hi I'm John Green this is crash-course
English literature and this is Romeo and
Juliet written in 1595 or 1596 and often
called the greatest love story of all
time which one you think about it is a
very strange thing to say about a play
that features like one offstage sex
scene in like seven onstage fatalities I
mean let's quickly review the plot boy
Romeo goes to a party trying to get over
a girl with whom he is completely
obsessed but then he meets another girl
Juliet and becomes obsessed with her
their families hate each other but
despite that or possibly because of it
they fall madly in love and get married
the next day whereupon immediately a
family feud breaks out no thought-bubble
not that kind of family feud
yes that kind several people get killed
including Juliet's cousin who is off by
Romeo and that means Romeo has to flee
Juliet takes a sleeping potion to avoid
another marriage and then Romeo comes
back finds her sleeping thinks she's
dead kills himself and then she wakes up
and kills herself and then the families
end the feud yay that we consider this
romance says quite a lot about humans
mr. green mr. green but they love each
other so much you know it's like his
life literally isn't worth living
without her yes me from the past her
being a woman that he's known for like a
few hundred hours and yet every year
thousands of people write to juliet care
of her hometown of Verona Italy and the
citizens of Verona right back you in
fact when you're in college will go to
Verona and visit all the touristy Romeo
and Juliet sites and that very night you
will be in a Veronese nightclub and you
will meet a girl named Antonia and you
will believe that you really loved her
and then it is the kind of love that can
last a lifetime I'm gonna hook up with
her know at the end of the night you
leaned in to kiss her like and know
so Shakespeare didn't invent the story
of Romeo and Juliet but he made really
important changes to his immediate
source material was a 3,000 line
narrative poem called the tragical
history of Romeo and Juliet written by
Arthur Brooke in 1560 - which itself
borrowed from a tradition of tragic
romances dating back at least two ovid
metamorphoses so Shakespeare obviously
changed some of the names but more
importantly he introduced a lot of
narrative complexity I mean for Brooke
the story of Romeo and Juliet was a
cautionary tale he calls them a couple
of unfortunate lovers throwing
themselves to uh Nonna's desire
neglecting the authority and advice of
parents and friends attempting all
adventures of peril for the attaining of
their wished lust abusing the Honourable
name of lawful marriage so Brookes poem
is just an ordinary story about naughty
teenagers who receive the standard
punishment for their naughtiness which
is of course death and of course as you
know from watching contemporary horror
movies if you're a woman and you want to
live to the end you better be a virgin
but Shakespeare offers a much more
compassionate portrait of Romeo and
Juliet and encourages us to empathize
with them I mean Romeo and Juliet are
obviously hot for each other but they're
also kind of polite about it I mean
witness the physical distance between
them in their most amorous scene I mean
they're most amorous on stage scene I
mean obviously they do they do do it and
they use the kind of sacred metaphors
that etiquette experts in Shakespeare's
day recommended for courtship I mean
Romeo calls Juliet a holy shrine and
then Juliet welcomes the four tation by
calling him a good pilgrim also
Shakespeare's Juliet is much younger
she's 16 or 18 and other versions of the
story but in Shakespeare she's only 13
and so it's hard to see her as like a
dishonest floozy I mean even in a
profoundly misogynistic age it's hard to
see a 13 year old stabbed herself and be
like yeah she got what was coming to her
so Shakespeare was also likely
influenced by the well poems of Petrarch
who the character Mercutio mentions and
pet rocks work is much more approving of
intense adoration than Brooks is for
instance he believed in love at first
sight and he had to because all of his
poems were written to a woman he never
met and only saw once but then the play
also isn't like a Yolo endorsement of
following your heart because following
your heart does get Romeo and Juliet
dead all right let's go to the
thought-bubble so Shakespeare sets the
play in Verona Italy which isn't a
surprise since the source material sets
it there as well and also because
Shakespeare set
of his plays away from England if you're
going to talk about morality and values
like individuals responsibilities to
their own interests versus their
responsibilities to their families and
the larger social order for instance
it's much safer to set it in far away
Italy Romeo and Juliet is a love story
but it's also a political story the
Montagues and Capulets consistently
