JAMES
DEAN
MEETS
THE
PIRATE'S
DAUGHTER
Passion
and
parody
in
William
Shakespeare's
Romeo
+
Juliet
and
Shakespeare
in
Love
Michael
Anderegg
"Believe
you
me,
we're
not
the
first
butchers
of
the
Bard"
Baz
Luhrmann,
Romeo
+
Juliet
Special
Edition
DVD
(2002)
"The
Elizabethan
theatre
was
a
similar
set-��up
to
Hollywood
in
many
respects.
Collective
writing,
rapid
writing
on
commission,
repeated
re-��use
of
the
same
subjects,
no
control
for
writers
over
their
own
products,
fame
only
among
other
writers,
��
even
Shakespeare's
curious
retirement
to
run
a
public
house
[!]
resembles
the
escape
to
the
ranch
that
everybody
here
is
planning."
Bertolt
Brecht,
Journals
1934-��1955
(Santa
Monica,
July
7,
1943)
Baz
Luhrmann's
William
Shakespeare'
s
Romeo
+
Juliet
(1996)
and
John
Madden's
Shakespeare
in
Love
(1998)
can
both
be
described
as
postmodern
retellings
of
the
best-��known
romantic
tragedy
in
Western
literature.
Both
films
find
ways
to
stand
in
awe
of
Romeo
and
Juliet
even
as
they
undermine
its
highbrow
credentials.
Luhrmann
essentially
puts
the
play
in
quotation
marks,
almost
as
if
his
gun-��
wielding
teens
had
been
dragooned
into
a
high
school
production
and
had
then
found
themselves
swept
away
by
the
force
of
its
romantic
vision.
Shakespeare
in
Love
pretends
that
the
play
originates
in
the
hackwork
of
a
thieving
playwright
in
search
of
a
saleable
commodity
which
then
becomes
magically
transformed
by
the
promptings
of
desire
into
a
transcendent
expression
of
love's
truth.
Each
film
is
a
testimony
to
the
malleability
of
Romeo
and
Juliet
as
a
cultural
object
in
the
modern
and
postmodern
moment.
Before
looking
at
both
films
in
some
detail,
a
brief
excursus
into
earlier
mass
media
appropriations
of
Shakespeare's
play
will
help
to
reveal
some
of
the
sources
of
its
continuing
fascination
as
an
iconic
text
in
popular
culture.
I
On
February
21,
1954,
CBS
Television's
You
Are
There
took
its
viewers
back
to
"December
26,
1594:
The
First
Command
Performance
of
Romeo
and
Juliet."
This
evening's
episode,
like
all
of
the
others
in
this
popular
middlebrow
series,
was
structured
to
resemble
a
news
special,
complete
with
reporters
and
on-��the-��scene
interviews,
and,
like
the
series
as
a
whole,
it
lay
claim
to
be
founded
solidly
on
the
historical
record.
It
would
not
have
taken
very
long,
however,
for
an
informed
viewer
to
discover
that,
series
anchor
Walter
Cronkite
to
the
contrary,
"all
things"
on
this
particular
evening
were
not
quite
"as
they
were
then."
The
theater
historians
who
might
have
tuned
in
would
have
been
intrigued
to
discover
that,
among
other
interesting
details,
a
Globe-��like
thrust
stage
had
been
constructed
at
Court
for
the
players;
presumably,
someone
involved
with
the
production
wanted
television
viewers
to
experience
an
"authentic"
open-��air
Elizabethan
theatrical
performance
even
if,
in
this
instance,
it
was
taking
place
indoors.
William
Shakespeare,
furthermore,
very
likely
did
not,
as
he
does
here,
play
Mercutio
in
Romeo
and
Juliet.
And,
although
scholars
differ
on
this
point,
it
seems
likely
that
Richard
Burbage,
if
he
had
the
actor's
instinct
and
the
actor's
ego
we
can
be
reasonably
certain
he
had,
would
(given
the
choice)
have
opted
to
play
Mercutio,
not,
as
he
does
on
this
occasion,
the
less
colorful
and
less
flamboyant
Romeo.
Although
the
work
of
the
various
You
Are
There
writers
continues
to
be
praised
for
its
"accurate
portrayals
of
historical
events"
(Horowitz
1983:93),
history,
in
this
particular
episode,
has
been
replaced
almost
entirely
by
speculation.
At
least
we
don't
have
Queen
Elizabeth
coming
to
the
playhouse,
as
she
will
in
Shakespeare
in
Love:
Shakespeare,
quite
properly,
goes
to
her.
She
does,
however,
appear
to
find
in
Shakespeare's
romantic
tragedy
analogies
to
her
own
emotional
life,
much
as
Judi
Dench's
Elizabeth
discovers,
in
the
later
film,
that
love
can
indeed
be
spoken
of
truly
in
a
play.
This
You
Are
There
episode
usefully
serves
to
introduce
my
several
concerns
for
the
remainder
of
this
discussion:
the
centrality
of
Romeo
and
Juliet
in
Shakespeare
offshoots
and
the
way
Shakespeare
becomes
positioned
in
contemporary
popular
film
as
at
once
highbrow
and
lowbrow,
a
sign
of
culture
and
a
vehicle
for
puncturing
cultural
pretension.
Among
the
more
peculiar
aspects
of
"the
first
command
performance
of
Romeo
and
Juliet"
is
that,
as
far
as
history
is
concerned,
the
dramatized
incident
never
happened.
