Everyone knows Shakespeare as a great writer and shareholder, but not everyone realizes that the success of his plays is mainly due to his experience as a dramatist.
Infact, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice are unique because of Shakespeare’s ability to describe emotions and behaviors of his characters in a deep and subtle way.
Also, he gives importance to female characters, who are almost always brave and determined, as well as beautiful. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia shows her courage in dressing up as a lawyer in order to help her husband’s friend Antonio, while in Shakespeare’s most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, the girl goes against her family’s will and gets secretly married to Romeo, even if he is from an enemy family.
In this regard, Shakespeare draws attention to conflictual family relationships, which suggests a rivalry between parents and teenagers and vice versa because of a generational gap. Infact, parents are very old while children are very young when they fall in love and that’s why they are rebellious towards their respective families and they fight for their love.
Attribuzione: Francesco Hayez, Public domain, da Wikimedia Commons
The author depicts the complex world of adolescence, describing teenagers in all their absurdity, contradictions, nastiness, cruelty, rebellion but also beauty. Analizing and describing young characters, he focuses on the intensity of their emotions and on the tragic consequences of impulsive decisions, guided by passionate love. In act 1 of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare line “O, teach me how I should forget to think!” captures the overwhelming inner confusion that characterizes teenagers.
Surely, he gave our modern generation a new way to look at them in a spirit of wondering, instead of our usual nostalgia and loathing with which we regard them. Probably Romeo and Juliet has never gone out of fashion because it is about an idealized and all-encompassing love. Furthermore, this play has easily adapted to our modern pop culture, because it responds to the audience’s desire to dream of an intense and star-crossed story.
Chiara Pira