i've truly galaxy brained myself on r&j by the way where it's like, picture the meme i'm too lazy to make, are you picturing it, with the blue guy, ok, so it's like level one "it's a beautiful and tragic love story" (taylor swift love story is an example of this even though/because she gives it a happy ending," and then level two is "romeo and juliet isn't a love story, they barely know each other," and level three which is an extremely popular opinion to toss around on the internet to make yourself sound smart is "ACTUALLY, it's the whole POINT that they barely know each other, that's what makes it a TRAGEDY," and then level four where i was at for a long time i admit was "it's not even really about love, notice that the prologue introduces two households before it introduces two lovers, the very first thing that happens in the play is a street brawl, this is a play suffused with violence and death because it's a play about violence the consequence of which is death," and then my third eye opened and now i'm on level five, "the question of whether romeo and juliet is a love story depends on any given individual's definition of 'love story,' but the question of romeo and juliet is a play about love rests on the text and the answer to that question is undeniably yes. it is a story about love and what's more it is a story about love that continues to resonate because it uses the particularities of its characters and setting and plot to express not thematically or ideologically but dramatically a universal truth of love, meaning that it's less that the play says anything about love and more that it expresses nakedly and profoundly how it actually feels, which is of course much more difficult. romeo and juliet are exceptional in their age, in their hastiness, in their inherited feud, in their options or lack thereof, but in love we are all foolish; in love we are all agonized; in love we are forced to confront the that sharp division between 'stupid teenager' and 'mature adult' is as applied to one's internal emotional landscape a comforting delusion. more than that: in love we are all greedy, and in love we all are doomed. to watch romeo and juliet fall in love as gorgeously and blissfully as they do knowing as we do from the outset how poorly it all ends is only to watch in accelerated form what we subject ourselves to every time we fall in love. there is no love story with a happy ending; the price we pay for the gift is that it will always end in heartbreak or death. and yet all of us forget this every day of our lives; we forget that the touch of the beloved is as temporary as anything else; that the best case scenario is that one day we will mourn them or they us; just as we forget, watching those irresistible first two acts, that we are watching a tragedy. romeo and juliet is a play about two horny kids and their weird families, but romeo and juliet is also a play that seduces you into savoring its joys even as you know that they must end in grief. what on earth would you call a love story, if not that?"
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
romaincrisis
janainaart
prguitarman
vaporwave
blakekathryn
