Juliet was 14 and Romeo probably just a few years older! Little wonder that both of them ended up dead by the end of the play.
The political violence of Verona – the feuding clans, a weak ruler and the rivalry spilling on to the streets, is too hard to miss. Both the adaptations that I watched, di Caprio’s 1996 version and the horrible one by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, are centered on this violence.
Known to be one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, its hard to miss the humour throughout the play. Had it not been for their tragic deaths, this could have ranked as one of his best comedies!
The most impressive lines in the play are Romeo and Juliet’s first conversation. Written as a sonnet, Shakespeare employs the metaphor of pilgrims, saints, palms, and hands as a buildup towards their first kiss. When it finally arrives, Juliet delivers a delicious compliment: “You kiss by the book.”
And he also has advice for parents who lose their minds when their children marry for love:
Oh, in this love, you love your child so ill
That you run mad, seeing that she is well.
She’s not well married that lives married long,
But she’s best married that dies married young.
Words worth remembering for a class and caste conscious society such as ours!
The Shakespeare Project so far: Macbeth | The Tempest | The Merchant of Venice | Twelfth Night | As You Like It | Much Ado About Nothing | King Lear | Hamlet | Julius Caesar | Antony and Cleopatra | Coriolanus | A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Othello | The Comedy of Errors
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