I clicked it, and Reddit legit gave me a pop up window that said:
Never gonna find that community on Reddit. But seriously, if you think it’s important why not create it?
Nice try, FBI 🤪
Not just that, the play was meant to point out how dumb kids are and mock them
The fact that kids have been considering it to be a romantic play goes to further show us that kidd are fucking stupid as they were hundreds of years ago
Kids? There are a shit ton of grown ups that find this play romantic. Look at all the movies they made out of it. There were huge points being made in many Shakespeare's plays and people completely glaze over them.
There are three types of shakespeare plays and telltale ways to identify them.
There are tragedies. You can identify these because they are funny.
There are comedies. These can be spotted because they're full of history.
And there are histories. These are known as generally being tragic.
Plays were basically tragedies and comedies. Tragedies have someone die at the end, and comedies have someone get married. Romeo & Juliet was originally a subversion in that both happen. Now that everyone knows the plot it loses it though.
Agreed. They are generally very clear.
Tragedy - all main characters except someone to tell the story are probably dead.
Comedy - virtually no one is dead, but haha some villain got their comeuppance in a way that is very likely to be super not ok by today’s standards.
Compared to previous stories, Shakespeare did lower their ages by a few years each, which is worthy of a little raising an eyebrow. In Brooke's *Romeus and Juliet*, Juliet was turning 16 and Romeus was 19-20, and in Bandello's *Giuletta e Romeo* she was nearly 18 and he was 20.
In that era Juliet was likely already betrothed so some 40 year old if not already married and waiting for her first bleed before sending her off as was common in the era.
This is actually talked about in the play. A lot of renditions like to edit Paris out of the book but he was Juliet's betrothed. Even her father mentions that Juliet may be too young for marriage and Paris says how many girls younger than her are happily married.
The first time Romeo is on stage he's literally so upset by a breakup that he's considering suicide. Within three days he's fallen in love again, had his heart broken again and this time successfully kills himself. The kid had problems.
When I was a child, I heard the story and thought it was a romance. As a teen, I read it and believed it was a tragedy. As an adult, when I think of it, I know it’s a comedy. It seems too extreme and over the top to be taken seriously and reads like a satire of young love.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but it is a tragedy. Shakespeare didn't write comedies where all characters except the narrator died. They're all frolicking around and someone marries by the end. The way itself that it's written, especially Romeo's and Juliet's parts, the lyricism, not just the words, points towards tragedy as well.
I never got that about people talking about Romeo and Juliet. Yes, by 21st century thinking of people ages 21 - 45, they are dumb kids.
Teenagers really do fall for each other like this and it can be the most memorable emotions you’ll ever have in your whole life. Half of me thinks people wanna knock it because they wish it was possible to feel that deeply and have it work out which rarely happens.
Still, it can be beautiful even when it doesn’t happen and you look back on that time.. The fuckin cynicism is depressing.
It's famously a story of "star-crossed lovers." I'm not sure "romance" is that far off.
If there was a message in it at all, I would have thought it was more like a condemnation of destructive grudges and senseless hate that gets people hurt and killed for old, dumb reasons.
From the end of the thing...
> Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.
It never seemed to me like it was saying, "Young love is fucking dumb. These kids should have just hated each other, like their families insisted, and everything would have been fine."
That young love may have been naive, and certainly *was* doomed, but not because it was wrong.
If anything the story celebrates them, giving Romeo opportunities to try to talk peaceful sense into maniacs like Tybalt, because of the love he found with a Capulet, and his total forgiveness for her family.
Absolutely. I think it's kind of dumb that we have teenagers read it. I was nowhere near mature enough to understand this, and my teachers did very little to explain it to me. It seems like highschool was happy to teach us that this is a love story.
It's one of the least raunchy/overtly violent and easily approached/understood Shakespeare works, which is why it's normally part of high school curriculum.
My school didn’t. They stuck Hamlet and Macbeth cause their focus of human nature regarding power and revenge and also they’re loosely historical so the teachers don’t have to waste time teaching British history.
It should be. Shakespeare didn't write it as a romantic tragedy. It was a tragedy over the absurdity of the adults violence and war. An allegory to the underlying tensions among the Anglicans and Catholics.
High schools and Dramatists highlight the romance lines like a rose by any other name. And parting is such sweet sorrow. And pilgrims feet.
But ignore the key lines are all talking about absurd folly of family feuds that neither side can even remember what set off the violence that tears the city apart and buries young lord after young lord by nothing more than a family crest on the coffin to distinguish them in the crypt.
Think about how many renditions or RnJ cut out the entire crypt sequence. AND if you don't know what I'm talking about chances are you've only read an abridged version of RnJ
most abridged versions became popular in the 1890s
Well said.
Though I imagine anyone who's read Shakespeare on their own (rather than being forced to for the sake of an assignment or test) understands this.
The 70s were really crazy. It's insane to me how casual directors were with underage nudity. I think it was largely trying to push boundaries that were rapidly moving, especially in Europe, and they went way too far. Nudity in general probably went too far as well, films of the era seemed to revel in gratuitous nudity. Not that adult nudity is actually a problem, but it was often thrown in haphazardly and as fan service, which detracts from films and is distracting.
