The Everlasting Love Story
The timeless stories
created by Shakespeare have been adapted and readapted since their inception.
The stories range from following Shakespeare’s dialogue faithfully, to only
capturing his essence and deriving from his inspiration. With the vast
availability of Shakespearian work (literal or not), taken from the original
stories and ideas that were written almost four hundred years ago, there
will be no generation that will not be introduced to some type of Shakespearian
comedy, tragedy, history, or poem. His legacy is the passion that resonates
within his work and ignites that same fervor with past, present, and future
readers alike.
Romeo and Juliet is one Shakespeare’s most
popular tragedies and is featured on the reading list of almost every high
school student in the United States. One could undoubtedly argue that there are
hundreds if not tens of thousands (taking into account unpublished and amateur
adaptions; including the hysterical comic book version I handed in as my ninth
grade final paper), of versions of Romeo and Juliet floating around the
proverbial literary water cooler; each version somewhat different from the
last. This essay will take into account the 1968 Romeo and Juliet directed by Franco Zeffirelli, the 1996 Romeo + Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann,
the 2011 Gnomeo & Juliet directed
by Kelly Asbury, and the 2013 Warm Bodies
directed by Jonathan Levine. Each version correlates either directly or
indirectly with the original Romeo and
Juliet written by William Shakespeare in the early 1600s (who actually took
his inspiration from the Italian Romeus and
Juliet written many years before).
“Two households, both alike in dignity / From
ancient grudge break to new mutiny, / Where civil blood makes civil hands
unclean. / From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of
star-crossed lovers take their life” (Prologue.1-5). This is how the majority
of Romeo and Juliet adaptations begin
and the 1968 version is not different, in fact the movie deviates very little
from the original play. In an interview with Pitch weekly Zeffirelli said,
“You're talking to
someone who's done 80 percent of his work based on classical material”
and his work on Taming of the Shrew
(1967), Hamlet (1990), and Jesus of Nazareth (1977) add credence to
that (Lybarger). One of the most important characteristics Zeffirelli takes
from the original play is the naivety of the characters. He takes two young
people: Leonard Whiting (Romeo) who was seventeen at the time and Olivia Hussey
(Juliet) who was fifteen at the time and allows their adolescent character to
flourish on screen capturing both their innocence and budding romance.
The 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet also features much of
the original dialogue with minor changes to modernize the text to screen
dynamic. The most abrupt change is to set and scenery as this version takes
place in modern day (1996 modern day anyways). The movie features cars, guns
instead of swords, and the two opposing families are actually two opposing
corporations (one owned by the Capulets and one by the Montagues). The major
difference (besides the set), is the grittiness of the 1996 version from the
1968 version. Luhrmann really captured the action, struggle, and resistance of
the Romeo and Juliet story in a way
that Zeffirelli didn’t. In this versions Romeo and Juliet both are more mature
than in Zeffirelli’s adaptation; they (especially Leonardo DiCaprio), captured
the essence of tormented teenagers stuck between a life and death situation
with such passion and anguish Shakespeare himself would have given a slight nod
from the audience.
Apart from the literal adaptations of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, there
are many stories that take only inspiration. Gnomeo and Juliet was a kids movie made in 2011 that featured two
rival garden gnome families (one blue and one red), that lived in two adjacent
yards. This movie centered around two characters (Gnome and Juliet), who met
one day and fell in love, but were forced apart due to some very devastating
horticultural differences. The movie features some of the famous lines (if only
a little different): “A weed by any other name is still a weed” and “The story
you are about to see has been told before. A lot. And now we are going to tell
it again. But different. It's about two star-crossed lovers kept apart by a big
feud. No one knows how this feud started, but it's all quite entertaining” (Gnomeo
& Juliet). The movie is clearly directed towards young children and
features music, playful action, and of course: A HAPPY ENDING!
One of the even less
literal adaptations for Romeo and Juliet is Warm
Bodies directed by Jonathan Levine in 2013. The main character “R” is a
zombie who early on in the film begins to wonder about himself in a very
existential kind of way. He wonders why can’t connect anymore with anyone
(which draws on many modern day worries of connecting physically with people
rather than digitally). Then he meets “Julie” (getting any hints yet?), who
begins to change him and instead of wanting to eat her brains, he wants to
protect her. The two warring ‘families’ are the humans and zombies and if that
isn’t enough evidence there is very compelling balcony scene. In the end the
love between the two ignites R’s heart and turns him human again (happy
ending!).
The reason I choose
these four adaptations of Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet is because they all deserve a place within the storylines.
Literal adaptations like Zeffirelli’s aid in a more classical understanding of
Shakespeare while Luhrmann’s version creates a textual understanding of the
story but adding a more relatable exterior. As for the last two examples (Gnomeo and Juliet & Warm Bodies), they
make Shakespeare available to the masses; available to people (teenagers and
children especially), who would not be drawn to more literal adaptations. This
is an important point because although there are people who swear by the
original, it just isn’t plausible to assume everyone is going to be able to
spend time learning an old English story from start to finish. I do
wholeheartedly believe that if Shakespeare was here today he would want people
to understand the underlying idea of Romeo
and Juliet; not just the literal or textual complexity but the passion and
electricity that is available when you connect with someone so completely. For
that reason, I can’t argue for what genre presents Shakespeare best because
they all do, in their own ways; for different people, on different days.
Works
Cited
Gnomeo
& Juliet. Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2011. DVD.
Lybarger,
Dylan. "Spreading the Wrong Gospel: An Interview with Franco
Zeffirelli." Lybarger Links. N.p., 13 Mar. 1999. Web. 18 July 2015.
<http://www.tipjar.com/dan/zeffirelli.htm>.
Shakespeare, William, and G.
Blakemore Evans. "Romeo and Juliet."
The Wadsworth Shakespeare: The
Complete Works. Second ed. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 1997. Print.
