Of Pentameter & Bear Baiting – Romeo & Juliet (Part 1) #2

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course English Literature and THIS is Romeo
and Juliet, written in 1595 or 1596 and often called the greatest love story of
all time. Which, when you think about it, is a very strange thing to say about
a play that features, like, one off-stage sex scene and like seven on-stage
fatalities. I mean, let's quickly review the plot: Boy, Romeo, goes to a party
trying to get over a girl, with whom he is completely obsessed, but then he
meets another girl, Juliet, and becomes obsessed with her. Their families
hate each other, but despite that or possibly because of it they fall madly in
love and get married the next day whereupon immediately a family feud
breaks out.
No, Thought Bubble, not that kind of family feud. Yes, that kind. Several
people get killed, including Juliet's cousin, who is offed by Romeo. And that
means Romeo has to flee. Juliet takes a sleeping potion to avoid another
marriage. And then Romeo comes back, finds her sleeping, thinks she's
dead, kills himself. And then, she wakes up and kills herself. And then the
families end the feud. Yay. That we consider this romance says quite a lot
about humans. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, but they love each other so much,
you know? It's like his life literally isn't worth living without her. Yes, Me
from the Past, her being a woman that he's known for, like, a few
hundred...hours. And yet, every year, thousands of people write to Juliet
care of her hometown of Verona, Italy, and the citizens of Verona write
back. You, in fact, when you're in college, will go to Verona and visit all the
touristy Romeo and Juliet sites, and that very night you will be at a Veronese
night club and you will meet a girl named Antonia, and you will believe that
you really love her and that it is the kind of love that can last a lifetime. I'm
gonna hook up with her? No, at the end of the night, you lean in to kiss her
like...and no.
So Shakespeare didn't invent the story of Romeo and Juliet, but he made
really important changes to it. His immediate source material was a 3,000
line narrative poem called The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet,
written by Arthur Brooke in 1562, which itself borrowed from a tradition of
tragic romances dating back at least to Ovid's Metamorphosis. So
Shakespeare obviously changed some of the names but more importantly,
he introduced a lot of narrative complexity. I mean, for Brooke, the story of
Romeus and Juliet was a cautionary tale. He calls them: "A couple of
unfortunate lovers, thralling themselves to unhonest desire, neglecting the
authority and advice of parents and friends..., attempting all adventures of
peril for the attaining of their wished lust... abusing the honourable name of
lawful marriage." So, Brooke's poem is just an ordinary story about naughty
teenagers who receive the standard punishment for their naughtiness,
which is, of course, death.
And, of course, as you know from watching contemporary horror movies: if
you're a woman and you wanna live til the end, you better be a virgin. But
Shakespeare offers a much more compassionate portrait of Romeo & Juliet
and encourages us to empathize with them. I mean, Romeo and Juliet are
obviously hot for each other, but they're also kind of polite about it. I mean,
witness the physical distance between them in their most amorous scene. I
mean, their most amorous on-stage scene. I mean, obviously, they d-- they
do do it. And they use the kind of sacred metaphors that etiquette experts in
Shakespeare's day recommended for courtship. I mean, Romeo calls Juliet a
"holy shrine;" and then Juliet welcomes the flirtation by calling him a "good
pilgrim."
Also, Shakespeare's Juliet is much younger: She's 16 or 18 in other versions
of the story, but in Shakespeare, she's only 13, and so it's hard to see her as,
like, a dishonest floozy. I mean, even in a profoundly misogynistic age, it's
hard to see a 13-year-old stab herself and be like, "Yeah! She got what was
coming to her." So, Shakespeare was also likely influenced by the love
poems of Petrarch, who the character Mercutio mentions. Petrarch's work is
much more approving of intense adoration than Brooke's is. For instance, he
believed in of love at first sight. And he had to because all of his poems were
written to a woman he never met, and only saw once. But then the play also
isn't, like, a YOLO endorsement of following your heart because following
your heart does get Romeo and Juliet dead.
