Disturb Your Universe: Rejecting Literary Labels

Transcription

1 Disturb Your Universe: Rejecting Literary Labels

2

3 Disturb Your Universe: Rejecting Literary Labels Senior Seminar in English, Spring 2002 State University of West Georgia Introduction Disturb Your Universe: Teaching the Conflicts Dr. Lisa Plummer Crafton 5 I. The Bard s Alive: Modern Film Versions of Romeo and Juliet The Cross, the Gun, and the Sword: How Baz Luhrman s Romeo + Juliet Enriches William Shakespeare s Play for a Modern Audience Jeremy Bell 9 He jests at scars that never felt a wound : The Comedy of Tragedy in Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love Rebekah Rogers 17 II. There is a place for everything, and everything has its place Jane Austen s Role as a Romantic: A Truth Universally Acknowledged? Melanie Leggatt 29 No Label Needed! Steven Loicano 41 III. Thwarted Texts? A New Skepticism A Place for Beloved: Considering the Issues of Literary Labeling 53 April Spann

4 4 Hester Prynne: The Thwarted Prophetess in Nathaniel Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter 69 Susan R. Rooks IV. Divorcing the Ivory Tower: Introducing Controversy Into the Classroom Catch the Literary Bug : Why Deny Children the Privileges of Reading? 81 Megan Ridley Disturb the Universe: Using Conflict to Teach Literature in Secondary Education 93 Christina Tidaback V. I will carry you kicking and screaming, and in the end you will thank me. Linking the Past with the Present: A Connection Between Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones s Diary 113 Laura Wagner It s hard to stay mad when there is so much beauty in the world : Enjoying the Timeless Wasteland 125 Eric Hudson The Things You Own, End Up Owning You : Fight Club as a Romantic Text 137 Matt Tuck Notes on Contributors 151

5 Disturb Your Universe: Teaching the Conflicts Lisa Plummer Crafton In a scene from The Chocolate War, by, the young protagonist asks, with explicit reference to T. S. Eliot, Do I dare disturb the universe? He asks the question with regard to serious, complex decisions facing young adults in complicated social dynamics, but we practicing literary critics do well to ask ourselves the same question about all kinds of boundaries established by literary history: Do we accept traditional literary period designations or challenge them? J. Hillis Miller notes in an important essay in this debate, Associating a given work with the period in which it was written is both an essential and an essentially problematic part of reading it ( Reading and Periodization 197). Do we use traditional classification/genre labeling even if those labels are not comprehensively adequate for the sake of convenience, or show the challenges to such labels? Do we maintain strict boundaries between literature and film, treating of two separate disciplines, or teach film as literature? Do we actively engage and teach contemporary adaptations of renowned classical texts, or de-emphasize pop culture examples in an attempt to preserve literary tradition? As teachers, do we avoid confrontational, controversial cultural subjects in favor of programmatic curricula? These kinds of questions are the ones formulated and committedly interrogated by these eleven young critics from the Senior Seminar of State University of West Georgia during Spring At the heart of these kinds of student-driven questions lie two very basic and essential queries which provided the two-pronged theoretical angle of this seminar. First, in Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revi- 5

6 6 Disturb Your Universe: Teaching the Conflicts talize American Education, Gerald Graff argues for the necessity of teaching challenges to traditional literary history, using that fact that culture itself is a debate, not a monologue, and asserts the following: A dangerous inability to talk to one another is the price we pay for a culture that makes it easy for us to avoid having to respect and deal with the people who strongly disagree with us (vii). Similar to Graff s perspective, a cultural debate does undergird the majority of these papers. Second, a disciplinary debate frames many of the papers, a consideration of challenges to the paradigms which practicing literary critics use. In the course of this seminar, we read numerous contributions to this debate, from J. Hillis Miller to David Perkins (Is Literary History Possible?), many of which are collected in an anthology of essays The Challenge of Periodization: Old Paradigms and New Perspective. The five sub-sections of this anthology present, from very diverse angles, explorations of the five pertinent questions above. The writers in the seminar chose the groupings themselves, although there are a number of other ways these conflicts can and perhaps should be engaged. It is our hope that readers will feel free to, themselves, disturb the universe and freely consider all these texts in different combinations and that such dialogic reading will allow for conflict to be part of the answer, not just the question, that literary criticism offers.

