Romeo and Juliet

Sometime before I was born, the BBC set themselves the task of filming each of Shakespeare's many plays. The Tasmanian library now owns most, if not all, of these productions on DVD, and, since I am not otherwise employed at present, I have decided to watch the most famous among them (such as Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, and, of course, Romeo and Juliet).

At this point I would like to pass on a little advice to you: If you plan to get a series of DVDs from the library, don't place holds on them all on the same day or they are likely to all turn up at once (and three hours of full Shakespearean English is enough for one day, trust me).

I started my Shakespearean plays with Romeo and Juliet. Of course, I was already familiar with the storyline and I have watched another version of it (the Leonardo DiCaprio version back when I thought he was gorgeous - quite a long time ago). This was the first time I have seen it the way Shakespeare wrote it - as a play, in full Shakespearean language and garb.

I know many people consider Romeo and Juliet as one of the greatest love stories ever told, if not the greatest, but I'm afraid that I strongly disagree. While it is no secret that Shakespeare is not my favourite playwright (Oscar Wilde is), this is not the reason I don't like Romeo and Juliet (in fact, I quite like some of his other plays), nor is the complicated language; it is the storyline.

The story basically goes that two families hate each other over some quarrel long ago, and the son of one family meets the daughter of the other family at a mask ball and they "fall in love". They then (with the help of a priest of questionable morals) secretly marry only a few hours after they meet because they are so enamored with each other's beauty. A rather complicated lot of dialogue and sword fight then occurs, the end result of which is that Romeo kills Juliet's cousin and has to flee the city. Juliet's parents, who don't know that she is already married to Romeo, arrange for her to marry another man. Juliet again enlists the help of the priest to obtain a medication that will make her appear as though she is dead in order to fake her own death the night before her wedding. The priest dispatches a messenger to go and fetch Romeo so that, when Juliet awakes in the family burial crypt, he can rescue her and they can live happily ever after. Juliet's side of the plan works perfectly and she is placed in the crypt next to her cousin that Romeo killed a few days earlier, but the messenger never makes it to Romeo so when he hears of Juliet's death he doesn't know that she is not really dead. He rushes to the crypt to see his wife, kills a few more people, and then poisons himself. Juliet wakes up, sees her husband is dead, and plunges a dagger into her own chest. All this happens, only a few days after Romeo and Juliet first meet at the masked ball.

Not my idea of a great love story. Not my idea of a love story at all. Romeo and Juliet were not 'in love'; they hardly knew each other - their 'love' was based solely on their beauty.