Romeo & Juliet

The Montagues and Capulets. Two names. Despite his admission that Shakespeare "invented" the modern human, a superficial Harold Bloom reading of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet might focus on the nanve, hormonal, inevitable doom of star-crossed lovers. Bloom (1998) argues that it is intensity of love and youthful idealism responsible for the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, "Romeo and Juliet is unmatched, in Shakespeare and in the world's literature, as a vision of an uncompromising mutual love that perishes of its own idealism and intensity," (89). The Montagues and Capulets. These "names" are all that needs expressed to understand how Romeo and Juliet has nothing at all to do with an indictment of young or star-crossed love at all but everything to do with human nature then and now. It has everything to do with two nanve, star-crossed lovers who have been taught they need to distinguish between "Montagues" and "Capulets", and, so, they tarnish their direly genuine need for each other by worshipping approval of one or the other definition of these "names." This applies nothing whatsoever to their feelings for each other, but they have been taught that these are the only "valuable" names. The "names" and "values" do not match and they know it but they know even more their love is genuine despite what they have been taught. It is only in this way that the love shared between Romeo and Juliet transcends their environment. They know there is no way to rece

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t they follow someone else's directive for their own happiness, because they are young enough not to understand what they have in their immediate possession. Lacking a "Romeo" or a "Juliet" in one's life, it is understandable that one might only know the universe of a "Montague" or a "Capulet." Having the world defined from these limited definitions, Romeo and Juliet, because of their youth, are ripped away from their love because it does not adhere to either the "Montague" or "Capulet" definition of love. In that definition a "Montague" could never love a "Capulet" and a "Capulet" could never love a "Montague." As such, the inability of their historically warring families to tolerate, appreciate, or embrace their love for each other is what makes them commit suicide. They are not insecure in their love for each other. They are insecure because they are young and are not sure, despite their monumental genuine affection for each other, that you should love anything more than a fellow "Montague" or "Capulet." It is what they have been taught to feel. Therefore when they first encounter each other in a genuine fashion, that genuineness is suspect once they understand one is the dreaded "other" they have been taught to repudia

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