Let’s look at Romeo’s poetry!
Monday, April 6, 2020
18 comments:
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I find it interesting that Mercutio and Romeo are such opposites yet both are very crafty with putting words together. I like that the implication that poetry is about being clever even if you're not a romantic.
ReplyDelete- Deborah Majowka
They are friends because of their love of words I imagine — but for Mercutio words are just words to play with whereas for Romeo they really take you to a higher heavenly sphere.
DeleteI agree with Romeo when it comes to dreaming. Personal story, months before my mother even found out she was pregnant with my younger brother I dreamt about her having a child and even the gender of the baby. So i can relate to Romeo on that.
ReplyDeleteAlso when Mercutio started speaking about the fairies, its quite interesting.Personally, I was more intrigued by Mercutio description of minor details than Romeo's love confession.
Forgot to put my name. -Jnette Leopold
DeleteI agree — I think Mercutio is much more interseting — although I will argue that Juliet is the most interesting of all.
DeleteThank you for the discussion about the difference between Shakespeare's poetry and plays. Specifically you spoke about the rhythm, the syllables following a pattern with a max of 10 syllables per line. In the scene you discuss the dream conversation between Romeo and his friend where they finish each other's sentences, I was just wondering if all of Shakespeare's poetry was structured this way? Were all writers at the time using this structure or was it specific to Shakespeare? My other thought is that due to the easy rhythm to latch onto, actors memorizing their lines would be helped by the formula.
ReplyDeleteMost of Shakespeare is set up with a ten syllable line where the weak and strong stress usually makes a pattern like alone-alone-alone-alone-alone. It was a very common thing and it DOES make it easier to remember. Great points!
DeleteI just want to leave a comment since I watched the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. I was anticipating Romeo and Mercutio's queen Mab interaction and the speech was cut. I guess that's what directors do with artistic license. Queen Mab ends up being some type of ecstasy pill. It seems odd that the director would change this one element to modernize the scene and show Romeo under the influence of drugs when he enters the Capulet party.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Matthew Morelli
One question I had reading the play was WHY does Mercutio go on such a gigantic unhinged speech to the point that his friend had to cut him off and tell him that he is talking nonsense. The director of the movie answered that question — they are on their way to a party so maybe they are doing drugs. The speech has such weird imagery it makes sense to think about it as being part of a drug trip also.
DeleteAm i right in thinking that’s the Romeo and Juliet season one thing does not use Shakespeare’s language? Cause that is kind of a deal breaker for me — I AM HERE FOR THE LANGUAGE!
ReplyDeleteDONT BE SORRY! Anything helps and I find the fact that there is a TV show fascinating! It makes me happy! It just makes it less useful in the classroom for me — but its still a great thing to watch!
ReplyDeleteI find this very interesting but I cant wait to hear more.
ReplyDeleteOk, so I have a thought on the Queen Mab thing. It only would only explain that there is a long speech here and necessarily the content of said speech BUT it could be a partial reason for the scene all together. It feels silly. Maybe I'm off though.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they needed more time for the other actors to get into their new costumes and have the set changed? We also need the audience to recognize the masked or disguised Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio. SO maybe he made them a scene out of necessity and then needed a speech to be little longer. It feels like a Midsummer speech and definitely lightens things up and the audience would love the cutting off of a dirty joke.
Shakespeare didn’t really have SETS and costumes were relatively minimal. Also I am split on how light it is — it seems like cause it is about Faeries but its also about how they get you pregnant and get soldiers to slit throats, so its kinda complicated. I wonder if the aim is because he had a fun crazy actor he wrote material for specificaly (if you have seen Shakespeare in Love the joke is that it is written to placate Ben Afflick who is playing like the Tom Cruise of Shakepseare’s England)
DeleteTo your point about how the cynic Mercutio is ironically the true poet in the play(not exactly what you said but que my next point), I noted in my last post about how Mercutio’s character felt like the character of a commoner who can only examine the world in the physical realm. Well in regards to poetry, Mercutio has a vantage point of being able to examine both Romeo’s point about love versus the selfish materialization of love in their(our) civilization(also in his view).
ReplyDeleteThere was a line in The Picture of Dorian Gray that I’ve always pondered, it relates to this, he wrote “A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize”. Which also makes me consider the notion of separating the man from the legacy, (an underscoring theme at the end of House of Cards). I used to think that sectoring off one group of ‘fine personalities’, like Romeo, from ‘great artists’, like Mercutio, was totally biased. I thought that the notion of having to choose between being ‘personally delightful’ or a ‘good artist’ was absurd. But the older I get the more I see how truly un-absurd it is, considering how much of ourselves we lose in trying to accomplish our own legacies.
That is an interesting issue — its one of the reason why I am not super ambitious: when I was I was kind of a JERK. So now I just try to chill and read books I enjoy and talk to people about those books! It’s way better!
DeleteI really like the contrast between Romeo and Mercutio’s concepts about love. I feel like they represent a crucial part in the translation of love. Mercutio represents the somatic characteristics of love such as the primal act of consummating a relationship. Whereas Romeo, evokes this higher sense of love. He represents the evolution of “primal love” and what it means emotionally to be in love. And I think it’s great that Shakespeare paired them together, in an essence they “belong” together.
ReplyDeleteQuick side note, I looked up the meaning of Mercutio’s name. Apparently it means mercury. That lead me down a rabbit hole and I looked up the astrological meaning of mercury which said: Mercury is the messenger of the gods in mythology. I found that to be interesting because Mercutio’s rant about queen Mab of the fairies and how they speak to you when you sleep.
An excellent point! Shakespeare is usually pretty good with names
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