I have read and seen Romeo and Juliet many times and before reading this essay was going to give this one a miss but Jack’s essay is brilliant and makes me look at it in an entire new way as I had never thought of the characters trying to firm their own moral code against their amoral elders before . Thank you so much for publishing this
I am always most pleasantly surprised when people have learned something about Shakespeare from me. It's a privilege I don't take for granted. Thank you for reading the essay, Miranda, and thank you for inviting me to write it for this substack.
I suspect that my public school English text did not contain more than excerpts. As naive as we were I'm certain I would remember if we had read the innuendo aloud in class. R&J certainly begins with a bang. My overall impression was that the only person in town with any sense is the prince. The essay helped me see some of the positive qualities in the impulsive young couple, especially considering that the adults in their lives were not very helpful role models.
I recognize that good teaching of Romeo and Juliet needs some sensitivity, but I would rather see tenth graders read an uncensored text than seventh graders read a chopped up copy. I don't think a student should have to read Mercutio aloud on the pears or the bawdy hand of the clock.
Prince Escalus certainly has more sense than the Capulets, but I am reluctant to affirm his banishment of Romeo. That too seems like one of the play's impulsive decisions. Yet it might seem moderate because Paris is the Prince's relative, and the Capulets want vengeance. Circumstances certainly get beyond his control.
Great point, Jack. I actually do believe that a lot of classics are assigned to students at too early and age. I’m on record as favoring abridged classics for children and adolescence. I fell in love with Great Expectations this way. But some works are just sophisticated enough to warrant waiting until,say, 10th grade. So I can see both sides of these questions, but ultimately, I think students can be turned off of works they are assigned to read before they can really appreciate them at all. None of us are ever old enough to appreciate them fully, of course, and always find more with every rereading.
As a young child, I had an abridged Great Illustrated Classics pocket edition of Great Expectations given to me by an elderly family friend who loved Dickens. I read it, and my sibling's Illustrated edition of A Tale of Two Cities many times. They inspired me to climb (yes, fingers and toes on the shelves) my father's shelf to reach his vintage clothbound unabridged pocket editions of David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit. I didn't fully understand them, but I kept trying to read them until I did.
The difficulty I have on this subject is that there are many people whose judgment I don't trust. I think R&J should be okay when readers are 15+ (regardless of the Florida laws). As for Toni Morrison, I wonder why some school systems and teachers won't look at some of her less rough novels, like A Mercy, to teach rather than Beloved, and juniors and seniors are about the right age for it. Beloved is a great novel for adults (including ready college students). I don't want banning it, but I would want a context where the readers are mature enough for it.
Agree. I do think some of these controversies could be avoided through better judgment on the part of the teachers. But they are often just going through bureaucratic hoops and just trying to survive.
So, Karen, I got out my copy of On Reading Well, and found more than I was looking for. From your chapter on chastity, I was reminded that Percy Shelley wrote a long poem titled, appropriately for R&J, Queen Mab. I should read it now. But you quote from it, and clearly Shelley is alluding to the fantasy creature Mercutio imagines in the play.
My essay here is long enough, but if I were going to write much more, I would have looked at Juliet's opening speech in 3.2, where she is much more than ready for Romeo to join her in bed. She gives this speech after 2.6, when they go to be married by Friar Lawrence. Are Romeo and Juliet chaste, or is their desire for each other just a little too heated to say so?
Oh, I love this question! So I think they are chaste, but their chastity needs to be accompanied by temperance. The way Aristotle discusses temperance is in terms of the physical appetites but that includes sex, of course. Temperance means desiring physical satisfaction, neither too much nor too little little.
He as well as the church fathers argued that no virtue can exist or be virtuous absent the other virtues. I think this is an excellent example of that.
This is a good answer. It goes along with the friar's initial response, though he's a dope on other matters in the play.
At about the same time as Shakespeare wrote R&J, he wrote Midsummer Night's Dream, where Theseus is four days from marrying Hippolyta, and what he needs is a cold shower.