It
is,
of
course,
possible
that
Romeo
and
Juliet
was
presented
at
Court
for
Elizabeth,
but
no
trace
of
any
such
performance
exists.
The
teleplay
writer
(McCarthyism
victim
Abraham
Polonsky,
writing
under
an
assumed
name)
here
went
out
of
his
way
to
dramatize
a
non-��
event
even
though
history
could
have
provided
him
with
specific
dates
on
which
one
or
another
Shakespeare
play
was
presented
at
Court.
Shakespeare
in
Love
engages
in
the
analogous
fiction
of
reconstructing
the
very
first
performance
of
Romeo
and
Juliet
at
the
Rose
Theatre
in
1593,
an
event
for
which
there
is
an
equal
absence
of
evidence;
we
have,
in
fact,
no
record
of
any
performance
of
the
play
before
1598.
In
both
instances,
the
writers
simply
wanted
to
construct
their
narratives
around
Romeo
and
Juliet,
no
matter
how
inconvenient
in
terms
of
history
or
even
legend
such
a
choice
might
be.
This
fascination
with
Romeo
and
Juliet
is
not
surprising:
of
all
of
Shakespeare's
plays,
it
is
probably
the
most
frequently
performed,
most
often
filmed,
and
most
likely
to
be
re-��written,
transformed,
parodied,
bowdlerized,
or
burlesqued.
It
may
be
the
play
that,
perhaps
only
after
Hamlet,
means
"Shakespeare"
to
most
people.
In
popular
culture
in
particular,
Romeo
and
Juliet
becomes
a
kind
of
shorthand
for
Shakespeare
and,
for
that
matter,
for
love
tragedy
in
general.
1
When
I
Love
Lucy
had
Orson
Welles
as
guest
star,
Lucy
wanted
to
be
Juliet
to
his
Romeo.
When
Andy
Griffith,
who
made
a
series
of
comic
45
rpm
recordings
in
the
late
1950s,
sends
his
country
bumpkin
persona
to
the
theater
for
the
first
time,
we
hear
the
latter's
reaction
in
"What
it
was
was
Romeo
and
Juliet."
West
Side
Story,
musical
play
and
film,
with
great
success
retold
the
travails
of
Shakespeare's
young
lovers
in
the
context
of
racially
divided
gang
wars
in
1950s
Manhattan.
Franco
Zeffirelli's
1968
adaptation
is
among
the
most
popular
of
Shakespeare
films.
And
then
there
are
the
jokes:
"O
Romeo,
Romeo,
wherefore
art
thou,
Romeo?"
-��
"Down
in
the
bushes,
the
damn
ladder
broke."
Among
the
twenty-��plus
Romeo
and
Juliet
films
from
the
silent
era
noted
by
Robert
Hamilton
Ball
(1968:217),
we
have
such
parodies
and
imitations
as
Juliet
and
Her
Romeo,
Doubling
for
Romeo
(with
satirist
Will
Rogers),
Romeo
and
Juliet
(a
Mack
Sennett
version,
with
cross-��eyed
comedian
Ben
Turpin),
Romeo
Turns
Bandit,
etc.
In
some
of
these
early
films,
as
in
later
ones,
Romeo
and
Juliet
is
the
play
within
the
film,
as
in
Edison's
Bumptious
as
Romeo:
"The
climax,"
according
to
Ball's
source
(the
film
is
lost),
"comes
in
a
balcony
scene
where
the
entire
palazzo
collapses
on
the
unfortunate
actor"
(Ball
1968:67).
What
is
it
about
Romeo
and
Juliet
that
lays
it
open
to
such
treatment?
One
answer
might
be
that
the
story
as
Shakespeare
tells
it
is
already
a
comedy,
upon
which
a
tragic
denouement
has
been
more
or
less
arbitrarily
imposed;
at
some
point,
we
are
supposed
to
stop
laughing
and
start
crying.
But
where,
exactly,
is
that
point?
There
is,
undeniably,
something
inherently
funny
about
adolescent
passion,
even
to
the
young.
Shakespeare
was
quite
aware
of
this,
which
is
why
he
created
Mercutio,
the
cynic
within
the
play
who
channels
off
our
impulse
to
laugh
at
the
lovers.
The
play's
tragic
ending,
especially,
is,
at
one
level,
ridiculously
avoidable.
However
much
Romeo
and
Juliet
may
be
seen
as
a
highly
valued
cultural
object,
the
fact
remains
that
it
has,
in
the
words
of
Stanley
Wells,
"undergone
adaptation,
sometimes
slight,
sometimes
substantial,
in
ways
that
are
implicitly
critical
of
the
original"
(1996:49).
The
impulse
to
burlesque
Romeo
and
Juliet,
moreover,
may
also
stem
from
male
anxiety
about
something
so
un-��masculine
as
romantic
love,
especially
when
carried
to
a
tragic
conclusion.
Parody
and
burlesque,
in
this
light,
serve
as
defense
mechanisms
against
a
powerful,
poetic
evocation
of
love
and
death
that
at
once
makes
the
play
a
popular
favorite
and
something
of
an
embarrassment.
William
Shakespeare'
s
Romeo
+
Juliet
and
Shakespeare
in
Love
are
among
the
latest
incarnations
of
Shakespeare's
love
story,
and
both
exhibit,
albeit
in
very
different
ways,
the
tension
between
satiric
playfulness
on
the
one
hand
and
high
seriousness
on
the
other
that
the
play
has
always
inspired.
