in tight-fitting black pants, with sharply tailored jackets and... very tight vest tops.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Rosaline is the most triumphant example because she does not even appear in the play! She is by far one of the most popular characters in fanon. Countless spin-offs feature her with a greatly increased role or straight up make her the main character.
  • Queen Mab, in a way, even more than Rosaline. Not only does she not appear, in the context of the story, she's probably not even real, and is only mentioned in a borderline Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. Within a few short years, however, she was showing up in other works of literature, and even today you're likely to see "Queen Mab" in a story about fairies. It's interesting to compare her to Titania, another apparent Shakespeare creation, who's about as popular despite having the advantage of being, y'know, an actual character.
  • Mercutio, who has all the good lines in the early part of the play, making it more jolting when he's killed. His legendary show stealing potential has made him the most popular character of the piece.
  • The Nurse is one of the funniest side characters, and many actresses would rather play the Nurse than Juliet. This is lampshaded in an episode of Pepper Ann where PA gets cast as the Nurse and - initially annoyed at not being Juliet - soon realises what a great part the Nurse is.
  • Benvolio is quite popular for a character that vanishes at the same time Mercutio dies, and even before then only appears in scenes to react to other characters. But he's beloved for being the Only Sane Man and Romeo's playful Deadpan Snarker best friend. Productions and adaptations will usually find a way to feature him in more scenes towards the end.
  • Tybalt's role is actually fairly small on paper, but he's nevertheless quite popular due to his intense, badass nature and the way he completely alters the plot. Most versions will showcase him more with extended duels, and often hinting at more depth than is first apparent.
• Fanon:
  • Mercutio is Camp Gay. There's nothing in the text that explicitly suggests this, but a number of adaptations have taken this interpretation and ran with it.
  • Rosaline is - along with Benvolio - one of the only sane characters in the play and made the right choice in rejecting Romeo's advances. Everyone else is either feuding or eloping. Rosaline does not make an appearance in the play but this interpretation may actually be canon as Father Lawrence even says that Rosaline knew that Romeo's love for her was not genuine.
  • Strangely, for a character who doesn't even appear in the play, both fanfictions and published adaptations have portrayed Valentine as an agoraphobic recluse, both to justify his absence at the Capulet party and make him a counterpoint to Mercutio.
  • Another common interpretation is that Mercutio is the unworthy heir to Prince Escalus and was raised by him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of Juliet's lines in Act 2, Scene 2 is "Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say 'ay'." Read this with knowledge of a conversation in Dragon Quest, in which the princess also asks "Dost thou love me?" and serves as the Trope Namer for But Thou Must!.
• Ho Yay: Mercutio/Romeo, Mercutio/Benvolio.
• Intended Audience Reaction: Any of the Squick involved in Juliet, who's only about to turn fourteen, being expected to get married soon was intentional. In the source material, the Juliet figure tended to be between sixteen and eighteen, and Shakespeare made her younger specifically for the sake of An Aesop against child marriage. In England at the time, although it wasn't uncommon for noblewomen to be married at twelve it was largely understood that they wouldn't begin having sex and bearing children until they were at their late teens at the very earliest (because of the very real danger in the birthing bed to underage women) - therefore Paris' argument that 'younger than she are happy mothers made' would have been seen as every bit as disturbing by a Tudor audience as a modern one.
• Iron Woobie: The Nurse. Despite having lost her husband, daughter, surrogate daughter and very close kinsman, she is possibly the least angsty character in the play. Her Woobie status is even bigger in the original tale, where she gets banished after the death of the lovers. And while she doesn't appear in the last scene, she is bound to be riddled with guilt when she discovers how she failed Juliet when her mistress needed her the most. The 1968 film shows her reaction, where she's stoic but clearly still heartbroken.
• It Was His Sled: Mercutio dies. The titular couple dying at the end isn't this trope - it's a Foregone Conclusion, since it's stated right in the opening narration that both of them are going to die.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The balcony scene has some of the most famous lines in the English language, including "Wherefore art thou Romeo?", "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," "What light through yonder window breaks?" and "Parting is such sweet sorrow." That last line is widely used and quoted to express a pair of lovers who have to leave each other for a time.
  • Two pairs of last words have become popular: Mercutio's "A plague o' both your houses!" and Romeo's "Thus, with a kiss, I die."
  • Lord Capulet's interestingly-worded admonishment of Tybalt, "You are a saucy boy." It's often paired with "What, you egg!" from Macbeth as a dialogue, probably because of those lines both being inherently funny.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Harley Granville-Barker best sums up the tale as "a tragedy of youth as youth sees it". This makes it pretty inevitable that the reception of the story largely relies/is colored by audience perception—of whether Teens Are Monsters, most are just Troubled Teens or everyone in between.