7 I. The Bard s Alive: Modern Film Versions of Romeo and Juliet

8

9 The Cross, the Gun, and the Sword: How Baz Luhrman s Romeo + Juliet Enriches William Shakespeare s Play for a Modern Audience Jeremy Bell Setting Shakespeare s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to music by the Butthole Surfers probably has The Bard rolling in his grave, but what the hell, it s open season on the classics these days. Christopher Null Romeo finds Juliet, they fall in love, and despite their families war, they marry. The story ends with their deaths. Here we have the basic story behind William Shakespeare s masterpiece Romeo and Juliet. Is it possible to take this love story and apply it to another setting than the one intended by the Bard? This feat is successfully accomplished in 1996 in Baz Luhrman s Romeo + Juliet. In this adaptation, the Montagues and Capulets carry out their feud in the luxurious setting of Verona Beach. The producers of this film adapted certain parts of Shakespeare s work and altered them for a contemporary setting. While other directors have produced other movie adaptations of the play, Luhrman s version adheres the closest to Shakespeare s blueprints, while offering a creative interpretation of the narrative. These versions would include one titled simply Romeo and Juliet, in which the producers put Shakespeare s play in film with little modifications, and the modern adaptation titled Romeo Must Die. In this version, there is one main character named Romeo and two feuding families, but nothing else that comes from Shakespeare. Why is it beneficial to analyze the relationship between Shakespeare s play and the 1996 film by Baz Luhrman? Using critical reviews of the movie and careful analysis of elements that exist in both works, it is possible to justify this movie s existence as complementary to the play. Through such an examination, one can come to understand that this play (a masterpiece in the literary canon) is adaptable to any setting at any time. The movie version is a carefully written adaptation of Shakespeare s work. In this analysis, it becomes clear that the movie 9

10 10 Jeremy Bell enriches the play by relating it to a modern audience. It is appropriate that we understand what parts have been changed and what aspects of the play have remained the same. The setting has been changed in both place and time. The characters names remain unchanged while their personalities have taken on attributes that are more modern. While both use the same script, the words sometimes take on a completely different meaning. As a close interpretation of Shakespeare s work, this adaptation represents what the play could have been had it been created in the twentieth century. Some critics feel that the movie is a complete bastardization of Shakespeare s masterpiece. Graff discusses the importance of critical debates and openness to new texts and critical perspectives in his book, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education. Graff states Studying literature is never a matter of just reading great texts but always involves a choice of critical vocabularies and theories (78). Educators, at times, suppress conflict in favor of presenting united unified facts of literary history. The fact that conflict does exist around the relevance of this movie to the play helps to prove the film s interest and legitimacy as an object of study for literary critics. Even though some critics believe this movie is nothing more than a misuse of Shakespeare s masterpiece in order to sell movie tickets, I will argue that studying the two together provides a richer understanding of this central plot s adaptability to different cultures at different times. Graff addresses the topic of a text s relevance to the world around it in chapter six of his book: Contrast is fundamental to understanding; for no subject, idea, or text is an island. In order to become intelligible in itself ; it needs to be seen in its relation to other subjects, ideas, and texts. When this relation of interdependence is obscured because different courses do not communicate, subjects, ideas, and texts become harder to comprehend, if not unintelligible. We think we are making things simpler for students by abstracting periods, texts, and authors from their relationships with other periods, texts, and authors so that we can study them closely in a purified space. But the very act of isolating an object from its contrasting background and relations makes it hard to grasp. (108-09)

11 Baz Luhrman s Romeo + Juliet 11 So many elements of the movie beg for analysis and discussion. These changes were executed to relate the film to a modern audience much in the same way that Shakespeare related the play to his own audience. In his essay Falling in Love: The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, John F. Andrews discusses the existence of a catharsis in Shakespeare s play that exists purely to trigger emotion, intellectual and ethical clarification by an attentive theatergoer (370). An attentive reading of the film will suggest how certain changes are made to attract the attentive theatergoer while maintaining the goal of catharsis. Striking changes are apparent from the movie s opening, although the play opens with a prologue that is unchanged in the movie. Fair Verona (2) is established as the setting for these two hours traffic (16). While the prologue is the same in the movie, Verona is changed to Verona Beach. This setting change is the first example of the updating of the play s content. The use of a contemporary setting, Verona Beach, is part of an argument established by movie critic Sean Manse. He links the setting change to traits given to Lords Montague and Capulet in the movie. Manse compares the movie s Montague and Capulet to the actual, Miami-based industrial rival families, the Carringtons and the Colbys. These real-world references help a modern audience relate to the two characters and, in turn, better understand the families. These two characters are established industrial leaders who hold the keys to power in the city. The beautiful opening scene of the movie is of two towers, taller than all other buildings in the city and divided by a statue of Christ. This image is a visual representation of a major theme in the movie and play. The two households are both bound by a single rule, religion. This theme is apparent in both works from the first fight scene in the gas station/marketplace to the tragic death scene in the Capulet crypt. 1 The filmmaker s use of two wealthy families who rule over the city highlights the significance of Shakespeare s characterization of the Montagues and Capulets in the play. The use of feuding families by Shakespeare in his play is a deliberate tool used to establish the power and the extent to which the families hate each other. Shakespeare critic Gail Kern Paster discusses the representation of the two feuding fami-