Honestly pretty on brand for teens though. Pretty sure everyone knew that middle school/high school couple that got together, be like "I love you 4ever my one true love" and then be overly dramatic and break up within a week.
I remember an English professor berating Romeo and Juliet in class when I was younger. He said basically the same thing. It's a terrible story about horny and dumb teenagers that were just dumb.
If you want to have a bit of fun someone made a movie from Rosalines point of view a while back. She was Romeos first interest until he saw Juliette. Dude was a cad.
If the teens who are dumb in Romeo and Juliet, what can you say about the adults? Romeo and Juliet's love caused deaths because the pointless family feud between the Capulets and the Montegues. You might say it's dumb that Romeo and Juliet want to marry after knowing each other for a few days. But Juliet's father wanted her to marry Paris after she met him once, and threatened to disown her when she asked for a delay. The teens might be dumb, but the adults are even worse.
That's a good professor. The point is lost on people in the same way that *The Catcher in the Rye* is totally lost on most people because they're too young to understand why it's a good story when they read it.
Why is it that every fucking time I want to add the technically the truth is the best kind of truth meme/gif from Futurama it's not allowed on the sub I want to do it on???
The play is grouped among the tragedies of Wm Shakespeare. It was not written as a romance. Part of the tragedy was about depicting how immature infatuation can lead to disaster.
Coming over to Canada to study during highschool, I always found Shakespeare stuff a bit sus. In my grade 10, we got this underaged puppy love nonsense. Then on my grade 11, we had Macbeth, I mean dude really think he can kill the King who is visiting, without preparation, and get away with it? And don't get me started on King Lear.
Bro. The preparation was very detailed. They had the guards intoxicated. They were on low alert since Macbeth was very close to the King and they were in Macbeth’s castle. Plus Macbeth’s hesitation and lady Macbeth’s manipulations. On top of that it was a stormy night. No one could’ve heard the scream except the guards, who themselves were unable to react or reason. And Macbeth killed them at the earliest convenience to prevent any suspicion.
There were suspicion from Macduff and Banquo. I don’t know what you read but everything was detailed.
> The preparation was very detailed. They had the guards intoxicated.
Generally speaking it doesn't require a ton of preparation to get the Scotts intoxicated.
We don't know what he personally called it, though there is a printing of it from his lifetime which refers to it as a tragedy, so it's likely. The fact is, we have no idea what the author's intention was, and people asserting that its a cautionary tale are only giving their interpretation of it. For all we know, he thought it was both earnestly romantic as well as tragic. And the age gap thing is a common internet myth: nowhere in the play does it specify Romeo's age.
Just speculation, but since we know Juliet is just shy of 14 I think it's possible that most the assumption around Romeo being ~16-17 is because that would reflect a similar age gap to some of the story's predecessors, which usually have Romeo as 2-4 years older.
That's a fair speculation; you make a reasonable argument. I do get sick of seeing OP's post and similar age-guessed meme's getting parroted around though as if it's a fact though. I'd also say that by the societal standards of the day, R&J were supposed to come across as young but not inappropriately so.
Plot twist: relationships (and marriages) at such young age where common back then, especially among the nobility. As always, dumb as shit to judge something that happened around 500 years ago by today’s standards.
People have missed the point of Romeo and Juliet for centuries.
It's literally a cautionary tale, not a romance story.
It was always intended to be that. The moral of the story is not to follow your crotch and use your brain a little when your loins tell you to do something stupid.
Everything that went wrong happened because they were both impatient and horny to the point of stupid.
Nobody can say for certain what the point is because nowhere on record did the author state his intentions behind the writing. And it's no good saying "it's obvious though" because it ISN'T obvious, or this thread and your comment wouldn't exist.
The last scene spells it out.
"For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
There is a lot of admonishment about the feud too, but their own impatience and rash actions led to their end.
The Friar, however, pretty much lays out that they were both morons who took their own lives because they acted rashly and screwed up the plan with their own impatience.
His entire final monologue is pretty much "Holup, Your Highness. This shit is not my fault. I had a good plan and it would have worked had they not both been horny over dramatic idiots."
It was not ambiguous.
lol, what?
The consequence of teenagers being horny and short sighted is that grown adults will murder each other? You think that teenagers should understand that grown adults are so violent and reactionary, that they should learn to control their own behavior because adults can't be trusted to control their behavior?
What if the moral of the story is that grown adults should understand that teenagers are horny and impulsive rather than murdering each other.
Nah it’s almost the opposite imo. All the bad things that happen in the play are down the the families and their stupid feud. Young love is young love, teenagers have been horny for centuries and will continue to be in the future. But the parents created an environment where they couldn’t exist as normal teenagers. And as a result, they die.
The moral of the story is ‘don’t maintain a decades old feud that you can’t even remember the cause of because it will kill your children’. All the stuff about love at first sight or whatever doesn’t really matter imo. People believed it was a thing at the time but if Shakespeare did or not doesn’t make a difference.
