Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

Roméo et Juliette

William Shakespeare and His Play “Romeo and Juliet”

How much poorer the world of music would be without the inspiration of William Shakespeare! In the field of opera alone, some of the greatest masterpieces owe their existence to the powerful allure of his lyricism. Romeo and Juliet, the play upon which Charles Gounod based his opera, was one of Shakespeare's early successes, popular from 1595 to the present day.

The story was not original to Shakespeare. Its pedigree can be traced from Italian, French and English sources. Masuccio Salernitano wrote the thirty-third story of his Cinquante Novelle (1476) of the star-crossed lovers and the feigned death of the heroine. It was Luigi da Porto in his Istoira Novellamente Ritrovata di due Nobili Amanti (c.1530) who bestowed the names Romeo and Guiletta upon the lovers and gave emphasis to the feud between the two families. Next, Matteo Bandello and his Novelle (1554), a collection of 214 tales, added the Nurse and Benvolio-type character. Translating the story into French in 1559, Pierre Boaistuau made his own alterations. It was this French version that Arthur Brooke used as the basis for his poem The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), giving Shakespeare a virtual blueprint for his play. Yet, Shakespeare's genius was transforming: the poetry, the dramatic balance of the characters, the foreshortening of time to heighten the impact of the events - in sum, creating the definitive drama of doomed young love.

Critics have come up with their own set of difficulties about the design of the play. Eighteenth century commentators first saw the tragedy as a punishment for the two feuding families and later as a moral judgment on the reckless lovers. In the nineteenth century the conflict between love and fate was stressed, as well as the paradox that the love that transcends also destroys. Twentieth century critics took up the cudgel of individual responsibility, blaming the lovers for their rash actions and holding them accountable for the dire results. More balanced reviewers began to see what was self-evident in the design: Shakespeare used all these themes, not harmonizing them, but letting each make its own contribution to the tragedy. Shakespeare was surely familiar with the medieval de casibus tragedy, wherein fate grants happiness but, by whatever means, despair and death follow. The theme is as ancient as man's earliest perception of the fleeting nature of joy.

Unto Shakespeare belongs the glory of molding a timeless story in eternal language.

Helen D'Artois Schmidt

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