12 12 Jeremy Bell lies in her essay Romeo and Juliet: A Modern Perspective : The conflict between traditional authority and individual desire provides the framework for Shakespeare s presentation of the Capulet- Montague feud.... We are never told what the families are fighting about or fighting for; in this sense the feud is both causeless and goal-less. The Chorus s first words insist not on the differences between the two families but on their similarity: they are two households both alike in dignity. (3) The producers and director utilize this aspect of the play to relate the feud to the modern audience. From past movie-viewing experience, as well as contemporary American culture itself, most audiences would understand the characterization of two rival industrial leaders in the same city. Additionally, these are not the only alterations done to the play. There are distinct alterations in dress, props, and scene settings. Christopher Null, editor-in-chief of filmcritic.com, is one critic who feels that the changes done to Shakespeare s play not only take away from the greatness of the story, but also reduce it to a pop-culture fad that is produced only to sell tickets and soundtracks: Setting Shakespeare s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to music by the Butthole Surfers probably has The Bard rolling in his grave, but what the hell, it s open season on the classics these days. I won t even pretend that I understand all of the nuance and symbolism of Luhrmann s instantly popular retelling of the tale, but I will say that this is one of the most entertaining renditions of any Shakespeare work I ve ever seen. (Null) This critic feels that while it is entertaining, the movie takes some vital quality away from Shakespeare s play that has made it part of our literary canon. However, the literary canon that we are all familiar with is not as static as it appears to be. When one thinks of the literary canon, one may think of authors such as Homer, Shakespeare, and Twain. During each of these author s lives, there existed a canon very different from the canon that exists today. As Graff points out, the

13 Baz Luhrman s Romeo + Juliet 13 canon changes as widely entertaining modern material that borrows from more established works finds its place in scholarly debates and discussions. In short, the college literary canon has been changing as it had for a century, by accretion at the margins, not by dumping the classics. 2 Here Graff acknowledges the fact that the canon is constantly changing because the art of literature is always in a state of change. These newer texts cause small changes and do not stand against other more established texts. The newer works use tools and ideas from earlier authors to create entertaining material. A critic from the Apollo Guide, Dan Jardine feels that it is not the issue of modern adaptation that makes this movie a mockery of Shakespeare s play; it is the specific casting and portrayal of characters. Is there substance to the charge that those who try to make Shakespeare contemporary rip the soul out of his work? Portrayal of Leonardo Di Caprio and his surfer-dude buddies destroy their lines with their mannered mouthful-of marbles coastal American accents (Jardine). In order to understand why the director chose to portray the characters as he did, it is important to look at specific scenes where changes and modernization are the most apparent. Director Baz Luhrmann states that in the gas station scene, which is the movie s adaptation of the marketplace scene in the opening of the play, the audience is given a cushion to help them better understand the language of Shakespeare. In this first fight scene, the Montague Boys pull up to the Phoenix gas station discussing how The quarrel is between our masters. And us their men (Luhrman). As they tease people in the gas station, a blue sedan bearing a license plate reading CAP 005 drives up. Personalized license plates are found on all cars belonging to the Montagues and Capulets. The quarrel breaks out as Abra, a Capulet, and Tybalt take revenge on Benvolio and the other Montagues for a thumb-biting incident. In the modern world, not too many people express their dislike for another person by biting their thumb, which is a disgrace to them if they bear it (Luhrman). The producers make it clear to the audience what is happening by using images and action with which we are all familiar. This scene uses the style of the western movie genre, which is one that many people are familiar with, to tell the story of the

14 14 Jeremy Bell first fight scene between the young Montagues and Capulets. Luhrmann states, The audience feels concerned that this could happen to them.... We wanted to show what is going on in a world where people carry weapons all of the time (Luhrman). By using the gas station setting, and specific actions and movements of the characters, the audience would have understood what was going on, even if the characters were speaking Eskimo (Luhrman). By slowly letting the audience get used to the style of speech used by the characters in such an actionpacked scene, the movie entertains. These aspects run throughout the movie and keep this tragedy as entertaining to the audience of today as it was to the audiences that went to the Globe Theatre to see the original play. Not only do the tools of cinema help the movie stay close in form to the original, they also help to expand on one particular thematic emphasis of the play the Christian dimension. During the Elizabethan era, the government and church were one unified body. The director and producers of the movie helped further express this idea with one simple symbol, the Christ statue. This statue stands in between the Montague and Capulet towers. The audience understands the symbolism of the statue and the towers, and thus, can better understand many of the story s Christian themes. Roy Battenhouse explains, in his book Shakespeare s Christian Dimension, how the play expresses Christian elements through the love between Romeo and Juliet: Juliet s beauty is Romeo s substitute sun in an otherwise dark world. His religion of the eye worships face, and regards her lips as a holy shrine (364). The movie addresses this theme using the tools of foreshadowing combined with religious symbolism strategically placed throughout the movie. In the gas station scene, Tybalt s vest bears a drawing of Christ and the reoccurring symbol of a cross and a heart together. As the scene progresses, the fight ends, and Tybalt drops his cigar into a puddle of gasoline that has collected around a cross-shaped crack in the concrete. The puddle ignites in slow motion as the music takes on a more solemn tone. These modifications to the themes in Shakespeare s play not only help emphasize their importance to the plot, but also help the modern audience understand more of the plot and symbolism embedded in Shakespeare s words.

