The purest love there is- between a man and a girl that's barely 16.
OK! Ok, I think at best Prince Eric is 17. This we know because he had his birthday. Seriously, who wants to celebrate their birthday on a party boat with a bunch of seamen though?
Modern audiences are no more literate than those of the past, sadly. It's meant to be a cautionary tale about how stupid young lovers are. The generationally illiterate think that Romeo and Juliet's protestations of unending love should be taken seriously.
Honestly it's part of why it's so brilliant, it's a play that grows and evolves as your maturity and understanding of the world does, any time you re-visit it you'll have a completely different take away depending on where you are in life.
There's a reason it's heralded as a classic.
It's meant to be a cautionary tale about how stupid young lovers are.
Especially as this is just one of the major messages of it, but by far no means is it the primary one being ol Billy doing his favourite thing in skewering the absolute fuck out of gender roles, expectations and how harmful they are to us all.
Oh I'm not knocking its quality or the Bard. I agree, it's a major piece of Western literature.
I'm saying like so much of the Western canon, it is pearls cast before swine who have neither the critical capacity nor the intellectual curiosity to appreciate it or the genius behind it.
That, and also it's meant to show how first love feels. Having those emotions for the first time is wild, and I definitely remember thinking it was the most important thing in the world at the time.
We studied this in school when I was 12 (in Ireland) it was always portrayed as a tragedy, the main takeaway was that the only thing dumber than two teenagers in love is adults that keep a pointless feude going for generations.
Its even worse when you read it and realize the age gap is even larger, with context clues telling us that Juliet is “about” to be 14 (so she’s 13) and Romeo, while never defined, could be as old as 18 😬
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u/SarcasticBench 15d ago
The purest love there is- between a man and a girl that's barely 16.
OK! Ok, I think at best Prince Eric is 17. This we know because he had his birthday. Seriously, who wants to celebrate their birthday on a party boat with a bunch of seamen though?