Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

647843267e t1_j8c3tqt wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in TIL The city of Verona, Italy, where Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is set, receives thousands of letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine's Day. The letters are answered by a team of volunteers known as the "Juliet Club." by basictoknow

In the original she is 16, but Shakespeare had to go and make it weird.

14

BaylonTheGrey t1_j8ck34b wrote

The original.

The original Romeo and Juliet.

The original Romeo and Juliet...that WASN'T written by William Shakespeare.

In that story...she's 16?

And...and William Shakespeare...rewrote it.

And made her 13?

That's....that's what you're saying?

7

twinparadox t1_j8ckw3b wrote

Yes, that is exactly what they are saying. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is based on The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, a narrative poem written a good 30 years before Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet is a 16 year old.

27

p314159i t1_j8ey4ix wrote

>poem

That is the key point here. Poem didn't need to have characters played by actors, and in Shakespeare's time all female roles were played by pre-pubescent boy actors.

5

BaylonTheGrey t1_j8fhvgk wrote

Based on is not the same thing.

Shakespeare wrote an entire play based on a Poem.

They are similar stories but not the same thing.

1

tsaimaitreya t1_j8ckrml wrote

There's an original?

Funnily at the time the italians married substantially younger than the english... But then Shakespeare had to go overboard with it lol

4

[deleted] t1_j8cbos3 wrote

[deleted]

1

647843267e t1_j8eopfq wrote

There's nothing unusual about a romance between two 16yr olds..

1

p314159i t1_j8exw2w wrote

Shakespeare had to make it believable for the character to be played by a pre-pubescent boy.

1