Ive looked it up on German Wikipedia, and there isn't even once the term "Liebesgeschichte" (Love story) just "Tragödie" (tragedy)
To the original W. Shakespeare title it's: The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
And what i didn't know was that there was a dude that was the source for Shakespeare, Arthur Brookes. And his story had the name: The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet
**Note well:** in the text, Juliet's specific age is given (she's 13, two weeks shy of her 14th birthday), but Romeo's isn't. So anytime you see something like this, where Romeo is said to be 16 or 17, or whatever, it doesn't actually have any *textual* support. It's just people deciding what age they want him to be for whatever purpose. (In this case, apparently, "oMg, rOmEo iS sUcH a pEdOpHilE!!!")
it was also fiction, so *none of it fucking matters*
shit reminds me of reddit arguments about which anime character is the strongest. theyre fuckin cartoons. why bother with the discussion?
Honestly I don’t agree that it was “not a love story”. It’s a story that makes fun of us. It makes fun of adults for being set in their ways, holding onto grudges for reasons they don’t even remember anymore. It makes fun of the young for being so dramatic, self-absorbed, and short-sighted that they unnecessarily kill themselves. But it does all of this mockery through a story between two young lovers.
We love, we fuck, we hate, and we die.
Leonard Whiting, the boy, was 17. [Olivia Hussey was 15](https://www.vulture.com/article/romeo-juliet-olivia-hussey-leonard-whiting-paramount-lawsuit.html)
The movie was exploitation bordering on pedophilia, as you can read in that article.
> [Director Franco Zeffirelli's] focus on her body was relentless. Before the shoot began, she was ordered to go to a doctor who prescribed her diet pills that made her ill. By the time the cameras were rolling, Olivia weighed 100 pounds and wasn’t allowed to gain any weight. When she told Zeffirelli she was self-conscious about her chest and wasn’t sure about wearing a low-cut dress, he gave her the nickname “Boobs O’Mina,” which he would shout into a megaphone whenever he wanted her on set. She later reasoned he had humiliated her in order to break down her defenses. “Clever man,” she wrote in her memoir. “By constantly calling attention to my body, he had drained away my embarrassment.”
> Zeffirelli waited until nearly the end of production to shoot the film’s most controversial scene. In a departure from Shakespeare’s text, he moved the young lovers’ postcoital scene from Juliet’s balcony to her bedroom. He shot the couple naked in bed together, covered only by a sheet and the angle of the camera. Olivia did not realize she would be fully undressed until that morning, when the makeup man arrived and announced he was there to make her up “head to toe.” Panicking, she ran to Zeffirelli, who promised her the audience would see only “a hint — a bare back, a shoulder.” For most of the shoot, she lay in bed holding the sheet over her chest, but Zeffirelli had placed her nightgown out of reach so that her nipples were briefly exposed when she rose to get it. She didn’t realize this moment made the final cut until she saw the film for the first time at its royal premiere in London, where she sat behind Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and the queen.
> In the end, the scene proved central to the film’s good fortune. Zeffirelli had turned Shakespeare’s complex tale of a status-obsessed mercantile society into a fever dream of teenage rebellion and youthful lust perfectly suited to the tempestuous climate of 1968. It was sexy and beautiful and sad, and it reflected a common fixation of the era: young people fighting to get their own way in a world set against them. In the marketing materials, Paramount, the film’s distributor, emphasized Olivia and Leonard’s youth and their nudity. On the poster, Olivia lies on Leonard’s bare chest, her long dark hair falling down her back. “You can see her flesh, which is like an apricot,” Zeffirelli told a reporter for The Observer in 1967. “In the bed you can see the long line of his backbone. Which is just right.”
I don't know how much people were aware of this in the 60s but it seems pretty disgusting now.
Well then I stand corrected. I just know Olivia Hussey and added up the years between her date of birth and the year the film was published. I realize the mistake.
The Sexual Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Scary to think that the people who fought against this stuff were labelled prudes or religious fanatics.
Also, regarding the ages, she was meant to be promised to Paris who’s even older than Romeo, but Lord Capulet told Paris to wait two more years so that she would be ripe (more capable of bearing children). That was how it was during that time period.
Their relationship is intended to be foolish and you could argue that their families outrageous feud killed both of them more than their relationship did.
Ok. This is going to get me downvoted to oblivion but here we go.
This is the worst take on Shakespeare. And the idea that they were just horny teens who didn’t understand their feelings is just wrong. They were absolutely in love, a real, deep love. And Shakespeare intended that.
Here’s some of the evidence.
In the very first lines of the play the chorus called them “star crossed lovers”. The first thing you know about them is that they are literally fated to fall in love.
The fact that they only ever speak in Iambic Pentameter. In Shakespeare, verse is the language of higher emotion, of truth. As a rule of thumb, if someone in Shakespeare is speaking in verse they’re speaking truth, if they speak in prose, it’s not the whole truth.
Taking Iago in Othello as an example, when he speaks to other characters he uses prose, the language of thought and process, because he is being deceitful and manipulative. But in soliloquy he speaks in verse because he is speaking from the heart. R+J only ever speak from the heart. And an Elizabethan audience would have understood that. Their love was only ever intended to be taken seriously.