I also was doubtful about rereading this play. I appreciate the new perspective.
I was homeschooled, but we didn't study Shakespeare, as he was much too worldly for the ultra-conservative program we were in during my high school years. However, I read Shakespeare on my own and the edition my father had on his shelf was a 1974 'Complete Works of Shakespeare' published by Abbey Library. I read Romeo and Juliet then, but preferred King Lear from among Shakespeare's tragedies. When I reread R&J in the Folger edition for this, I didn't remember the bawdiness, but when I checked, it is all there in my father's edition, except it has the et caetera for Mercutio's pun. I just didn't understand the allusions the first time.
I have a question, does an aubade have a specific form like a sonnet does, or is it just the content of the poem that makes it an aubade?
Holly, it is the content of the poem that makes an aubade, dawn breaking in on a couple in bed. While I linked to one by John Donne, other poets who have written aubades are William Butler Yeats and Tracy K Smith. You can probably find others with a search in poetryfoundation.org.
King Lear is a magnificent play; I was able to see a great performance last summer in Canada. I haven't always found my university students warming up to it. What do you like about it?
Did you go to the Stratford Festival in Ontario? That is on my bucket list.
I think I like King Lear because I understand it. That sounds odd, because one taped performance I watched rendered the complex lines almost incomprehensible. But the was the production's fault - I've since seen a much better filmed version of King Lear, the 1982 BBC production with Sir Michael Hordern as Lear and Michael Kitchen as Edmund. As complex as the language is, the genuine human emotions shine through when I read it. I lack the technical skill to say for certain, but I suspect Shakespeare had matured his poetical style to communicate with greater clarity than in some of his earlier works.
I was interested to see your note that Shakespeare had changed King Lear into tragedy. That answered a question I have had for many years. My mother was a retired school teacher and had collected old school readers. One of the readers had a fairy tale about a king with three daughters. One day, to test them, he asks each how much she loves him. The elder two claim to love him above their favourite things, the youngest replies, "I love you as meat loves salt." He is enraged by her cryptic answer and exiles her, giving his kingdom to her sisters. The youngest daughter has adventures in disguise before a prince falls in love with her and marries her. One day, her father, exiled by his elder daughters, comes begging to the castle where his youngest lives. She recognizes him and feeds him meat without salt. He tasting it, finally understands what his daughter meant and repents, and they are reconciled, and she helps restore his kingdom.
Knowing that story from my childhood, Shakespeare's version puzzled me with its tragic turn. Now I know that he made an artistic decision.
Now that I've retired, I might have to slow down my theatre attendance, but yes, it was at the Stratford Festival that I saw King Lear last summer. It has so far been my favorite performance of the play.
The plot for King Lear comes Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of British Kings. History, in this case, might be better regarded as legends; King Leir is said to have lived during the time of the prophet Isaiah. I suspect that the fairy tale you are remembering is, in fact, another version of the King Leir legend. When I say that the source story has a happy ending, I mean that Leir in the legend is reconciled to his daughter (the one represented by Cordelia in the play), she marries happily, and Leir dies appropriately of natural causes after the events of the play are over. Besides Geoffrey of Monmouth's history, there is an anonymous play about Lear that precedes Shakespeare's play; I haven't read it, but my understanding is that its ending follows Geoffrey's. After Shakespeare, in the late 17th/18th Century, various playwrights and editors concluded that they could improve on Shakespeare. Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear to have regular verse rhythms and rhymes, and he "fixed" the ending to a happy ending. According to what I've read, Tate's Lear held the stage for decades and was thought to be Shakespeare's own work. Samuel Johnson, one of Shakespeare's later editors, found King Lear scarcely to be tolerated.
I couldn't say everything that would deserve to be said about R&J, but I'll note that its ornate poetic style reflects the love poetry style of the Italian poet Petrarch, who was very much in vogue when Shakespeare wrote R&J. Petrarch invented sonnets, and besides the one I note in the essay are two other complete sonnets in the play, as the prologue, and at the beginning of Act 2.
