Let's see how this young couple will face their inevitable fate

The first time that I encountered the play written by Shakespeare was in last year’s World Literature Class. At the beginning of reading his play, the sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary were unfathomable to me and the only way I could comprehend his story was by re-constructing the word fragments. Nonetheless, through the deeper study of the context later, I can gradually understand his “ancient language” without recombining the words. Thanks to the experience of reading Othello, I was not anxious at all when I knew I would read Romeo and Juliet soon.

Romeo and Juliet has gained such a world-wide renown that even the four Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies can not reach. What I knew already about this story is that it is a famous tragedy in which both of the main characters died because the coincidence of cumulative misunderstanding. The god of destiny makes fools of the people. I myself do not enjoy reading a story especially when I already knew it had a bad ending.

In Act 1, the playwright already reveals the whole background of the story. The first fight at the start of the play confused me a little bit, but after I went through the following plots, I have to say it is a great idea to introduce the entrenched hostility between the house of Capulet and the house of Montague by presenting the conflict first. The second thing that impresses me is readers can easily figure out the characters’ personality by reading their words. The dialogues are just so representative of their different dispositions. I like the way that Shakespeare “builds” the character of the Nurse. From her endless talks about everything, readers can easily imagine a figure of nagging, over-dramatic and querulous mid or old age lady in their minds.

Romeo is a poetic and melancholy person. The way he wrote and speak is full of sophisticated and poetic description about love, like “why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything of nothing first create! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapne chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, still-waking sleep that is not what it is”. When coming to unsmooth love, Romeo will easily become sad. Just like when he knows he cannot marry Roseline, Romeo just keeps thinking about her so deeply that he even cannot have a good sleep.  Juliet, on the other hand, is not that worry about love. However, she should worry about her marriage soon. In the play that we have read so far, she was introduced to a successful man and both her mother and her nurse seem to be very satisfied about their marriage, if that is possible. Although Juliet hasn’t said that much, her response to her mother’s intention of letting young Paris marry her reflects some of her personality. “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move. But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly” is what Juliet says to her mother. Juliet’s response is indeed smart. She neither defies her mother’s decision nor compromises. She gives herself a space to whether go back or move forward.