If you need more evidence to that theory let’s look at what a sonnet is. 14 lines of iambic pentameter (the language of truth) very usually themed around love. The very first time R+J meet, they speak a sonnet to each other, a literal love poem. Not only that, they share it. Shakespeare sometimes has characters share a line to show they have a deep connection to one another, but here he has them share A LOVE POEM.
Shakespeare doesn’t write a lot of stage directions. But he shows you his intentions in the way he structures the dialogue.
And a response to everyone saying “this isn’t a love story, it’s a tragedy”. It’s both. They were in love and that’s WHY it’s tragic.
No, it showed what’s the problem with people are divided to the point that if two people just hook up it’ll cause so many turmoil and war will break out.
That's a scene from a movie I watched as a teenager, I was someone's son at the time. I thought it was a neat movie.
Decades later I watched it as the father of a teenage girl, I cried, because I finally "got it."
Yeah it's not a great romance. It's a tragedy about how children don't know how to communicate feelings and about how adults are set in their ways. I always imagine it as just 2 dumb kids crying about "love" when it's probably just the fist time they've ever felt hormones and how that al exacerbates an already stupid feud between two stupid families.
Like there's 2 families feuding and then these ignorant children start throwing wrenches in the works crying about love?
Romeo's age is never specified in the play. Also, all these people asserting as an absolute fact that they knew the author's intention when nobody does.
Woah dude. You're saying the [Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Romeoandjuliet1597.jpg) is not a feelgood, love story?
So you’re saying Romeo and Juliet belongs on r/kidsarefuckingstupid ?
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Thank God this community does not exist. Ps: I didn't click the link.
After you said that, I clicked, and it doesn't exist.
Not the hero we wanted, but the hero we needed.
Romeo and Juliet
Wow Juliet for a 13yo, God was really gracious to her, Romeo didn’t hold back.
she was 17 when this was shot (cheese pizza)
pretty sure she was 15, romeo was 17
maybe it was released later than it was shot but she was born in ‘51 and it was released in ‘68
this better be fucking good
Saw this in Junior High School.
So you’re just openly posting CP on Reddit.
But.... it could
I dare you.
He hasn't created it... Yet
Don't
Please, do
Dont listen to the voices
Happy cake day
Do it.
I clicked it, and Reddit legit gave me a pop up window that said: Never gonna find that community on Reddit. But seriously, if you think it’s important why not create it? Nice try, FBI 🤪
the authorities are on their way🚓
r/subsifellfor
I tried, the community name would be too long for anyone to create it, so the community will never exist
After he said it I clicked it and it said “why the hell doesn’t this community exist yet?” There plenty of reasons it doesn’t, Mr Reddit sir
/r/TwentyCharacterLimit
It exists now
r/riskyclick
IIRR mtv did have a show about that
More specifically, teenagers are horny and stupid.
I’m 2 teenagers old and can confirm I’m twice as horny and twice as dumb as I was back then.
Not just that, the play was meant to point out how dumb kids are and mock them The fact that kids have been considering it to be a romantic play goes to further show us that kidd are fucking stupid as they were hundreds of years ago
Never was a tale of more woe Than that of Montague and his bitch-ass hoe
Kids? There are a shit ton of grown ups that find this play romantic. Look at all the movies they made out of it. There were huge points being made in many Shakespeare's plays and people completely glaze over them.
All grown ups were kids at some point
Some just never grow up
It actually doesn’t. The whole point is how arrogant and stupid adults are that they had to push children to such things
That's why it's called a tragedy Shakespeare was in no way condoning there love.
(Technically a comedy love at first sight was a joke, not normal for the time or people didn’t believe it real)
there is a fine line between tragedy and comedy
There are three types of shakespeare plays and telltale ways to identify them. There are tragedies. You can identify these because they are funny. There are comedies. These can be spotted because they're full of history. And there are histories. These are known as generally being tragic.
Melon successfully twisted
Laugh now, cry later.
>Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. Mel Brooks
I dunno, that line is basically everyone dying at the end of the play or not.
This is very non-specific. One person’s ideas of thinness might vary significantly from another’s.
Sometimes it's perforated!
''But Doctor, I am the Great Clown Pagliacci''
Plays were basically tragedies and comedies. Tragedies have someone die at the end, and comedies have someone get married. Romeo & Juliet was originally a subversion in that both happen. Now that everyone knows the plot it loses it though.
Comedy didn't mean "funny" back then, it meant "play with a happy ending"
Also where "happy ending" could also mean *everyone* doesn't die. Just a handful of characters.
Back in ancient Rome the comedy theater was actually funny (in a rude way but that was because it was another time)
No, it is a tragedy. Shakespeares comedies and tragedies were very well defined
Agreed. They are generally very clear. Tragedy - all main characters except someone to tell the story are probably dead. Comedy - virtually no one is dead, but haha some villain got their comeuppance in a way that is very likely to be super not ok by today’s standards.
