I’ve been studying Romeo and Juliet for some time now. Of course, I know the main plot points – it’s been parodied countless times in countless art forms, and I read the play, with much instruction, during my freshmen year of high school. Yet, as I took up the book again, I found myself stymied by the language. I could not behold the grandeur of the vocabulary, as so many fans of the Bard seem to attest. As someone with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Asperger’s, whenever I read anything – whether intellectual or not, I reread each sentence at least twice, sometimes more. This makes me a slow reader, but an excellent analyst of literature. However, when trying to understand the whole of a Shakespearean work, one cannot just concentrate on the meaning of every single word. Looking at footnotes and dictionaries frequently while attempting to read the play disrupts the natural rhythm of the play.

Sure, for intensive study of Romeo and Juliet, or any other play by any other playwright for that matter, understanding the nuances of the language, the double meanings, or the lost meanings from Elizabethan times to our own, is essential. As I’ve learned in my Shakespeare in Community course, this understanding likely came naturally to the original audiences of Shakespeare’s plays. Language is fluid, though; it changes with each generation. Reading work that may be a hundred years old, or 600 years old, or one thousand years old is like reading a different language. One studies the grammar and syntax of a foreign language, immersing oneself in the culture and spoken words, before one has enough mastery to read a book in that language and understand it as second nature.

As a writer, I was determined that I should read this play, rather than watch the play performed, as if that was somehow cheating. But I was so fixated on every word I didn’t understand, I was getting nowhere fast. Finally, I relented. I watched the 1976 version of Romeo and Juliet. Immediately, I saw and heard things that I just couldn’t pick up by reading. I love literary analysis and enjoy it immensely, but how can I analyze something I don’t fundamentally understand at its core. I only knew this play as if looking through tiny peepholes in a fence, missing the wholeness of the work. Shakespeare is a different language to me: I needed to watch the reactions of the characters, their movements, their facial expressions; I needed to hear the laughter (I never knew there was so much joviality in the first acts! I read those lines as stoic, not recognizing a goodhearted jest between friends) to appreciate the story behind the words. It was as if watching and listening to the action without focusing on understanding every word provided me with subtitles to each scene, allowing me not only to get the gist of what was happening, but also to finally hear those beautiful, passionate, unbridled words. The play came alive! With whispers and shouts and declarations of love, crying vehemently and vows of rage-filled revenge – I couldn’t insert these emotions into my reading because I was hung up on just understanding the vocabulary.

Now, for the first time, I observed Romeo, Juliet, and their family and friends as teenagers. The duels between Mercutio and Tybalt were most likely caused by the hormones coursing through their bodies, coupled with the feud between the two houses that those boys may not have even fully understood. While Mercutio antagonizes, Tybalt remains bull-headed. Blows were bound to be had, but over-zealous teenagers armed with weaponry, and it’s no wonder that disaster struck. I was more drawn in by the injustice and the sadness of young life lost during senseless battles than I was by the love and lust between Juliet and her Romeo that intensified as each act progressed. Only as I watched them kiss passionately before their wedding ceremony did I realize how in love they were. Until then, I only saw Juliet as a child of 14 – naive, willing to do whatever her mother asked of her, sweet and innocent. Romeo and Benvolio tried to keep the peace among the houses, but alas, poor Romeo was bested by circumstances (and Tybalt’s bull-headedness). This is not the play I read as a 14 year old, focused on these weird, outdated words and listening to lectures just to understand what this darn story was about.

Shakespeare was a playwright. His works are meant to be performed in the theatre. I love books in all their glory, but now I will approach plays as plays and not as books. The message seems to get lost in the translation.