Friday, April 3, 2020
13 comments:
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I love the "Dreamers often lie" bit of dialogue. It has really great rhythm as well as showing the character's personalities. With all the poetry in Romeo and Juliet, and the really great rhythm that comes with, I wonder if it would make a great musical. Kind of reminds me of the novel, The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle because it also has big portions of poetic dialogue while keeping a longer narrative.
ReplyDelete-Deborah Majowka
A big part of what makes the line have a neat feel — and this is something I will discuss more next time — is that Mercutio and Romeo are, I am pretty sure, doing parts of the same iambic pentameter line (this is hard to see the way the copy I gave you is printed). Also last Unicorn is great! We are big fans in this house!
DeleteMy MAIN POINT about Romeo and Juliet is that SHE IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN HE IS, AT EVERYTHING.
ReplyDeleteVery excited for this lesson because I love to hate on the star crossed lovers (my Romeo and Juliet paradox). I’m hoping that you’ll change my opinion of them. Although I love the wordiness of the play and I really enjoy Shakespeare’s poetry throughout the play. I started watching the movie and I noticed the rhyming but I didn’t think anything of it... until now! Shakespeare is the man!!!
ReplyDeleteHere is my romeo and Juliet paradox: people think they are idiots because they go to fast but going too fast IS THE BEST THING ABOUT THEM EVEN THO THEY DIE BECAUSE OF IT
DeleteOh how i miss class!!! Just hearing you explain the movie to us be so awesome!!! I was looking forward to Romeo and Juliet. But why did Shakespeare make the friend so rude? But dreams often lie but sometimes it happens in life!
ReplyDeleteYou are probably nicer than I am but I have had lots of friends in my life that were like Mercutio — rude, but also boisterous and fun and entertaining!
DeleteJust would like to say that I get so sad watching these videos because I KNOW that in class, this discussion would be so fun and interactive. I am so upset, not only because there is a global health pandemic, but because I cannot go to Shakespeare class. Also, I totally did not google "Romeo and Juliet 1996 free" and illegally stream the movie. Though, had I did, I should be pardoned from any punishment due it being used for academic purposes. I miss this class and you :(
ReplyDeleteUgh I miss class so much its gonna be so sad if Fall 2020 is also online!
DeleteCurious your thoughts on how the ages of R and J may or may not be reflected in the language/poetry of the play. They very much act like teenagers, but do they talk like teenagers? Hard to imagine so. Even for wealthy and educated kids. I know times were different and the concept of the "teenager" is a relatively modern concept. I don't know though, they come across as so articulate and well read etc. She's only 13!
ReplyDeleteI mean they do not talk like i would think 13 year olds would talk but Shakespeare is not really naturalistic theater — teenagers in Hollywood movies also don’t talk like real teenagers and no one in real life speaks in iambic pentameter or spontaneously rhymes the way R&J do. I think people feel like there are fairy tales for kids where animals talk and there are realistic stories but there is a continuum between the two and and Shakespeare is somewhere between realistic and fairy tale so that the two of them are IN PART symbolic of the ideas and feelings of love without crossing over into cartoons. The words capture how people feel even tho it is not realistic — but neither is everyone doing a big dance number in a musical! The dance number is symbolic of a real explosion of feeling but it is not literally happening to the characters who generally don’t comment on how everyone knew the same dance moves or whatever.
DeleteHi! So I have seen the Romeo + Juliet version of the play and wanted to view the 1968 version for closer reference(as a Lana Del Rey fan, where they use the 1968 clips in a lot of her demo videos, it did not disappoint! Very Tumblr- which I guess is a Gen Z/Millennial way of calling something-old, chic). Anyways, watching the film after finishing the screenplay confirmed my thoughts on Mercutio’s ignorance. In my last semester we studied the Enlightenment period which reminded me symbolically of Mercutio and Romeo as two different schools of thought. Mercutio, I felt, represents convention and common-people, whereas Romeo represents the philosophes, seeking life beyond convention and questioning the very nature of convention itself. After all, he did list contrasting qualities that are more or less- the same difference.
ReplyDeleteI think that is a very useful way to think about it — but Juliet is the BEST philosopher!
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