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| Ingrid Bugge, "Romeo and Juliet" (2013) The story of "Romeo and Juliet" has become the most iconic story of love of all time. We never learn the root cause of the quarrel between the Capulets and the Montagues. From very early on "Romeo and Juliet" was prized above all for its romantic interest. Proof of this comes from the First Folio of Shakespeare´s plays in the Bodleian in Oxford. For 40 years after its publication in 1623 the volume remained chained to the shelves of the library for use by students; eventually, in 1664, the university traded it in for a Third Folio of the poet´s works. Date of Composition: the evidence seems to point to as early as 1591 for the date of the composition of "Romeo and Juliet", at least in its first form, though the play, as we know it, may safely be dated circa 1596. "O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, And all a wonder and a wild desire!" William Shakespeare (1564-1616), "Romeo and Juliet" (c.1596) |
Romeo and Juliet meet at the Capulets´ball on Sunday night.
They are wedded on Monday.
Consummate their love that night.
They part at dawn on Tuesday to the sound of the lark.
And they are re-united in death on the night of Thursday.
What renders the play special as literature are its daring and dazzling metaphors, none more so perhaps than those rich conceits about Juliet´s eyes trading places with the stars for a brake in heaven where, streaming through the firmament, they will illuminate all creation.
The play is full of such arresting rhetorical moments, with Shakespeare pulling out all the stops to make us experience -and not just witness- the sheer beauty of this pair of innocent and star-crossed lovers.
Shakespeare created a contrapuntual structure through a series of artful oppositions between youth and age, light and dark, night and dawn, life and death, that have inspired successive generations every bit as much as the play´s language.
During the summer of 1935, Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953) worked on "Romeo and Juliet" in the peaceful surroundings of the "Bolshoi´s company´s" retreat of Polenovo (URSS).
The "Kirov" had at last, in 1940, undertaken "Romeo and Juliet"
Prokofievs Shakespearen Ballet premiered at The Royal Opera House (Covent Garden, London) turned out to be a triumphant succes.
Finally, one must not overlook the close connection of the play with the sonnets, many of which, as we know from Meres, must have been written before 1598:
William Shakespeare: Sonnet CXVI
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempest and is never shaken..."
"Love´s not Time´s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle´s compass come..."
"If this be error, and upon me prov´d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov´d"
The most frequently handled page in the entire volume was the lover´s parting at dawn after their night together in Act III. scene 5.
Here Romeo and Juliet appear aloft on that same balcony where two days earlier she had spoken private lines of love about his name (unaware at first of the fact that he was hidding down in the orchard below overhearing every word).
Looking up at her, she had then seemed to him as glorious as a winget messenger of heaven while she in turn was sighing the words:
"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
before offering to surrender her own name and family if it helped Romeo and her together.
The scene occurs on page 68 of the tragedy section of the Folio.
The edges of the Bodleian copy were worn away, without a trace of tear, by students some of whom were almost certainly no older than the 13-years-old-Juliet.
Capulet´s orchard
(The scene is set in Verona, Italy)
Romeo, son of Montague.
Juliet, daughter of Capulet.
Enter Romeo and Juliet, above, at the window.
(Juliet:)
"Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yond pom´granate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale...!"
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), "Romeo and Juliet", Act III. scene 5 (c.1596)
