O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father refuse thy name, thou art thyself thou not a montegue, what is montegue? tis nor hand nor foot nor any other part belonging to a man What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, So Romeo would were he not Romeo called retain such dear perfection to which he owes without that title, Romeo, Doth thy name! And for that name which is no part of thee, take all thyself.
When I was twelve, my sixth-grade English class went on a field trip to see Franco Zeffirelli’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. From that moment forward I dreamed that someday I’d meet my own Juliet. I’d marry her and I would love her with the same passion and intensity as Romeo. The factthat their marriage lasted fewer than three days before they both were deaddidn’t seem to affect my fantasy. Even if they had lived, I don’t think theirrelationship could have survived. Let’s face it, being that emotionally aflame, sexually charged, and transcendentally eloquent every single second can really start to grate on a person’s nerves. However, if I could find someone to love just a fraction of the way that Montague loved his Capulet, then marrying her would be worth it.
whats here a cup closed in my true loves hand poisin i see hath been his timeless end. oh churl drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after. i will kiss thy lips some poisin doth hang on them, to help me die with a restorative. thy lips are warm.yea noise then ill be brief oh happy dagger this is thy sheath. there rust and let me die.
There are a million things in this world that can end you, that can in one second obliterate the life you work so hard to keep alive. Our lives are structured around not dying. Eating, sleeping, looking both ways before you cross the street. It's all, all of it, to keep us safe from the thing that we know is going to get us anyway. It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. It's the world's biggest joke. Our entire lives are set up around not dying, knowing all the while that it's the one thing we can't avoid.
Some people’s self-esteem was secretly improved when they discovered that their then-lovers had killed themselves over them.
In high school, we barely brushed against Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, or any of the other so-unserious writers who delight everyone they touch. This was, after all, a very expensive and important school. Instead, I was force-fed a few of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits, although the English needed translation, the broad comedy and wrenching drama were lost, and none of the magnificently dirty jokes were ever explained. (Incidentally, Romeo and Juliet, fully appreciated, might be banned in some U.S. states.) This was the Concordance again, and little more. So we'd read all the lines aloud, resign ourselves to a ponderous struggle, and soon give up the plot completely.
Well, in that hit you miss. She'll not be hitWith Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit,And, in strong proff of chastity well armed,From Love's weak childish bow she lives uncharmed. She will not stay the siege of loving terms,Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes,Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.O, she is rich in beauty; only poorThat, when she dies, with dies her store.Act 1,Scene 1, lines 180-197
She was afraid of giving in to that overwhelming, absolute, unconditional love, a love that had shown her the route to heaven, but which had also taught her how much one could suffer, to the point where even the sound of your own tears became deafening.
The French poet Mallarmé and, after him, Borges, claimed that “everything in the world exists to end up in a book,” and if that’s true, and that even every man is a book, Federico was undoubtedly created by the pen of Keats or some other tormented Romantic poet; while Matteo was pure passion, like Shakespeare’s Romeo: spontaneous, intense, and impetuously real.
It's absurd how crazy love can make you......but even more absurd how stupid jealousy can make you!
Her heart was telling her to trust him, but it wouldn’t be the first time that that foolish muscle, there in the middle of her chest, had betrayed her.
I tried to hate you, to forgive you, all just to forget you, but I'm only capable of loving you. You're tattooed onto my skin, and the more I try to erase you, the deeper you sink in.
You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.
I said ”I love you so much it’s killing me”and you kept saying sorryso I stopped explainingfor it never made sense to youwhat always did to meto let what you love kill youand never regret. As Romeo is dying Juliet says”I am willing to die to remain by your side”and love was never a static place of restbut the last second of euphoriawhile throwing yourself out from a 20 store windowto be able to say”I flew before I hit the ground”,and it was glorious.Don’t be sorry.The fall was beautiful, dear.The crash was beautiful.
