Romeo and Juliet Movie
Which Romeo and Juliet movie are you watching? Can you tell me the name of the director and/or the year of production? Or the names of the actors playing Romeo and Juliet?
I'm a huge fan of Shakespeare, and I've read Romeo and Juliet about fifty times. I'll tell you anything you want to know.
Basically, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet come from two families who have been feuding with each other now for so long that nobody rememebers what started it. R & J are a couple of starry-eyed kids, fourteen and thirteen years old, but they're passionately in love with each other. The conflicts between their "star-crossed love," the war between their families, and the prince's efforts to keep the peace in the city make Romeo and Juliet a very beautiful and a very tragic story.
My Renaissance English is pretty good, so if you need any help with the vocabulary of Shakespeare, let me know. There were quite a few words that we no longer use today, and a bunch of words that meant different things then than they do now. Also, the grammar was a little different (They might say, "Go you now," where today, we'd just say, "go now," for example. And they had an informal second person that we no longer use, but it works a lot like "tú" in Spanish: Formal: You are, you do; informal: Thou art, thou dost. And the third person singular was different: He hath, he sitteth, he goeth. But since we always include our pronouns in English even when our verbs are conjugated, that shouldn't be too hard to pick up. Anyway, let me know what your specific questions are. I don't know anything about how much or how little you know, so please bear with me and let me know if it sounds like I'm talking down to you or like I'm talking over your head.
If you find the movie really overwhelming, you might try picking up a copy of the play with annotations. There are a lot of really good ones. Folger editions are really handy, because they put the explanations on the facing page even with the lines they talk about, so they're really easy to find when you need them. I've had a lot of good experience with Arden versions, too. You may just want to go to the bookstore and flip through a couple of different versions and see which ones look the most helpful and easy to use.
Of course, the movie will skip some scenes, rearrange a few things, and so on, but if you read the play and get a feel for what's going on, it may make the movie a lot easier to follow.
Have fun, and let me know if there's anything else I can do to help. I'm always delighted to talk about Shakespeare.
Best Wishes,
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: Gujarati; Berber (Tamazight)
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Mark S.
March 30, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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