Why Shakespeare dampens the romantic atmosphere in Romeo & Juliet
For a play long considered the greatest love story ever told, Shakespeare ironically weaves into it just about everything possible to reduce its inherent romantic atmosphere. He dampens the romanticism with scenes replete with bawdy jokes; he has Romeo in love with another girl before his fateful encounter with Juliet; and he furnishes Juliet with another suitor equally as honourable and tragic as Romeo himself. All these elements do not make for good romance.
From the play’s performance history, we know that many past producers of Romeo and Juliet did recognize that these elements in Shakespeare’s script dampened the romantic atmosphere. However, they—and their audience—dearly wanted a romantic love story … so many producers simply deleted Shakespeare’s unromantic elements! Most of their productions omitted Romeo’s prior love for Rosaline, removed all the bawdry, and in an adaptation of the play by David Garrick—that was performed from 1748 till 1845—there was even a long love dialogue between Romeo and Juliet just before they died, an emotionally charged scene that Shakespeare himself carefully avoided.
We are thus faced with an intriguing question: Why does Shakespeare try so earnestly to dampen the romantic nature of the play? Why does he include all the unromantic elements that so many producers, pandering to popular demand, delete in their productions? What is Shakespeare’s purpose?
Startling as it may sound, Romeo and Juliet, the world’s most famous love tragedy, is not meant—at least by Shakespeare himself—to be primarily a romantic love story. Shakespeare has a more important message to convey in the play. The mystical meaning of Romeo and Juliet soars far beyond that of a traditional love story, for in it, Shakespeare crafts a powerful message of transcendent universality, a message crucial to all true spiritual traditions. Shakespeare’s intent is to harness the powerful surge of emotional intensity, caused by the love tragedy, to bring forth a spiritual realization of critical importance.
The play highlights the delusion that lies behind our partiality in loving some while hating others. The real meaning of the play has more to do with the oneness of all, than with the love relationship between a single couple. It is to emphasize this point that prompts Shakespeare to reduce the romantic atmosphere in his play.
Shakespeare wants us to focus instead on the profound meaning of the play, which resides in the cause of the tragedy. Thus, the reason why there is so much bawdry and all the unromantic elements in Romeo & Juliet is the same reason why Romeo & Juliet has the ultimate spoiler in storytelling. Both help to direct our attention onto the central meaning of the play which concerns how the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets brought about the tragic end of the two young lovers.
It is in Romeo and Juliet that the themes of Shakespeare’s other plays—the peril of misperception (in Much Ado About Nothing), the confusion of labels with reality (in The Comedy of Errors), and the mistake of having our roles define our identity (in The Taming of the Shrew)—are honed to their most potent and emotionally devastating form. Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the greatest piece of literature ever written that denounces conflict between factions.