Watching the 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet was indispensable for me to be able to visualize the play’s setting and characters and better understand its poignant and heartbreaking story. While the story can certainly be enjoyed in book form, it is important to recognize its origin as a play, where its scenes, setting and characters are not described. While we may learn about its characters through occasional description by others, they are generally left bare of any significant description of their appearances. Similarly, we never learn more about a character’s surroundings than the roughest details of the set they are in. These absent descriptions (due to the required liberties of the stage) could be overlooked using the powers of imagination, but I struggled to pass the last missed trait, the lack of descriptions of the characters’ movements, tone, and emotions. Unlike a novel, the author of a play will not mention the character’s intonation (“he spits angrily,” “he yells”) nor their facial or hand movements (“she grimaced”). In reading Romeo and Juliet, it is necessary to interpret Shakespeare’s elaborate writing to tell the characters’ tones, and here is where I found the movie an essential addition to reading the play as a Shakespeare newbie. As I improved at deciphering Elizabethan lines, having hints to guide me around what could be intended by certain phrases was very helpful. By watching the movie beforehand, I not only could pay more attention to what characters said, but I also understood the passages much better than if I hadn’t heard them acted out first.
By seeing it visually, I was more saddened by the tragedy of this fatal romance, as both the actors but also my ability to correctly interpret the humor throughout made the story feel more realistic. Through seeing the characters portrayed by actors similar to my own age, the disastrous effect of Romeo and Juliet’s love was made more personal. Since I could hear the characters laugh or their tones while giving comical statements, I also knew more often when a line was meant to be comical, and this made the tragedy all the more striking. Nearly everyone has some humor in their daily life: by changing it from being just a dramatic, romantically intense story, the additions of Shakespeare’s spots of humor throughout the tragic tale helped it feel more lifelike. Sharing some of the jests of the main characters and their friends made it more heartbreaking to me when Romeo and Juliet tragically took their lives. Overall, watching the story acted out, as it was intended to be consumed, was essential for me to better comprehend the meanings behind Shakespearian words and strengthened my connection to the story.