Romeo and Juliet - How relevant is the story to modern day life?

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Zoe Poulton-Jones 11AK                19/04/2009

English Literature Coursework

Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare’s version of “Romeo and Juliet” is a tragedy telling the tale of the relationship of two “star-crossed” lovers, whom fate has not smiled upon. But written over four hundred years ago, do its concepts, messages, layout and more still remain relevant to audiences around the world today?

On one hand, as I just said, the play was written just under half a century ago. Things that were appealing and fashionable at one time do not always remain so into the present day. And yet “Romeo and Juliet” tackles innumerable issues that are happening in many peoples’ lives. Love, hate, lies, deceit, lust, teenage life, peer and parental pressure, violence, murder, drug abuse, death, sex and depression are just some of the themes covered in this play.

Teenagers right up to the elderly can empathise with many of these topics, and clearly find most of them interesting, certainly judging by the popularity of Soaps and Dramas which include these matters also. Think about it: two men have fallen for thirteen year old Juliet; she marries and loses her virginity to Romeo, the last person her family would approve of, within two days of knowing him. The love they share is almost entirely lustful whereas Paris’ love for Juliet could be seen as more mature...but Juliet is more than likely annoyed and upset with the way her parents have treated her, marrying her off to Paris because of his social standing and wealth. Besides, Juliet’s relationship with her parents isn’t in parental terms anyway; she addresses her mother ‘Madam’ and looks upon the nurse as more of a mother figure because she was raised by her. To Juliet, it must seem like just revenge to marry and run away with Romeo, part of a family that is her family’s nemesis, and then fake her own death. And just a few days before meeting Juliet, Romeo had been apparently madly in love with Rosaline who did not return his love…so perhaps Romeo pursued and married Juliet as a way of getting over Rosaline, maybe even to spite Rosaline. Juliet even continues to stand by Romeo after he kills her own cousin. Taking the advice of Friar Lawrence, Juliet takes drugs to fake her own death so she can run away with Romeo then (thanks to crossed wires) they both kill themselves. And the whole of the story is spread over a few days, perhaps a week. All in all when you look at the play in that light is sounds perfectly ludicrous, but you can still empathise with it because this is the typical way that teenagers work, if not taken to extremes quite a lot.

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Perhaps it is for the above outlined reasons that references to Romeo and Juliet are prolific throughout society, television and film. Ask most people the name of a Shakespeare play and they are likely to say Romeo and Juliet, or at least it would be the first title that came to mind. In response to the argument that the play is not relevant because of the old-fashioned language contained within, phrases from Romeo and Juliet are still in use today such as “vexed” and “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

Many modernised film versions of Romeo and Juliet have ...

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