II
At
first
glance,
Baz
Luhrmann's
William
Shakespeare'
s
Romeo
+
Juliet
could
be
mistaken
for
yet
another
(mis)appropriation
of
Shakespeare's
play
for
purposes
of
parody
or
even
burlesque,
a
hip
(hop?)
retelling
aimed
at
an
irredeemably
low-��brow
audience
of
clueless
teenagers
inhabiting
an
intellectually
bankrupt
culture.
Romeo
+
Juliet
(a
less
cumbersome
title
I
will
generally
use
from
now
on)
simultaneously
encourages
and
undermines
such
a
reading.
2
Throughout
the
film,
Luhrmann
sets
up
expectations
and
then
subverts
them,
freely
manipulating
past,
present,
and
future
time,
wedding
richly
poetic
language
to
pop-��culture
imagery,
theater
to
film,
employing
cinematographic
and
editing
styles
that
evoke
both
MTV
and
the
"historical"
avant-��garde.
He
simultaneously
flatters
and
critiques
the
teen
culture
from
which
his
film
appears
to
draw
its
inspiration
and
primary
raison
d'��tre.
As
the
film
begins,
a
television
set
occupies
the
screen
-��
a
retro
1970s/1980s
model.
We
are
at
once
in
the
present-��day
world
of
mass
communication
("a
world,"
as
Peter
Donaldson
[2002:62]
observes,
"saturated
by
image,
where
mass
media
and
corporate
power
have
triumphed
even
more
decisively
��
than
in
real
life"),
and
yet
the
first
object
we
see
is
already
archaic.
We
are,
vaguely,
in
the
past,
a
feeling
reinforced
by
the
montage
of
images
drawn
from
later
points
in
the
film,
as
well
as,
vaguely,
in
the
future.
As
the
Chorus
makes
clear,
this
is
a
story
already
told,
already
done;
its
end
is
in
its
beginning.
The
opening
sequence
fragments
into
a
cacophony
of
sound
and
image,
even
as
the
words
of
Shakespeare's
Prologue
are
given
a
solidity
and,
by
repetition
(twice
spoken,
but
also
repeated
as
both
verbal
and
visual
language),
redundancy.
Barbara
Hodgdon
identifies
a
tone
that
"ricochets
between
Wall-��and-��Moonshine
tongue-��in-��cheekiness
and
playing
it
straight,
between
selling
Shakespeare
as
one-��off
visual
in-��jokes
and
tying
its
scenography,
almost
over-��explicitly,
to
the
word"
(1999:89).
We
will
be
given
Shakespeare's
words,
this
initial
sequence
tells
us,
but
the
seeming
promise
turns
out
to
be
something
of
a
deception,
as
words
will
not
play
so
central
a
role
as
we
are
led
to
suppose.
The
following
sequence,
of
the
first
"brawl,"
stylistically
continues
the
melding
of
the
modern
and
the
archaic.
This
bravura
sequence
-��
and
something
similar
could
be
said
of
Shakespeare's
opening
scene
-��
acts
as
a
"grabber,"
a
powerful,
dramatic,
somewhat
deceptive
means
of
gaining
the
attention
of
an
audience.
Deceptive
because,
in
Luhrmann's
case,
the
stylistic
flamboyance
that
characterizes
this
opening
does
not
accurately
represent
the
tonal
ground
of
the
film;
what
it
succeeds
in
doing,
most
of
all,
is
providing
a
"cover"
for
what
follows.
For
all
of
its
cinematic
verve,
Luhrmann's
Romeo
+
Juliet
is
a
highly
theatrical
film
(as
the
director
readily
acknowledges),
its
style
clearly
drawn
from
Luhrmann's
work
in
opera
as
much
as
from
his
forays
into
advertising
and
rock
videos.
As
James
Loehlin
observes,
"
William
Shakespeare'
s
Romeo
+
Juliet
continually
and
playfully
juxtaposes
contemporary
kitsch
with
the
high-��culture
world
of
Shakespeare,
classical
music
and
Renaissance
art
and
architecture"
(2000:124).
Indeed,
what
many
critics
have
identified
as
Luhrmann's
"MTV
style"
can
be
more
accurately
described
as
a
mix
of
early
experimental
cinema
and
modernist
video
art.
Music
videos
themselves
are,
with
some
exceptions,
stylistically
archaic
and
unadventurous
(Dali
and
Buñuel
set
many
of
the
parameters
in
Un
chien
andalou
[1929]):
irrational
editing
patterns,
impressionistic
imagery,
expressionist
decor,
surreal
juxtapositions,
all
presented
with
a
strong
dose
of
"
��pater
les
bourgeois"
(which
might
be
translated,
in
the
present
instance,
as
"screw
the
parents").
Rock
video,
developed
in
the
early
1980s,
was
already
clich��-��ridden
and
ossified
by
the
early
1990s,
having
settled
into
a
very
few,
rigid
moves,
most
of
them
founded
on
already
shopworn
cinematic
clich��s.
Luhrmann
draws
on
a
far
richer
range
of
allusions
and
on
a
wider
variety
of
stylistic
choices
than
can
be
encapsulated
by
the
reference
to
MTV.
