Shakespeare in Love (and presumably lots of other scholars I haven’t read) picks this play as the moment when Shakespeare’s talent really began to flower – his first fully-fledged masterpiece. And while it’s hard to tell the exact order in which Shakespeare wrote his plays there’s definitely something to it. It’s an excellent story, with fleshed out characters that makes total sense. All the time and effort he spent on the love dialogues in Loves Labor Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Taming of the Shrew, means he handles the romances here effortlessly; the tragedy of his historicals means the story is strong.
I studied this at high school but hadn’t read it since then. Some things leaps out at me – the part of Benlovio is actually quite big in the play (they give a lot of his lines to Mercutio in adaptations); how young and silly the lead couple are (which makes the whole plot make a lot more sense); Romeo’s fickleness – one minute Rosalind, the next the barely-legal Juliet (NB this play has a sex scene and since Juliet is fourteen that makes it child pornography); Juliet’s sulky teen defiance, including threats of suicide (a scene right out of Summer Heights High); a bad taste scene involving wacky servants after Juliet fakes her death (this even involves a song – it’s almost always cut from productions); the presence of songs in the play (Shakespeare couldn’t help himself around this time, they were everywhere); Romeo kills Paris at the end (he’s loitering around the tomb); the fact the Friar arrives in between Rome’s death and Juliet’s (it’s one crowded tomb); the finale where the entire story is recapped. When all’s said and done this remains a wonderful play, passionate, melancholic and vibrant.
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