Shakespeare, Harry Potter and Me, Gehayi

[gehayi]

I looked over the Shakespeare meme that's going around, but the problem with that is that it presumes that you've seen the plays both on stage and in the movies. I have never seen a Shakespeare play on stage or in the movies. The only adaptation of a Shakespeare play that I know I've seen is West Side Story. I've only ever read two plays for

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

I am baffled how so many people read R&J as being "true love." I see it totally differently, probably due to early exposure to an essay on the play by Isaac Asimov. Iirc, his argument something like this:

- R&J are quite obviously horny teenagers, and moreover (I think he mentioned this), in the source material Shakespeare was using, the whole point was that rebellious children are going to get themselves killed. Plus Romeo is also quite obviously fickle.

- The servants seem happy to brawl, and Tybalt takes the feud seriously (and by extension Juliet, since it's mentioned later that they were close and she probably believes what he tells her). But Montague and Capulet themselves don't seem that into it, to the point where when Romeo crashes the Capulet party, Capulet's response is basically, "Oh, I heard he's a good kid. Chill." Which suggests that the feud is winding down, and a timely marriage proposal might actually go over well and allow everyone to save face. But Juliet thinks her father would never go for it because OMG FEUD!!1! and Romeo is willing to indulge her romantic fantasies of secret marriage, because they're kids. (And it might not have worked out, but Capulet didn't know that at the time.)

- Friar Lawrence had several opportunities to say, "You know what? Maybe we should float this by your parents, I think they'd go for it." Or he could have gone to Prince Escalus before or after the marriage to explain the situation and have him try to sort it out. Or he could have kept Romeo in sanctuary instead of sending him out of reliable mail range. Or he could have stayed in that tomb and kept Juliet from stabbing herself.

- So basically, the kids are stupid, but it didn't need to end in multiple deaths if all the adults hadn't taught them they were supposed to be deadly enemies and then ignored all the brawling and such that made the kids think that sort of thing was normal. (Tybalt included.) They created a culture of casual violence, and it came back to bite them. And that's why the play ends with Escalus and the parents reconciling and saying, "Damn, this is all our fault. Let's be friends now" instead of stopping when R&J die.

In that light, it's a much more interesting play.

[gehayi]

Geez, I wish my teacher had presented it that way. Instead, she was all, "This is the epitome of romance and True Love!" Which I didn't believe, but at fourteen, I knew that teachers don't want to hear your opinion--they want to hear their own opinion echoed back. Preferably in their own words.

Yeah, I was rather cynical as a teenager.

Asimov's essay sounds familiar. I probably read it, as I read almost everything the man ever wrote. (Never could get through the Foundation Trilogy, though.)

[sunnyskywalker]

Like I said, it was good luck. I've heard more stories about your kind of English class, and I don't think my parents' English teachers taught much of anything.

I think I got through the trilogy when I was twelve or so, but don't remember much of it. Some of his short stories and essays are much more memorable to me.