Romeo and Juliet

is my absolute favorite story EVER. It's well written, has a beautiful plot line, the characters have cool names (I mean, Mercutio? Come on! Awesome.), and it pretty much shaped the modern love story. I'm pretty sure that the one line from Shakespeare that everyone knows is "Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"
Even if people don't understand the incredible symbolism of that line, they at least know that the line symbolises something.

So why do we love Romeo and Juliet? There's something about the story that enchants us. Even though we know it's rediculous to meet someone, fall in love, get married, and kill yourself for them in less then a week, the two lovers represent the kind of love that everyone wants, no matter how much they deny it--the consummate kind of love that brings two people together not through what my friends Tricia and Billie refer to as "Lust at First Site," but through true, complete, love that isn't lust, but a deep spiritual connection.

Romeo and Juliet's love for eachother changes them. Before he meets Juliet, Romeo is a typical young man (for that time). He hangs out with his friends, jokes, goes to parties, not too unlike the way we live. Of course, when we first meet him, he's pining over another beautiful woman, Rosaline, much in the same way a normal boy would pine for a woman he lusts after. As a matter of fact, the Friar says to Romeo when the younger man comes to him about Juliet, "Young men's love, then, lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes." And this is true of Romeo--until he meets Juliet. When he meets her, he not only thinks she's beautiful, but he loves to talk with her, too.

Juliet changes, as well. When she first appears, she is an obedient girl, doing as her parents tell her to. Had Romeo not gone to that party at her father's house, she would have gotten married to Paris, wouldn't have had true love but led a happy life, the same way her mother had. But something changes, and suddenly, she's found something more important to her then simply pleasing her parents and nurse, and she will do anything to keep from losing that. This is why, even though it terrifies her, she is willing to pretend she has died so that she may be banished with Romeo.

So I think that's why we love Romeo and Juliet so much. Even though Romeo completely destroys his own happiness, even though Juliet is willing to hurt her parents and nurse, we wish we could have someone that we could be brave like that for.

Maybe I'm just being stupid, but I believe in that kind of love. I mean, I'm not idiotic enough to think that it's easy to find or that everybody even finds it. But I do believe in it for everyone.

Brii333

"A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorry, will not show his head.
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished,
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
~Romeo and Juliet
~Act V, Scene iii
~The Prince