In
this
sense,
the
photographic
qualities
of
Luhrmann's
film
coordinates
with
his
mise-��en-��sc��ne;
a
future
that
is
really
a
past;
a
"there"
that
is
really
"here;"
a
story
that
is
freshly
being
told
yet
again
-��
the
effect
intensified
by
the
way
Luhrmann
ratchets
up
the
sense
of
fate
and
foreknowledge
already
present
in
the
play:
this
is
a
story
already
over
before
it
begins.
What
is
most
"postmodern"
about
the
film
is
its
ransacking
of
the
past
both
for
its
subject
matter
and
for
its
style.
If
the
opening
sequences
-��
the
Prologue
and
the
fight
-��
serve
to
establish
the
filmmaker's
bona
fides
as
cinema,
the
sequence
that
follows
very
much
introduces
us
to
the
world
of
theater.
We
find
Romeo
sitting
on
the
stage
of
a
ruined
movie
house,
his
image
constructed
in
a
theatrical,
self-��conscious
fashion,
cigarette
in
hand,
hair
tousled,
sports
coat
over
his
open-��necked
shirt,
jotting
down
his
presumably
Petrarchan
conceits
into
a
small
notebook.
Later,
Mercutio,
too,
makes
a
flamboyantly
"theatrical"
entrance.
Not
only
is
he
in
drag,
but
he
almost
immediately
appears
on
the
same
stage
earlier
associated
with
Romeo.
Although
this
stage
set
is
infrequently
seen,
it
features
in
some
of
the
most
important
moments
in
the
film:
Romeo's
entrance,
Mercutio's
entrance,
and
Mercutio's
death.
At
the
end
of
the
last-��mentioned
sequence,
a
lap
dissolve
associates
the
stage
as
well
with
Juliet's
bed
and
thus
by
extension
with
the
"bed"/bier
on
which
Romeo
and
Juliet
die.
The
final
setting
in
the
film,
the
Capulet
tomb,
may
be
the
most
theatrical
of
all:
a
set
illuminated
by
hundreds
of
candles
and
dozens
of
neon
crosses,
a
neo-��baroque
wedding
of
sixteenth-��
and
twentieth-��century
light
sources,
self-��
consciously
decorated
as
no
church
or
tomb
has
ever
been,
and
seemingly
prepared
in
advance
for
the
lovers'
final
meeting.
Even
in
the
act
of
bringing
Shakespeare's
play
up
to
date,
Luhrmann
does
little
more
than,
say,
David
Garrick
did
in
the
eighteenth
century:
he
makes
it
into
a
recognizable
contemporary
cultural
object,
and
shows
himself
alert
to
the
sensibilities
of
an
audience
whose
tastes
and
feelings
are
conditioned
by
the
culture
in
which
they
are
immersed.
This
can,
of
course,
be
accomplished
in
a
variety
of
ways,
of
which
bringing
the
film
"up
to
date"
in
terms
of
its
mise-��en-��sc��ne
is
only
one.
The
pastiche
element
of
the
film
is
not,
as
in
so
much
"vulgar"
postmodernism,
an
end
in
itself,
however.
Luhrmann's
strategy
is
to
deprive
the
viewer
of
specific
markers
for
pinning
down
time
and
place
too
precisely.
This
need
not
be
interpreted
as
"dumbing
down"
-��
Zeffirelli,
for
his
1968
film,
though
he
re-��creates
a
Renaissance
world
in
the
miseen-��sc��ne,
does
something
quite
similar
for
a
late
1960s
audience,
stripping
from
Shakespeare's
play
much
of
what
did
not
conveniently
fit
into
the
cultural
moment
and
the
cultural
attitudes
he
wanted
to
highlight,
something
obvious
enough
at
the
time
and
even
clearer
in
retrospect.
Luhrmann
has
claimed,
with
a
seeming
absence
of
irony,
that
his
goal
was
"to
do
a
sort
of
Elizabethan
interpretation
of
Shakespeare"
(2001:
DVD
Special
Edition),
which
would
in
part
explain
his
insistence
on
retaining
Shakespeare's
language
-��
or,
at
least,
a
reasonable
percentage
of
it
-��
rather
than
creating
a
verbal
language
of
his
own:
the
sixteenth-��century
syntax
and
vocabulary
serve
as
necessary
links
between
the
pastness
of
the
tale
and
the
presentness
of
the
mise-��en-��sc��ne;
or,
as
Elsie
Walker
puts
it,
"The
obvious
disjunction
between
the
verse
and
the
setting
in
Luhrmann's
film
throws
the
verse
and
its
filmic
context
into
a
kind
of
defamiliarizing
relief
"
(2000:138).
Romeo
+
Juliet,
in
fact,
employs
Shakespeare's
dialogue
in
a
variety
of
ways,
depending
on
the
occasion.
At
times,
the
film
can
simply
pretend
that
the
language
and
"poetic"
diction
are
not
alien
to
contemporary
sensibilities.
A
line
like
"thy
drugs
are
quick"
fits
easily
into
the
drug
culture
of
the
Capulet
ball
sequence
(even
though,
in
this
particular
instance,
the
words
have
been
transplanted
from
one
point
in
the
play
to
another).
At
other
times,
the
language
is
allowed
to
remain
"Shakespeare"
3
-��
so,
for
a
critical
example,
the
sonnet
lines
Romeo
and
Juliet
recite
at
first
meeting
are
spoken
in
their
entirety
in
spite
of
the
fact
that
the
meaning
of
the
imagery
is
not
self-��evident.