The song you link might indeed be an aubade. However, I looked up the traditional "Lark in the Morning" folksong, and it tells the story of a couple falling in love. It seems to end with the couple in bed, but that might involve more narrative than an aubade usually has.
Thank you for trying out the essay. I'm glad you enjoyed it. One last thing while I'm thinking about it: Romeo and Juliet will be onstage in Stratford, Ontario this upcoming season.
The centre of the fairy tale I remember, when the youngest daughter is in disguise, closely resembled the German Grimm's fairy tale titled 'Allerleirauh'. In trying to recall that unpronounceable title, I also found the title of the tale I remember from the reader - it was an English fairy tale called 'Cap O' Rushes'. I wonder if the original teller blended the German tale and the tale of Leir together.
Speaking of blending, you are right, there are many versions of 'The Lark in the Morning'. The one I linked to was collected in Sussex by 20th century composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, known for 'The Lark Ascending' and 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis'. The Vaughan Williams version begins:
"Lay still my fond shepherd and don't you rise yet. It's a fine dewy morning and besides, my love, it is wet." I found it interesting that the lark features both in the folksong and R&J's aubade.
There is a lot written about King Lear, and I know scholars have studied the relationship of the play to folklore and fairy tales. I have studied more of its anachronistic relationship to 16th Century martyrologies and contemporary ideas of kingship.
I don't read German, but I will note that Lear's name in its older spelling, Leir, appears in the title you give of the fairy tale. I think you're on to something.
And those opening lyrics of the Vaughan Williams larksong are certainly right for an aubade. I like aubades, so I will look up his setting.
I have read and seen Romeo and Juliet many times and before reading this essay was going to give this one a miss but Jack’s essay is brilliant and makes me look at it in an entire new way as I had never thought of the characters trying to firm their own moral code against their amoral elders before . Thank you so much for publishing this
Thank you for reading and being surprised and enlightened, as I was by Jack’s essay!
I am always most pleasantly surprised when people have learned something about Shakespeare from me. It's a privilege I don't take for granted. Thank you for reading the essay, Miranda, and thank you for inviting me to write it for this substack.
The best kind of surprise! 😀
I suspect that my public school English text did not contain more than excerpts. As naive as we were I'm certain I would remember if we had read the innuendo aloud in class. R&J certainly begins with a bang. My overall impression was that the only person in town with any sense is the prince. The essay helped me see some of the positive qualities in the impulsive young couple, especially considering that the adults in their lives were not very helpful role models.
That’s so funny but true about remembering those parts!
I recognize that good teaching of Romeo and Juliet needs some sensitivity, but I would rather see tenth graders read an uncensored text than seventh graders read a chopped up copy. I don't think a student should have to read Mercutio aloud on the pears or the bawdy hand of the clock.
Prince Escalus certainly has more sense than the Capulets, but I am reluctant to affirm his banishment of Romeo. That too seems like one of the play's impulsive decisions. Yet it might seem moderate because Paris is the Prince's relative, and the Capulets want vengeance. Circumstances certainly get beyond his control.
Thank you for reading the essay.
Great point, Jack. I actually do believe that a lot of classics are assigned to students at too early and age. I’m on record as favoring abridged classics for children and adolescence. I fell in love with Great Expectations this way. But some works are just sophisticated enough to warrant waiting until,say, 10th grade. So I can see both sides of these questions, but ultimately, I think students can be turned off of works they are assigned to read before they can really appreciate them at all. None of us are ever old enough to appreciate them fully, of course, and always find more with every rereading.
As a young child, I had an abridged Great Illustrated Classics pocket edition of Great Expectations given to me by an elderly family friend who loved Dickens. I read it, and my sibling's Illustrated edition of A Tale of Two Cities many times. They inspired me to climb (yes, fingers and toes on the shelves) my father's shelf to reach his vintage clothbound unabridged pocket editions of David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit. I didn't fully understand them, but I kept trying to read them until I did.
Yes! And I love my Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte baby board books. And I don’t even have babies!
