Romeo and Juliet: Understanding Love
Mr Marc Zaczek
At first Romeo and Juliet appears to be a play about two hormonal teenagers who defy a long standing feud between their families; risking everything for love. Cue the syrupy music for when they first meet. Romeo and Juliet stare into each other's eyes and say a lot of poetic things. Samuel Pepys, a 17th century writer, asserted that it was the “worst” play ever.
However, literary critic Harold Bloom, concluded that Romeo and Juliet "is unmatched, in Shakespeare and in the world's literature, as a vision of uncompromising mutual love that perishes of its own idealism and intensity."
Today, Romeo and Juliet is the template for nearly all literary stories about socially "forbidden" love; including The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights and, more recently, the Twilight narrative.
Contemporary audiences tend to embrace the play as cautionary tale; sometimes love is doomed to fail, and that applies no matter how old you are and what time you're living in.
The content that follows is intended to assist students in comprehending the many nuances of love, ultimately providing a deeper awareness as to why Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy that transcends time.
Students using an Apple I-Pad can access and edit Word documents, Excel and Power-point. Download "CloudOn" from the apps store (it is a free app). Follow the instructions and then download "Dropbox" to store your edited documents. You will now have an interface similar to Word, Excel and Power-point. The following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKDlpGPoxSU will provide you with a tutorial pertaining to "CloudOn".