Shakespeare's Play: Romeo and Juliet Term Paper

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Perhaps because of this reference to contemporary political ideals, the romance of Shakespeare seems more archetypal than the immediately relevant sociological commentary of "West Side Story." Bernstein's musical is unapologetically topical, dealing with the 1950s obsession with juvenile delinquency and even common theories to explain it, as in the song "Gee Officer Krupkie" which suggests alternatively that delinquency is caused by society, psychology, and also a young thug being "no damn good." While Shakespeare's conflict between young desires and old hatreds and resistance to change could apply to a variety of contexts, from ancient times as in the case of Pyramus and Thisbe, to the lovers of Brooke's history of Italy, to New York City gangs, to Bosnia, Bernstein's specific focus on the linguistic differences between Puerto Ricans and whites in their speeches and songs, the significance of juvenile crime in American society, and specific cultural ideals like that of 'making it' in America would make it difficult to, for example, set "West Side Story" in another place and time, as many filmmakers and playwrights have done with "Romeo and Juliet," as in Baz Luhrmann's 1996 modernization of the aesthetic, if not the language of the Shakespearean tragedy.

Bernstein, to make the tale more plausible to a contemporary setting, also made some notable alterations, namely the absence of adults in the story. While in "Romeo and Juliet," the parents of both lovers are just as determined to wage familial warfare as the quarreling servants in the street and the angry young men engaged in dueling (particularly Old Capulet, who tries to force his daughter to marry Paris), there are no parental figures in "West Side Story" urging the young people to fight. Rather, the absence of caring and responsible parental figures is part of the tragedy.

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There is only Bernardo, who is still extremely young, almost as young as Maria (although he perceives himself as her guardian), who is roughly the same age as Tony. Doc, the 'Friar Lawrence' figure has a relatively minor role in the tale. Rather than an elderly Nurse, Maria's semi-willing intermediary in her affair is Anita, a young, opinionated and highly sexualized woman rather than an elderly, comic figure like Juliet's nurse. Because Maria and Tony are chronologically older than their Renaissance counterparts, all of the actors of the Bernstein musical seem more alike in age than different. All of the characters are victims of society and the way that poverty drives the white gangs to hate Puerto Ricans, and the prejudice against the Puerto Ricans in society drives Puerto Ricans to hate whites.

Of course, what seems the most obvious difference between "West Side Story" and "Romeo and Juliet" is that Bernstein's work has music and dancing, and Shakespeare's play does not. However, given the use of Shakespeare's language, particularly in "Romeo and Juliet" which makes use of frequent metaphors ("It is the east and Juliet is the sun"), depicts the lovers 'completing' a sonnet together as they fall in love, and is so musical in its construction, even in comparison to Shakespeare's later plays, this is perhaps less important than one might initially suspect. Shakespeare often uses kinesthetic action such as his fight sequences, to propel the plot forward, like Bernstein uses dancing. It is not the musical aspect of "West Side Story" that makes it stand apart from its original source, but the musical's unapologetic American qualities of theme and characters that makes it of its time, seemingly ripped from the headlines of the past, rather than transcendent of time and place.

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