Romeo and Juliet

The timeless Shakespeare love story. Some of us had to read Romeo and Juliet in high school, others read it for the first time this past month...but all of us were familiar with the story. How can you not be?

What makes Shakespeare so wonderful to read is this: he can play linguistic gymnastics with a familiar story. In Romeo and Juliet, the chorus tells you the end of the story right off the bat. "A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life." But then you start reading, and laughing, and hoping... and becoming drawn into the comedy and drama of the story. It was very fun for our group to re-visit this story as adults... because we can read between the lines to get all the bad jokes! *grin*

Our conversation jumped all over the place (as usual), but we touched on all the major themes and topics of the play. Also, many of us associate "Romeo and Juliet" with the Baz Luhrman movie. It was interesting how we kept comparing what we read in the play to what we remember seeing in the movie. We love the Montagues and aren't really big fans of the Capulets. Tybalt is lame. Benvolio rocks. Romeo and Juliet have it bad. Paris really gets a raw deal in this story. And Friar Laurence wasn't doing anyone any favors with his meddling. Two of our favorite quotes: "You kiss by the book" and "By my heel I care not."

We concluded the night by finding a 9th grade final exam for Romeo and Juliet and testing our knowledge. I'm proud to report that we passed with flying colors! Whoo hoo!

Next month will be a bit of a treat. We are reading "The Meaning of Night" by Michael Cox, and will have a murder mystery theme to our next gathering. I've never done one of these before, so I think it will be lots of fun!

Till then... Happy Reading!!