Words by Allyson

In the prologue to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the chorus declares:

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

Dear Bill,

Can I call you Bill?  I hope so.  I also hope you won't think I'm strange when I say that I love you.  Very much.  Thank you for some of the most interesting, insightful pieces of literature I've ever read. This spring term, I took a class about you.  We read six comedies (The Tempest and Measure for Measure were my favorites).  This means I have some catching up to do on your tragedies and histories, but that's fine by me.

How do you do it?  How do you take the most complex, inexpressible emotions and thoughts and articulate them so simply and eloquently?  How do you make me conflicted over whether a play is a comedy or tragedy, I mean those are opposites right?  How do you make me want to strangle a character, and simultaneously pity him?  It's frustrating and wonderful because I sit there, determined to make these things out, and at the end I still come to no conclusions.  Other than, "well that's a really tough question."

I love your wit. Your charm.  The way you play with the meaning of words so that entire scenes hinge on one pun.  I love that you often put the moral of the play in the mouth of a minor character.  Your sonnets are absolutely beautiful.

But maybe my favorite thing about your plays is the way that you make me want to do something.  To change my behavior, to think more carefully, to tell everyone about your plays and work the morals out until I'm exhausted.  I love that you make me want to actively engage with the texts and with the world around me.

So thank you.  Thank you so much.

Best,

Allyson Austin

Today I was daydreaming about going to Paris.  I'm sure that someday in the future I'll end up there, but not for the foreseeable future.  And so today, in my mind, I planned my trip.

I found a flight for tomorrow from SLC and a hotel on Champs-Elysees for a week (because if it's a daydream, I'm obviously going to have the best).

"And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays."
                                                                             - William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

image via

This week was all sorts of wonderful and insane.  It consisted of:

1 embarrassing meeting with a professor and a completed Shakespeare paper.

Online window shopping at Barneys.

3 Chocolate chip cookies during a study group meeting.

John Denver, Neil Diamond, and Simon & Garfunkel. And this song on repeat for the past two days.

The Provo Bakery. Best decision ever and looking for an excuse to go back.

5 morning workouts with Sister, even though today's got cut short.

Running into old friends at institute.

Lots of laughs and long talks in 14.

Panda Express.

1 bedroom that desperately needs cleaning.

1 Game night with some pretty awesome people.

1 delicious barbecue . . . and I'm realizing just how much food came up in this post.

And 2 blog posts.
image via