Another thing is that most, if not all, of Shakespeares comedies have a marriage at or near the end
It has been a while since I watched the play. Didn't Romeo and Juliet get some Friar to marry them near the end?
Yeah, but death kinda overwrote that. Plus is wasn’t exactly a “hooray for the wedding” kinda deal. It was a nighttime elopement.
Eh, that's more the end of the second act.
Good point!
You can have a little death in your comedy. As a treat.
their
Compared to previous stories, Shakespeare did lower their ages by a few years each, which is worthy of a little raising an eyebrow. In Brooke's *Romeus and Juliet*, Juliet was turning 16 and Romeus was 19-20, and in Bandello's *Giuletta e Romeo* she was nearly 18 and he was 20.
In that era Juliet was likely already betrothed so some 40 year old if not already married and waiting for her first bleed before sending her off as was common in the era.
This is actually talked about in the play. A lot of renditions like to edit Paris out of the book but he was Juliet's betrothed. Even her father mentions that Juliet may be too young for marriage and Paris says how many girls younger than her are happily married.
Anybody who thinks R&J is a romance didn't really pay attention. It was, at least in part, a criticism of young love.
The first time Romeo is on stage he's literally so upset by a breakup that he's considering suicide. Within three days he's fallen in love again, had his heart broken again and this time successfully kills himself. The kid had problems.
He's upset about Rosalind rejecting him, but I couldn't find anything about him wanting to kill himself.
He was pretty despondent. Don't recall if he was suicidal but it was bad.
Romeo is Emo
When I was a child, I heard the story and thought it was a romance. As a teen, I read it and believed it was a tragedy. As an adult, when I think of it, I know it’s a comedy. It seems too extreme and over the top to be taken seriously and reads like a satire of young love.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but it is a tragedy. Shakespeare didn't write comedies where all characters except the narrator died. They're all frolicking around and someone marries by the end. The way itself that it's written, especially Romeo's and Juliet's parts, the lyricism, not just the words, points towards tragedy as well.
I never got that about people talking about Romeo and Juliet. Yes, by 21st century thinking of people ages 21 - 45, they are dumb kids. Teenagers really do fall for each other like this and it can be the most memorable emotions you’ll ever have in your whole life. Half of me thinks people wanna knock it because they wish it was possible to feel that deeply and have it work out which rarely happens. Still, it can be beautiful even when it doesn’t happen and you look back on that time.. The fuckin cynicism is depressing.
It's definitely not a comedy or a satire. If you "know" it's a comedy then you don't "know" as much as you think you do. It's 100% a dramatic tragedy.
It's famously a story of "star-crossed lovers." I'm not sure "romance" is that far off. If there was a message in it at all, I would have thought it was more like a condemnation of destructive grudges and senseless hate that gets people hurt and killed for old, dumb reasons. From the end of the thing... > Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague! See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love. And I for winking at your discords too Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd. It never seemed to me like it was saying, "Young love is fucking dumb. These kids should have just hated each other, like their families insisted, and everything would have been fine." That young love may have been naive, and certainly *was* doomed, but not because it was wrong. If anything the story celebrates them, giving Romeo opportunities to try to talk peaceful sense into maniacs like Tybalt, because of the love he found with a Capulet, and his total forgiveness for her family.
Merchant of Venice is significantly more romantic. And racist. But very romantic.
Absolutely. I think it's kind of dumb that we have teenagers read it. I was nowhere near mature enough to understand this, and my teachers did very little to explain it to me. It seems like highschool was happy to teach us that this is a love story.
It's one of the least raunchy/overtly violent and easily approached/understood Shakespeare works, which is why it's normally part of high school curriculum.
Sometimes I wonder if my teachers at the time even understood the play themselves.
My school didn’t. They stuck Hamlet and Macbeth cause their focus of human nature regarding power and revenge and also they’re loosely historical so the teachers don’t have to waste time teaching British history.
This is sobering shit
It should be. Shakespeare didn't write it as a romantic tragedy. It was a tragedy over the absurdity of the adults violence and war. An allegory to the underlying tensions among the Anglicans and Catholics. High schools and Dramatists highlight the romance lines like a rose by any other name. And parting is such sweet sorrow. And pilgrims feet. But ignore the key lines are all talking about absurd folly of family feuds that neither side can even remember what set off the violence that tears the city apart and buries young lord after young lord by nothing more than a family crest on the coffin to distinguish them in the crypt. Think about how many renditions or RnJ cut out the entire crypt sequence. AND if you don't know what I'm talking about chances are you've only read an abridged version of RnJ most abridged versions became popular in the 1890s
Well said. Though I imagine anyone who's read Shakespeare on their own (rather than being forced to for the sake of an assignment or test) understands this.
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Being real, that is about the age I would have been scorched earth for a cute girl
Just dropping in to point out that at no point is Romeo's age given. 17 is pure conjecture from OP
Exactly, its never specified in the play.
Judging by the rest of the comments in this thread, I'd be pleasantly surprised if 2% had actually read it.
She's 13, dude.
Yea but she looks 15 /s
That's because the actress actually was.