Luhrmann,
presumably,
would
not
have
wanted
to
cut
one
of
the
most
famous
passages
in
Shakespeare;
but,
beyond
that,
Shakespeare's
sonnet
transports
us
momentarily
back
to
the
sixteenth
century
and
in
so
doing
collapses
the
worlds
of
Verona
and
Verona
Beach.
For
further
insurance
that
this
scene
will
"work,"
Luhrmann
-��
again
with
the
precedence
of
Zeffirelli
-��
gives
us
the
meeting
of
Romeo
and
Juliet
in
effect
several
times
over
through
time
expansion
and
repetitive
editing
patterns,
and
he
precedes
the
sonnet
meeting
with
the
fish-��tank
meeting
where
the
exchange
of
glances
and
the
matching
of
identities
have
already
been
made.
But
if
Luhrmann's
young
lovers
speak
the
language
of
Shakespeare,
they
project
images
drawn
from
popular
culture.
Leonardo
DiCaprio's
Romeo,
a
more
complexly
drawn
character
than
Claire
Danes's
Juliet,
4
combines
a
number
of
cultural
signifiers:
first
of
all,
inevitably,
we
have
DiCaprio's
own
image
as
a
kind
of
asexual
love
object
for
adolescents;
then
the
sensitive,
essentially
white-��bread
teen,
roughly
equivalent
to
Richard
Beymer's
Tony
in
West
Side
Story;
and,
very
consciously,
the
James
Dean
allusions,
especially
the
latter's
incarnation
of
Jim
Stark
in
Rebel
Without
a
Cause
(which
could
itself
be
seen
as
a
loose
Romeo
and
Juliet
adaptation).
These
reference
points,
needless
to
add,
are
not
all
necessarily
aimed
at
the
1990s
teen
audience
that
would
constitute
the
obvious
target
of
the
film's
production
and
marketing
strategies,
an
audience
for
whom
James
Dean
might
be
only
slightly
more
(or
slightly
less)
familiar
than
Shakespeare.
Luhrmann's
film
is
cunningly
designed
to
appeal
to
the
parents
and
even
the
grandparents
of
that
"natural"
audience.
Nonetheless,
the
various
elements
that
go
to
make
up
the
image
of
Romeo
in
the
film
are
available
to
any
savvy
youth
who
has
absorbed,
whether
at
first,
second,
or
third
hand,
those
cultural
markers.
The
image
of
Juliet,
on
the
other
hand,
though
less
allusively
defined
than
Romeo's,
appeals
to
a
special
kind
of
nostalgia
for
girlhood
innocence,
not
so
much
lost
as
never
available
in
the
first
place.
Even
a
jaded
sixteen-��year-��old
can
be
imagined
yearning
for
the
kind
of
protected,
cocoon
existence
Claire
Danes,
costumed
as
she
is
like
an
American
Girl
doll,
lives
out
in
Luhrmann's
film,
a
world
of
parental
protection
and
direction
(as
well
as,
it
must
be
noted,
of
parental
control
and
physical
violence).
In
a
piece
for
Variety
("Fox
doth
use
its
wiles
to
sell
Shakespeare"),
John
Brodie
claims
that
"[m]uch
credit
for
the
pic's
surprising
success
was
the
studio's
understanding
from
the
outset
that
this
was
a
teen
picture,
not
a
movie
for
eggheads"
(1996).
Apart
from
the
somewhat
quaint
use
of
the
word
"eggheads,"
Brodie
expresses
here
what
many
reviewers
identified
as
Luhrmann's
condescending
to
his
audience.
But
this
view
is
itself
simplistic
and
unsophisticated.
In
making
Shakespeare's
play
"acceptable"
to
a
contemporary
audience,
a
filmmaker
will
find
it
necessary
to
disguise,
gloss
over,
or
entirely
repress
much
in
the
play
that
might
be
off-��putting
or
incomprehensible.
If
the
question
that
a
Shakespeare
film
needs
to
ask
of
its
audience
is
"Do
you
accept
the
revelation
of
the
human
condition
that
Shakespeare
achieved
400
years
ago
can
be
relevant
and
be
freed
again
today,"
as
Luhrmann
himself
states
it
(Fox
Video
Laser:
1997),
then
the
answer
is
probably
"no."
There
are
many
ways
Shakespeare
is
not
one
of
us:
many
ways,
indeed,
in
which
he
was
already
not
"one
of
us"
by,
say,
1750.
In
his
aptly
titled
essay
"The
Challenges
of
Romeo
and
Juliet,"
Stanley
Wells
addresses
the
perceived
problematic
of
Shakespeare's
play:
"The
history
of
critical
and
theatrical
reactions
to
the
play
demonstrates
the
fact
that
Shakespeare
worked
in
a
far
more
literary
mode
than
has
been
fashionable
in
the
theater
of
later
ages,
and
that
its
literariness
has
often
been
regarded
as
a
theatrical
handicap"
(1996:4).
Wells
identifies
the
type
of
material
often
cut
-��
long
speeches
that
recapitulate
what
the
audience
has
already
seen,
"self-��conscious
and
even
ostentatious
intellectualism"
as
expressed
in
complex
wordplay,
and
passages
of
"false
emotion."
