Before this unit, I had only a basic understanding of the plot of Romeo and Juliet (1597). Boy meets girl, girl’s family hates boy’s family and vice versa, girl fakes her death, boy kills himself out of sadness, girl realizes what has happened and kills herself in despair. A classic tragedy! While reading the script, I noticed two differences in the way it was presented: How the medium affected the story, and as a result, how emotions were conveyed through the text.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was always intended to be conveyed in both visual and auditory forms first plays and then later, through movies and television. Taking either one of these elements away can affect the audience experience as a result. In reading the story, I found it difficult to relate to the characters presented or properly interpret the emotions behind a specific scene. This is because I was missing the visual cues that would have been used in the play such as hand gestures, posture, expressions, and the tone of an actor’s voice. Every character was only defined by their name and how their dialogue was written in the script, so it lacked all the nuances I saw in the movie. Interpreting the dialogue correctly was more difficult because I wasn’t used to the Elizabethan language , so I had to estimate how a character was delivering a line based on the context of the scene and what little I knew about the story. This was not helped whatsoever by the way interpersonal actions were written in the script, as only important movements such as Romeo killing Tybalt were written down.
After realizing how important the medium was to properly convey this story, I began thinking about what other media could be used to have the same effect. A simple novel, although properly conveying the main emotions and actions in a story, would lack all the nuances that a play or movie provides. Graphic novels would have a similar problem, except they would be using visuals to show movements. What about audiobooks or podcasts? They’re also lacking the visual element and would need to use the narrator more to fill in the gaps. This also suggests that the narrator would have to describe scenes using Elizabethan English, as switching back and forth between Elizabethan English and contemporary English would be difficult for the listener to follow. Again, we run into the same challenges with conveying all the nuances in the story. How about non-verbal formats? Well, that takes away the entire point of the play. Especially now, I don’t think most people come for the story of Romeo and Juliet, it’s been told so many times that even if you haven’t seen it, you’ll know what it’s about (that’s where I was at before starting this unit). People come for how the story is presented. The way a story is told matters, if my short summary at the beginning of this response illustrates anything. The poetry, the flow, and craftmanship of each sentence is what matters. Without it, Romeo and Juliet would just be another contrived story that’s been gorged on tropes. The reason people return to the story of Romeo and Juliet centuries later is not because of what is said, but how it’s said.