Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare's great discovery of how to unite romance with tragedy. It is an intimate love story set in a public context fraught with danger and hatred. Its verse is youthful and fresh, with memorable phrases that are among the best-known in the canon. It is one of Shakespeare's most often performed plays; it is certainly the most often filmed. It has given rise to numerous musical works in opera, ballet, or the concert hall. It has been played as period drama, updated to a variety of contemporary contexts, or adapted into spin-offs that venture far from Shakespeare's original. This brief course will explore the many ways in which the play and its two title characters have been interpreted. The first class will focus on straight productions rather than adaptations, but will include some relatively faithful versions in film, opera, or ballet. The second class will cast its net considerably wider, and may even approach the lunatic fringe.

Those of you who have followed me in person and online will know that I have included Romeo and Juliet in several other courses to date. So some reuse of material is inevitable, especially since much of the best stuff simply demands to be included. But I have managed to keep previously-seen clips down to under 30% for the two classes, and the arguments and presentation will of course be new. rb.

At least half this class will be devoted to verse spoken on stage in front of a live audience, since that’s where all Shakespeare starts. His theatre had no sets, no lighting, and little background music; it is all in the language. The fact that women’s roles were played by young men suggests that performing them (and probably male roles also) had little to do with the modern concept of inhabiting the characters, so much as depicting their emotional world through words. Adding the resources of a modern theatre—let alone a film studio or opera house—opens new possibilities, but entirely changes the esthetic equation. Paradoxically, ballet may be closer to Shakespeare's verse than either film or opera, in that it also depends upon an external expressive language precisely controlled.

May I assume that you are already familiar with the plot of Romeo and Juliet? If not, the first link below contains summaries of various lengths. Even if you are familiar with the play, it would be good to review the texts of the five short sections in the text handout below, as we shall be comparing several different interpretations of each; I will, however, also be showing the shorter ones on screen. The other two handouts are a reference list to what we shall be doing in class; use the second one if you have a two-sided printer.
     • plot summaries of Romeo and Juliet
     • texts of the sections we shall watch in class
     • annotated playlist
     • playlist in booklet form for two-sided printers

This class moves away from Romeo and Juliet as individuals to study the later transformations of the play as a whole; you might call it Romeo-and-Juliets Galore. There are at least two levels of transformation. One is when a director performs Shakespeare’s text as written, but recontextualizes it by moving it out of the original locale or time-period, generally but not always by updating it to the present. A second type of transformation involves translating the play into a different medium, such as film, opera, or ballet. While these derived works may also stay close to Shakespeare’s original, as we saw in the previous class, they too may be recontextualized just like the play itself.

A further transformation takes place in those works marked “after” or “inspired by” Shakespeare. With these, there are no rules and no limits. But there are a lot of them out there; we can only look at a few.

There are no texts to read in advance. Other handouts below:
     • table of updates and adaptations
     • annotated playlist
     • playlist in booklet form for two-sided printers

 
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