What if Romeo and Juliet would've had WhatsApp?

Yesterday, I was talking to Antonella and she asked me "what do you think it would have happened if Romeo and Juliet would have had WhatsApp?" Well, first I laughed at her but then I realized that it was a really good question to introduce the topic of my post.

If Romeo and Juliet would have had WhatsApp, I think that they would not have been together anyway because that is not the way that it was meant to be. 

As it is stated in the prologue of the play they were "a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life," which means that fate had control over them. Fate is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "a power that some people believe controls what will happen" and it is commonly related to the star's will. In the play, we can see from the beginning how fate surrounds the events that occur to the lovers: they belong to families that hate each other. Then the accidents that ruin Friar Lawrence's plans to help Juliet not to marry Paris without disobeying her father, and at the end, the unopportune awakening of Juliet just after Romeo's suicide.

Fate controled the lovers; it was a powerful force that carry them to death. So as much as Romeo and Juliet would have organized their escape by texting each other, they would not have made it. I think that maybe Romeo's phone would have been out of battery or something tragic. 

What do you think about the inevitable fate in the play? Do you believe it is a force present in your life too?

Sources:
http://shakespeare.about.com/od/romeoandjuliet/a/romeo_fate.htm
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

Merchant of Venice: More than a Romantic Comedy

Hi Everyone! 

When we started to talk about William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, I thought about the economy of that time, so I decided to make a little research about. Finally,  I found a page full of information that I am going to share with you.

So when William Shakespeare never thought that this play would portrayed the first ideas and conceptions of Capitalism.

Yes! This economic model has its roots at the time when William Shakespeare was writing The Merchant of Venice; England was facing an ideological conflict: the Feudalism of the Middle Age was in decadence, while the first green roots of Capitalism started to grow and develop in English lands.

But you may think that there is a problem because I am talking about England, and this play is set in Venice, there is one reason: Italian city-states included Venice were between the most developed mercantile city centers of Europe. In fact, Venice had a reputation of a free-markert environment for commerce.So most all of the mercantile relations took place in Italy and its cities.

Another important point is that the Church feared the emergence of this new socioeconomic system because they had been restricting activities of merchants, for instance, they created The Law of Just Price, in which, merchants could only earn, as much as, the poorest of knights. This law had an obvious aim: to maintain feudal social relations, instead of start using this new model.

We should pay to this information, while we read this play, to understand the context, in which, this romantic comedy took place.

Romeo and Juliet in Modern Times

Hi everyone!
As we all know, William Shakespeare wrote the tragic play called  Romeo and Juliet. It is said that this play was written between 1591 and 1595, so for us it would be really hard to understand a tragedy that happened 420 years ago because we are in different century and we are living under a different way of thinking and understanding life and relationships.
But Can you believe that still in our days an old tragedy like Romeo and Juliet is happening?
So, Let me tell you that this kind of tragedy is happening  in our days, also let me tell you that we have Romeos and Juliets living in our century, suffering just like the old Romeo and Juliet who had to face a drama full of anger between the Montague and Capulet's families.

In 2011, two Iranian lovers were described as the modern day Romeo and Juliet in the Daily Mail newspaper because they were driven to commit suicide by their country's regime.
Nahal Sahabi, 28 years old, and her boyfriend Behnam Ganji, 22 years old, were imprisoned by the Iranian regime because both of them were friend with a human activist.(Daily Mail, 2011)

Also in 2013, another couple was related to William Shakespeare's tragedy. The story started 3 years ago when Huda walked into a mobile phone shop in her home village in Saudi Arabia. She met Arafat, a Yemeni migrant worker from a much poorer family. The problem started when Arafat approached Huda's parents to ask for her hand, Huda's parents refused because they wanted Huda to marry another guy. Huda decided to escape with Arafat, the love of her life, instead of marrying an unknown man. (BBC, 2013)

These tragedies make us remember the concept of love that William Shakespeare gave us in his tragic novel. 

When we love someone we have to fight against the rules and the roles gave by a patriarchal society. We have to stand up and fight for what we want and what we desire. Love should not mean forget who you are, love means take all your history and mix it with the one of your one and only.
Sometimes I think that we need more love, we need to start fighting for what we really want, and not for what society makes us want.
I assure you that having the most expensive cellphone won't make you happy, but having the company and the love of someone will make you feel that life is worth trying, even if you

have to die for what you think and want.

References:

A modern-day tale of Romeo and Juliet (2013, November 23). Retrieved from BBC. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-25058575

Tragedy of modern day Romeo and Juliet (2012, October 2). Retrieved from Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044057/Tragedy-modern-day-Romeo-Juliet-The-lovers-driven-suicide-Iranian-regime.html

Haven't we all been visited by Queen Mab?