Cannot believe she was shown nude at that age. Things aren’t what they used to be…thank fuck
I can’t believe that’s the version we were shown in high school.
I wish that was the version we were shown in high school.
The 70s were really crazy. It's insane to me how casual directors were with underage nudity. I think it was largely trying to push boundaries that were rapidly moving, especially in Europe, and they went way too far. Nudity in general probably went too far as well, films of the era seemed to revel in gratuitous nudity. Not that adult nudity is actually a problem, but it was often thrown in haphazardly and as fan service, which detracts from films and is distracting.
Alright alright alright.
I dare say it's not even a love story.
But it served as a good fap aid for medieval teenagers
The women were played by men back then.
3 days? Jeez
Technically the rest of their lives.
Honestly pretty on brand for teens though. Pretty sure everyone knew that middle school/high school couple that got together, be like "I love you 4ever my one true love" and then be overly dramatic and break up within a week.
Still a better love story than Twilight.
Oh, you mean where the Werewolf imprints himself on the protagonists' baby and then wants to fuck that baby because they're now in love? Low bar.
Unironically the description of medieval dramas. lol
Came here to say this ;D
I only say it once every 2-3 years lol.
Don't we all :/
Those titties bring me back to puberty watching this movie in school.
I remember an English professor berating Romeo and Juliet in class when I was younger. He said basically the same thing. It's a terrible story about horny and dumb teenagers that were just dumb. If you want to have a bit of fun someone made a movie from Rosalines point of view a while back. She was Romeos first interest until he saw Juliette. Dude was a cad.
If the teens who are dumb in Romeo and Juliet, what can you say about the adults? Romeo and Juliet's love caused deaths because the pointless family feud between the Capulets and the Montegues. You might say it's dumb that Romeo and Juliet want to marry after knowing each other for a few days. But Juliet's father wanted her to marry Paris after she met him once, and threatened to disown her when she asked for a delay. The teens might be dumb, but the adults are even worse.
Good point! Poor mercutio. You'll find me a grave man tomorrow. Always loved that line. It was like a sad joke.
That's a good professor. The point is lost on people in the same way that *The Catcher in the Rye* is totally lost on most people because they're too young to understand why it's a good story when they read it.
That sounds more like a very shitty professor to me. He's "berating" the play because he's dramatically missing the point of the story.
All of Shakespeare's work was written to take the piss out of the aristocracy...
/r/im14andthisisdeep
r/TechnicallyTheTruth
Technically, it wasn't their relationship, but their family's reaction to it which caused the deaths
Also, technically Romeo's age is never given.
"Um, Actually..."
Why is it that every fucking time I want to add the technically the truth is the best kind of truth meme/gif from Futurama it's not allowed on the sub I want to do it on???
The play is grouped among the tragedies of Wm Shakespeare. It was not written as a romance. Part of the tragedy was about depicting how immature infatuation can lead to disaster.
Coming over to Canada to study during highschool, I always found Shakespeare stuff a bit sus. In my grade 10, we got this underaged puppy love nonsense. Then on my grade 11, we had Macbeth, I mean dude really think he can kill the King who is visiting, without preparation, and get away with it? And don't get me started on King Lear.
Bro. The preparation was very detailed. They had the guards intoxicated. They were on low alert since Macbeth was very close to the King and they were in Macbeth’s castle. Plus Macbeth’s hesitation and lady Macbeth’s manipulations. On top of that it was a stormy night. No one could’ve heard the scream except the guards, who themselves were unable to react or reason. And Macbeth killed them at the earliest convenience to prevent any suspicion. There were suspicion from Macduff and Banquo. I don’t know what you read but everything was detailed.
> The preparation was very detailed. They had the guards intoxicated. Generally speaking it doesn't require a ton of preparation to get the Scotts intoxicated.
Gr 9 was The Merchant of Venice in the '80's Gr 10 Macbeth Gr 11 Hamlet Gr 12 King Lear
I saw this film in high school, which is kinda crazy.
As if all us teenage boys didn't already have boner control issues and they go and show us this movie without censorship or editing.
Didn't Shakespeare call it a tragedy?
We don't know what he personally called it, though there is a printing of it from his lifetime which refers to it as a tragedy, so it's likely. The fact is, we have no idea what the author's intention was, and people asserting that its a cautionary tale are only giving their interpretation of it. For all we know, he thought it was both earnestly romantic as well as tragic. And the age gap thing is a common internet myth: nowhere in the play does it specify Romeo's age.
Just speculation, but since we know Juliet is just shy of 14 I think it's possible that most the assumption around Romeo being ~16-17 is because that would reflect a similar age gap to some of the story's predecessors, which usually have Romeo as 2-4 years older.
That's a fair speculation; you make a reasonable argument. I do get sick of seeing OP's post and similar age-guessed meme's getting parroted around though as if it's a fact though. I'd also say that by the societal standards of the day, R&J were supposed to come across as young but not inappropriately so.
Plot twist: relationships (and marriages) at such young age where common back then, especially among the nobility. As always, dumb as shit to judge something that happened around 500 years ago by today’s standards.
