I have no real guide for this post, I just love how divided Shakespeare's romances can make people react, and I'd love to sit down, write out the actual intent behind them, and see if maybe, if you're someone who has an intensity towards one of them, you can think it over again. Like if you viciously hate Romeo & Juliet and think they were idiots and the whole play is pointless.
One: I'd love to ask who hurt you, two, I'd love to see you actually exploring your feelings about them! It's the same with Amy from Little Women, like I promise ya'll, you ain't gotta hate this fictional child for doing what she was written to do. You can move on with your life!
BUT! Here we go.
Romeo & Juliet (Yes, I warned you I would talk about them)
Let's start with a bullet point list of things we know about this couple.
Their families are fighting a blood feud in the city of Verona
They are both the heirs to these families, Montague and Capulet
Romeo is an artist and romantic at heart who also happens to be 17, his family seems to be very loose on him, he has multiple friends, and isn't really involved in the feud yet plus he's freshly heartbroken.
Juliet is 14, young, carefree, and her father suddenly decides she's to marry a man she doesn't know or love to save their family, she doesn't really seem to have any friends besides her nurse, so she's kept in isolation
Romeo and Juliet meet by chance at a party of the Capulet's that he has snuck into, and it's love at first sight (which yes, is very much a thing, especially with teenagers who believe they have no other options, and the one in front of them is tempting and forbidden)
Romeo & Juliet conspire via her nurse and his friend the Friar, and they marry in secret with the intent to tell their parents soon
However, Mercutio confronts Tybalt in the streets and Mercutio kills Tybalt before Romeo, enraged at his friend's useless death and cursing of the families for dragging innocents into their fight, kills Mercutio.
Romeo is now a wanted man so he flees the city.
Juliet's father pushes up the marriage between her and Paris, and in her terror she sneaks a poison from the friar that fakes her death
the friar fails to get news to Romeo in time who is warned by his other friend and comes running back with an actual deadly poison on hand and one purpose
Romeo kills himself next to Juliet who wakes up to find him dying and stabs herself
In their grief at finding their children actually dead, the families are forced to finally make a black peace.
Now, that's a lot, but it's all important.
People normally read this play first in high school, when they are also a teenager, and desperate to not be labeled as silly, so when confronted with this tragedy, what's the main point people seem to pull out?
"UGH they're so stupid? Who would ever do that? This is the WORST play." And they tend to keep that opinion for life if not a long time.
Here's why that's incredibly block headed and ill thought out if it's thought about at all.
Romeo and Juliet are the tragedy in Shakespeare. They unwillingly are sacrifices for the terrible decisions their families make, as always happens with children when the elders begin to fight.
They are the love, that bright kernel of light that blossoms between two young people that despite everything drilled into their heads, they still manage to find the will to love that which they are taught to hate. Another lesson of Shakespeare's, people aren't born hateful, they learn it, and it's possible to unlearn it too.
They're also the price that their families paid, a grim, terrible one, that on Juliet's father is exacted twice. He was horrific to her, he threatened her, he coerced her, and in the end he tried to disown her. He had to lose her once on her own, to his own hate for her tiny rebellion of refusing to marry Paris, and then again, with a dagger in her heart and the realization that she had loved Montague despite his hate. She had become bigger and better than him.
Romeo & Juliet is so much more than just two teenagers falling in love. It's an important story that is over dramatized to the point of ridiculousness sometimes, and isn't given to people in the correct way.
Hamlet & Ophelia in Hamlet
So, Hamlet & Ophelia. She's kind of a background character, right? Wrong, she's actually incredibly important to everything that happens, especially in the end. A very good look at just what Ophelia means is the movie Ophelia that released in June of last year with Daisy Ridley playing the starring role. It also takes a good look at Hamlet's mother who many write off as a traitor who knew exactly what was going down and had the power to stop it if she so pleased but didn't.
Here's what we know about Hamlet & Ophelia
Ophelia, daughter of the former king's adviser, younger sister to Laertes, in love with Hamlet
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, off at college at the beginning of the play where he sees his father's ghost and learns of his murder, loves Ophelia?
Hamlet returns to find it's true, that his Uncle is king and has married his mother, and even when seeing Ophelia again for the first time in years, decides on the plan of pretending to be mad to punish his Uncle
Ophelia highly disapproves though she doesn't quite like his uncle at all, she just doesn't want to see her lover lose his mind
Things go horrifically wrong, Hamlet kills her father, and pretends to leave to hide
Ophelia now actually loses her mind with grief, as her lover has killed her father, the only person protecting her in this castle
She comes into the hall during a dinner, soaked, and dances and sings curses at the royals disguised as compliments, and then runs into the river and drowns herself
Hamlet returns, puts on a thinly disguised play about his uncle killing his father and things go out of control.
Everyone kills each other besides Horatio and then the country they were at war with invades right at the end, leaving this one of Shakespeare's deadliest, and most horrific tragedies
So basically, this is less romance than it is tragedy, but you have the aspects there. The hints that Hamlet and Ophelia had been in love for a good while, despite the fact that she was merely the daughter of an adviser and he the Crown Prince. They were probably expecting him to return from college and to have their remaining happy years before he either got to marry her or had to marry a foreign princess.
Their tragedy lies in the fact that once again, they are paying for the crimes of their parents, but specifically the crimes of Hamlet's uncle who craved everything his brother had so much he was willing to murder and steal for it. It's very much a tragedy of toxic masculinity and the dangers of unchecked monarchs and the royal families that orbit around them.
And to further draw it out, Ophelia and Hamlet are a tragedy together, but they are also a tragedy separately.
Hamlet because really, he could have just returned to college, waited out the initial rage, but of course his father would have haunted him still. And he would have been away from Ophelia and his mother, and I don't think his uncle would have stopped at just the throne and the queen. I genuinely believe Hamlet had no other choice than to return and bring his uncle to justice, just, the way he went about it is the biggest tragedy of all. Nobody wanted to believe Hamlet. He was alone. He didn't even have his mother.
Ophelia is more alone even than Hamlet in this world, she's shunned in subtle ways, and when Hamlet's father dies and he returns, it's clear to her that she will never have what she had before. They could run away, they could be happy, but only if Hamlet listens to her, and he doesn't, so in Hamlet not believing her that they could be happy away from all that, she has lost her only choice. Her father is dead, murdered by Hamlet's hand, and she has but one thing left, her grief. Over so many things. So she loses herself to it, and drowns in it.
So, I have no underlying Valentine's day message here, I just thought now would be a poignant time to talk about this. Especially as I myself am writing a tragic romance between enemies currently based off of Julius Caesar and set in space. It's been on my mind, and I hope it's of interest to all of you who got this far!