It was purely out of the blue, but when I saw it I knew I wanted to get lost in it.
JK. I'm not talking about some deep stuff right now. So long story short, I somehow stumbled upon a book of "Favorite Tales from William Shakepeare" while I was cleaning up my family's book shelf. Curiosity got me and I decided to read its first tale which was Romeo and Juliet.
I know that usually students in western countries must have read at least one story of Shakespeare during their high school years and make a book report about it. But, since I spent my high school years in Jakarta, I've never had the opportunity where I was obligated to read Shakespeare or any classic author for that matter. And I figured, I might as well try to read it now before it's too late.
Later on there was this idea that pops into my head of making a book report about it, but then I realized that it might take a bit too much of my time. Since we all know that making a book report ain't easy people. You have to do research about the characters, make a solid argument of your own point of view of the story, make an in depth analyses about each characters and events, it's just too much for me. But I still want to pour out my thoughts about this tale as old as time.
The story of Romeo and Juliet as stars-crossed lovers have such a strong appeal for many generations. The countless remakes have been made through many different form of art. Romeo and Juliet is also considered to be one of Shakespeare's most popular works. I mean hey, I can see why it's popular till this day. It has all the elements of a sappy romantic movie like we now have. It's a guilty pleasure, but we all know we'll still watch it nonetheless.
I assume that people know the general story line of Romeo and Juliet so I won't get too much into that. It's you know the usual stuff like two houses fighting with one another, a boy meets a girl at a ball, he fell in love with her and she with him, and as it turns out the girl is the daughter of the boy's family's enemy, despite the enmity between the two houses they're trying to keep their relationship, but unfortunately it doesn't work out well for the boy and the girl. The end.
My initial reaction to this was, okay-ish. I mean when you see in movies, they usually depict it in a way where you will swoon over Romeo because of his charisma and love for Juliet. But I didn't get that same feeling and emotion when I finished reading this. The first thing that hit me was how fast their relationship was. I mean, sure it was like love at first sight but they barely know each other. And I feel like the attraction that they had was merely a physical attraction rather than an emotional attraction.
If my calculation is right, they met on Sunday and both of them confess their love/attraction. On Monday they got married in secret. That same day Romeo was banned from Verona. On Tuesday Juliet received the news that her father demands Juliet to marry the suitor that her father had chosen and that she would marry him on Thursday. Then the following night she drank the poisonous vial. On Wednesday Juliet was proclaimed dead.On Thursday Romeo heard the news and came to the tomb where he thought she was truly dead so he drank a poison to kill himself and after Juliet woke up from her 42 hours of sleep and found that Romeo has killed him self because he thought she was dead, she decided to also end her life (for real this time).
There were a lot of things happening in a short amount of time. Also another thing to consider is the language. It's archaic but that is expected from and old tale like this. I've had to search a few words to fully understand the whole meaning of it. All in all it was a good experience, and reading one of classic Shakespeare's work has always been lingering somewhere in the back of my mind. So it feels good to finally cross this one out.
