WHY ROMEO AND JULIET GOT IT ALL WRONG!

Shakespeare's fast and furious tale of love at first sight is defined by drama - but does the true love story lie in the silence and serenity of a second glance, asks Haim Shapira

- Haim Shapira

Some things never cease to amaze me. Is it not strange that, in Western culture, the story of Romeo and Juliet, a couple of naive, confused children, serves as a model for the type of sublime love that's greater than life itself?

Let's take a good look at what happens. The story begins like this: Romeo is madly in love with... Rosaline. Yes, Rosaline.

Rosaline? Who is that? Many people forget this detail, but at the beginning of the story Romeo is in love with Rosaline, Juliet's cousin. Here's what Romeo says about her:

Moments before he meets Juliet, Rosaline is the one who has captured Romeo's heart, the one he cannot live without. He is willing to sacrifice everything for her love.

In fact, the main reason Romeo's friends drag him to the big ball thrown by the head of the Capulet family, where he first lays eyes on Juliet, is to contrive a meeting with Rosaline. They've seen their friend wandering the streets of Verona, sighing endlessly because of his unrequited love for her. They had no choice but to intervene, for they feared the young lover would lose his sanity. It seems that Romeo's friends knew about the boy's problematic character.

A split-second before Romeo falls in love with Juliet to the depths of his soul, he actually loves Rosaline to similar depths of the same soul. But then, at the Capulet ball, he notices that Juliet is slightly fairer than Rosaline, and immediately transfers his full measure of love to her.

Here's what Romeo says when he first sees Juliet:

What happened to Rosaline? Where has it gone, this great love he felt towards her?

By the way, we must ask this question: if what we have here is supposed to be a play about the (apparently) pure, exalted love between Romeo and Juliet, why did Shakespeare need the presence of another beloved within the narrative? That's pretty confusing, isn't it?