"...Love moderately.Long love doth so.Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."

At the age of 14 I was little more than a giant mess of hormones, insecurity, and an active imagination. I had literally just managed to surmount the horrors of my 8th grade year and careened into high school like a moth after one wing has been ripped off. That summer I had decided to try Shakespeare for the first time and discovered my drug of choice when I read Julius Caesar. My love for the Bard was immediate and intense. That is until I came into contact with the teenage passion and incredulous plot of Romeo and Juliet. My thoughts about this play for many years have been along these lines: How could a genius like Shakespeare tell a story with such beautiful language about such annoyingly foolish people? What a ridiculously overdramatic ending...when does that happen in real life? While reading the tragedy of these two star-crossed lovers I observed my peers and often thought very much the same things about the melodrama of teen social circles. The inflated passions of the characters Romeo and Juliet were not at all antonymic to what I witnessed in my own culture, but the lengths they went to to be together and the manner in which their tale ended seemed utterly unbelievable and pointless.



Fortunately, the teen tragedy did not quench my love for the writings of Shakespeare and I have continued to feed upon the fruits of his imagination for more than 20 years now. Ironically, it is this lifelong appreciation that has brought me full circle: studying Romeo and Juliet in a classroom setting, this time by elective choice. Another irony, I will have finished reading through the tragic love story on the cusp of the most commercialized of holidays: Valentine's Day. While I now have a richer understanding as well as appreciation for what William Shakespeare was really creating in his telling of this tale of ill-fated love I am reminded, especially at this "romantic" time of year, of what has provoked my dislike. The notion of love and romance as a spontaneous and predetermined master of the human race seems like a limited and disingenous reflection of the deeper nature and meaning of what it is to love. Just as a box of chocolates, overpriced flowers, teddy bears hugging balloons, or even diamonds and pearls gifted on one established day a year can't approach the value of a deep loyal and fervent passion, neither can the poetic dramatics of two 14 year old children genuinely express the meaningfulness of love based on understanding, self-sacrifice, and true vulnerability. It is a heady, impatient passion that drives these two lovers to their tombs....one wonders what would have been the long term nature of their relationship if patience and thoughtfulness had tempered youthful desire.