All my pictures are from Sherlock Holmes Museum.

All quotes are from Shakespeare.  Whom we are letting us help us look at love this week.

but first my favorite love story–no not Will but Dianna’s words and characters:

” My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love is as deep; the more I give thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.”

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DROUGHTLANDERLOSOPY

“For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”

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Shakespare’s stories deal with a lot of things, a great variety of people and a full range of Good, Bad and Ugly.  But I think his story most assosciated with love is Romeo and Juliet…

The good: the young lovers

Young love

all that’s wonderful about being in love, magnified by the youngness and innocence of the couple….love is best when not corrupted by previous bad experiences, by the jadedness of the multiple experience….Do any of us ever remember that early love before we were hurt, betrayed, lied to….what ever caused our break-ups over the years?

“With love’s light wings did I o’er-perh these walls; for stony limits cannot hold love out.  And what love can do that dares love attempt.”

The bad the feud between their two families….this could come in many forms for those of us who were in love when we were young….they belonged to the wrong faith, when I was growing up my mother insisted I stay within my faith and since I was in church school she didn’t have a lot of problems early on, but….There is also nationalities that do not relish outside romances.  Race has long been an issue in many societies and though it is not so much as it once was, its still an issue in some families.  Money and lack there of also can be an issue and we could go on and on…So most of us understand that there can be family (or even social groups) issues that can come between lovers and lead to clandestine meetings and the like.

THE UGLY is the lengths then had to go to (a faked death–a missed message so that the one party doesn’t know the other is dead and a suicide, following by a second on the return to consciousness and discovery of the dead lover.

“See how she leans her check upon her hand: O’ that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek.”

While I’m not sure that will invented the star-crossed lover I am sure that he single-handedly made them a premier part of the world’s love mythology.  Really a bench mark for all that came after and there have been so many that have.

I see this as an essentially juvenile tale–it is stated in the play that Juliette had not yet reached 14 years, and that’s teen if I ever saw it.    As for Romeo the closest to his age we come is a comment that he didn’t have a beard yet.  Given that we can figure the age around 12-18.  I like to think around 16….but you can go younger or older as you like it.  So we have one very young girl of 13 and a boy–young man of a few years more or less.

Teenagers at least in our day and age seem to like the dramatic and these two from feuding families, though we must take this seriously as there are actual fighting resulting in the death which makes it a bit more serious than just he normal teenage angst of our usual more modern story.  But if we over look that we can pretty much can point out the emotions that run so high when hormones are flaring in the normal puberty (if one can ever call it normal).   And Shakespeare added his beautiful verse so that the teens do such a lovely job transmitting their emotions.

“Did my heart love till now?  Forswear it.  Sight!  For I never saw true beauty till this night.”   (I bet there’s more than one teen out there that would give his cell phone…well maybe not that but—for lines as good as Romeos)

So yes we have a teen love affair—even possible in this day and age…take for instance:

West Side Story—a movie from my youth but still making the rounds in plays and the like.  Rather than the city of Verona, a city of northern Italy we have New York a city of northern America.  The families are now a Puerto Rican gang the Sharks and a Anglo gang the Jets (when you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day).  Juliette is now Maria a beautiful sister of the leader of the Sharks and Romeo is Tony a former member and still associate of the Jets.  The rest is pretty much Shakespeare except without the Old English and with lots of music and don’t forget the singing.  It’s still star-crossed (thwarted by bad luck) lovers  doing themselves to death for love and loss of the object of that love.

So we’ve pretty much shown that down deep we have some affinity for the over-emotional and while we may not do it ourselves we like to weak over those who die for love–or maybe we just cherish the idea that someday someone might actually love us that much.

“Good night.  Good night.  Parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say good night till it be marrow.”

I am sure that there are many more efforts on dying for love in one form or another, but I think it is the most famous.  And like I said before maybe we love the thought of this love, and though on one hand it is not what we really want–a dead lover and a dead self.  Maybe its because for many of us love tends to be fickle and a lover or lovers who will end their life kinda negates  the fickle aspect of love as you can’t wiggle out of the final commitment that these two lovers, no matter how young they were, made could never be forsaken by either of them.

So there you have it, Shakespeare has crated that love that is a total commitment that makes so many–especially women sigh at the ending.

And if I the cynical girl that I am tends to see it as a rather short-sighted give the average length of a teenagers love interests in general (even several adult ones I’ve known of for that matter)

“My Bounty is as boundless as my love is deep, the more I give thee, the more I have, from both are infinite.”

One thing that does interest me is that this was the early days of romantic love—and like now it was a bit of a fairy tale.  The wealthy and even the less so tended to marry for titles, more riches, military and political stability and protection.  The less wealthy were often married for the same reasons just on a much lesser state (i.e. you have a pretty daughter and you marry her to the ugly buther who has a house and a steady income.  She’s cried for and the butcher doesn’t have to waste his money on women of the streets. All very sensible if not necessariy romantic.  So Shakespeare’s ideas must have been very appealing, and the dying at the end just proved how true the lovers really were.  Point made don’t you think.

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“But soft!  What light through yonder window breaks?  It is the east and Juliet is the sun.  Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon.  Who is already sick and pale with grief.  That is already sick and pale with grief.  That thou her maid art far more fair than she.  Be not her maid, since she is envious: her vestal livery is but sick and green and none but fools do wear it: cast it off.  It is my lady O, it is my love!”

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JULIET:  “Tis almost morning:  I would have thee gone: an yet no further than a wanton’s bird; who lets it hop a little from her hand, like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, and with a silk thread plucks it back again, so loving-jealous of his liberty.

ROMEO: I would I were thy bird.”