What do we see? And what does it matter? As an older father and educator of my youngest daughter, now sixteen years old, I have the joy of truly learning Shakespeare for the first time. In recent months we have tackled two Shakespeare plays, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. One is billed as the greatest love story of all time and the other as one of the darkest and greatest tragedies of all time. But which is which?
Our modern world clearly considers the tale of frustrated young lovers the romance and the story of a king descendant the tragedy. But in Romeo and Juliet there is no love, only a pubescent-adolescent infatuation that ends without hope in the suicides of two children. There is no romance. Totally absent is the patter of two people coming to know one another. There is only the hormonal rush of physical attraction and the drive to climax. To live without real love and die without hope is the ultimate tragedy. On the other hand, the seemingly horrific King Lear is a love story from beginning to end. It is a about a man who runs from love but ultimately finds himself redeemed in the very love he ran from. (more...)
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