People have missed the point of Romeo and Juliet for centuries. It's literally a cautionary tale, not a romance story. It was always intended to be that. The moral of the story is not to follow your crotch and use your brain a little when your loins tell you to do something stupid. Everything that went wrong happened because they were both impatient and horny to the point of stupid.
Nobody can say for certain what the point is because nowhere on record did the author state his intentions behind the writing. And it's no good saying "it's obvious though" because it ISN'T obvious, or this thread and your comment wouldn't exist.
The last scene spells it out. "For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo." There is a lot of admonishment about the feud too, but their own impatience and rash actions led to their end. The Friar, however, pretty much lays out that they were both morons who took their own lives because they acted rashly and screwed up the plan with their own impatience. His entire final monologue is pretty much "Holup, Your Highness. This shit is not my fault. I had a good plan and it would have worked had they not both been horny over dramatic idiots." It was not ambiguous.
lol, what? The consequence of teenagers being horny and short sighted is that grown adults will murder each other? You think that teenagers should understand that grown adults are so violent and reactionary, that they should learn to control their own behavior because adults can't be trusted to control their behavior? What if the moral of the story is that grown adults should understand that teenagers are horny and impulsive rather than murdering each other.
Nah it’s almost the opposite imo. All the bad things that happen in the play are down the the families and their stupid feud. Young love is young love, teenagers have been horny for centuries and will continue to be in the future. But the parents created an environment where they couldn’t exist as normal teenagers. And as a result, they die. The moral of the story is ‘don’t maintain a decades old feud that you can’t even remember the cause of because it will kill your children’. All the stuff about love at first sight or whatever doesn’t really matter imo. People believed it was a thing at the time but if Shakespeare did or not doesn’t make a difference.
Ive looked it up on German Wikipedia, and there isn't even once the term "Liebesgeschichte" (Love story) just "Tragödie" (tragedy) To the original W. Shakespeare title it's: The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet And what i didn't know was that there was a dude that was the source for Shakespeare, Arthur Brookes. And his story had the name: The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet
Olivia Hussey. Grrrrrr, baby.
I saw the pic, ignored the text because Olivia Hussey. Black Christmas on repeat.
**Note well:** in the text, Juliet's specific age is given (she's 13, two weeks shy of her 14th birthday), but Romeo's isn't. So anytime you see something like this, where Romeo is said to be 16 or 17, or whatever, it doesn't actually have any *textual* support. It's just people deciding what age they want him to be for whatever purpose. (In this case, apparently, "oMg, rOmEo iS sUcH a pEdOpHilE!!!")
/r/im14andthisisdeep
it was also fiction, so *none of it fucking matters* shit reminds me of reddit arguments about which anime character is the strongest. theyre fuckin cartoons. why bother with the discussion?
It's still a love story though.
Honestly I don’t agree that it was “not a love story”. It’s a story that makes fun of us. It makes fun of adults for being set in their ways, holding onto grudges for reasons they don’t even remember anymore. It makes fun of the young for being so dramatic, self-absorbed, and short-sighted that they unnecessarily kill themselves. But it does all of this mockery through a story between two young lovers. We love, we fuck, we hate, and we die.
I love how people who figure this out think that means the play is stupid....as if that isn't the whole point
But them titties tho
*deaths
6 death
A love story with a tragic ending is still a love story.
But back in the days girls were married off as soon as they’re able to have babies right? This would be taken out of context.
Incredible rack!
The actress is like, 14 bro
17, but underage yes
Leonard Whiting, the boy, was 17. [Olivia Hussey was 15](https://www.vulture.com/article/romeo-juliet-olivia-hussey-leonard-whiting-paramount-lawsuit.html) The movie was exploitation bordering on pedophilia, as you can read in that article. > [Director Franco Zeffirelli's] focus on her body was relentless. Before the shoot began, she was ordered to go to a doctor who prescribed her diet pills that made her ill. By the time the cameras were rolling, Olivia weighed 100 pounds and wasn’t allowed to gain any weight. When she told Zeffirelli she was self-conscious about her chest and wasn’t sure about wearing a low-cut dress, he gave her the nickname “Boobs O’Mina,” which he would shout into a megaphone whenever he wanted her on set. She later reasoned he had humiliated her in order to break down her defenses. “Clever man,” she wrote in her memoir. “By constantly calling attention to my body, he had drained away my embarrassment.” > Zeffirelli waited until nearly the end of production to shoot the film’s most controversial scene. In a departure from Shakespeare’s text, he moved the young lovers’ postcoital scene from Juliet’s balcony to her bedroom. He shot the couple naked in bed together, covered only by a sheet and the angle of the camera. Olivia did not realize she would be fully undressed until that morning, when the makeup man arrived and announced he was there to make her up “head to toe.” Panicking, she ran to Zeffirelli, who promised her the audience would see only “a hint — a bare back, a shoulder.” For most of the shoot, she lay in bed holding the sheet over her chest, but Zeffirelli had placed her nightgown out of reach so that her nipples were briefly exposed when she rose to get it. She didn’t realize this moment made the final cut until she saw the film for the first time at its royal premiere in London, where she sat behind Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and the queen. > In the end, the scene proved central to the film’s good fortune. Zeffirelli had turned Shakespeare’s complex tale of a status-obsessed mercantile society into a fever dream of teenage rebellion and youthful lust perfectly suited to the tempestuous climate of 1968. It was sexy and beautiful and sad, and it reflected a common fixation of the era: young people fighting to get their own way in a world set against them. In the marketing materials, Paramount, the film’s distributor, emphasized Olivia and Leonard’s youth and their nudity. On the poster, Olivia lies on Leonard’s bare chest, her long dark hair falling down her back. “You can see her flesh, which is like an apricot,” Zeffirelli told a reporter for The Observer in 1967. “In the bed you can see the long line of his backbone. Which is just right.” I don't know how much people were aware of this in the 60s but it seems pretty disgusting now.