So, who’s Queen Mab? In Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”, Mercutio describes her as a tiny fairy that goes into men’s noses and makes them dream of impossible things, like winning the lottery, being a super popular hottie or going to Maui and surf with dolphins while one of the volcanoes erupts. Mercutio, making fun of Romeo’s childish infatuation with Rosaline (he hasn’t met Juliet yet), tries hard to explain that dreams vanish, that they’re not real, that once you wake up, everything remains the same.

In the following clip, Mercutio first makes fun of Romeo's feelings towards Rosaline, but then he goes on a deeper level and talks about Queen Mab, what she does to the men she visits and what happens with their dreams:

Some will say that Mercutio was the biggest party pooper, but I think that he was one of the realest characters in “Romeo and Juliet.” He remained down-to-earth, true to himself and never had these weird ideas about love, the importance or meaning of it: he always thought that love was something chemical and physical instead of having a romantic vision of it (sorry Romeo).  

It's here where I’d like to pay attention to Queen Mab’s figure. This tiny inoffensive fairy that waits until late at night, when men fall asleep to go into their bodies and play with their biggest fantasies and desires, this little fairy that’s nothing like Disney’s Tinker Bell and her goodie goodie friends. Queen Mab is pretty bad, she’s a little bitch that loves to create lovely scenarios in our minds that will never ever happen, fantasies that feed our souls and make us feel miserable. Isn’t that what happened to Romeo and Juliet? Didn’t their lives end up being a major disaster after basing their relationship on fantasies and dreams? But come on, who hasn’t been a victim of dreams and fantasies? That’s why I think that all of us have been visited by her at least once, for good or bad. And although Queen Mab might look evil, it’s good to play with our roles from time to time, even if it’s just a dream. “Look at me, I’m on a date with Donald Glover, the black Spiderman. Okay, no”. In some ways, Queen Mab’s visit is a way of doing the things we haven’t had the chance to do, being someone we would like to be or living the life we would like to live. It's all about roles, what society expects us to be and who we really are.

The importance here lies on what our good friend Mercutio told us:

"True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,

Which is as thin of substance as the air".

(Romeo and Juliet. Act 1, scene 4. Retrieved from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/romeo_juliet.1.4.html)

Dreams are vain fantasy, as thin as the air. Let’s play with them a bit, but don’t let them rule our lives, don’t let them blind us or make our life a disaster.

R + J = Rose and Jack?

       The other day while watching for the 10th time Titanic, something really called my attention at the first moment. I never paid atention to this little details and when I realized about that I was like wait what?. It literally blew my mind. Appart from having Leonardo Dicaprio as the main male role, there are many things they also have in common.

         I foud out that there are many similarities between these two pieces and while doing a little research I found out that I was not the only one who saw this. First, the most noticeable thing of all, their initials. R and J. In one hand we have Romeo and Juliet, and on the other hand we have Rose and Jack. Pure coincidence? I don´t really think so. 

       

        

        Going a bit deeper into the plot, both, the play and the movie are based on Aristotle´s structure of a tragedy and follow the same pattern of separation which will end in a disaster for the main characters. 

"The aim of tragedy, Aristotle writes, is to bring about a "catharsis" of the spectators — to arouse in them sensations of pity and fear, and to purge them of these emotions so that they leave the theater feeling cleansed and uplifted, with a heightened understanding of the ways of gods and men. This catharsis is brought about by witnessing some disastrous and moving change in the fortunes of the drama's protagonist."

(http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/agamemnon-the-choephori-and-the-eumenides/critical-essay/aristotle-on-tragedy )

         

         In the case of Rome and Juliet, we already know that both characters die, Romeo decides to drink the most powerful poison ever created after seeing Juliet "supposedly dead" and then she does the same after seeing Romeo dying in her arms. 

         

         In Titanic we have something very similar. After the ship collides with the iceberg and they are all screaming for help, we already know that we have to prepare ourselves for something very dramatic. In this movie only the male character dies but it is equally painful because they cannot stay together; Rose survived but she lost the love of her life so it becomes a tragedy afterwards too.

           Other similarities I was able to notice were for example that in Titanic , both main characters belong to very different lifestyles and soiety; including family, peers and friends who believe they should not be together. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, the Capulet´s and the Montague´s have been enemies for a long time and they are not supposed to fraternize with any member of the other house. 

             In the case of the female characters, Rose and Juliet are forced to marry someone they don´t want to but that is accepted by their families so they cannot freely love the person they want to; a forbidden love which cannot be possible. 

                  

             In the case of the male characters both sacrifice themselves for their beloved one. For Romeo, he killed himself because he wanted to be with Juliet at any cost and in the case of Jack, he gives his live to let Rose survive.

               Now it´s time for you to think about what they have in common. Can you find any other similarity or are they completely different for you? Let´s make the exercise :D 

"To me, fair friend, you can never be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still."

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 104.