15 Baz Luhrman s Romeo + Juliet 15 Shakespeare s families in the play can also be read through a Christian critique of their false idols. As Battenhouse explains, The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is the tragedy of a social group which has nothing to do but feud with their neighbors, give parties, cultivate elegance of manner and speech, and indulge their emotions. The fatal weakness which affects them all, even the lovers, is a wish to show off. Instead of asking, What ought I to do? or even What would I really like to do? they ask If I do this, what sort of figure shall I cut in the eyes of others? (366). This idolizing of the self clearly and acts as a catalyst for the eventual tragedy that befalls both households. M. M. Mahood also helps us to better understand this substitution of erotic for spiritual love factor of Romeo and Juliet s love and religion: Romeo and Juliet stellify each other, the love which appears to be quenched as easily as a spark is, in fact, made as permanent as the sun and stars when it is set out over the range of time (68). Another predominant Christian element in the play (that is discussed in the movie analysis) is the positioning of religion between the two families. Religion acts as a tie between these families that is first established in the marriage of the two lovers and is severed at their deaths in the Capulet family crypt. By marrying Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence hopes to end the feud. As he states, For this alliance may so happy prove to turn your households rancor to pure love (2.3.95). The role of religion is also apparent in the final scene of the play. Once Montague and Capulet witness the death scene of their children, Prince explains how all are punished because of their sins: See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love, And I, winking at your discords too, Have lost a kinsmen. All are punished ( ). In the movie, this scene is full of neon crosses and statues of Mary and Christ. The Christian symbols present at the beginning of the movie exist here as ironic symbols and help to establish how the families fatal flaw lead to the death of their children. After comparing scenes from both the play and the movie and examining parallel symbolism, it is easy to see why Baz Luhrman and his production staff chose to present Shakespeare s masterpiece in the way that they did. Those critics who feel that this movie is a misrepre-

16 16 Jeremy Bell sentation of Shakespeare s play fail to see how the movie enhances the play by sparking new interest in the canonized work. The movie also presents the material in a way that is entertaining to a modern audience and understandable to a wider range of people. It is safe to say that Romeo + Juliet is a complementary piece to the play. In many ways, the movie adds fresh perspectives on many of Shakespeare s themes and creates a fantastic world where Shakespeare s characters exist as real people and not just in our minds. Notes 1 Manse makes other relevant references between popular culture and the movie s characters. He addresses, for example, the similarities between Dave Paris and Ted Kennedy and also Mercutio and RuPaul. 2 In chapter 2, Graff uses the changing literary canon to prove his point about the debate over The Color Purple pushing works by Shakespeare out of the classroom. In 1988, Christopher Clausen published an article that made this claim. While it is taken out of context in this paper s example, it still applies since the same factors that tested the canon in Graff s Great Color Purple Hoax apply to the treatment of this adaptation of Shakespeare s play. Works Cited Batenhouse, Roy. Shakespeare s Christian Dimension. Bloomington: Indiana UP, Jardine, Dan. Apollo Guide Accessed 2/12/02. Graff, Gerald. Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education. New York: Norton, Luhrmann, Baz. William Shakespeare s Romeo + Juliet Special Edition. Twentieth Century Fox Productions, Mahood, M. M. Shakespeare s Wordplay. London: Methuen, Null, Christopher Accessed 2/12/02. Paster, Gail Kern. Romeo and Juliet: A Modern Perspective. The New Folger Library Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. New York: Washington Square P, Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. New York: Random House,

17 He jests at scars that never felt a wound : The Comedy of Tragedy in Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love Rebekah Rogers William Shakespeare s play Romeo and Juliet is arguably the most wellknown play of all time. Almost anyone, whether a member of academia or not, can retell the tragic story of the two star-crossed lovers and their inevitable deaths in the fifth act. Shakespeare wrote during the Renaissance, which as the name literally means, was a rebirth. A Handbook to Literature defines the English Renaissance as a period of new humanistic learning, which resulted from the rediscovery of classical literature (Holman 444). Writers during this time, like Shakespeare, were imitating this classical literature to produce a better text instead of a completely new one. Arthur Brooke s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet was one of Shakespeare s sources for Romeo and Juliet; Brooke s poem focuses on the tragic elements of the story in that the lovers determine their fate by their misdeeds. Brooke s statements in his preface set the fundamental blame in a promiscuous, irrational love and its Catholic counselor (Champion 70). Shakespeare used this original story to write his own tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, but he goes beyond the limited focus of the Tragicall Historye to create a tragedy with comic relief. As Northrop Frye writes, The original writer is not the writer who thinks up a new story there aren t any new stories really but the writer who tells one of the world s greatest stories in a new way (61). Shakespeare s telling of one of the world s greatest stories makes Romeo and Juliet into a tragedy; the play proves itself to be a tragedy very early in the play and keeps with the genre until the ending when both protagonists are dead, but the play about family feuds, ill-fated lover, and suicide also utilizes comedy at crucial moments to relieve tension for the audience. Susan Snyder suggests that Shakespeare s use of comedy in his tragic love story is no coincidence: The features that distinguish this subgenre [Italianate tragedy of love and intrigue] from 17

