Romeo Ja Julia
Romeo Ja Julia
Translated by Paavo Emil Cajander
Two teenagers meet at a party and fall instantly, desperately in love. That's the simple spine. But Shakespeare builds around it a world where ancient hatreds poison the air they breathe, where the very stars seem conspiring against them. Romeo and Juliet is not a slow burn toward tragedy, it hurtles toward it from the first scene, propelled by young hearts that refuse to accept that love can be illegal. Their courtship lasts barely a week. In that time they meet, kiss, marry in secret, consummate, separate, and die. The play moves at the pace of adolescence itself, frantic, impatient, all-or-nothing. Shakespeare gives them some of the most gorgeous poetry ever written in any language, and then he uses that poetry to chronicle their destruction. What makes this endure is how it captures the unbearable truth that love doesn't conquer hate, not in the real world. But it matters anyway. It matters because these two children chose to believe in something bigger than the feud, and their belief was so absolute they died for it. Four hundred years later, we still recognize that hunger. We're still that age when love feels like the only thing that could possibly matter.
Editions
X-Ray
“These violent delights have violent endsAnd in their triumph die, like fire and powder,Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honeyIs loathsome in his own deliciousnessAnd in the taste confounds the appetite.Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.””
— William Shakespeare
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,My love as deep; the more I give to thee,The more I have, for both are infinite.””
— William Shakespeare
“Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.””
— William Shakespeare
“thus with a kiss I die””
— William Shakespeare
“Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.””
— William Shakespeare
“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.””
— William Shakespeare
“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.””
— William Shakespeare
“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.””
— William Shakespeare
“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)””
— William Shakespeare