ignore the proclamations of the prince
of Verona and arguably Romeo's biggest
hurdle to marrying Juliet is that the
Prince exiles him and promises to
execute him should he return to the city
should you be loyal first to your own
feelings or to your family or to your
faith or to your prince these are not
just questions of will that hot girl go
out with me they are in fact questions
that were central to Elizabethan England
and as the critic north of Frey pointed
out whenever Shakespeare wanted to write
about the problems of feuding Nobles he
either said his plays in the distant
past
or in a land far far away but when it
comes to the actual romance it's all
very hot-blooded and Mediterranean and
Catholic it's no coincidence that in
Protestant England much of Romeo and
Juliet's tragedy is facilitated by a
slippery Catholic friar the stereotype
of Italians is passionate and impulsive
goes back a long way to well before
Shakespeare and that helps explain Romeo
and Juliet's actions I mean would
English lovers act like this
probably not they'd be too busy being
pale and avoiding the rain and eating
shepherd's pie and whatnot but this is
just what those Italians would do
thanks thought-bubble okay let's turn
briefly to the play structure Romeo and
Juliet you'll be surprised to learn is a
tragedy and Shakespeare's tragedies
follow the same structure first
described by Aristotle in the fifth
century BCE tragedy occurs when a mostly
good character or characters of noble
extraction here Romeo and Juliet make an
error getting married so quickly
ignoring the family feud and are brought
low double suicide Shakespeare wouldn't
have read Aristotle but he probably
would have been familiar with Latin
criticism of the poetics now I don't
want to generalize about Aristotle and I
know that he has a vocal group of
supporters among crash-course commenters
but it is widely known that Aristotle
was 100% wrong 100% of the time if you
watched our series on world history for
instance you'll recall that Aristotle
believed that some people were just
naturally slavey but while this
narrative of tragedy that Noble
people suffer when they act badly isn't
actually reflected very often in the
real world it remains a really powerful
idea both in our fiction and in the way
we imagine the world around us and it's
a big part of why we're so fascinated
when we see the once-great suffered
downfalls whether it's Lance Armstrong
or warren g harding or Marilyn Monroe or
Lindsay Lohan or the entirety of the
Jackson family
what makes Shakespearean tragedy so
interesting is the complexity he
introduces to that Aristotelian
structure complexity by the way not seen
in the downfall of Lindsay Lohan I mean
at least by Elizabethan standards Romeo
and Juliet both make mistakes but their
mistakes born of love and it is because
of their deaths as a result of these
mistakes that peace and harmony return
to the streets of Verona so you can read
it as a mere Aristotelian tragedy but
you can also read it as a narrative of
tragic sacrifice or as a story about
love being worth the price of death oh
it's time for the open letter an open
letter to star-crossed lovers but first
let's see what's in the secret
compartment today ah it's hazel and
Augustus noted star-crossed lovers from
my book The Fault in Our Stars hi guys
I'm gonna leave you in there but keep it
PG dear star-crossed lovers you go
pretty much all the way back in good
Richard you're very helpful for thinking
about like fate and free will but you're
also kind of sexy so if you want to
think about free will but also give
people high-quality entertainment you
are the natural choice star-crossed
lovers I wonder if this constant
exploration of star-crossed lovers miss
also leads to a kind of celebration of
it and whether actual lovers who needed
to be star-crossed try to invent star
Crossing nests yeah don't do that it's
unhealthy for Emily Dickinson's sake
just let yourselves be happy best wishes
John Green
okay so let's turn to the actual writing
Romeo and Juliet has both poetry and
prose it's pretty easy to tell which is
which by looking at you know the line
length the lines of poetry are shorter
and usually conform to the same metric
structure called I Amba contaminant and
I am as a poetic foot consisting of a
stressed syllable and an unstressed
syllable and not like in the anxiety
sense but in the sense of you know
putting an emphasis on a syllable and
pentameter means that there are five
feet in a line this sounds very
complicated but it's actually very easy
let's try it on the prologue two
households both alike in dignity in fair
Verona where we lay our scene from
ancient Grudge break
to new mutiny where civil blood makes
civil hands unclean now my performance
just then would not have gotten me hired
at Shakespeare's theatre company ideally
you don't read I am sin that sing-songy
