Greenblatt Intro to Romeo and Juliet (Christine Ahn)
May be the most well-known play among Shakespeare’s work,
Romeo and Juliet, is not definitely original work of Shakespeare. The story of
two lovers with star-crossed fate due to rivalry of two families was popular
subject back then. Heavily borrowed from Arthur Brooke’s Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, Shakespeare attempts to
transform a story that was told by other writers over and over into something
rich and flavorful. Though Shakespeare follows the main outline of Brooke’s
narrative, he makes several changes to intensify theatrical factors.
One of the important changes Shakespeare had made would be
messing with time. Juliet was sixteen in Brooke’s version of Romeus and Juliet
while she’s only thirteen in Shakespeare’s. Also, in Brooke’s version, the
story took 9 month to develop and to end and in Shakespeare’s play, they meet
and fall in love and die in less than a week! Greenblatt explains this
too-young-to-be heroine as a young girl suddenly awakening to passionate desire
against the will of her family, throwing herself into irresisti1ble fire like a
moth. The writer of this play does not stop here- he erases possible fantasies,
making the dead lovers to be rejoined in happier afterlife. “Here, here will I
remain, with worms that are thy chambermaids.”
Noticeably, the play throws in an important idea of ironic
nature of the word. Famous line of “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”
is a good example of this ironic situation. Only if Romeo’s name is an
arbitrary sign, can her love be realized, comments Greenblatt. But with words
being arbitrary, their love, composed of words, is nothing but list of
meaningless words.
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