18 18 Rebekah Rogers the more dominant fall-of-the-mighty strain move it closer to comedy: its sources are typically novelle... its heroes are of lesser rank, its situations private... its main motive force is love (56). Since comedy is the antithesis of tragedy, the comedic moments shift the reader s attention away from the tragic storyline to temporarily relieve the reader from the tragic moment, but inevitably, these moments really serve to foreshadow the ultimate, tragic ending. These comedic moments are strategically placed in the text after a somber moment to make the reader laugh instead of cry. A modern version of Romeo and Juliet is utilized in the film Shakespeare in Love where screenplay writers Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard utilize comedy to mask their telling of the classic tragedy which their film is based on. Instead of presenting the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet from the very beginning, comedy permeates Norman and Stoppard s entire film, in effect, manipulating a sixteenth century tragedy into a twenty-first century comedy. The original story of Romeo and Juliet is altered in this film to include a fictionalized story of Shakespeare himself and his love affair with a woman of the upper class. Unlike the comedic moments in Romeo and Juliet, the comedy in Shakespeare in Love is almost constant, and it distracts the viewer into forgetting that this film will inevitably end tragically. How can the same story be a tragic play in the Renaissance and a comedy in modern film? The contrast between the tragedy of one version and the comedy of another cannot be separated and studied independently; The conflict of tragedy versus comedy makes these two texts essential to one another. As Gerald Graff argues in his book Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, contrast is fundamental to understanding, for no subject, idea, or text is an island. In order to become intelligible in itself, it needs to be seen in its relation to other subjects, ideas, and texts (108). In order to interact, the play and the film must provide one another with something; the film provides the play reader with a fictionalized version of Shakespeare s life to liven the mood and make the situation of Shakespeare falling in love funny and ironic while the play provides the film with tragic irony that Will and Viola (or Romeo and Juliet) cannot be together. Romeo and Juliet must be proved a tragedy and

19 Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love 19 Shakespeare in Love a comedy in order to fully understand the interactions between these two texts. The original play by William Shakespeare is entitled The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and besides this distinction on the title page, the prologue to the play summarizes the tragic plot. The Chorus tells the audience, A pair of star-cross d lover take their life, / Whose misadventur d piteous overthrows/ Doth with their death bury their parents strife/ The fearful passage of their death-mark d love/ And the continuance of their parents rage, / Which, but their children s end, nought could remove,/ Is now the two hours traffic of our stage. (Shakespeare ) From the beginning of the play, the audience knows the entire story; they know that no matter how in love Romeo and Juliet are and no matter what plan they devise to escape the wrath of their parents, the play will end with their deaths. This fact is the ironic side of tragedy according to Northrop Frye because the audience usually knows more about what s happening or going to happen than the characters do (62). Shakespeare in Love utilizes Shakespeare s tragic plot of Romeo and Juliet, but is itself in the genre of comedy. In the film, the life of Shakespeare while writing Romeo and Juliet is fictionalized, and the film follows him as he falls in love with Viola de Lessups, a woman who is completely above him socially. Viola loves the theater and particularly the Shakespeare she has seen, and she dresses as a man to try out for the part of Romeo in Shakespeare s new play Romeo and Juliet (or as it is called at the time, Romeo and Ethel the Pirate s Daughter). The idea of Shakespeare falling for his Romeo provides the movie with humor as Viola s alter ego, Thomas Kent, is kept secret. When analyzing these two texts as complements to one another, it is important to look at scenes that parallel one another. Romeo and Will share heartache and jest from their compadres while Juliet and Viola share a distress over their proposed arranged marriages. When the two couples meet for the first time, they both experience love at first sight that will eventually lead to a tragic ending for both couples.

20 20 Rebekah Rogers Through all of these parallels, Shakespeare s play and its comic relief continues to remind the reader that all will eventually end tragically while Norman and Stoppard s film includes so much comedy that the reader forgets that the story is supposed to end tragically. The interaction of the two texts makes both works into a mixture of comedy and tragedy; Will and Romeo provide comedy through their depression over lost love and the sexual comedy that goes along with that while Juliet and Viola prove that a tragedy will inevitably occur. When these two couples are brought together, both literally in the individual texts and figuratively between the two texts, the audience can see how, although Shakespeare in Love is billed as a comedy, it only distracts the reader along the way to forget that the ending will be just as tragic as Romeo and Juliet. At the beginning of Shakespeare s play, Romeo is sick with heartache over a lost love. Romeo laments, Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;/ Being purg d a fire sparkling in lover s eyes;/ Being vex d, a sea nourish d with lovers tears;/ what is it else? A madness most discreet,/ A choking gall, and a preseving sweet (Shakespeare ). Thse lines set Romeo up as a hopeless romantic, and the reader is prepared for him to suddenly fall in love with Juliet when he first sees her. His love affair with Juliet is already destined to fail, and the reader knows that at this point. The reader s knowledge is proved shortly after when Romeo first sees Juliet, and he remarks, Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight./ For I ne er saw true beauty till this night (Shakespeare ). Romeo s love is immediate; Maurice Charney writes, Love enters through the eyes and it is spontaneous, irresistible, and absolute (9). Romeo exemplifies this spontaneous love when he falls in love with Juliet. The reader knows that this relationship is destined to end tragically, and Romeo is quite unable to cope with love without being overwhelmed with the feeling. Charney states, Romeo is not unlike Shakespeare s male lovers in the comedies, who are overwhelmed by love at first sight and seem much less resourceful in coping with love (82). This inability to cope with love allows Shakespeare to temporarily relieve the reader from this tragic moment by having Romeo s friends make fun of him. At this point, the comic relief is necessary to relieve the tension of

