In
the prologue to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the chorus declares:
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge, break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage—
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
It is interesting that the play begins with a spoiler, with the assurance that the love between Romeo and Juliet will certainly burn out and their fate is not the source of tension. We know from the very beginning that their deaths are the only thing that ends the conflict between their families. But even more so, the final statement about the things that are missed in the prologue is striking. The play does not work as just a summary. You need the details to truly make sense of it.
The criticisms of the play are easy and repeated frequently. Romeo is overdramatic. Juliet is just a child. They should have just told each other the plan. They're both narcissistic. They don't even know each other. They didn't need to die. They should just get over themselves. Watching (or reading) the play in this way is frustrating. A drawn out and exaggerated tragedy with little to admire.
But that’s not how Romeo and Juliet themselves experience the four days of the play.
When Juliet meets Romeo, she is thirteen years old. Romeo is assumed young, though his age is never actually stated, and licking his wounds from a fresh heartbreak. The attraction between Juliet and Romeo is immediate and all-consuming. They are secretly married within a day and die for their love within two more. For them, the time is both compressed and drawn out. Every moment they are together is breathless, every moment apart anguish. The juxtaposition of the violence between their families and the passion of their relationship heightens the stakes, forcing them to the extremes when Romeo kills Tybalt and is exiled, and Juliet is promised to Count Paris. Though short lived, it’s unfair to say their love is superficial. They love deeply enough that they are willing to give their lives for it.
The audience (or reader) that looks down their nose at Juliet and Romeo does not spare the lovers any grief. Instead, they spend the entire play being the villain. Denying the agency of the couple and failing to consider why they choose each other. Why they choose death rather than be parted. That audience that loses any chance to learn from the play.
Romeo and Juliet is not about mature love. It's not about how you make something last, and we are not supposed to think it is. The text clearly shows how these two lovers are making bad decisions. Instead, Romeo and Juliet doesn’t belittle falling in love and refuses to mock young lovers. It doesn’t argue that this is best or highest kind of love, and in fact explicitly argues against it. The play makes it very clear that this love is fickle, easily abandoned like Romeo's love for Rosaline, and that it has real potential to lead to disastrous outcomes if there aren't tempering forces. The play simply acknowledges that young love and obsession is real and can be deeply felt. And still as real and deeply felt even when people rush into it. Romeo and Juliet takes first love seriously, as seriously as those who are experiencing it.
And if we hope to understand our own young lovers, and avoid a tragic ending of our own, we ought to take it seriously as well.
image: Benjamin West, Romeo and Juliet, 1778
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