One of William Shakespeare’s most famous pieces is Romeo and Juliet, 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 has the modernized interpretation of watching the 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 do that. A 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 at least make a jocular parody of a few scenes and show that these scenes are not believable. To do that, I had to come up with some comedic factors, and the scenes that I thought irrational and chose to reveal the quixotic features were Act 1 Scene 5, Act 2 Scene 2, and Act 3 Scene 1. If the story of Romeo and Juliet was put into the real modern world, the plot would be perceived as irrational and implausible. Therefore, I tried to portray the ridiculous aspects of the scenes by using condensed lines, employing exaggeration and sarcasm with characters’ action and playing various songs to set the atmosphere of the scenes.
Act 1 Scene 5 is about the first meeting of Romeo and Juliet and its background is a ball. 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 turned into a strong love. This scene was immensely unrealistic to me. Considering that Juliet was thirteen years old girl and Romeo was just a few years older than her, and the way they charmed with each other, I thought this scene needed to be amended urgently. First and foremost about lines, I thought there was too much unnecessary description, and they had gone too far as unsettled teenage lovers. I eliminated all poetic language and left only essential parts of the lines. Fundamentally, I just left the words that were needed to convey meaning. “If I profane 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 the original was too wordy and too descriptive which could sound boring to the audiences, and that was actually the better way to say in the given circumstance. In addition, I wanted to show that Romeo’s crush was lighthearted since he fell in love with Juliet only by looking at her beauty. “What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?” (Line 48), Romeo asked Juliet’s identity to a servingman just because she was so pretty and that made him want to talk to her. Thus for the staging, I acted out Romeo as a playboy whose main purpose was to flirt with a girl, so I, with my fellows, danced like drunk people; we shaked our body without an idea. Then we pointed finger at an invisible attractive girl passing by me, made a whoop with smiling, and did fist bump with nodding. It showed that Romeo in the scene was not thinking enough and immature about love. Also, I thought that in the real world, the background like a ball which has really loud and chaotic atmosphere makes it hard for people 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 modern dance club and played a dance electronic music called “Shots” by LMFAO. Most importantly, to make the scene hilarious, I added a direction; Romeo and Juliet had to ask for pardon to each other since they could not really hear each other speaking. It was hilarious to the audience because even though their lines were remarkably exquisite, they could not actually hear what each other said. 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 is an unworldly boy and Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting scene was highly unrealistic.
Then in Act 2 Scene 2, which was the balcony scene, there was a significant deepening of Romeo and Juliet’s hopeless love by talking in poetic words and checking each other’s mind. However, when I tried to imagine this scene happening nowadays, I simply could not imagine because it was way too romantic and beautiful unlike reality. In reality, if two lovers fall in love, they go out of their mind and can not restrain themselves. Thus, while the soliloquy of Juliet in the original scene 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 completely but kept the whole line for my scene. I asked Juliet to be much more obsessed with Romeo and act like a child who really wants to get something but her mother does not let her get it. This might be the Juliet’s actual attitude in this scene. In my scene, Juliet demonstrated her obsession by exaggeratedly stumbling around the stage, lapsing on the floor and aggressively screaming out Romeo’s name, and grabbing anything on the stage and throwing. It showed Juliet’s strong feeling towards Romeo in an audacious way and it helped the audience easily grasp what was going on in the scene. Next, Romeo was eavesdropping Juliet under the balcony, and when he realized the way she thought about him, he tried to climb up the wall to reach her. I thought I could make that as a comical scene. Consequently, I played the Mission Impossible theme song while Romeo mimed climbing up the wall, and prepared sunglasses to mimic a secret agent of Mission Impossible. Also I asked Romeo to rumple his clothes and spoil his hair after he finished miming climbing up to show the harshness of reality that it is absurd to be drawn neatly after climb the wall. By doing that, I tried to be sarcastic to the particularly imaginative scene. Lastly, Romeo seemed decidedly brave that he could take all the risky situations coming from the feud between two families, but I found this was ironic and this will never happen in reality especially for teenage lovers who are not capable of refusing parent’s opinion. I demonstrated the ironic stage direction to stress the fact that the feud was impossible to avoid. For that reason, when Nurse called Juliet within the house, Romeo, who said that he was not afraid of the Capulet family, was shocked, slipped on the ground, and crawled to hide somewhere. Using exaggeration and hilarious stage directions helped me successfully complete my goal which was to make audience laugh and show other chimerical aspects of the scene.
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 there was always breakthrough. Throughout the story, the majority of Romeo’s lines were exceptionally long due to his aesthetic modifier and poetic flowery words. Act 3 Scene 3 has a huge tension between the Montague and Capulet families; in other words it had to be a very serious and tight scene in terms of the atmosphere. Nonetheless, 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 simply did not fit in the scene. As a result, as background music for normal lines which was said by Mercutio and Tybalt, I played the music that sounded urgent and strained called “Into the Battlefield” from Crows Zero, and as soon as Romeo started speaking, I played relaxing, sleepy, and peaceful music called “Aloha” from Spongebob Squarepants. Also to show that Romeo’s extremely long line was tedious and to emphasize his long lines, I did not cut any lines, instead Tybalt and Mercutio put down their swords, yawned, dozed off, and took a good rest while Romeo was speaking his lines along the slackening music. Lastly, when Romeo kills Tybalt by stabbing him, he actually did not mean to kill Tybalt according to “O, I am Fortune’s fool!” (line 142). Romeo was likely to kill Tybalt impulsively and he might have been shocked that he actually killed a person. I felt like I could make it funny by taking Romeo’s emotion into the scene and making it into slow motion. As a result, in our scene, when Romeo killed Tybalt, they did slow motion by themselves by making a shocked face and roaring sound. This scene, on which my friends and I contemplated for a long time as a group, was the most successful one that was paid off by making a lot of people laugh. The using of two completely different sounding musics clearly indicated the contrast of atmosphere which emphasizes Romeo’s ridiculously lengthy lines and how it did not fit in the scene. In addition, exaggerated stage direction such as nodding off and slow motion strengthened the effect.
Even though the play Romeo and Juliet is widely known as one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, it has a lot of irrational qualities when it is viewed from the modern perspective. As an impressed and admiring reader of it, I wanted to adapt it into the modern setting and employ a few comical factors to make it hilarious to manifest the unrealistic qualities, since no one would imagine that this perfectly tragic love story turns into complete comedy. By choosing to do challenging task, I could not only develop the skill to see Romeo and Juliet with my second eyes, but also learn that making a comedy needs a great amount of analysis of the scenes and sophisticated preparedness in directing.
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