Wherefore art thou Romeo?

[randy_byers]

So I went to Shakespeare in the Park's production of Romeo and Juliet last night, and I didn't like it very much. The lovers had no chemistry (a fatal flaw!), poor acting made many of the characters tiresome (particularly the ranting Mercutio, played by a woman), and the direction was so incoherent that the whole thing felt like a ramshackle contraption of mechanical contrivances. Since I was bored, I started to wonder about the source of the tragedy in the play. One traditional way to think about tragedy is to look for Aristotelian hamartia -- the protagonist's tragic flaw -- e.g., Hamlet's indecisiveness, Othello's jealousy, Macbeth's ambition. But what is Romeo's flaw? What is Juliet's? Immaturity? Rashness? An excess of passion? It's actually hard to pin down, especially when it comes to Juliet. Is she just a victim of Romeo's lack of self-control? In reality, they both seem to be victims of fate and the vengeful flaws of their society. (Lady Capulet was played as a real villain in this version, screaming for Romeo's blood.) In the end, the Prince blames the parents for the deaths of their children, but of course the deaths are also the result of blind bad luck. Is that a flaw in the play? In a poor production, with people running past each other failing to deliver messages in plain sight, it begins to seem so. In a good one, we curse the stars along with Romeo.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Hugo Dyson, one of the Inklings specializing in Shakespeare, said that R&J lacks the mightily tragic heroes of the other Shakespeare tragedies. Rather, its characters are more typical of the comedies, making it "a comedy turned by ill chance and excess into tragedy."

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. It even has a marriage in it. As I was watching the play last night, I kept thinking about how much funnier Baz Luhrmann's film version is, and how it shifts so agilely between humor and pathos. Certainly the horseplay amongst the boys and the punning of many of the characters (including the leads) feels comedic at times, even last night. Mercutio is real wise guy.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

R&J always starts out feeling like one of the comedies, yeah; it's just that the miraculous 11th hour solution doesn't work, and so everyone dies, the end. But to me it's clear that the tragic flaw is never meant to be in any one character. Romeo & Juliet is a retelling of the Pyramus and Thisbe myth, so the fatal flaw is the feud between the two families, not in either of the feud's ultimate victims.

And in one of those things rolling around the back of my brain about the way Shakespeare always stole his plots from other writers, it occurs to me that the core story in King Lear is from a fairy tale -- the youngest daughter who loves her father more than meat loves salt, and is banished from the Kingdom because of her father's inability to judge his daughter's worth.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I guess the intro to R&J makes it pretty clear that the conflict between the families is the problem that the death of the lovers resolves. One of the things that the Shakespeare in the Park version muffled badly (and I think Luhrmann's film version does too) is the reconciliation between Montague and Capulet after the bodies are discovered. In fact, last night's version had all the players turn their back to the audience after the Prince's final words and start to keen (which is the same way it started), with one of them shrieking "No!" or "Argh!" or something woeful as a punctuation mark.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

I find most R&J productions "off." I saw one in another century that used two talented high school actors, who looked even younger than their late-teen years because they were surrounded by people at least in their 20s and most much older. What was trite coming from an adult actor playing a teenager was right in that production.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It's surprisingly hard to make the lead characters sympathetic, at least to me, although I guess that's true of all the tragedies. I hate Hamlet, I want to gouge out Lear's eyes, want to strangle Othello, etc etc. No wonder I'm starting to drift toward the comedies in my old age.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

Both Hamlet and Othello are tragic heroes in the sense that their own weaknesses became their fatal flaws. However, I agree that in S's tragedies and in some comedies, his powerful characters are hideous. There is a whole branch of Shakespearean criticism that looks at the very response you describe -- "I hate Hamlet, I want to gouge out Lear's eyes, want to strangle Othello, etc etc." -- as S's political criticism of English royalty and a hereditary Strongman government through his foreign plays. It reduces to "I'm not criticizing you Mr. Strongman, I am criticizing those people over there who are our enemies." That was a good tactic for keeping your head in his day.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Indeed, although he seems to have done more ass-kissing in his history plays.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

Some years ago, I made my annual visit to Ashland in early June, and discovered that this is the season for large, roving bands of high school students. I thought they'd behave in the Noel Coward play, because it was a fluffy comedy not much different than a sitcom. They did not. They fidgeted and whispered.

In Romeo and Juliet, despite the Elizabethan English, and the long playing time, they were perfectly silent, swept away by the show.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, let's hope they learned a lesson from it: young love kills!

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love
And the continuance of their parents' rage
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove
Is now the two hours' traffick of our stage

Perhaps Romeo and Juliet are not the protagonists even though they have so much stage time. They're just the form their parents' punishment takes.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Now there's a fate to rail against! "I exist only to punish my parents."

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I should have said "their death is".

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I mean, talk about doom: "I have to die to punish my parents." Bummer, dude.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Bleeding tragedy, innit?