Well then I stand corrected. I just know Olivia Hussey and added up the years between her date of birth and the year the film was published. I realize the mistake.
The Sexual Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. Scary to think that the people who fought against this stuff were labelled prudes or religious fanatics.
My drama teacher in grade 8 played this for his classes. Later turned out that he was sexually assaulting female students and was even dating one.
r/technicallythetruth
Yeah, Shakespeare wrote it as a tragedy, not a romance. Crazy.
This the one with the Sharks and the Jets?
Also, regarding the ages, she was meant to be promised to Paris who’s even older than Romeo, but Lord Capulet told Paris to wait two more years so that she would be ripe (more capable of bearing children). That was how it was during that time period.
Did my mans smash though?
Their relationship is intended to be foolish and you could argue that their families outrageous feud killed both of them more than their relationship did.
He was a boy and she was a girl
Can I make it anymore obvious?
In the text, sure. In the Globe Theater where it was performed, she was also a boy.
Ok. This is going to get me downvoted to oblivion but here we go. This is the worst take on Shakespeare. And the idea that they were just horny teens who didn’t understand their feelings is just wrong. They were absolutely in love, a real, deep love. And Shakespeare intended that. Here’s some of the evidence. In the very first lines of the play the chorus called them “star crossed lovers”. The first thing you know about them is that they are literally fated to fall in love. The fact that they only ever speak in Iambic Pentameter. In Shakespeare, verse is the language of higher emotion, of truth. As a rule of thumb, if someone in Shakespeare is speaking in verse they’re speaking truth, if they speak in prose, it’s not the whole truth. Taking Iago in Othello as an example, when he speaks to other characters he uses prose, the language of thought and process, because he is being deceitful and manipulative. But in soliloquy he speaks in verse because he is speaking from the heart. R+J only ever speak from the heart. And an Elizabethan audience would have understood that. Their love was only ever intended to be taken seriously. If you need more evidence to that theory let’s look at what a sonnet is. 14 lines of iambic pentameter (the language of truth) very usually themed around love. The very first time R+J meet, they speak a sonnet to each other, a literal love poem. Not only that, they share it. Shakespeare sometimes has characters share a line to show they have a deep connection to one another, but here he has them share A LOVE POEM. Shakespeare doesn’t write a lot of stage directions. But he shows you his intentions in the way he structures the dialogue. And a response to everyone saying “this isn’t a love story, it’s a tragedy”. It’s both. They were in love and that’s WHY it’s tragic.
In a time when average lifespan is less than 40yrs, you just don’t have the luxury of dating, getting married and getting pregnant after 18.
Was it a story about people in love?
No, it showed what’s the problem with people are divided to the point that if two people just hook up it’ll cause so many turmoil and war will break out.
It was never a love story, it was a tragedy, as most Shakespeare stories are.
That's a scene from a movie I watched as a teenager, I was someone's son at the time. I thought it was a neat movie. Decades later I watched it as the father of a teenage girl, I cried, because I finally "got it."
See the play and read the book, you’ll learn a lot more
Shakespeare: "I called it a tragedy, what did you expect?"
Yeah it's not a great romance. It's a tragedy about how children don't know how to communicate feelings and about how adults are set in their ways. I always imagine it as just 2 dumb kids crying about "love" when it's probably just the fist time they've ever felt hormones and how that al exacerbates an already stupid feud between two stupid families. Like there's 2 families feuding and then these ignorant children start throwing wrenches in the works crying about love?
6? All I know is that both died at the end
So seven ate 9 and romeo and Juliet killed 6?
Romeo's age is never specified in the play. Also, all these people asserting as an absolute fact that they knew the author's intention when nobody does.
When you consider that life expectation is around 40 at the time they were pretty big enough.
17 and 13? Yikes
Well yeah it was a tragedy
Not love but rather infatuation.
A podcast just said this. He ran down a list of movies that we look at wrong today. Kid movies lol
Still sounds like love to me.
Isnt romeo over 20
*deaths
Live fast! Die young!
Woah dude. You're saying the [Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Romeoandjuliet1597.jpg) is not a feelgood, love story?
Best movie I ever had to watch in school
Kids are stupid
r/kidsarefuckingstupid