William Shakespeare’s one of the most famous pieces Romeo and Juliet is a tragic fiction play that depicts the unattainable love between Romeo and Juliet. When I was reading Romeo and Juliet, the first thought I had in my head was that this story was highly ridiculous as a reader who had the modernized view of watching world. What I thought next was perhaps I could re-make this story to be more believable, but the problem was how am I going to re-make the scene to be more believable. Little after, I came up with a few ideas inspired by these day’s comedy shows. They used modern setting as a background to make not humorous story into humorous story. Although I might not be able to make it “believable”, I thought I could make a jocular parody of a few scenes and show that this scenes are not believable. To do that, I needed comedic factors.The scenes that I thought irrational were Act 1 Scene 5, Act 2 Scene 2, and Act 3 Scene 1. Things that happened in these scenes actually would not happen in real world. Therefore I tried to portray the ridiculous aspects of the scenes through the using of exaggeration, sarcasm, and irony.
In Act 1 Scene 5 was about the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet and its background was a ball party. Starting from the line 104, which was Romeo’s first attempt to attract Juliet by his poetic words, Romeo and Juliet’s crush on each other grew rapidly and eventually stopped when kissed. This scene was immensely unrealistic to me. Considering their age and the way to charm each other, I thought this scene needed to be amended urgently. For lines, I thought they were too much unnecessary description and they had gone too far as unsettled teenager lovers. What I did was cutting out all the poetic language and leaving only essential parts of the lines. Fundamentally I just left the words that were needed to convey the meaning. “If I propane with my unworthiest hand, this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss” (line 104) was changed into “My lips, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss” because I felt like it was too wordy and too descriptive which could sound boring to the audiences. Also, I thought in the real world, the background like a ball party which has really loud and chaotic atmosphere makes hard to hear each other speaking, and I thought it could be used as a comical factor of this scene. Therefore I set up the background as a dance club and played some electronic music. Most importantly, to make the scene hilarious, I added a direction; Romeo and Juliet had to ask for pardon each other since they could not really hear each other speaking. By getting rid of all the poetic language and leaving only the practical words, and by setting the background as a dance club and adding the specific humorous stage direction, I could effectively show that Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting scene was highly unrealistic.
Then for Act 2 Scene 2, which was the balcony scene, I knew it was a romantic scene. There was a significant deepening of their hopeless love through their, again, poetic talk and turning crush into the real love. However, when I tried to imagine this scene happening nowadays, it simply did not work because it was way too romantic and beautiful unlike the reality. In reality, if two lovers fall in love, their mind goes out of their mind and can not restrain themselves. Thus while the soliloquy of Juliet in original proceeded calmly and feebly, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet”, I changed Juliet’s action but kept the whole line. I asked Juliet to be more obsessed with Romeo and act like a child who really wants to get something but her mother does not let her get it because that is what I thought as an actual Juliet’s mind in the scene. In my scene, Juliet portrayed her obsession by stumbling around the stage, sitting down and screaming out Romeo’s name, and grabbing anything on the stage and throwing. Also, Romeo was overhearing Juliet down the balcony and was trying to climb up the wall to reach her. I thought I could make that as a comical scene I added the mission impossible theme song while Romeo climbed up the wall, prepared sunglasses, and rumpled his clothes and hair after he finished climbing up to show the harshness of reality. Lastly, Romeo seemed really brave that he could take all the risks coming from the feud between two families, but I thought this will never happen especially for teenager lovers. I demonstrated irony to stress on that. When nurse called Juliet within, Romeo, who said that he was not afraid of Capulet family, was shocked and trying to hide somewhere.
My last choice was Act 3 Scene 1, which is Tybalt, Mercutio, and Romeo’s fighting scene. This scene seemed to have no room to make it humorous, but I figured out something extraordinary. Throughout the story, majority of Romeo’s lines were exceptionally long due to his aesthetic modifier and poetic flowery words. Act 3 Scene 3 had a huge tension between Montague and Capulet family; in other words it had to be very serious and tight scene. Nevertheless, Romeo’s line in that scene was still so long. From “Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee doth much excuse the appertaining rage to such a greeting. Villain am I none. Therefore farewell. I see thou knows me not” (line 63) to “I do protest I never injured thee but love thee better than thou canst devise till thou shalt know the reason of my love. And so, good Capulet, which name I tender as dearly as mine own, be satisfied” (line 73), his lines were so long that honestly he could have been stabbed before he even finished his lines. I thought Romeo’s lengthy line did not fit in the scene. As a result, as a background music for normal lines, the music that sounded urgent and strained was played, and as soon as Romeo started speaking, relaxing, sleepy, peaceful music was played. It effectively showed the contrast which emphasizes the unrealistic aspect of Romeo’s ridiculously lengthy lines.
Self Comment (outline) : I have more analysis and staging to add. Also I am going to write conclusion. This is just the basic structure of my coursework.
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