21 Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love 21 this moment that reminds the reader of the tragedy. Benvolio and Mercutio, Romeo cohorts, provide the comedy in Act II Scene I to jest at Romeo s romantic notions. Mercutio s sexual humor is seen when he says, Twould anger him/ to raise a spirit in his mistress circle/ Of some strange nature, letting it there stand/ Till she had laid it and conjur d it down:/ That were some spite. My invocation/ Is fair and honest; in his mistress name/ I conjure only but to raise up him. (Shakespeare ) Mercutio insinuates that he only wishes to conjure Romeo s sexual desire for any mistress, and the audience can laugh at Mercutio s version of sexual love that so contrasts Romeo s romantic notions. His friends wish for Romeo to cure his lovesickness with any woman. Charney reminds her readers that all love in Shakespeare is sexual (7), and Mercutio and Benvolio s desire for Romeo to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh instead of being depressed over one woman is part of [their] comic badinage with [their] histrionically love-sick friend whose mistress refuses to reciprocate (Chamption 71), but this moment of sexual comedy only lasts until the next scene where Romeo will remind the reader that the story is a tragedy. The comedy that Mercutio gives the audience only lasts for a moment because Romeo reminds the reader that all will end tragically when he says, He jests at scars that never felt a wound (Shakespeare 2.2.1). Romeo is insinuating here that Mercutio and Benvolio do not know what it is like to have a wound or a scar from a lost love. Romeo feels that his heart hurts worse because he has felt love and lost it, and his friends cannot possibly understand because they have never even loved. Besides that, Romeo is reminding the reader that he will receive a wound at the end of the play because of his love for Juliet. A moment that appeared to be humorous only reminds the reader that Romeo and Juliet will not be happy and alive at the end of the play. Unlike Romeo s heartache that becomes comic to others but soon returns to the tragic story, Will s heartache in Shakespeare in Love is pre-

22 22 Rebekah Rogers sented in a comical light. The setting of Will s admittance of his heartache makes the moment comical. Will is not telling a trusted friend about his troubles; he is paying a doctor, somewhat like a psychologist, to listen to and diagnose his problems. Ordinarily this would not be funny, but Dr. Moth s sign professes that he is an apothecary, alchemist, astrologer, seer, interpreter of dreams, and priest of psyche (Norman and Stoppard 9). The interior of the room continues the humorous scenes with its stuffed alligator and assortments of pills, potions and mystic paraphernalia (9). The best way to see these intricate details is to watch the film very closely or read the notes before each scene in the screenplay. Will is depressed about the loss of his gift for writing, and he confesses this to Dr. Moth, but while confessing, he provides his own sexual jokes to describe the situation he is in. Will tells Dr. Moth, It s as if my quill is broken. As if the organ of my imagination has dried up. As if the proud tower of my genius has collapsed (Norman and Stoppard 10). Sexual imagery pervades these statements, and the viewer cannot help but laugh at Will s situation. When the mood seems to shift to a more morose one during the discussion of Will s marriage to Anne Hathaway, the change does not last long because comedy comes immediately back in: Dr. Moth: And your relations? Will: On my mother s side the Ardens... Dr. Moth: No, your marriage bed. (Norman and Stoppard 11-12) Will is not even thinking seriously enough to understand what Dr. Moth is talking about; he can only provide humorous answers which prevent the viewer from feeling the heartache that he is feeling. Film critic James Berardinelli states, Although Shakespeare in Love offers its shard of belly laughs, most of the humor and there is quite a bit of it falls more into the wit category. For example, while the scene of Will undergoing a primitive form of psychoanalysis is amusing, it s not likely to cause anyone to roll in the aisles ( Shakespeare in Love ). While I agree with Mr. Berardinelli that the movie is quite humorous and it is wittier than hilariously funny, I believe that he is

