For young people living in the world of adults, “love” is a means of defiance and resistance. Explore with respect to the literary text and any cinematic adaptation of Romeo and Juliet prescribed in your course. 


The frantic pace of the movie reveals the outburst vehemence and impulsive hot-headed nature of the dwelling aboriginal of Verona as latterly foreshadowed by the rage, grief and passion of the feuding rivalries between the adversaries-Capulets and Montagues----true to the authenticity of Shakespearean spirit. 1960s film version was focused on tragic love; the 1990s is about violent love. 

Shakespearean dramatis persona were the milieu of the starcrossed lovers and their inner moral dilemmas of those minds whose temperaments resonate reckless and hasty nature as the dysfunctional world of the Montagues and Capulets whose blood and honour were inseperable. Modern day mise-en-scene of the adaptation is a brilliant spectacle that marvels the accomplishing achievements through bestowal of laurel wreathed bouquets and accolades. For instance, Mercutio’s raving in the Capulet’s ball makes unimpeachable exemplary phenomenon with the bottling of acid beforehand. Romeo’s decision to end his life with poisonous drugs parallels the lifestyle of violence and addiction. The mafia clans fanaticism of religious sentiments as projected by their Catholic vein running through the plot juxtaposes coldblooded aggression as ironically spotlighted by the stereotypical families. 

The close shot camera focusing the Shakespearean hero and heroine cloistered by the walls of Verona and confinement by window frame of patriarchal abode respectively. Upon revealing close up shot Zeffirelli’s camera angle moves to showcase Romeo attired in a deep, lilac; a Montague bereft of Capulet vulgarity and ostentation; nonetheless, pill box hat, eyeliner, flawless complexion and the flower exemplifies effeminacy. “A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show for his head”-----unshaved, unkempt Romeo beside swollen lips and fluffy faced Juliet in the tomb scene is the visual artifice in commitment to the ironical perspectives of the drama. Zeffirelli’s textual interpretation literally elucidates Shakespeare’s highly stylized and emotionally expressive naturalism that bestows weight to the narrative moments like Juliet’s departure epitomizing overexcitedness and emotional disorientation by the state of the physical dizziness. Here, as throughout, Zeffirelli creates a situation where visibility becomes feeling and feeling becomes awareness. 

Religion of love imagery foreshadowed by the sonnet dialogue is absolutely superbly visualized filmic adaptation to cherish beneath the connotations of pilgrimage and saintliness: institutionalized and ritualized love-making courtship. The starcrossed lovers romantic love-making sonnet in the background depicted by the imageries of saints, pilgrims and statues brings the abstractest essence of martyrdom, canonization and immortality---the fabulous trappings embodying their history---their personalities and their naivetes, and their uncertainty of each other and the awareness of the social context in which they find themselves in the ignorance of perils. Choruses last six lines musical effect is absolutely inappropriate and unnecessary addition to the cinematic conventions of diegesis hovering between snapshots and painting, documentary and fiction; reconciling the present tense with the past tense of the film, ethical space with that of the cinema and history with story as profoundly replicated in Mercutio’s remark to Romeo is appropriately credible to Zeffirelli’s diegetic: “Now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature.” 

Further Reading

Sarah L. Lorenz’s “Romeo and Juliet”: The Movie, The English Journal, March 1998, Volume 7, No 3, Teaching the Classics: Old Wine, New Bottles, March 1998, pp. 50-51, National Council of Teachers of English 

Michael Pursell’s Artifice and Authenticity in Zeffirelli’s: “Romeo and Juliet”, Literature and Film Quarterly, 1986, Volume 14, No 4, pp. 173-178, Salisbury University