way but I am big pentameter pops up all
over the place John Keats's last will
and testament was a single line of
iambic pentameter my chest of books
divided among my friends and much of our
conversation takes place within AIIMS
like that last sentence for instance I
mean this isn't genius stuff my
two-year-old son regularly uses iambic
pentameter like every time he says daddy
I want to go to Steak and Shake High
epic pentameter is a way of reflecting
the natural rhythms of human speech in
English while also heightening it and
it's worth paying attention to
especially when Shakespeare messes
around with the meter as in the famous
line oh Romeo Romeo wherefore art thou
Romeo that line would be iambic
pentameter but something keeps messing
it up specifically Romeo's name and it's
his name of course that is the problem
where he not named Romeo Montague
there'd be no issue in the line or in
the play and I know that when we first
encounter Shakespeare the language can
seem difficult that's because unlike
French or Italian English has evolved a
lot since the 16th century also
Shakespeare was constantly using words
in new ways as in this play for instance
when he became the first person ever to
describe a hot girl as an angel but the
difficulty and the slowness of the
reading allows you to pay attention to
the genius of Shakespeare's language so
I know sometimes it feels more like
translation than reading but if you
stick with it you will find yourself in
Shakespeare's world actually it might
help a little to imagine the places they
were originally stage because the
Elizabethan Playhouse was very different
from theaters of today there were a few
indoor private theaters and a couple
more in palaces and at the ends of court
but Shakespeare's company typically
performed in large theaters like the
globe partly open to the air and partly
covered by a thatched roof now I don't
know if these thatched roofs inspired
rock master Scott and the dynamic three
to record their hit song the roof is on
fire however the roof was often on fire
particularly when plays necessitated
cannons and as there was limited water
and firefighting resources it was
sometimes necessary to let the william
faulkner burn so if you had the cache
fort you sat in tiered benches in the
galleries with a good view of the stage
but if you had less money you stood in
the pit and you usually stood there for
more than three hours these weren't
short plays well except for Macbeth da
ha ha
Scottish play Romeo and Juliet wasn't
performed at the globe but probably at a
theater called the curtain slightly
older but otherwise very similar
although on the good side of the River
Thames
Shakespeare referred to it as the wooden
oh it was rediscovered earlier this year
by archaeologists working in London
theaters like the globe when the curtain
were dirty they probably didn't smell
very good and while cellphones didn't go
off in the middle of plays they were not
quiet places today you go to the theater
and everyone gets quiet when the lights
go down but there were no lights there
also weren't any microphones there was
nothing to focus attention on the stage
except the play itself so people drank
and ate and jeered at the actors if they
thought the performances were bad so
Romeo and Juliet maybe an amazing work
of poetry but it also pandered to the
popular tastes of the time I mean
Renaissance theater wasn't like high art
so yes Nobles went to the theater but it
wasn't considered classy I mean a lot of
times people were literally choosing
between seeing this play and watching a
chained bear try to fight off a bunch of
dogs so this wasn't highbrow
entertainment and I hope it doesn't feel
high brown to you just because of the
fancy language Shakespeare knew how to
navigate between high and low culture he
knew how to amuse and entertain us while
also grappling with big questions about
honor and fate and duty and human
frailty and the idea that something can
be both fun and smart still resonates
today I mean isn't that why you watch
crash course and yes I went there we are
of Shakespearean quality Oh
next week we'll delve further into the
themes of Romeo and Juliet and discuss
whether it's really love or lust at the
heart of their relationship thanks for
watching I'll see you then crash course
is produced and directed by Stan Muller
our script supervisor is Meredith Danko
the Associate Producer is Danica Johnson
the show is written by Alexis selassie
and myself and our graphics team is
thought bubble every week instead of
cursing I use the names of writers I
like if you'd like to suggest writers
you can do so in the comments where you
can also ask questions about today's
video that will be answered by our team
of highly trained English people thanks
for watching crash course and as we say
in my hometown don't forget to be
awesome
you