Anyway, like last year, I have reread the play and assembled a list of questions to ask about every version (though some may apply only to productions of the play itself, not to adaptations). Some are carry-overs or adjustments of last year's Hamlet questions. They are:
Who (how old), when, how long? This is a straight pickup from last year, with the critical addition of the ages of the lead players. Romeo's age is not specified in the play, but he's clearly an age-appropriate partner for Juliet, whose age is twice implied as 13. Along with this, do we get the lines in the play in which J's age is specified?
What sort of R&J? Are they silly kids, or is their passion as irresistible to us as to them?
Seriocomic scale for first scene? This presumes, of course, that the original act I, scene i is retained, with Montague servants confronting Capulet servants. This scene is typically played for yuks, but of course the rest of the play suggests that there are tragic seeds here. I'll try to rate the opening on a scale of 1 (silly) to 10 (ominous).
"Wherefore": do the film/playmakers know what it means? Extremely annoying that in pop culture this most famous line is usually misread (typical jokey answer: "Down here: the trellis broke"). I don't really expect anyone to screw this up, but anyone who does is under double-secret probation from I.ii.
Carrion flies? In one of the play's weirdest passages (III.iii), the newly banishèd Romeo bemoans that "carrion flies"
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmay seizeI'm interested to see who's got the balls to include this macabre sequence.
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand
And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But Romeo may not, he is banishèd.
Flies may do this, but I from this must fly.
Body count? This is an obvious one that I should have done for Hamlet. Here the textual count is 6: Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, Juliet, and Lady Montague. Except for Paris and Lady M, they all seem mandatory, but we shall see (especially in the adaptations--I already know, e.g., that in West Side Story Maria/Juliet survives, and there's no Lady M equivalent).
What (else) is missing? and What (else) is changed? and What (else) is odd? are carryovers from the Hamlet Project, and are self-explanatory.
End-of-the-play exposition? Hey, Will was young, and though the comic wordplay throughout the work was a pleasant surprise after so long since my last reading, a good editor would have cut the last c. 190 lines (including an uninterrupted 40+ lines from the Friar) to about a dozen: did Elizabethan audiences really need to have the whole fucking story retold at the end? Had they all taken ill-timed bathroom breaks? I'll be looking to see whether the sensible decision is made to cut to the chase once the title characters are dead dead dead.
And that's that--tune in again over the next couple of months for more R&J than you can possibly stand.
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