Some masterpieces of the world literature and culture, in general, have now become deeply integrated into the human mind. As a result, the vast majority of the world residents no longer have the need to read the whole work or see its interpretation in order to retell its main gist freely. When talking of cinematography, the prime example of such cultural integration is James Cameron’s “Titanic.” Speaking of the realm of the literary world, the example of a work recognized within any social group is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – the story that comes to mind whenever one thinks of love. However, while everyone is well acquainted with the belles-lettres work itself, it is the absolute minority that has ever read the play’s original text. Thus, it is now of crucial importance to analyze how various productions of the play and its interpretations in the context of the 21st century render the true meaning and emotive intention of the author.
One of the most recent interpretations of Romeo and Juliet performed on stage is Dominic Dromgoole’s 2009 production of the play. It goes without saying that when magnificent decorations of the author’s epoch surround the lines of play, the whole perception of the text is changed significantly. Performed at the Globe Theater in 2009, the play itself intended to render the exact mood of the end of the 16th century, along with the beautiful setting of Verona (Shakespeare’s Globe, 2020). The costumes and stage props were extremely close to that of Shakespeare’s traditional clothes and decorations, which contributed a lot to the full-scale immersion into the play’s mood and original setting of the love story. However, while Dromgoole did his best to render the visual effect of the original play, its performance by Ellie Kendrick and Adetomiwa Edun leading parts slightly modernized the atmosphere. This effect was reached though making Romeo and Juliet quite similar to the youth of the 21st century.
Speaking of more differences between the original text and its recent interpretation, it should be mentioned that despite the well-known tragic ending of the story, the overall recipients’ feelings differ in the level of heaviness. The original play written by William Shakespeare opens with a rather dooming sonnet where he practically reveals the consequences of such a passionate yet hazardous love story. The very play is later filled with various moving and hopeful scenes, which encouraged the audience to feel joyful for the lovers’ short but precious moments of absolute happiness and fulfillment brought by each other’s company.
However, because of the author’s prediction of the story ending, recipients have no intention to feel positive about the couple, as they know that such love only leads to a tragedy. The 2009 performance has managed to give people a sense of momentous joy by the upbeat performance of young and promising actors and by omitting the dooming prologue. Another significant detail of the play is the presence of the well-known balcony scene in Act 2, Scene 2. While the scene itself is one of the most crucial to both plot and character development, the original text was never mentioning the very word “balcony,” as it was an alien concept at the time (Mowat & Werstine, 2011). When speaking of the overall impression the Dromgoole’s productions leaves, it should be emphasized that Romeo and Juliet will never be something unfamiliar to the average recipient. However, the slightest change in the interpretation, such as giving the characters additional personal traits, provides the audience with a completely new perspective on the subject of love and its place within social norms.
Unlike stage performances of Romeo and Juliet screen adaptations of the story frequently bring more modification to the language and original setting of the play due to the cinema market’s requirement to come up with new ideas in order to remain relevant. Thus, the Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 adaptation of the famous play, while preserving most of the original peculiarities, severely experiments with the work’s text and setting (Pizano, 2020). To begin with, the major plot, theme of the play, and its language are mostly preserved within the movie, adding a few modernizations to the details of the major plot twists.
For example, when speaking of the play’s ending, it is quite hard to introduce some major changes to the plot, as the story would be at risk of losing its initial semantic value. However, if the original ending is as tragic as it should be in the real-life setting, Luhrmann allows his characters to share a kiss right before Romeo passes away to give the scene a Hollywood effect. Another example of such slight modification could be the famous balcony scene, replaced with the setting in the swimming pool. This change preserves the whole crucial meaning behind the scene while creating a background more suitable for the Hollywood movie and matter of teenage love.
However, some of the play parts and settings have undergone severe modifications aimed at modernizing the story by recreating it in the context of the modern world. Thus, Romeo and Juliet were lovers torn apart by their affiliation, as they belonged to the rivaling business enterprises in the modern-day US world (Luhrmann, 1996). Despite the whole story being translated into the paradigm of a different time period, the idea of the story remains unchanged due to its independence from time boundaries and social settings. This absolute universality of the text serves as one of the main reasons behind so many efforts to interpret it in various contexts and play with its main plot. Thus, either Romeo and Juliet is staged according to the canons of the 16th century, or it is translated into the modern teenage slang language, the main idea of a play will always remain unchanged and relatable to the world community.
References
Luhrmann, B. (1996). Romeo + Juliet [Film]. Bazmark Productions.
Mowat, B. A., & Werstine, P. (Eds.). (2011). Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Simon & Schuster.
Pizano, A. L. (2020). Speaking without words: Luhrmann’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 21(4), 532-558.
Romeo and Juliet (2009) YouTube premiere. (2020). Web.