Among
Luhrmann's
many
alterations
and
omissions,
the
following
are
especially
in
line
with
Wells's
observations:
the
virtual
elimination
of
the
scene
where
the
Nurse
reports
Tybalt's
death
to
Juliet;
the
discovery
of
Juliet's
supposed
death
by
the
Capulet
household;
the
killing
of
Paris
at
the
tomb;
the
comic
musicians;
Friar
Lawrence's
appearance
at
the
Capulet
tomb
and
his
subsequent
desertion
of
Juliet.
Other
scenes
are
severely
reduced:
Juliet's
45-��line
"potion"
soliloquy
is
pared
down
to
two
lines;
the
ball
scene
lacks
most
of
Capulet's
exchanges
with
Old
Capulet
and
other
characters;
and
the
Nurse's
interchanges
with
her
servant,
Peter,
are
gone.
What
a
number
of
these
cuts
have
in
common
is
that
they
can
be
thought
of
as
eliminating
either
rhetorical
excess
or
violations
of
decorum
-��
or
both
at
once.
These
are
pressure
points
in
Shakespeare's
play,
places
where
his
failure
to
adhere
to
classical
principles
and,
by
anticipation,
neoclassical
rules
have
in
the
past
been
regarded
as
close
to
scandalous.
These
are
the
elements
of
Shakespearean
drama
presumed
to
be
indigestible
for
a
contemporary
audience:
both
Shakespeare
in
Love,
which
pretends
to
take
us
back
to
the
origins
of
Romeo
and
Juliet,
and
Luhrmann's
film,
which
projects
Shakespeare's
play
into
the
twenty-��first
century,
elide
or
gloss
over
the
very
same
elements,
the
elements
that
run
counter
to
the
idea
of
Shakespeare
as
a
screenwriter,
an
entertainer,
"one
of
us."
One
strategy
for
translating
the
highly
rhetorical
essence
of
Romeo
and
Juliet
into
acceptable
modern
terms
is
to
make
what
is
public
in
the
play
private
on
the
screen.
Juliet's
reception
of
the
news
of
Tybalt's
death
and
Romeo's
banishment,
a
serio-��comic
scene
of
misunderstanding
-��
the
Nurse,
as
usual,
cannot
seem
to
get
to
the
point
-��
is
almost
entirely
eliminated,
and
what
remains
of
it
is
transformed
into
an
internal
meditation
by
Juliet
alone
in
her
bedroom.
What
is
passionate
intensity
in
Shakespeare's
play
is
a
passive,
puzzling
reflection
in
the
film.
Juliet,
in
fact,
suffers
most
from
this
avoidance
of
rhetoric
and
of
the
tragi-��comic.
Shakespeare
created
a
Juliet
quite
capable
of
dissimulation
and
irony
as
well
as
anger
and
fierce
determination.
Her
love
for
Romeo
quickly,
if
temporarily,
turns
to
hatred
when
she
hears
the
news
of
Tybalt's
death;
she
engages
in
elaborate
and
deceitful
wordplay,
allowing
her
mother
to
think
that
she
is
mourning
for
Tybalt
when,
in
fact,
she
is
yearning
for
Romeo;
she
dismisses
her
nurse
with
angry
finality
("ancient
damnation")
when
the
latter
encourages
her
to
marry
Paris;
she
fools
her
father
with
a
hypocritical
pretense
of
submission
even
as
she
plots
her
rebellion
against
him;
she
doubts
the
motives
of
the
Friar,
temporarily
seeing
him,
with
mature
insight,
in
a
Machiavellian
light,
as
she
prepares
to
swallow
the
potion
(and
her
potion
soliloquy
as
a
whole
reveals
her
to
be
a
young
woman
of
vivid,
if
morbid,
imagination).
Claire
Danes's
Juliet,
robbed
of
these
enriching
traits,
emotions,
motives,
and
inconsistencies
of
character,
is
an
ideal
Victorian
Juliet,
perhaps,
but
she
is
far
from
the
Juliet
Shakespeare
created.
Neither
a
contemporary
teenager
nor
a
Shakespearean
heroine,
the
Luhrmann
Juliet
has
little
social
or
cultural
grounding
apart
from
the
baroque
Catholicism
that
decorates
her
immediate
environment.
5
More
significant
than
the
cuts
and
transpositions,
however,
is
the
way
Luhrmann
interprets
Shakespeare's
text,
and
in
particular,
his
focus
on
the
doomed
nature
of
Romeo
and
Juliet's
love.
By
placing
his
emphasis
on
fate,
Luhrmann
robs
the
lovers
of
agency,
of
responsibility
for
their
own
actions
and
choices.
Fate,
of
course,
plays
a
crucial
role
in
Shakespeare's
play,
which
is
one
reason
why
some
critics
deny
it
tragic
stature.
Romeo
and
Juliet
is
a
tragi-��comedy
not
merely
because
it
mixes
tragic
and
comic
elements
but
because
its
tragic
elements
are
also
comic:
much
of
the
misfortune
in
the
play
has
a
comic
dimension,
and
what
is
the
denouement
but
a
comedy
of
errors?
Any
production
of
the
play
has
to
come
to
terms
with
preventing
the
image
of
Romeo
and
love
is
forbidden
by
parental
interdict,
nothing
of
the
kind
actually
takes
place
in
Shakespeare's
play.