23 Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love 23 missing the entire point. The film is loosely based on Shakespeare s tragedy, and to make it uproariously funny would be a mockery of the original. The wit allows the viewer to forget about the tragic ending for the time being, but when the film ends just as tragically as the original play, the viewer is not completely surprised. What do these scenes from Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love have to do with one another? It is essential to view and read these scenes together in order to see how the two texts interact and rely upon one another. The scenes are quite different, but as Graff points out, the disagreements themselves can be the point of connection (119). Romeo s heartache seems realistic in its melancholic nature, and when the audience sees Will in a similar state, he knows that, despite the sexual comedy, Will really is hurting just like Romeo. As the reader recognizes parallels between Romeo and Will s situations, he sees that the irony of Will s situation is, in spite of the jokes, Will is going to end up in a tragedy just like Romeo. The film provides the play with a feeling of comedy to pervade over the tragedy. The audience sees how funny Will s situation is, and he can now see Romeo s similar predicament in a more humorous light. The use of sexual imagery by Will is obviously pointing a finger at Mercutio s jokes about Romeo s lack of sexual experience. Will, on the other hand, has shared plenty of sexual exploits with Dr. Moth in the past. The doctor recites, Black Sue, Fat Pheobe, Rosaline, Burbage s seamstress; Aprodite, who does it behind the Dog and... (10). As the play adds to the film s seriousness, the film adds to the play s comedy to meld the two texts together. The storylines continue to parallel one another throughout the two texts, and the contributions that the texts give to one another continue to strengthen both. Opposite Romeo and Will are the two women involved in the texts: Juliet and Viola. While the men are concerned with lost love and sexual situations, the women are concerned about their impending arranged marriages that cannot be avoided. The idea of an arranged marriage lends to the tragedy of both texts because, inevitably, a woman must marry the man whom her parents have paid, and if she refuses, the only other theatrical option is death. Juliet and Viola both face impending marriages to men they do not love or desire to love, and through

24 24 Rebekah Rogers this female protagonist connection, the viewer can see the ultimate tragic ending that even the comedy of Shakespeare in Love will have. Juliet s mother breaks the news of Paris desire to wed the young Juliet, but from the first mention of marriage by Lady Capulet, Juliet is not very interested. Lady Capulet asks, Tell me, daughter Juliet,/ How stands your dispositions to be married (Shakespeare ), and Juliet responds, It is an honour that I dream not of (Shakespeare ). Juliet s frankness concerning her lack of interest in marriage foreshadows the tragedy to come. Juliet will not be able to choose between Paris and the man she will soon meet and fall in love with. The reader knows when Lady Capulet instructs Juliet to Read o er the volume of young Paris s face/ And find delight writ there with beauty s pen./ Examine every married lineament/ And see how one another lends content;/ And what obscur d in this fair volume lies, / find written in the margin of his eyes (Shakespeare ) that Juliet is being told that her future has been bargained for and bought by Paris. This scene is a stark reminder of Juliet s two choices: marriage without love or death with love, and as Charney writes, love in itself does not produce the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet (87). Juliet s love for Romeo does not necessarily force the play to end tragically; Juliet s unwillingness to marry Paris, and the ongoing feud between the Montagues and the Capulet forces the tragedy. Viola s marriage is planned in much the same way as Juliet s when Lord Wessex, described in the screenplay as our villain... in his forties, dark, cruel, self-important (Norman and Stoppard 19), bargains with Sir Robert de Lessups, Viola s father. Sir Robert: She is a beauty, my lord, as would take a king to church for a dowry of a nutmeg. Wessex: My plantations in Virginia are not mortgaged for a nutmeg. I have an ancient name that will bring you preferment when your grandson is a Wesses. Is she fertile? Sir Robert: She will breed. If she do not, send her back. Wessex: Is she obedient? Sir Robert: As any mule in Christendom. But if you are the man to ride her, there are rubies in the saddlebag. Wessex: I like her. (Norman and Stoppard 42)

25 Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love 25 Obviously, no interest in a love relationship between Wessex and Viola exists. The only concerns are fertility, wealth, and obedience. The reader realizes that Viola is faced with marrying a man who obviously does not love her or facing the tragedy that will occur is she tries to be with Will, whom she will meet shortly after this transaction between her father and Wessex. Juliet and Viola s similar situations are important to one another, and the two texts. While Romeo and Will provide both texts with a sense of comic relief, Juliet and Viola jointly provide the texts with a sense of foreshadowing toward the tragic ending. Since their situations are so similar, the film becomes more of a tragedy at this point when there is no comic relief involved as Lord Wessex bargains for Viola. The comedy of Will s situation defers the reader from thinking about the tragic ending of the comedic film, but since the film will end tragically, these must be foreshadowing so that the viewer does not think the comedic film will end comically. Juliet s situation foreshadows the tragic ending that the reader is already aware of, but is also serves to relate the two texts. Since the reader knows the outcome of Juliet s situation, he sees that, since Viola s is so similar, she will be separated from her love too. The endings from both texts really bring them together and show the reader/viewer that, although he may have been confused by the warring ideas of comedy and tragedy in the two texts, both texts will end with tragedy. The ending of Romeo and Juliet is apparent from the Prologue when Shakespeare states the entire plot of the play, but the viewer is left guessing the entire two hours of the movie because he does not know if comedy or tragedy will win out. The answer is both. The interaction of the texts provide a comic look at heartache through Romeo and Will and a tragic look at arranged marriages through Juliet and Viola, and the ending to Shakespeare in Love must be a mystery to the viewer until it is happening. Film critic James Berardinelli states, An added bonus is that, unlike most romantic comedies, the ending isn t a foregone conclusion ( Shakespeare in Love ). After looking at the texts together, the reader/viewer sees that the film must end tragically, but the film is too comical to have both protagonists kill themselves as Romeo and Juliet did. The separation of Will and Viola be-

