FREE ESSAY ON ROMEO O ROMEO

ROMEO O ROMEO

English 102 19 April 1999 Why Romeo and Juliet was so popular in Shakespeare's time and
why even today it is still so popular? William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 in
the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, England to Mary Arden and John Shakespeare. He was the
third of eight children. He went to a local grammar school, where his studies included
Latin and Greek (Debnam). At the age of eighteen he married Anne Hathaway who was eight
years older than he. Their marriage was hurried because Anne was already pregnant (The
Tragedies, 16). Shakespeare was the father of three children, two daughters and one son,
Hamnet. At this time, Shakespeare was twenty-one, and the way he supported his family is
unknown. In August of 1596, Hamnet died at the age of eleven (Shakespeare's History).
Stories say that Shakespeare began his career by holding horses outside the theaters.
More reliable information indicates that he acted in plays, many of his own. From acting
Shakespeare progressed to writing plays both for the theater and for court performances
(The Tragedies, 17). Shakespeare didn't attend college, so in order to broaden his
education, he studied the ways of a gentleman and read widely. He looked to
Cambridge-educated playwright Christopher Marlowe, as a mentor. Marlowe was the same age
as Shakespeare, but who preceded him in skillfully combining drama with poetry. In many
plays throughout his career, Shakespeare paid tribute to Marlowe, though ultimately he
eclipsed Marlowe as a dramatist (The Tragedies, 17). Shakespeare is the greatest
playwright the world has ever known. The thirty-seven plays he wrote more than 400 years
ago are the most popular on Earth. They are performed more often than those of any other
playwright. He also wrote sonnets, a kind of poem. Writing sonnets was thought to be much
more important than writing plays in Shakespeare's day (Debnam). By the time Shakespeare
turned thirty years old, he was an established actor and playwright in London. At the age
of thirty-three, he had not only written the early poems and the early plays, but in the
last three or four years half-a-dozen masterpieces: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and
Juliet, Richard II., King John, The Merchant of Venice, The Two Parts of Henry IV
(Shakespeare The Man, 382). When he was thirty-five, Shakespeare was a member of the
syndicate responsible for building the first Globe theater, in Southwark, in 1599
(General Into). From then on, Shakespeare was completely involved in the theater: He
wrote for the company, acted in the plays, shared in the profits, and eventually became
one of the owners of the Globe theater (The Tragedies, 19). This famous theater made him
wealthy, not his plays as some might believe, which he did not make much money from
(Debnam). In 1612, Shakespeare divided his time between Stratford and London. On March
25, 1616, while he was in fine health, Shakespeare made a will. A month later, after a
trip to London, he suddenly became ill and died on his birthday, at the age of fifty-two.
As he lay dying, the chapel bell knelled for the passing of his soul, for the man for
whom love was the center of the universe and the central subject of his many works (The
Tragedies, 27). Romeo and Juliet, which was Shakespeare's first tragedy, was first
printed in 1597. Upon this first printing it is described as 'An excellent conceited
tragedy' that had 'been often (with great applause) played publicly'. At this time the
play was already well known, in Italian, French, and English. Shakespeare owes most to
Arthur Brooke's long poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1592) (The Complete
Works, 335). He also may have looked and studied other versions of the play before
writing his own version of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is among the
most widely recognizable and most often read and studied Western literary classic. A
major reason for the play's continuing appeal is that its characters explore and express
a wide range of human emotions and experiences, especially those that deal with young
love (R&J, 12). This tragic play is cherished throughout many years because readers wish
to have some of the same qualities that both Romeo and Juliet acquire. Romeo is very
brave and cunning. He expresses his lover through his actions by never giving up hope and
staying faithful to his wife, whom he has been banished from. Even when he hears the
horrible news that his new wife is dead, he rushes to be by her side, despite being
banished by the prince of Verona to Mantua. Seeing her lying motionless inside the family
tomb makes him lose his strength and will to live. He swiftly pulls out a vile containing
poison and drinks it so that he may finally be allowed to spend eternity with Juliet, who
is still fast asleep unaware of what is happening to her husband. When she awakens and
sees Romeo laying at her side, dead, she loses her strength and will to live and kills
herself with his dagger. She does this because she knows love is a force stronger and
greater than death; she would rather die and be with Romeo than live and be without him.
There are many qualities of Romeo and Juliet that have kept the reader's appeal fresh.
