" This was not a love story, this was something differntly entirely. I have read this both on my own time and for school, and my opinion is yet to change. This is a brief relationship between a 13 year old and a 17 year old and ends in 6 deaths. Shakespeare is a master at his trade, but I find this lacks the luster I had hoped. Romeo is a wishy-washy teenage boy who falls in love with Rosaline the nun. He becomes depressed, feeling as though his life should just end and that he will never feel the warmth of the sun on his skin again, that is, until he sees Juliet. Oh lark and behold, she doth teach the torches how to burn bright, a jewel in Ethiop's ear, ya catch my drift? He instantly becomes smitten with the daughter of his family's rivals. A tale as old as time, is it not? The two children fall into a forbidden love, and being children, they decide that they are meant to be together. After a ill-concieved plan and aid from a friar, they set it into motion, inevitably ending in both the star-cross'd lovers demise.
I will give credit where credit is due, the foreshadowing within this play was very well planned. Alas, it was the content itself that I found distasteful.
This has become known as the greatest love story ever told, of Juliet and her Romeo. But is it love?
Mercutio tries to warn Romeo in his Queen Mab monologue, dreams are but vain hopes for the vapid child, yet what does he do? He doesn't listen. (Queen Mab= tiny fairy queen who gives you dreams)
The theme of this play is driven with darker emotions, not love and happiness. Passion, hatred, obsession. Do these two children love each other? Or do they love the thrill? Can this infatuation with the unattainable even be called love? It's an obsession. They are driven by passion, Romeo falls for the young Juliet Capulet because of her looks and soley that! Juliet wants an escape from Paris and lo and behold, here comes Romeo, what a better sign of teenage rebellion than by shacking up with the son of her family's rival? (Frankly, a piercing would have saved her a LOT of trouble...) They become obsessed with one another, passion fueling it.
A rose by any other name smells just as sweet? Does it? If Romeo was not a Montague and Juliet not a Capulet, would they have felt the draw? Like the fruit dangling from the tree in the Garden of Eden, what one cannot have, one desires most.
I did enjoy, at least, the dramatic foils of Tybalt and Benvolio, if that is any concelation for disliking a well-loved classic..... "
— Adler, 1/6/2014