Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (The Connell Guide To ...)

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (The Connell Guide To ...)

Romeo and Juliet is routinely called â€œthe worldâ€™s greatest love storyâ€, as though it is all about romance. The play features some of the most lyrical passages in all of drama, and the lovers are young, beautiful, and ardent. But when we look at the play, the lyricism and the romance are not really what drive things along. It is true that Romeo, especially early on in the play, acts like a young man determined to take his place in an immortal tale of love. Everything he says is romantic â€“ but rather like an anniversary card is romantic. His words propel nothing, or nothing but sarcastic admonitions from his friends to forget about love and to treat women as they should be treated, with careless physical appetite. The world we have entered is rapacious more than romantic. Everyone knows something of this, from the film versions of the story if nothing else. Romeo and Juliet must fight for their love inside a culture of stupid hatreds. But it is not a simple case of love versus war, or the city against the couple. If it were, it would nicely reinforce clichÃ©s about true love, fighting against the odds. In this book Simon Palfrey suggests that the play Shakespeare actually wrote is more troubling than this. Julietâ€™s passion â€“ for all her youth, for all its truth â€“ is at the very cusp of murderousness. Juliet is the worldâ€™s scourge, in the sense that she will whip and punish and haunt it; she is also its triumph, in the sense of its best and truest thing. The deaths her love leads to are in no way avoidable, and in no way accidental. They are her inheritance, the thing she was born to. Of course she takes Romeo with her. But it is at heart her play.
Country USA
Brand Connell Publishing
Manufacturer Connell Publishing
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber Illustrations
ReleaseDate 2018-09-01
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781907776083

Country	USA
Brand	Connell Publishing
Manufacturer	Connell Publishing
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	Illustrations
ReleaseDate	2018-09-01
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781907776083