The best board books are great literature and art. I often wish I could keep a copy of the ones I give my nieces and nephews.
The difficulty I have on this subject is that there are many people whose judgment I don't trust. I think R&J should be okay when readers are 15+ (regardless of the Florida laws). As for Toni Morrison, I wonder why some school systems and teachers won't look at some of her less rough novels, like A Mercy, to teach rather than Beloved, and juniors and seniors are about the right age for it. Beloved is a great novel for adults (including ready college students). I don't want banning it, but I would want a context where the readers are mature enough for it.
Agree. I do think some of these controversies could be avoided through better judgment on the part of the teachers. But they are often just going through bureaucratic hoops and just trying to survive.
I have mentioned in the essay the action that the Hillsborough, Florida school board had taken against Romeo and Juliet. A law in Texas has been recently ruled unconstitutional after the appeals court heard that Romeo and Juliet could be caught up in the law's enforcement. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-appeals-court-blocks-texas-law-ban-restrict-library-books-rcna134426
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
So, Karen, I got out my copy of On Reading Well, and found more than I was looking for. From your chapter on chastity, I was reminded that Percy Shelley wrote a long poem titled, appropriately for R&J, Queen Mab. I should read it now. But you quote from it, and clearly Shelley is alluding to the fantasy creature Mercutio imagines in the play.
My essay here is long enough, but if I were going to write much more, I would have looked at Juliet's opening speech in 3.2, where she is much more than ready for Romeo to join her in bed. She gives this speech after 2.6, when they go to be married by Friar Lawrence. Are Romeo and Juliet chaste, or is their desire for each other just a little too heated to say so?
Oh, I love this question! So I think they are chaste, but their chastity needs to be accompanied by temperance. The way Aristotle discusses temperance is in terms of the physical appetites but that includes sex, of course. Temperance means desiring physical satisfaction, neither too much nor too little little.
He as well as the church fathers argued that no virtue can exist or be virtuous absent the other virtues. I think this is an excellent example of that.
This is a good answer. It goes along with the friar's initial response, though he's a dope on other matters in the play.
At about the same time as Shakespeare wrote R&J, he wrote Midsummer Night's Dream, where Theseus is four days from marrying Hippolyta, and what he needs is a cold shower.
😂
I also was doubtful about rereading this play. I appreciate the new perspective.
I was homeschooled, but we didn't study Shakespeare, as he was much too worldly for the ultra-conservative program we were in during my high school years. However, I read Shakespeare on my own and the edition my father had on his shelf was a 1974 'Complete Works of Shakespeare' published by Abbey Library. I read Romeo and Juliet then, but preferred King Lear from among Shakespeare's tragedies. When I reread R&J in the Folger edition for this, I didn't remember the bawdiness, but when I checked, it is all there in my father's edition, except it has the et caetera for Mercutio's pun. I just didn't understand the allusions the first time.
I have a question, does an aubade have a specific form like a sonnet does, or is it just the content of the poem that makes it an aubade?
Holly, it is the content of the poem that makes an aubade, dawn breaking in on a couple in bed. While I linked to one by John Donne, other poets who have written aubades are William Butler Yeats and Tracy K Smith. You can probably find others with a search in poetryfoundation.org.
King Lear is a magnificent play; I was able to see a great performance last summer in Canada. I haven't always found my university students warming up to it. What do you like about it?
Did you go to the Stratford Festival in Ontario? That is on my bucket list.
I think I like King Lear because I understand it. That sounds odd, because one taped performance I watched rendered the complex lines almost incomprehensible. But the was the production's fault - I've since seen a much better filmed version of King Lear, the 1982 BBC production with Sir Michael Hordern as Lear and Michael Kitchen as Edmund. As complex as the language is, the genuine human emotions shine through when I read it. I lack the technical skill to say for certain, but I suspect Shakespeare had matured his poetical style to communicate with greater clarity than in some of his earlier works.