  • Thanks to Mainstream Obscurity and a misreading of what the term "Star-Crossed Lovers" means, a number of people think that Romeo and Juliet is the most romantic love story ever written, with the play's title becoming a synonym for "a very good romantic couple". The play itself is very critical of Romeo and Juliet's relationship, mostly owing to the two of them being lovestruck teenagers who are in way over their heads and making a bad situation even worse. The relationship moves absurdly fast, from "I just met you at a party" to "you are my undying love, marry me" in less than two days, and the Downer Ending where both of them die entirely preventable deaths due to an abysmally bad attempt at explaining exactly what was going on. Far from presenting it as the ultimate love story, the play is instead quite critical of their lovestruck relationship that wasn't all that thought out.
  • Also, there are some people who use Romeo and Juliet as an analogy for even the most mundane problem in their own relationships, ignoring the tragic theme of the play.
  • On the other hand, some people go too far in the other direction and assert it's not actually a love story, just a story of two stupid teenagers who should have listened to their parents, even though those parents are too busy fighting a completely pointless feud to really do any sort of parenting, which is a big cause of why Romeo and Juliet's relationship is doomed. This also discounts that their lines about being in love are some of the best poetry Shakespeare's written. Romeo and Juliet mishandled their love for each other, but they did love each other (as much as two teenagers who barely met could, at any rate). While Romeo and Juliet might have been acting foolishly, they wouldn't have had to if it weren't for their two families needlessly complicating things.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Depending on how it's staged, Tybalt crosses it by killing Mercutio with a cheap shot, thus setting off a chain of events leading directly to the Downer Ending. This is softened in some adaptations, including the Zeffirelli version, where Tybalt kills him accidentally while trying to knife Romeo (who was trying to intervene) and is somewhat horrified upon realizing who he had wounded. It should be noted that the original script doesn't specify how deliberate it was or who he was trying to stab, just that Mercutio was stabbed under Romeo's arm.
  • Lord Capulet arguably crosses it when he forces Juliet to marry Paris just to gain political power or favor. He'd been uncomfortable with how quickly Paris wanted the marriage at the start of the play, but he basically orders his thirteen-year-old child to suck it up and do it. In the Zeffirelli version he screams abuse at her, and manhandles her at one point. From this point on, Juliet feels her only other option is death, until Friar Laurence convinces her otherwise. Lord Capulet - and indeed his wife too - made their child think death and running away were her only options.
• Narm: The swordfight between Romeo and Paris ends with the latter getting fatally stabbed. Before he dies, Paris shouts "Oh, I am slain!"
• Older Than They Think:
  • It was not uncommon for Shakespeare to "borrow" his plots from other works. The story of Romeo and Juliet was heavily based on a poem by the English poet Arthur Brooks called The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet. Brooks in turn got the story from a number of Italian and French novellas about Romeo/Romeus and Juliet/Julietta/Giulietta, in turn apparently based on oral and written traditions. These works in turn bear many similarities to the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe" in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which Shakespeare used as a Play Within a Play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In some older versions, Juliet survives the story and becomes a nun.
  • The backdrop of the feuding families, if not also the story of the doomed lovers, may have been loosely based on fact. Around three centuries before Shakespeare, Dante mentioned the feuding families Montecchi and Cappelletti in Purgatorio.
• Ron the Death Eater: Some fans tend to be a little too hard on the two lovers. Romeo and Juliet are essentially two kids who want to date and get to know each other better. But because of the stupid feud that their elders have prolonged, they're forced to do some rash and stupid things in the hopes of being together. The Aesop that the young often have to suffer for the mistakes of the old tends to be lost on people who just blame the kids. Not to mention that Juliet is only thirteen and being married off to someone she doesn't even know.
• Signature Scene:
  • The balcony scene is one of the most often quoted, referenced and parodied scenes in any of Shakespeare's plays. Say "what light through yonder window breaks" and 99% of people will get the reference at once.
  • Romeo and Juliet committing suicide isn't quite as iconic, but it's nevertheless a legendary moment that's been spoiled for everyone before seeing or reading the story. Though of course, the play itself spoils this in the first scene.
  • And coming in behind that, Tybalt and Mercutio's duel, specifically the death of the latter, if only because it cements the major change in tone and story.
