Romeo & Juliet by Willam Shakespeare

In my continuing effort to read Shakespeare I chose Romeo and Juliet this time as my son is reading it for his freshman English class.

This is a great story. It is accessible and while the writing is still a little thick I found it easy to follow. As with all of the Shakespeare I have read I find that the key is not to stress over each and every word as if you struggle through you will with the context understand the meaning. I usually with the context can get the full meaning of the phrase.

We all have seen many references to Romeo and Juliet in the culture but I must admit that I did not know the whole story.

It is a tale of love between two whose families are in conflict. The Montagues and Capulets are not friends. Interestingly we do not find out the source of this conflict. It appears the parents do not carry the weight of it, indeed when Romeo shows up at a party the Capulet father is not that upset. Little does he know of the trouble this will sow as Romeo meets his daughter Juliet.

Some phrases we all know..." wherefore art thou Romeo" " a rose by any other name" but the most bueatiful is when Romeo first appears at Juliet's window and we hear his soloiliqy including the comment about " when she dies they shall cut her up and make her stars in the sky, and be so bueatiful that the world will fall in love with night and forget the garish sun."

We might remember Robert Kennedy using this phrase to speak of his fallen brother at the 1964 Democratic Convention.

How many of us will have our work be held to such high esteem 500 years later. Shakespeare's work is timeless. It deserves to be.