William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

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William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

YOU should be at home looking after the children, tidying the house,

cooking, and sewing. YOU should be at work all day, providing for your

family and keeping bread on the table….and YOU are just downright ugly

you should lock yourself in your house and never leave

That's what the public in Shakespeare's time was like. They had very

strict opinions about how people should live their life, what role

they should play in society…and even whom they should marry. The play

Romeo and Juliet is a prime example of this, as two lovers who are

forbidden by their families to be together, risk everything for love,

and die tragic but heart warming deaths.

Shakespeare wrote 'Romeo and Juliet' in 1595, and as I have already

stated, society in that time was extremely fascist and very racist.

Some of that racism and bitter stereotypes exist even today. Take

Mercutio, for example. In the Baz Luhrman directed video of Romeo and

Juliet, Mercutio is not only a black actor, he's also the only main

black actor in the film. Mercutio is also thought to be taking drugs,

or not quite all there in the head, as he talks of fairies…"Time out

o' mind the fairies coachmen" In Shakespeare's time, only some one who

was mentally challenged would dare talk about fairies in public, yet

Mercutio feels no embarrassment at all. Could this be because had

Mercutio been played by a black actor, in the Shakespearean days,

people would have immediately assumed he was mentally challenged to

begin with? I believe so…and the fact that a black actor never even

had the chance to perform in the globe theatre in Shakespeare's time

makes my hypothesis seems rather just. It looks like Baz Lurhman

obviously completed ample research before searching for cast members.

Another cast member that grabbed my attention was Claire Danes, who

played Juliet in the Baz Luhrman film. In Act 1 Scene 5, Romeo refers

to Juliet's lips as " saints lips", while he, portraying a pilgrim,

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