Romeo & Juliet Should Never Have Been That Deep

Now, I'll preface this with the fact that when I first read Romeo & Juliet it was in class and during the last few acts I was in and out of the classroom for art club activities, but looking back on it, it was never that deep. Or, it shouldn't have been.

Romeo Montague is the Shakespearean equivalent of the brooding bad boy with a deep underlying sadness that's ruled primarily by his unmitigated libido. Like, if I remember correctly, Romeo was initially introduced as being absolutely distraught and completely isolated from his family during the first altercation of the story because the girl he liked didn't want to have sex with him... and the entirety of Romeo and Juliet's encounter was contingent on him attending that party just to - I think - convince her to reconsider. 

Alright whatever, we get to the party, immediately Tybalt is on edge because they are sworn enemies and Romeo has the audacity to throw on a cat mask and slink into his house like everything is sweet?? Lmao?? Whatever, Lord Capulet wants to keep the peace so he lets him stay, so Romeo decides to try and spit game at the only girl in attendance who is wearing the Capulet colors and, at least in the 1968 adaptation, looks viscerally uncomfortable with the sweaty teenage boy fiending after her like a dog even though he came to the party for another girl. Okay... uhm whatever, maybe I just don't get it, maybe I don't understand. May that love never find me lolol. 

And, obviously, alluding to the nature of the way he chases her with his cat mask and her mousy disposition as he basically stalks her around the ballroom. Again, sweaty and leering and uncomfortably insistent until he corners her at the punch bowl behind a curtain somewhere, AND SHE'S INTO IT?? Oh! Alright! They kiss, and due to whatever they spiked that punch with because even with the dramatic flair there's no way they fell in love after that, they're absolutely smitten with each other, but, 'Oh no! I don't even know your name!' So we have to figure out who you are and, surprise surprise ! He's the son of your father's sworn enemy and she's the only daughter of your father's sworn enemy ! 

Again, THEY JUST MET!! 

Romeo, after he and his friends decide to leave the party, just can't get her out of his head. So he does what any normal human being would do...he loiters in her bushes and listens to her monologue about the forbidden nature of their *checks watch* THREE HOUR love before spider climbing up her balcony wall. Get it I guess. Like, I cannot stress enough how baffled I was while reading this and ignoring the various mispronunciations of the word 'aye'. 

She's into it though so it's fine, she laments about his identity and he DENOUNCES HIS FAMILY NAME...ohkay..!  Because the cookie is that good I guess. Now he needs to run away, again, because obviously if Lord Capulet finds the son of his sworn enemy hanging from his balcony trying to chat up his daughter, that would end the story too soon. 

This is where it gets blurry so here we have a more than brief intermission about just how insane the idea of being so taken by a girl who has not yet reached her fourteenth summer just hours after crying over my first love because she wants to remain a virgin is. That's a crazy concept! Like yeah, star-crossed lovers which as they kiss consume, or whatever the quote is and whatnot but, W-O-W. Overarching themes of inevitability and fate and forbidden love, themes of loyalty to family and loyalty to yourself what have you. All very nice, all very lovely, you can't have a compelling and transcendental story without some absolutely insane plot points, but it never should have been that deep. 

Especially considering, uhm spoiler?? if you have somehow avoided an absolutely ancient literary pioneer, from the reactions of literally all of the characters following Tybalt's death, NO ONE HAS DIED?? These two families, the Capulets and the Montagues, have been feuding for how long?? The prince has interfered with their affairs on more than one occasion because the blood is that bad! The people of Verona were willing to fight the Montagues and the Capulets themselves!! Even the servants for the families hate each other!! But no one died as a result until Tybalt??? Posers!! Posturers?? Fake gangsters!! 

Whatever, some time passes and Romeo is on cloud nine because he got his rebound, now we focus on Mercutio and Tybalt and their little fencing match that took so much yapping to get to I almost thought they were flirting when I watched the movie and when I read the book. They fight, Mercutio is injured but he's acting so dramatic everyone thinks he's joking.. uhm,  Mercutio then dies. Yeah, no, Tybalt struck him fatally during their fight and now Romeo has no choice but to get it back in blood. 

I'm pretty sure this is after Romeo and Juliet decide to get married, again, it's blurry I'm sorry! Just know it's been less than a business week. 

Now Romeo and Tybalt fight and Romeo wins because his time hasn't come yet. News spreads of these two deaths in Verona's most affluent families so obviously the prince is involved, again, and even though the Capulets want him to sentence Romeo to death, he exiles him. Romeo is banished, that's great! Wonderful, actually.. or so you would think. No, lmao, Romeo runs off to his friend Friar Lawrence and he just wants to die he's so distraught because even carrion-flies are free to inhabit Verona, where Juliet lives, but Romeo is banished :(. Alright bro. Like, if any man had to be the original simp, it would be Romeo. 

Oh, you bought your girlfriend some flowers and you kiss the ground she walks on?? Romeo will kill himself if he can't see Juliet, yeah, up your game :/. 

While all of this is happening, Lord Capulet has decided to marry Juliet off to a man named Paris. A man of questionable moral character who claims that, "Younger than she [Juliet] are happy mothers made" Yuck. She's 13...  Obviously, Juliet objects, and so of course her father threatens to disown her and throw her out on the street if she refuses to marry a man like a day after her cousin died! Duh! 

It's a play, it's a drama, I am aware, but can I just say that everyone is so dramatic. 

So Juliet runs off to Friar Lawrence and asks for a way to avoid the wedding altogether, so of course he gives her a concoction to help her fake her death! What sound decision making skills you all have.. waow. Juliet returns to her father and pretends to be happy with her arrangement, oh goody! Now Lord Capulet wants to marry her off tomorrow... $/!:8&/? (order might be wrong ngl)

She's left with no choice, duh, so she drinks the potion. She "dies", it's a whole thing with a funeral procession and everything. But, Romeo didn't know that she was going to do that... (more) drama! 

So now Romeo believes that she is dead and seeks out and apothecary to give him a poison that will kill him too. He goes to her funeral and sneaks into her tomb, I think, only to run into Paris who is like, very confused as to why a strange man is loitering in his "wife's" tomb. And because everyone is still so dramatic, they fight. Romeo wins because he has it like that I guess?? And, after learning that Paris was also due to be married to Juliet, Romeo grants Paris his final wish and allows him to be laid to rest right beside a (still "dead") Juliet. 

Ugh, so sweet. 

Uhm, Romeo drink his little drinky drink and dies, only for Juliet to FINALLY wake up and see the carnage they he's amassed. Seeing that he is now dead, she attempts to drink the poison leftover but Romeo's greedy self didn't leave her any. So the next best thing is to, obviously, stab herself in the abdomen with his dagger. Yeah. Uhm. 

That's not all but the end is Friar Lawrence essentially coming clean about the whole secret marriage between them and their deaths and the Montagues and the Capulets are no longer enemies.  

It never should have been that deep, like oh my god. But, uhm, whatever Shakespeare.