jenn96 said:
The moral of Romeo and Juliet in 1597 was "listen to your parents". It wasn't supposed to be a love story, just a cautionary tale about horny kids making terrible decisions because they didn't do what they were told.
I taught R and J to on-level ninth graders for about 10 years, and I pretty much agree with Jenn's comment.
Romeo begins the play as a Renaissance "type," the callow youth in love with love (Rosaline). Whether he actually matures during the play when he turns his affections to Juliet is a matter of debate.
The play explores the consequences of rebelling against one's parents at a time when--as Lord Capulet reminds his daughter--well-to-do parents essentially owned their children and married them off as a way of solidifying business and political arrangements.
The play shows the bad side of the power-hungry parents, but it also demonstrates the rashness of youth.
The beginning of the work famously calls the two lovers "star-crossed," meaning that their fate is pre-determined, but the play actually shows just the reverse: the two young people are done in by a combination of their own obsession and their parents' urge to use and control them.
And the language, of course, is beautiful.
One year a young woman seated at the front of my class listened as a classmate read Romeo's lines:
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!O, that I were a glove upon that hand,That I might touch that cheek!My student let out a long, deep, completely unselfconscious sigh and said, "I wish some guy would say that to me!" Not a soul giggled.
And the best movie version is by Zeffirelli, 1968.