The audience enjoys hearing about true love and how it will someday prevail. People want
to be able to relate to the couple's love for each other and repeatedly want to compare
it to their own love. Quite often people yearn to have a lifestyle like that of Romeo and
Juliet. For this reason, audiences will always continue to read about true love, and
although it may be heartbreaking, the reader enjoys hearing about situations they can
relate to. Romeo and Juliet is often compared to other Shakespearean works that were
written around the same time period. Some of these works include Richard II, Richard III,
and Kind John. Frank Harris does just this in The Man Shakespeare. He explains that:
...Romeo and Juliet seems to me to be far more characteristic of the poet's genius than
any of these histories; it is not only a finer work of art than any of them, and
therefore of higher promise, but in its lyrical sweetness far more truly representative
of Shakespeare's youth than any of the earlier comedies or historical plays (127).
Shakespeare expresses love and emotion so vividly in Romeo and Juliet, which makes it so
noteworthy and of a higher promise than any of his earlier works. Another critic, H. B.
Charlton, only considers Romeo and Juliet to be an experimental tragedy. He points out
that somehow or in some respects Romeo and Juliet fails to fulfil the function of
tragedy, or rather it gives less of the pleasure peculiar to tragedy than do
Shakespeare's greater tragic plays [sic] (Romeo and Juliet as an Experimental Tragedy,
4). He goes on to suggest that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has come down to us with a
physical feature attached to it which for Shakespearian tragedy is unique (Romeo and
Juliet as an Experimental Tragedy, 14). Cedric Watts, writer of Twayne's New Critical
Introductions to Shakespeare, believes that Shakespeare put too much emphasis the youth
of the lovers, tragic miscalculations, and the lacking of inevitability. In his book,
Watts illustrates this point with pin point accuracy. He explains that: It is obviously
true that the plot depends on seemingly random occurrences. For example: in Act 1,
Capulet entrusts the party invitations to a messenger who is unable to read; the
messenger therefore consults a passer-by, who just happens to be Romeo; Romeo thus learns
of the festivities, and decides to attend them in order to see Rosaline; and thus he
chances to encounter Juliet. In Act 3, Romeo seeks to part the combatants in the
street-fight, and the unintended result is that Mercutio, impeded by Romeo's arm, is
mortally stabbed by Tybalt. Above all, there is the absurd delay of Friar Laurence's
letter to Romeo: 'absurd' not only because the somewhat farcical obtrudes itself at a
crucial point but also because the playwright's arrangement of events here seems
uncharacteristically maladroit. Laurence entrusts his letter to Friar John ( a new
character introduced inelegantly late in the play), and hapless John is trapped for a
while in a house at Padua because there has been an outbreak of plague - an outbreak of
which there has been no mention previously. The chance event seems rather clumsily
contrived. Again, if Friar Laurence had arrived only a few minutes later, and if Juliet
had awakened only a minute sooner, the disaster might have been averted. Hence the
painful quality of the plotting in Act 5: we think, 'If only, if only...So near and yet
so far' (40). This does seem quiet strange that almost every consequential event is
disrupted by tragic miscalculations and chance events. If Shakespeare had not organized
his play this way the outcome effect would not have been the same. We would not have
gotten the feeling of If only, if only...So near and yet so far. The whole point of
arranging these events in this inevitable order is so that the play seems all the more
tragic to the audience. Charles Haines praises Romeo and Juliet in his book Immortals of
Literature, William Shakespeare and His Plays. He reminds us of the fact that Shakespeare
was a poet, and that he had a poet's knowledge of words and a playwright's understanding
of what the audience wants and combined this gave him a sort of sixth sense of combining
poetry with drama. Haines declares: [Romeo and Juliet] contains some of Shakespeare's
most beautiful lines. The names of Romeo and Juliet have become symbols all over the
world of young love. Although exquisite and moving, Romeo and Juliet is perhaps not among
Shakespeare's most profound tragedies. In the prologue to the play, Romeo and Juliet are
spoken of as star-crossed lovers, which is to say, persons caught in a web of destiny,
chance, and accident. Indeed, both Romeo and Juliet die as the result of an accident,
largely because a message had miscarried. It is impossible to trace a straight line from
the characters of Romeo and Juliet to their premature deaths. Both of them were, perhaps,
foolish, reckless, and ill-advised in some of their behavior, but their deaths were as
much due to accident as to the workings of their characters (74). Unlike Watts, Haines
does not relate every misfortune to a chance event, and he does not feel that is
possible. He both praises and slightly criticizes Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Although there are many qualities the play Romeo and Juliet posses that attract us to it,
the one that shines above all the rest is the everlasting love Romeo and Juliet have for
one another. They continue to show their love for one another from the first time they
meet to the last time they look at the other before committing suicide because they can't
imagine living in a world without the other. Their love for each other conquers all other
things, even life itself. This, along with many other characteristics that Romeo and
Juliet posses are what has kept us drawn to this play and plays like it for 400 years.
People will probably never get tired of a story of ever-lasting love, for it is what all
people wish to have in their lives. They desire to cast themselves as Romeo and Juliet so
they can experience what true love does to the mind, body, and soul.