Re: Concept, Schmoncept

Okay. Reckon I'll get us started here on replying to my question of 2-April-2008.

I'm not one of those people who enjoys re-reading novels. In fact, I sometimes wonder why I own any at all; I should just use the library (right, Grey?). But Shakespeare I always enjoy re-reading. Probably mostly because I have both developed a bit of an "ear" for it, and could never hope to understand even a single play of his in its entirety. So there's a lot there for me to experience each time, a good balance of expectation and discovery. Hamlet and R&J are probably tied for first in the list of Shakespeare I've read the most times; Mac'ers at a narrow second place. So for the purposes of this exercise, I'm writing about what I got out of this last reading, with all the influences of the me of the now.

For me the play is kind of a love letter to the person we might have been the very first time we had the experience of really being in love. Romeo thinks he knows love, and that concept gets blown out of the water by this experience; Juliet never thought of love, yet knows it with incredible certainty the moment it happens. And the key is that this experience means everything in the world to them, whether that's a prudent idea or not. It is their everything and, in spite of their mutual demise at the end, I can't regard it as a cautionary tale. Their deaths seem to me to be the fault of those forces repressing their love. Teenagers think they're right about everything. In love, I tend to think they just might be.

I'm also impressed, whatever the cause, with just how "Italian" the play feels to me. (I readily admit to being biased on this front.) It reminds me of the towns I've visited and the people I've met there. Everyone seems to know everyone else somehow, and everyone seems to have a story they're eager to express their view on. It's awfully cliche to describe people from the southern parts of Europe as passionate -- particularly coming from an Anglo American -- but that don't necessarily make it untrue. Interestingly enough, with all that passionate love and hatred, I get the impression that the folk in R&J are generally pretty good at not killing one another. That's part of what makes Mercutio and Tybalt such events; someone got his eye poked out.

It's just a great story. It doesn't get old for me.