The
fact
is
that
Romeo
and
Juliet
make
no
effort
to
discover
whether
or
not
they
could
marry:
Juliet's
eagerness
to
become
Romeo's
wife,
almost
as
if
the
very
act
of
falling
in
love
had
been
a
kind
of
self-��deflowering,
precludes
all
other
avenues.
Friar
Lawrence's
assumption
that
by
marrying
Juliet
to
Romeo
he
can
effect
an
end
to
the
feud
actually
makes
a
good
deal
of
sense:
unfortunately,
he
does
not
have
the
opportunity
to
find
out.
The
deadly
impetuosity
of
the
young
make
such
an
outcome
impossible.
At
least
as
far
back
as
Franco
Zeffirelli's
Old
Vic
production
of
Romeo
and
Juliet
in
1960,
directors
have
tended
to
treat
the
feud
as,
to
a
greater
or
lesser
extent,
adolescent
hi-��jinx,
a
kind
of
masculine
showing
off,
not
to
be
taken
too
seriously.
Zeffirelli's
1968
film
became
the
best-��known
version
of
this
approach,
and
a
similar
impulse
can
be
detected
in
Luhrmann's
film
as
well.
The
advantage
is
that
one
can
maintain
a
comic
tone
-��
and
this
is
part
of
Shakespeare's
strategy
as
well
-��
almost
uninterruptedly
until
the
death
of
Mercutio;
the
disadvantage
is
that
it
tends
to
undermine
the
gravitas
of
the
words
spoken
by
the
Prince,
whose
language
("purple
fountains
issuing
blood,"
etc.)
make
it
quite
clear
that
the
feud
has
been
and
continues
to
be
a
matter
of
deadly
force.
Luhrmann
has
an
added
problem
Zeffirelli
did
not
have
to
worry
about,
in
that
the
presence
of
guns
makes
it
even
more
difficult
to
treat
the
opening
segment
as
light-��hearted
good
fun.
In
the
end,
Luhrmann
has
it
both
ways.
With
all
of
the
exchange
of
gunfire,
it
is
unclear
who,
if
anyone,
is
actually
killed
(the
one
character
who
appears
to
have
been
shot
-��
and
in
the
head
at
that
-��
pops
up
a
few
scenes
later
with
a
bandage
on
his
arm).
Consequently,
when
matters
turn
deadly,
it
seems
almost
accidental,
and
the
responsibility
for
the
tragic
turn
of
events
does
not
so
much
lie
in
the
feud
as
in
the
actions
of
Romeo,
Tybalt,
and
Mercutio.
On
this
point,
at
least,
Luhrmann
cannot
be
faulted
for
flattering
his
teenaged
audience:
the
blame
the
parents
game
is
ultimately
no
more
convincing
in
Romeo
+
Juliet
than
it
was
in
Rebel
Without
a
Cause.
In
the
end,
it
is
the
children
who
must
either
grow
up
(as
Jim
Stark
does
in
Rebel)
or
be
destroyed;
society
is
almost
irrelevant.
IV
Both
Romeo
+
Juliet
and
Shakespeare
in
Love
can
be
(and
have
been)
devalued
for
their
"low-��brow"
treatment
of
Shakespeare
and
the
Shakespearean
text.
Both
films,
however,
attempt,
each
in
its
own
way,
to
answer
the
hard
question
any
film
dealing
with
Shakespeare's
life
and
work
must
confront:
how
do
you
make
the
work
of
a
writer
dead
for
400
years
seem
relevant
to
present-��day
audiences?
One
answer,
of
course,
is
that
you
do
not
need
to:
Shakespeare
remains
relevant
to
us
today;
indeed,
that
is
precisely
what
makes
Shakespeare
Shakespeare.
The
circular
argument,
needless
to
say,
begs
a
lot
of
questions.
The
strategy,
in
any
case,
is
always
to
bring
Shakespeare
to
us,
not
to
take
us
back
to
Shakespeare.
Or,
rather,
as
Shakespeare
in
Love
demonstrates,
to
take
us
back
to
Shakespeare
by
bringing
Shakespeare
to
us,
to
collapse
past
and
present,
to
deny
that
there
is
such
a
thing
as
"pastness"
altogether.
"History,"
from
this
point
of
view,
is
always
"now."
The
publicists
knew
precisely
what
the
film
was
up
to:
"Refreshingly
contemporary,
Shakespeare
in
Love
is
ultimately
the
tale
of
a
man
and
woman
trying
to
make
love
work
in
the
90s
-��
the
1590s"
(
Pressbook).
In
discussing
the
characters
and
situations
they
have
constructed,
the
participants
in
Shakespeare
in
Love
continuously
look
for
analogies:
Ned
Allyn
is
the
Tom
Cruise
of
his
day
(Madden,
Ben
Affleck);
"It's
Dallas,
it's
J.R.
with
different
props"
(Colin
Firth).
Baz
Luhrmann,
too,
finds
equivalents:
"If
Shakespeare
was
writing
a
screenplay,
it
would
be
��
Something
About
Mary
set
on
the
Titanic"
(Special
Edition
DVD).
Shakespeare
in
Love,
like
Romeo
+
Juliet,
continually
negotiates
this
balance
between
past
and
present,
between
then
and
now.
The
film's
opening
nicely
encapsulates
the
effect:
we
move
smoothly
from
the
Miramax
logo
(a
stylized
view
of
the
Manhattan
skyline)
to
the
Universal
logo
to
the
initial
scene
which,
though
set
in
1593,
is
introduced
to
us
via
a
rapid
steadicam
camera
movement,
and
reflects
back
on
those
two
initial
corporate
logos:
Fennyman
the
money-��lender
is
torturing
Henslowe
the
producer.
