Watching the scripted and accurately portrayed version of Romeo and Juliet was a new experience for me to say the least. It is different than reading it in a book where expressions and suspense is hard to convey. Even in knock off versions such as the 1996 Romeo + Juliet hardly convey the emotion and tragedy that the scripted version so clearly conveyed. It was almost as if I could feel in my heart every emotion displayed by the characters. I felt the fear and horror of the Friar Lawrence as he stumbled out of the Capulet tomb after realising that he caused the death of poor Romeo and Juliet. I felt the sadness in Nurse’s face and voices as she wailed helplessly after the ‘death’ of Juliet. However, the thing that resonated with me the most was the Juliet’s desperation for Romeo, scrambling for his spirt- his love that was lost in deaths cold embrace. I could feel her hope and her happiness being sucked out of her body by the mere sight of her Romeo lying dead beside her tomb. It could have been the smallest details being portrayed by the actress: a quivering lip or even the subtle pauses in between her words that made it feel as if the actress would have really died from Romeo. The words:
Go get thee hence, for I will not away.
What’s here? a cup clos’d in my true love’s hand?
Poison I see hath been his timeless end.
O churl, drank all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips,
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make me die with a restorative.
Thy lips are warm.
(Act: 5 Scene: 3)
will stick with me forever as I remember Juliet’s saddened remark of a hint of life in the lifeless body of her Romeo.