Romeo and Juliet is the Worst Story Ever

"Romeo and Juliet" was one of Shakespeare's most popular plays when he was alive, and it still is to this day. I'm sure you're all at least vaguely familiar with the plot, but do you really understand what happened in it? Here's the actual story of Romeo and Juliet, without all the flowery language and melodramatic bullshit. First of all, Romeo and Juliet are kids. Juliet is explicitly 13 years old, and while I don't think Romeo's exact age is mentioned, he's definitely a teenager, and probably only a year or two older. Romeo goes to a party all bummed out cause he's been trying to get with this girl, Rosaline, and it totally hasn't been working. He shows up at the party hoping to do the old "fancy meeting you here" deal, and instead finds Juliet. BOOM! Instant love. Of course, Romeo is on the rebound and Juliet's parents are considering throwing her into an arranged marriage, but none of that has anything to do with anything. That night, the famous balcony seen takes place where Juliet proclaims her love for Romeo and they decide to get married. The same fucking day they met.

The next day, they get secretly married. A couple people die, and Juliet's parents decide to promise her to Count Paris. She's all pissed off and angry at them, so she let's Romeo into her room that night and they consummate their marriage, statutory style. Again, this is of course because she's completely in love with the guy she's known for 24 hours and been married to for 12 hours, it has nothing to do with some stupid teenage rebellion or anything. Juliet then buys a magic potion to make it look like she's dead for a couple days, and doesn't bother to tell Romeo. She sends a messenger, but that's no way to treat your husband and the love of your life. That's the 16th century equivalent of a text message: "Dearest Romeo, faking death, bbl. TTFN! ;-) <3"; that shit needs to be done in person. Anyway, he finds out she's dead so he goes to her grave and kills himself, even though they've spent no more than 48 hours in the same room as each other over the course of their entire lives so far. She wakes up, and kills herself when she sees that he's dead.

This fucking plot has been redone and redone over and over and over again, and it's absurd. Two teenagers meet, get married, fuck, and commit suicide together in the span of a week, tops. Yeah, that's the most fucking romantic story in the history of time. There's not even a courtship period, they just meet, marry, and fuck. No dates, no developing a relationship, no pulling out chairs or opening doors, just a string of rash decisions. And speaking of opening doors, what's the deal with doors for public places? It's really hard to be a gentleman and open the door for my girlfriend since every fucking place we go has two sets of doors. Yeah I can open the first one, but unless I was The Flash, there's no way I can get to the second one to open it before she does. But anyway, there's nothing romantic about this story. It's just a couple of stupid teenagers acting like stupid teenagers. But Shakespeare wrote it, so apparently it's fucking brilliant.

dr_jeebus@sydlexia.com

In Romeo and Juliet 2, Jeb Bush will marry Caroline Kennedy.

© 2009 by Dr. Jeebus