When,
after
some
discussion,
Henslowe
promises
Fennyman
a
new
work
by
Shakespeare,
Fennyman
balances
the
costs
and
gains
of
putting
on
a
play.
"The
writer
and
the
actors,"
he
concludes,
"can
be
paid
out
of
the
profits."
"But,"
Henslowe
responds,
"there
are
no
profits."
"Exactly,"
Fennyman
answers
with
obvious
satisfaction.
To
which
Henslowe,
with
unconcealed
admiration,
can
only
reply:
"I
think
you
have
hit
on
something,
Mr.
Fennyman."
As
often
in
the
entertainment
culture
of
advanced
capitalism
-��
which,
Shakespeare
in
Love
wants
us
to
believe,
is
not
so
different
from
the
entertainment
culture
of
Elizabethan
England
-��
the
hand
that
feeds
is
not
only
bitten
but
relishes
the
pain.
This
is,
in
one
sense,
as
much
a
movie
about
money
as
it
is
about
Shakespeare.
Shakespeare
in
Love
and
Romeo
+
Juliet
want
to
make
Shakespeare
"relevant"
to
a
turn
of
the
millennium
audience
and
at
the
same
time
to
make
something
"new,"
something
that
is
at
once
sincere
and
playful,
at
once
homage
and
pastiche,
at
once
a
meditation
on
Shakespeare's
characters
and
themes
and
a
multiplex
hit.
And
both
films
succeed
in
part
because,
while
taking
Shakespeare
(more
or
less)
seriously,
they
also
rely
on
generic
codes
and
conventions
that
are
at
the
heart
of
the
movies.
These
are
films
highly
aware
of
themselves
as
participating
in
movie
culture,
institutionally
and
generically.
With
Shakespeare
in
Love,
that
awareness
is
expressed
through
a
self-��reflexive
commentary
on
the
vicissitudes
of
filmmaking
itself.
Romeo
+
Juliet,
on
the
other
hand,
draws
on
narrative
and
stylistic
conventions
of
international
cinema:
critics,
as
well
as
ordinary
viewers,
have
identified
allusions
to
Sergio
Leone
westerns,
to
John
Woo,
to
Busby
Berkeley
musicals
and
Paris
is
Burning,
to
Priscilla,
Queen
of
the
Desert
and
Rebel
Without
a
Cause.
All
of
this
is
so
self-��conscious
that
there
hardly
needs
a
critic
come
from
a
screening
to
tell
us
this;
Luhrmann
and
company
are
perfectly
happy
to
make
the
connections
for
us.
And
both
films
reflect,
and
take
advantage
of,
the
peculiar
hybridity
of
contemporary
filmmaking
practices.
Romeo
+
Juliet
has
American
stars,
an
Australian
director,
and
a
largely
Australian
and
Mexican
crew;
financed
by
an
American
major,
it
was
filmed
mainly
in
Mexico.
Shakespeare
in
Love,
an
"independent"
film,
is
nevertheless
financed
in
part
and
released
by
Universal,
a
major
studio;
it
features
an
Anglo-��American
cast,
and
one
American
and
one
British
screenwriter.
In
presenting
their
versions
of
romantic
tragedy,
the
creators
of
William
Shakespeare'
s
Romeo
+
Juliet
and
of
Shakespeare
in
Love,
in
spite
of
comments
they
may
sometimes
make
to
the
contrary,
saw
themselves,
unsurprisingly,
not
as
iconoclasts
or
vulgarians,
but
as
conservers
or
restorers
intent
on
breaking
down
the
cultural
encrustations
that
have
made
Shakespeare
"highbrow,"
rarefied,
effeminate,
and
boring.
Luhrmann,
as
much
as
John
Madden
and
company,
claims
to
be
taking
us
back
to
the
"real"
Shakespeare,
to
the
"original"
Romeo
and
Juliet;
his
aim
was
to
free
Shakespeare
from
"the
accumulation
of
��
'club'
Shakespeare,
which
kind
of
dates
to,
really,
the
Victorian
period"
(Special
Edition
DVD;
Luhrmann
never
mentions
Zeffirelli).
Far
from
desecration,
these
filmmakers
are
involved
in
a
salvage
operation.
Jonathan
Bate,
King
Alfred
Professor
of
Literature
at
the
University
of
Liverpool,
happily
endorses
Luhrmann's
achievement:
"The
best
Shakespeare
is
always
Shakespeare
made
contemporary,"
which
is
why
"one
of
the
great
achievements
of
our
time
is
Baz
Luhrmann's
Romeo
and
Juliet
film"
(Special
Edition
DVD).
To
please
Jonathan
Bate
and
Stephen
Greenblatt,
on
the
one
hand,
and
Miramax's
Harvey
Weinstein,
on
the
other,
may
seem
a
large
ambition,
but
it
is
one
to
which
the
creators
of
both
films,
directly
and
indirectly,
aspire,
and
if
the
circa
$200
million
each
film
has
brought
into
the
box
office
is
juxtaposed
to
the
generally
enthusiastic
critical
reception
each
has
enjoyed
from
academics
and
non-��academics
alike,
they
appear
to
have
succeeded.