Avalon is full of desperate people.’ She bites at her lower lip this time, fumbling her hands, knitting her fingers into the bundle of plastic coin bags in her grasp. ‘Are you implying that I’m desperate?’ I say, one eyebrow tilting.‘You don’t need to be desperate… you can have anyone... I…’ she trails off. Looking up and trying to search the line of shops for the bank. I repulse her, I make her want to run. Why is this so hard? I need to get inside of her, I need to know what she is thinking, what she is wanting.It surely isn’t me she wants. Not to the extent that I… want her.‘You?’ I entice her to finish her sentence but she doesn’t, she stares off into the bustling crowds, memory flashing her eyes with a darkness.‘Madi wouldn’t fumble like this.’Oh, she would fumble, but not in the way you are, Elli.‘You’re not her, Elli.’ I entice her again, trying to force the dark memory, the sadness from her.‘No, if I was, you wouldn’t have wanted anyone else.’A breath hitches in her throat, she puts a hand over her mouth and says something else, her cheeks dance a shade of red that brightens and brightens until she apologises and quickens her pace. I chuckle, pulling at her arm and encircling one around her waist, pulling her back to me. Beneath my touch, her body trembles. When I raise my hand, my palm touching her cheek, I am sure she isn’t breathing.‘I don’t want anyone, Elli.’ My eyes burn, consuming her with my gaze. She is like a frightful deer, struggling beneath me with a gaze that cannot quite meet mine. When she does, it is only for a brief second before falling down and all I see is the gentle flutter of her raven flashes.‘I told you. I want someone I cannot have.’‘That is a really harsh way of telling someone you’re not interested.
I've played Romeo for Juliet(But in depth)It's vignettes of silhouettes(And then read)And watched Russian roulette, yeah red SovietYet doing it simultaneouslyWhile dropping down shed oubliettesTurned around and took truth to the head thatLove is the ugliest thing too beautiful for death
I was Juliet and Quinn was Romeo, and the lines weren't dead black-and-white words on a page but somehow alive, as natural and real as the argument we'd had about the spider and the fly. The rows of empty seats were gone, and we were in a candlelit ballrooom, wrapped in our own cocoon of words. But the playful banter of our words couldn't mask what we both knew--that after this, nothing would be the same .And then we got to the kissing part, which we'd only read through together and had never really rehearsed. But it didn't matter, because I was still Juliet and Quinn was still Romeo, his gray-green eyes fixed on mine. And when he bent to kiss me, it was Romeo's lips on Juliet's. Even so, Juliet was just as stunned as I would've been. When I said the last line, I was speaking for both of us. You kiss by the book.
Oh love how can we not be together?' Romeo cried. "Without the sight of you every day, the smell, the taste of you, I would wither away. My blood would turn to powder in my veins. And you? Have you not found in me a mirror for your soul? When you look at me, when we speak, touch, do you not see who you really are? I dare you to deny that in my presence you love yourself better. I know this is true, for I love myself better in yours.
When the devout religion of mine eyeMaintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires,And these, who, often drowned, could never die,Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sunNe'er saw her match since first the world begun.
Friar Laurence:O, mickle is the powerful grace that liesIn herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: For nought to vile that on the earth doth live, But to the earth some special good doth give; nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime's by action dignified.
I began to recall my own experience when I was Mercutio’s age (late teens I decided, a year or two older than Romeo) as a pupil at a public school called Christ’s Hospital. This school is situated in the idyllic countryside of the Sussex Weald, just outside Horsham. I recalled the strange blend of raucousness and intellect amongst the cloisters, the fighting, the sport, and general sense of rebelliousness, of not wishing to seem conventional (this was the sixties); in the sixth form (we were called Grecians) the rarefied atmosphere, the assumption that of course we would go to Oxford or Cambridge; the adoption of an ascetic style, of Zen Buddhism, of baroque opera, the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, and Mahler; of Pound, Eliot and e. e. cummings. We perceived the world completely through art and culture. We were very young, very wise, and possessed of a kind of innocent cynicism. We wore yellow stockings, knee breeches, and an ankle length dark blue coat, with silver buttons. We had read Proust, we had read Evelyn Waugh, we knew what was what. There was a sense, fostered by us and by many teachers, that we were already up there with Lamb, Coleridge, and all the other great men who had been educated there. We certainly thought that we soared ‘above a common bound’. I suppose it is a process of constant mythologizing that is attempted at any public school. Tom Brown’s Schooldays is a good example. Girls were objects of both romantic and purely sexual, fantasy; beautiful, distant, mysterious, unobtainable, and, quite simply, not there. The real vessel for emotional exchange, whether sexually expressed or not, were our own intense friendships with each other. The process of my perceptions of Mercutio intermingling with my emotional memory continued intermittently, up to and including rehearsals. I am now aware that that possibly I re-constructed my memory somewhat, mythologised it even, excising what was irrelevant, emphasising what was useful, to accord with how I was beginning to see the part, and what I wanted to express with it. What I was seeing in Mercutio was his grief and pain at impending separation from Romeo, so I suppose I sensitised myself to that period of my life when male bonding was at its strongest for me.