Good day, dear Take in Mind readers! The tender, but very tragic love story of two teenagers from Verona is known, I think, to almost all the people in the world. There are numerous translations into most languages, plentiful theatrical performances and film adaptations, operas, ballets, musicals, cartoons, and anime – and all these are in addition to tens of thousands of pages of scientific and historical publications written by professional literary critics. What may I, an ordinary reader, add to this extraordinary collection?
On the other hand, I confess that one unusual question intrigues me for a long time. It’s well known (to Shakespeare’s haters and not only), that Shakespeare rewrote, with perfection, already-known stories, and did it so cleverly, that no one remembers now the original. Perhaps, this scenario happened also with the brilliant tragedy. Well, my question is: from whom did Shakespeare borrow the “Romeo and Juliet” story?
Let’s start with the fact that the feuding families of the Montagues and the Capulets were mentioned in the first quarter of the 14th century by the great Dante Alighieri in his The Divine Comedy. Further, the story about two young beloveds was repeatedly “exploited” by Italian writers of the Renaissance. By the way, the names of Romeo and Juliet first appeared in The Newly Found Story of Two Noble Lovers and Their Sad Death in Verona in the Time of the Signor Bartolomeo Della Scala by Luigi da Porta (around 1524). Romeo and Juliet, the novel by Matteo Bandello (1554), whose plot was briefly summarized by the author as “The piteous death of two ill-fortuned lovers who died, the one of poison and the other of grief…”, in turn, served as the basis of Arthur Brooke’s poem (1562). William Shakespeare borrowed the plot and the characters from Brooke directly in 1595.
However, if we look deeper, then the one who takes precedence is Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso), who described the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in his Metamorphoses. The event was taken place in ancient Babylon. The beautiful Pyramus was captivated by the beauty of the young Thisbe. Their feelings were mutual and would certainly have led to a wedding if there had been the consent of the parents (by the way, Ovid does not mention any reasons for the refusal). The couple lived in neighboring houses that had a common wall. Using a crack in this wall, Pyramus and Thisbe had an opportunity to speak with each other.
On one of the nights they agreed to meet secretly outside the city under snow-white mulberries. Thisbe came first, but the sudden appearance of a lioness frightened her. The girl succeeded to hide in the cave, dropping her veil on the run. The lioness tore the fabric with her bloodied mouth and left the place without touching Thisbe. Soon Pyramus came. Seeing the torn, with signs of blood, and the veil of his beloved (and without doing any blood tests for identification?! – sorry for the joke!)… the young man cried and plunged the sword into his stomach. Thisbe came out of her hiding place, but the happiness of miraculous salvation was instantly replaced by terrible grief. The second suicide follows the first one, and the blood of the lovers spilled on the mulberries turns the berries dark. By the way, the tragedy of the Beautiful Thisbe and Pyramus was incorporated by Shakespeare into his A Midsummer Night’s Dream comedy.
Well, after we have clarified the issue of the primary sources of the story, let’s talk a little about its modern adaptations. Especially because the rampant fantasy of modern Shakespeares is simply amazing. Our short list is opened by the classic West Side Story, in which the Jets, a street teenage gang of descendants of white immigrants, and the Sharks, immigrants from Puerto Rico, appear as the Montagues and the Capulets.
Next, it is necessary to mention Under the sky of Verona, a 2004 Russian-Israeli series. Briefly, the plot is as follows: 1984. A trustworthy young Soviet Komsomol member Andrey, who tightly believes in the ideals of the Communist Party, was sent to a seminar in Verona (Italy). There he met his true love, a religious Jewish girl named Leah, who came with her father to the rabbi’s congress. The state of Israel and the Soviet Union, the rabbinate and atheists from the Communist Party – all these surround two young beloved hearts…
…The world is on the verge of extinction, struck by a terrible epidemic. Contrary to the laws of Nature, the dead do not want to rest in peace, but instead, walk and strive to eat the brains of the still-living people. The change began when a zombie named R (the first letter of his first name in his previous life) saves a living girl named (what a surprise!) Julie instead of eating her brain. This friendship (gradually developing into love) threatens both of them. But… I will not spoil with spoilers for those who have not yet read the Warm bodies novel by Isaac Marion or have not watched the 2013 paranormal romantic zombie comedy film directed by Jonathan Levine.
In a certain sense, the love story of the ex-Marine Jake Sully and the beautiful Na’vi Neytiri on distant Pandora (2009 epic sci-fi film Avatar directed by James Cameron) has common ideas with the tragedy of Shakespeare (and, as we already know, not only of him).
In conclusion, it is necessary to note that, unlike the stories of the great playwright and his predecessors, many of the modern adaptations end nicely with live and happy main characters. Such happy ends I wish to all of us!
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