...I mean as far as I'm concerned people who treat Romeo and Juliet as a great big heterosexual love story are doing a greater violence to the text than any slasher ever could, so have at it.
Angus - can you exand on this please? I thought it was a hetrosexual love story - though not neccesarily one favorable to love. Part of the Elisibethan morality was that you married as a business deal, and took lovers on the side for sex (except for the lower who classes who married as a business deal that included sex; i.e. lower classes probably wouldn't have a great many chances for lovers on the side - so you were supposed to marry someone you were sexually compatible with.) Love, especially love that ignored the business side of marriage was a madness and a tragedy. Of course R&J has additional layers of irony - because if the M's and C's had not been so busy pursing their crazy feud, they would have seen a Romeo/Juliet marriage as a good business deal, and a chance to end the really insane war.
I thought the pseudo hip-hop/rock Romeo and Juliet that was tried a few years ago actually had a good concept. It was unfortunately executed like crap and with poor direction , and (IMO) a really bad choice of cast - but I think the idea was a good one - not just the rival families as American Gangs (after all that goes back to West Side Story) but the idea of this as a small madness within a large madness; I really think that was faithful to the orginal.
Yes, I pretty much thought it was a heterosexual love story too.
t /naive
I also liked Lurman's R&J. And I thought the cast was good. Although I was sorry the Nurse's best lines got cut.
Oh, I just assumed he meant it was a fucked up and crazy "love" story! Not that the het-ness was in question. Angus?
I heart this thread..
Everything from Buffy to Shakespeare via Jondalar and chinois and aging necrophilic dwarves and inisipip posh twits and chocolate bikkies, then back again.
The Buffistas World's contracted thus.
t /board love. Must go monday.
There were aging necrophiliac dwarves? How did I miss this?
In my opinion, R&J is more about "Look what a pair of nitwits they are!" (a la Anthony and Cleopatra) than about Twoooo Wuuuuuv. Painfully young (even by Elizabethan terms) idiots are carried away by forces they ought to resist.
Your Shakespeare May Vary.
Having finished watching the Manor/Edwardian House, I have to say that future generations, when asking "What's a git, daddy?" will be directed to videos of "Sir" John Oliff-Cooper.
I'm just starting watching "Manor House", so one episode in I'm mostly reeling at the missing scullery maid. I can't wait until the next ep.
I'm amazed they could find anybody to do that job. In Edwardian times it was scull or starve. Nowadays, it's scull or live with your mum and eat takeout Indian.
Not difficult, that.
You'll see soon enough why the scullery maid who stays does so. Hint: it isn't the working conditions.
How much did they know before they showed up? Was that girl really extraordinarily stupid? The first one, I mean ... did one of the footmen have anything to do with the second one?
In my opinion, R&J is more about "Look what a pair of nitwits they are!" (a la Anthony and Cleopatra) than about Twoooo Wuuuuuv. Painfully young (even by Elizabethan terms) idiots are carried away by forces they ought to resist.
Crazy nitwits Betsy. I think theme of madness iin R&J is essential. I suspect that to Shakespeare who as a man of his times must have seen passion as an almost physical force, the mad passion of Romeo and Juliet for one another was not a contrast to, but an expression of the mad passionate hatred of the two houses for one another. The philosophy and science of the day was all about balance of humors. I suspect that in Elisabethean times it would seem the most natural thing in the world for an unbalanced, unrestrained hatred between families to express itself in an equally unbalanced unrestrained loved between two dimwitted members of those same families.