I was interested to see your note that Shakespeare had changed King Lear into tragedy. That answered a question I have had for many years. My mother was a retired school teacher and had collected old school readers. One of the readers had a fairy tale about a king with three daughters. One day, to test them, he asks each how much she loves him. The elder two claim to love him above their favourite things, the youngest replies, "I love you as meat loves salt." He is enraged by her cryptic answer and exiles her, giving his kingdom to her sisters. The youngest daughter has adventures in disguise before a prince falls in love with her and marries her. One day, her father, exiled by his elder daughters, comes begging to the castle where his youngest lives. She recognizes him and feeds him meat without salt. He tasting it, finally understands what his daughter meant and repents, and they are reconciled, and she helps restore his kingdom.
Knowing that story from my childhood, Shakespeare's version puzzled me with its tragic turn. Now I know that he made an artistic decision.
So if an aubade is in its content, then this beautiful English folksong must be an aubade: https://youtu.be/D1rDLDjxfYg?feature=shared
Now that I've retired, I might have to slow down my theatre attendance, but yes, it was at the Stratford Festival that I saw King Lear last summer. It has so far been my favorite performance of the play.
The plot for King Lear comes Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of British Kings. History, in this case, might be better regarded as legends; King Leir is said to have lived during the time of the prophet Isaiah. I suspect that the fairy tale you are remembering is, in fact, another version of the King Leir legend. When I say that the source story has a happy ending, I mean that Leir in the legend is reconciled to his daughter (the one represented by Cordelia in the play), she marries happily, and Leir dies appropriately of natural causes after the events of the play are over. Besides Geoffrey of Monmouth's history, there is an anonymous play about Lear that precedes Shakespeare's play; I haven't read it, but my understanding is that its ending follows Geoffrey's. After Shakespeare, in the late 17th/18th Century, various playwrights and editors concluded that they could improve on Shakespeare. Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear to have regular verse rhythms and rhymes, and he "fixed" the ending to a happy ending. According to what I've read, Tate's Lear held the stage for decades and was thought to be Shakespeare's own work. Samuel Johnson, one of Shakespeare's later editors, found King Lear scarcely to be tolerated.
I couldn't say everything that would deserve to be said about R&J, but I'll note that its ornate poetic style reflects the love poetry style of the Italian poet Petrarch, who was very much in vogue when Shakespeare wrote R&J. Petrarch invented sonnets, and besides the one I note in the essay are two other complete sonnets in the play, as the prologue, and at the beginning of Act 2.
The song you link might indeed be an aubade. However, I looked up the traditional "Lark in the Morning" folksong, and it tells the story of a couple falling in love. It seems to end with the couple in bed, but that might involve more narrative than an aubade usually has.
Thank you for trying out the essay. I'm glad you enjoyed it. One last thing while I'm thinking about it: Romeo and Juliet will be onstage in Stratford, Ontario this upcoming season.
The centre of the fairy tale I remember, when the youngest daughter is in disguise, closely resembled the German Grimm's fairy tale titled 'Allerleirauh'. In trying to recall that unpronounceable title, I also found the title of the tale I remember from the reader - it was an English fairy tale called 'Cap O' Rushes'. I wonder if the original teller blended the German tale and the tale of Leir together.
Speaking of blending, you are right, there are many versions of 'The Lark in the Morning'. The one I linked to was collected in Sussex by 20th century composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, known for 'The Lark Ascending' and 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis'. The Vaughan Williams version begins:
"Lay still my fond shepherd and don't you rise yet. It's a fine dewy morning and besides, my love, it is wet." I found it interesting that the lark features both in the folksong and R&J's aubade.
There is a lot written about King Lear, and I know scholars have studied the relationship of the play to folklore and fairy tales. I have studied more of its anachronistic relationship to 16th Century martyrologies and contemporary ideas of kingship.
I don't read German, but I will note that Lear's name in its older spelling, Leir, appears in the title you give of the fairy tale. I think you're on to something.
And those opening lyrics of the Vaughan Williams larksong are certainly right for an aubade. I like aubades, so I will look up his setting.