Romeo and Juliet.docx

1、Romeo and JulietRoger Ebert 对Romeo and Juliet 的评论是什么？Romeo and Juliet“ is always said to be the first romantic tragedy ever written, but it isnt really a tragedy at all. Its a tragic misunderstanding, scarcely fitting the ancient requirement of tragedy that the mighty fall through their own flaws. R

2、omeo and Juliet have no flaws, and arent old enough to be blamed if they did. They die because of the pigheaded quarrel of their families, the Montagues and Capulets. By writing the play, Shakespeare began the shaping of modern drama, in which the fates of ordinary people are as crucial as those of

3、the great. The great tragedies of his time, including his own, involved kings, emperors, generals. Here, near the dawn of his career, perhaps remembering a sweet early romance before his forced marriage to Anne Hathaway, he writes about teenagers in love.“Romeo and Juliet“ has been filmed many times

4、 in many ways; Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard starred in the beloved 1936 Hollywood version, and modern transformations include Robert Wises “West Side Story“ (1961), which applies the plot to Manhattan gang warfare; Abel Ferraras “China Girl“ (1987), about a forbidden romance between a girl of Chi

5、natown and a boy of Little Italy, and Baz Luhrmanns “William Shakespeares Romeo & Juliet“ (1996), with California punk gangs on Verona Beach. But the favorite film version is likely to remain, for many years, Franco Zeffirellis 1968 production.His crucial decision, in a film where almost everything

6、went well, was to cast actors who were about the right age to play the characters (as Howard and Shearer were obviously not). As the play opens, Juliet “hath not seen the change of 14 years,“ and Romeo is little older. This is first love for Juliet, and Romeos crush on the unseen Rosalind is forgott

7、en the moment he sees Julhttp:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_JulietRomeo and Juliet Characters Analysis Study GuidesHamletJulius CaesarKing Henry IVKing LearMacbethMerchant of VeniceOthelloRomeo and JulietThe TempestTwelfth Night TriviaAuthorshipBard FactsBibliographyBiographyFAQFilmsGlobe Theatre

8、PicturesQuizTimeline Visitor Survey Click here! Romeo and Juliet Characters Analysis features noted Shakespeare scholar William Hazlitts famous critical essay about the characters of Romeo and Juliet.ROMEO AND JULIET is the only tragedy which Shakespear has written entirely on a love-story. It is su

9、pposed to have been his first play, and it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in every line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the bitterness of despair. It has been said of ROMEO AND JULIET by a great critic, that whatever is most intoxicating in

10、the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, is to be found in this poem. The description is true; and yet it does not answer to our idea of the play. For if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has its freshness too;if i

11、t has the languor of the nightingales song, it has also its giddy transport; if it has the softness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in love, but they are not love-sick. Everything speaks the very soul of pl

12、easure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions: the heart beats, the blood circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand from poems and plays,made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of fancies wan that hang th

13、e pensive head, of evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce supports itself,an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature! It is the reverse of all this. It is Shakespear all ove

14、r, and Shakespear when he was young.We have heard it objected to ROMEO AND JULIET, that it is founded on an idle passion between a boy and a girl, who have scarcely seen and can have but little sympathy or rational esteem for one another, who have had no experience of the good or ills of life, and w

15、hose raptures or despair must be therefore equally groundless and fantastical. Whoever objects to the youth of the parties in this play as too unripe and crude to pluck the sweets of love, and wishes to see a first-love carried on into a good old age, and the passions taken at the rebound, when thei

16、r force is spent, may find all this done in the Stranger and in other German plays, where they do things by contraries, and transpose nature to inspire sentiment and create philosophy. Shakespear proceeded in a more straight-forward, and, we think, effectual way. He did not endeavour to extract beau

17、ty from wrinkles, or the wild throb of passion from the last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. It was not his way. But he has given a picture of human life, such .as it is in the order of nature. He has founded the passion of the two lovers not o

18、n the pleasures they had experienced, but on all the pleasures they had not experienced. All that was to come of life was theirs. At that untried source of promised happiness they slaked their thirst, and the first eager draught made them drunk with love and joy. They were in full possession of thei

19、r senses and their affections. Their hopes were of air, their desires of fire. Youth is the season of love, because the heart is then first melted in tenderness from the touch of novelty, and kindled to rapture, for it knows no end of its enjoyments or its wishes. Desire has no limit but itself. Pas

20、sion, the love and expectation of pleasure, is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible, till experience comes to check and kill it. Juliet exclaims on her first interview with Romeo-My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep.And why should it not? What was to hinder the thrilling tide of ple

21、asure, which had just. gushed from her heart, from flowing on without stint or measure, but experience which she was yet without? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure, which her heart and her senses had just tasted, but indifference which she was yet a stranger to? Wh

22、at was there to check the ardour of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment which she had not yet felt! As are the desires and the hopes of youthful passion, such is the keenness of its disappointments, and their baleful effect. Such is the transition in this play

23、 from the highest bliss to the lowest despair, from the nuptial couch to an untimely grave. The only evil that even in appre-hension befalls the two lovers is the loss of the greatest possible felicity; yet this loss is fatal to both, for they had rather part with life than bear the thought of survi

24、ving all that had made life dear to them. In all this, Shakespear has but followed nature, which existed in his time, as well as now. The modern philosophy, which reduces the whole theory of the mind to habitual impressions, and leaves the natural impulses of passion and imagina-tion out of the acco

25、unt, had not then been discovered; or if it had, would have been little calculated for the uses of poetry.It is the inadequacy of the same false system of philosophy to account for the strength of our earliest attachments, which has led Mr. Wordsworth to indulge in the mystical visions of Platonism

26、in his ode on the Progress of Life. He has very admirably described the vividness of our impressions in youth and childhood, and how they fade by degrees into the light of common day, and he ascribes the change to the supposition of a pre-existent state, as if our early thoughts were nearer heaven,

27、reflections of former trails of glory, shadows of our past being. This is idle. It is not from the knowledge of the past that the first impressions of things derive their gloss and splendour, but from our ignorance of the future, which fills the void to come with the warmth of our desires, with our

28、gayest hopes, and brightest fancies. It is the obscurity spread before it that colours the prospect of life with hope, as it is the cloud which reflects the rainbow. There is no occasion to resort to any mystical union and trans-mission of feeling through different states of being to account for the

29、 romantic enthusiasm of youth; nor to plant the root of hope in the grave, nor to derive it from the skies. Its root is in the heart of man: it lifts its head above the stars. Desire and imagination are inmates of the human breast. The, heaven - that lies about us in our infancy is only a new world,

30、 of which we know nothing but what we wish it to be, and believe all that we wish. In youth and boyhood, the world we live in is the world of desire, and of fancy: it is experience that brings us down to the world of reality. What is it that in youth sheds a dewy light round the evening star? That m

31、akes the daisy look so bright? That perfumes the hyacinth? That embalms the first kiss of love? It is the delight of novelty, and the seeing no end to the pleasure that we fondly believe is still in store for us. The heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts, and is unable to sustain the weight

32、 of hope and love that presses upon it.- The effects of the passion of love alone might have dissipated Mr. Wordsworths theory, if he means anything more by it than an ingenious and poetical allegory. That at least is not a link in the chain let down from other worlds; the purple light of love is not a dim reflection of the smiles of celestial bliss. It