All right, let's go to the Thought Bubble. So Shakespeare sets the play in
Verona, Italy, which isn't a surprise, since the source material sets it there as
well, and also because Shakespeare set most of his plays away from
England. If you're going to talk about morality and values -- like individuals
responsibilities to their own interests versus their responsibilities to their
families and the larger social order, for instance -- it's much safer to set it in
faraway Italy. Romeo and Juliet is a love story, but it's also a political story:
The Montagues and Capulets consistently ignore the proclamations of the
Prince of Verona, and arguably Romeo's biggest hurdle to marrying Juliet is
that the Prince exiles him and promises to execute him should he return to
the city. Should you be loyal first to your own feelings? Or to your family? Or
to your faith? Or to your prince?
These are not just questions of Will That Hot Girl Go Out With Me; they are
in fact questions that were central to Elizabethan England, and as the critic
Northrup Frye pointed out, whenever Shakespeare wanted to write about
the problems of feuding nobles, he either set his plays in the distant past or
in a land far, far away. But when it comes to the actual romance, it's all very
hot-blooded and Mediterranean and Catholic. It's no coincidence that in
Protestant England, much of Romeo and Juliet's tragedy is facilitated by a
slippery Catholic friar. The stereotype of Italians as passionate and impulsive
goes back a long way, to well before Shakespeare, and that helps explain
Romeo and Juliet's actions. I mean, would English lovers act like this?
Probably not. They'd be too busy being pale and avoiding the rain and eating
shepherd's pie and whatnot, but this is just what those Italians would do.
Thanks, Thought Bubble. Okay, let's turn briefly to the play's structure.
Romeo and Juliet, you'll be surprised to learn, is a tragedy. And
Shakespeare's tragedies follow the same structure first described by
Aristotle in the 5th century BCE Tragedy occurs when a mostly good
character or characters of noble extraction (here, Romeo and Juliet) make
an error (getting married so quickly, ignoring the family feud) and are
brought low (double suicide). Shakespeare wouldn't have read Aristotle, but
he probably would have been familiar with Latin criticism of the Poetics.
Now I don't want to generalize about Aristotle and I know that he has a
vocal group of supporters among Crash Course commenters, but it is widely
known that Aristotle was 100% wrong 100% of the time. If you watched our
series on World History, for instance, you'll recall that Aristotle believed that
some people were just naturally slave-ey. But while this narrative of tragedy
that noble people suffer when they act badly isn't actually reflected very
often in the real world, it remains a really powerful idea, both in our fiction
and in the way we imagine the world around us. And it's a big part of why
we're so fascinated when we see the once-great suffer downfalls, whether
it's Lance Armstrong or Warren G. Harding or Marilyn Monroe or Lindsay
Lohan or the entirety of The Jackson family.
But what makes Shakespearean tragedy so interesting is the complexity he
introduces to that Aristotelian structure. Complexity, by the way, not seen in
the downfall of Lindsay Lohan. I mean, at least by Elizabethan standards,
Romeo and Juliet both make mistakes, but they're mistakes born of love,
and it is because of their deaths as result of these mistakes that peace and
harmony return to the streets of Verona. So you can read it as a mere
Aristotelian tragedy, but you can also read it as a narrative of tragic sacrifice,
or as a story about love being worth the price of death. Oh, it's time for the
open letter?
An Open Letter to Star-Crossed Lovers. But first, let's see what's in The
Secret Compartment today. Oh, it's Hazel and Augustus, noted star-crossed
lovers from my book, The Fault in Our Stars. Hi, guys! Uh, I'm gonna leave
you in there, but keep it PG. Dear Star-Crossed Lovers, You go pretty much
all the way back in literature. You're very helpful for thinking about, like, fate
and free will. But you're also kind of sexy. So if you want to think about free
will, but also give people high-quality entertainment, you are the natural
choice, star-crossed lovers. But I wonder if this constant exploration of star-
crossed-lovers-ness also leads to a kind of celebration of it and whether
actual lovers who needn't be star-crossed try to invent star-crossed-ness.
Yeah, don't do that. It's unhealthy. For Emily Dickinson's sake, just let
yourself be happy. Best wishes, John Green Okay, so let's turn to the actual
writing. Romeo and Juliet has both poetry and prose; it's pretty easy to tell
which is which by looking at, you know, the line length. The lines of poetry
are shorter and usually conform to the same metric structure, called iambic
pentameter. An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of a stressed and unstressed
syllable. And not, like, in the anxiety sense, but in the sense of, you know,
putting an emphasis on a syllable. And pentameter means that there are five
feet in a line.