26 26 Rebekah Rogers cause of Viola s marriage to Lord Wessex mixes the comedy of Will s situation with the tragedy of Viola s to form the perfect ending for reading the two texts together. The lovers are separated, but the moment is bittersweet when Will is shown at his desk working on his next project. He writes about his next heroine for a love story, and he writes,... and her name will be... Viola (Norman and Stoppard 155). Works Cited Berardinelli, James. Shakespeare in Love. Colossus Film Reviews. 20 Feb < html>. Champion, Larry S. Shakespeare s Tragic Perspective. Athens: U of Georgia P, Charney, Maurice. Shakespeare on Love and Lust. New York: Columbia UP, Cowell, Stephanie. Shakespeare in Love a new movie reviewed by Stephanie Cowell. Shakespeare Magazine. 20 Feb < com/reviews/shakespeareinlove.asp>. Frye, Northrop. Romeo and Juliet: More Than Conventions of Love. Reading on the Tragedies of William Shakespeare. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven P, Graff, Gerald. Beyong the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts can Revitalize American Education. New York: Norton, Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Norman, Marc and Tom Stoppard. Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay. New York: Hyperion, Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Ed. Brian Gibbons. London, Arden, Snyder, Susan. The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare s Tragedies. Princeton: Princeton UP, Romeo and Juliet: Comedy into Tragedy. Essays in Criticism 20 (1970):

27 II. There is a place for everything, and everything has its place

28

29 Jane Austen s Role as a Romantic: A Truth Universally Acknowledged? Melanie Leggat With an increasing interest over the past few decades in the critical debates of Romanticism and gender, Jane Austen has amazingly become more celebrated than she was when she was accepted as what Marilyn Butler calls the gentry s greatest artist (Butler 99). If Butler s characterization is true of Austen as the conservative voice of the gentry, how can critics reconcile that label with Mellor s assertions that Austen offers a critique of abused patriarchal power, of capitalist greed and aristocratic snobbery (Mellor 94)? What accounts for either of these critics fervent beliefs, and their answers to the question: Is Austen a Romantic? It is all but impossible to determine one absolute answer to these questions. Given these examples, it is clear why Austen has stimulated so many differing critical opinions. The case is more complicated when we consider that not only are the critical assumptions about Jane Austen s work quite varied, but the novels themselves present no truth universally acknowledged (Austen 1) when it comes to her categorizations as a writer. Mary Waldron goes so far as to suggest that the great positive strands that have been made in the past three decades about her political and moral positions begin to seem less mutually exclusive: they seem true even when they contradict each other (Women s Writing). In Pride and Prejudice, written in 1813, the young Elizabeth Bennet has energy, wit, self-confidence, and the ability to think for herself (Tomalin 160), yet she ultimately lets go of her pride and marries the wealthy Darcy, leaving her middle class roots to assume the position of Lady Pemberley. Persuasion, written only five years later, suggests quite a different approach to marriage, gender roles, and social classes, the primary topics of both novels. The latter book introduces the reader to the somewhat older Anne Elliot who is forced into prudence in her youth, (Austen 14), but who, by the conclusion of the novel, overcomes the persuasion of her family and friends to marry her long time 29

30 30 Melanie Leggatt love, Captain Wentworth. In choosing to marry him, she leaves her upper middle class home in order to spend her life at sea with him, a life very much the opposite of the privileged one Elizabeth chooses to lead. Given the difference between these early and late novels, critical questions of debate have become important. For instance, is Jane Austen suggesting the role of the woman should be out-spoken and independent like Elizabeth or more mild and patient as Anne represents? Also, as Elizabeth herself asks, What is the difference in matrimonial affairs between mercenary and prudent love as she and Anne illustrate (Austen 115)? And, finally, is the elite class one to aspire to and join or one to despise and leave behind? How do both of these narratives parallel or contradict common Romantic characteristics? Answering these questions may allow us to more clearly position Austen within the Romantic movement. Additionally, this conflict suggests that these two texts should be taught simultaneously. Introducing these two texts together would increase the conflicts in interpreting Austen s beliefs about these issues, yet it would also increase awareness. Gerald Graff makes the point in his book Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, that oftentimes the disagreements themselves can be the point of connection (Graff 119). It is a disservice to the reader not to reveal these conflicts because [c]ontrast is fundamental to understanding, for no subject, idea, or text is an island. In order [for a text] to become intelligible in itself, it needs to be seen in its relation to other subjects, ideas, and texts (Graff 108). Thus, unless these two contrasting texts are not addressed and somehow viewed concurrently, then the result is not only a more ignorant, but also a misguided audience. Graff states correctly that what creates difficulty is not just the object of study but the kind of question being asked about it (Graff 100). We can apply Graff s idea to the conflicting issues in Austen studies, namely the representation of female characters, marriage and the social class structure, in order to illustrate the need to teach both of these books in dialogue to get a better representation of Jane Austen s work as a Romantic writer. During the nineteenth century Pride and Prejudice was widely recognized as the Austen novel, states Norma Page (96). In this novel Jane Austen introduces Elizabeth Bennet, the young and vibrant heroine