• Strangled by the Red String: The play is legendary for how fast the romance unfolds, with Romeo going from Wangsting about Rosaline to being madly in love with Juliet over just one day. And the two lovers marrying the very next! But it can be argued that the entire point of Romeo & Juliet is for the romance to be sudden - because the circumstances they're in don't allow for a healthy courtship period, and every romantic scene is already played somewhat for Dramatic Irony, since the prologue tells the audience the two are going to die. The story's tragedy is that the two never get the chance to fall in love healthily and properly, because both face certain death if they're discovered. Unsurprisingly the story is subject to misinterpretations that claim it's a manual on how to have a relationship or the other extreme of a parable on shallow teenage lust. It's worth noting that the poem Shakespeare based the story on had the romance unfolding over a longer period of a few months.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Benvolio abruptly vanishes halfway through the play and never factors into the final act at all. It's telling that a lot of productions have him delivering the lines from random Montagues in the final scenes. According to the Quarto 1 version, he died offstage. His exit was to escort Mercutio to the surgeon.
• Too Cool to Live: Mercutio. Legend goes that Shakespeare once claimed that he "had to kill Mercutio before Mercutio killed him." This is referenced in Shakespeare in Love, where Shakespeare tells the Large Ham leader of the acting company (Ben Affleck) that Mercutio is the lead while the play is still a work in progress.
• Uncertain Audience: The 2013 movie version, adapted for the screen by Julian Fellowes. It drew criticism for not only rewriting most of Shakespeare's lines in some way but also mixing in his own, in spite of the movie going for an "authentic" presentation otherwise with an Italian Renaissance setting akin to the acclaimed 1968 movie version. The intent was to make it easier for modern audiences to relate to. But modern audiences, especially educators, deemed it too seriously compromised as an adaptation and near-useless as a teaching tool for people learning about the actual play, and the educators/experts in turn did/could not recommend the movie to younger audiences who might be interested. Such younger audience members could just (or were encouraged to) turn to the 1968 and even the modernized-setting-with-guns 1996 versions instead, which made far less changes to the text in comparison. And on top of everything, direct Shakespeare adaptations are a bit of a hard sell to younger audiences these days who often first see such adaptations in a school context. The movie was ultimately a box office bomb.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Juliet is only thirteen and already getting married, not to mention her parents are trying to push her into an Arranged Marriage (whether she wants it or not). Whilst the brawls and murders are treated with some gravity, the idea that characters would be easily carrying swords around and killing each other off at the drop of a hat would, likewise, be unthinkable today. Some modern adaptations have the rival families be criminal gangs that would be more inclined to carry weapons and kill at a moment's notice in order to mitigate the latter.
  • Although it's important to keep in mind that a lot of the talk about Juliet's marriage was meant to come off as awful, especially all that jazz about how thirteen-year-olds having babies is awesome. Elizabethans knew darn well that younger than she happy mothers are not made, even without the benefit of modern medicine. Girls of Juliet's high social status certainly married that young for economic or political reasons (see below), but it would have been considered at the very least stupid if not immoral to actually consummate the marriage before a few years had passed. Hell, it's also in the text as Juliet's father is really off-put by Paris' desire to marry Juliet and says they should wait a couple of years at least.
  • Some modern viewers also tend to miss the gravity of Juliet's betrothal to Paris. A betrothal was essentially a business merger - and it meant that the Capulets stood to gain either money or political favour by marrying Juliet to Paris. Juliet refusing to marry him is not simply turning down a date she doesn't like; it's deciding the fate of their entire estate and family. That is what Lord Capulet is so furious about when Juliet tries to delay the marriage.
• Values Resonance: The moral of the story that parents end up passing on their mistakes to their kids is a timeless one, as is the plot of teenagers Dating What Daddy Hates - and the disastrous results. That's one of the many reasons this play has endured over the years.
• The Woobie:
  • The main couple, and also Benvolio qualifies; he's the voice of reason among his friends and he has his cousin banished from Verona after the latter kills Tybalt in revenge for Mercutio.
  • Mercutio can also be this depending on how he's played. The Zeffrelli film version of the Queen Mab speech ends with Mercutio in a dark square, angrily shouting at no one in particular, possibly having a panic attack, and when Romeo comes to calm him down he looks absolutely pitiful. Some interpret it as Mercutio lashing out at a society that strangles those who are different, while others say he's spouting anti-love rhetoric because he's been burned a few too many times. Yet others think he's grappling with romantic feelings for Romeo. It's highly implied that he's suffering from either bipolar disorder or paranoid schizophrenia.
• Woolseyism: The Vietnamese version of the balcony scene changes the reference to the moon and the vestal livery into Chang'e (a Chinese moon goddess) being envious and the robes of spirit mediums.

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