This sounds very complicated, but it's actually very easy. Let's try it on the
prologue: Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay
our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood
makes civil hands unclean. Now my performance just then would not have
gotten my hired at Shakespeare's theater company. Ideally, you don't read
iambs in that sing-song-y way, but iambic pentameter pops up all over the
place. John Keats' last will and testament was a single line of iambic
pentameter: My chest of books divide among my friends. And much of our
conversation takes places within iambs. Like, that last sentence for instance.
I mean, this isn't genius stuff. My two-year-old son regularly uses iambic
pentameter, like every time he says, "Daddy, I want to go to Steak N Shake."
Iambic pentameter is a way of reflecting the natural rhythms of human
speech in English, while also heightening it. And it's worth paying attention
to especially when Shakespeare messes around with the meter, as in that
famous line, "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?" That line
would be iambic pentameter but something keeps messing it up --
specifically, Romeo's name. And it's his name, of course, that is the problem.
Were he not named Romeo Montague, there'd be no issue, in the line or in
the play. And I know that when we first encounter Shakespeare, the
language can seem difficult. That's because unlike French or Italian, English
has evolved a lot since the 16th-century.
Also, Shakespeare was constantly using words in new ways, as in this play,
for instance, when he became the first person ever to describe a hot girl as
an "angel." But the difficulty and the slowness of the reading allows you to
pay attention to the genius of Shakespeare's language. So, I know
sometimes it feels more like translation than reading, but if you stick with it,
you will find yourself in Shakespeare's world. Actually, it might help a little to
imagine the plays as they were originally staged because the Elizabethan
playhouse was very different from theaters of today. There were a few
indoor, private theaters and a couple more in palaces and at the Inns of
Court, but Shakespeare's company typically performed in large theaters like
the Globe, partly open to the air and partly covered by a thatched roof.
Now, I don't know if these thatched roofs inspired Rock Master Scott and
the Dynamic Three to record their hit song, "The Roof Is on Fire," however
the roof was often on fire, particularly when plays necessitated cannons.
And as there was limited water and firefighting resources, it was sometimes
necessary to let the William Faulkner burn. So, if you had the cash for it, you
sat on tiered benches in the galleries with a good view of the stage. But if
you had less money, you stood in the pit. And you usually stood there for
more than three hours. These weren't short plays.
Well, except for Macbeth. Ah! I should have said "the Scottish play." Romeo
and Juliet wasn't performed at the Globe, but probably at a theater called
the Curtain, slightly older, but otherwise very similar, although on the good
side of the river Thames. Shakespeare referred to it as "the Wooden O." It
was rediscovered earlier this year by archaeologists working in London.
Theaters like the Globe and the Curtain were dirty, they probably didn't
smell very good, and while cellphones didn't go off in the middle of plays,
they were not quiet places. Today, you go to the theater and everyone gets
quiet when the lights go down, but there were no lights. There also weren't
any microphones. There was nothing to focus attention on the stage except
the play itself, so people drank and ate and jeered at the actors if they
thought the performances were bad.
So Romeo and Juliet may be an amazing work of poetry, but it also pandered
to the popular tastes of the time. I mean, Renaissance theater wasn't, like,
high art. So, yes, nobles went to the theater, but it wasn't considered classy.
I mean, a lot of times people were literally choosing between seeing this
play and watching a chained bear try to fight off a bunch of dogs. So this
wasn't highbrow entertainment, and I hope it doesn't feel highbrow to you
just because of the fancy language. Shakespeare knew how to navigate
between high and low culture. He knew how to amuse and entertain us
while also grappling with big questions about honor and fate and duty and
human frailty. And the idea that something can be both fun and smart still
resonates today. I mean, isn't that why you watch Crash Course? And yes, I
went there. We are of Shakespearean quality.
Next week we'll delve further into the themes of Romeo and Juliet and
discuss whether it's really love or lust at the heart of their relationship.
Thanks for watching. I'll see you then. Crash Course is produced and
directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. The
associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by Alexis Soloski
and myself. And our graphics team is Thought Bubble. Every week, instead
of cursing, I use the names of writers I like. If you'd like to suggest writers,
you can do so in the comments where you can also ask questions about
today's video that will be answered by our team of highly-trained English
people.