Ashleigh Heaton
Entertainment Editor
I have read and seen Romeo and Juliet hundreds of times, and yet I still cry when Juliet wakes up to see Romeo, dead.
I have seen the old ‘60s movie version of the play, Baz Lahrum’s ‘90s modern movie remake, watched it live at Shakespeare in the Park and read the piece too many times than I intend to confess to. I still devour Shakespeare’s words, whispering Juliet’s lines under my breath as the story unfolds – hoping, all the way through, that by some miracle the ending would magically change, the words altered to leave nothing but the happiest of endings.
But despite each of the many times I wish this, the chorus still closes the final act with “for never has there been a tale of such woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”.
I guess that, at the core, I’m just a hopeless romantic. Yes, I do believe in true love. Yes, I do believe in soul mates. And yes, I do believe in happily-ever-afters. Unfortunately, in this fast-paced world, it feels like there is no room for us silly little people obsessed with love – our heads are just floating up above the clouds, they say, and we need to be more realistic about the world.
Why does no one believe in Juliet and her Romeo anymore? When did love become trivial?
In all fairness, I have little room to talk: I’ve never really been in a serious relationship, nor have I ever experienced love past the schoolgirl crush. Never in my life have I felt a love so strong that I would be willing to raise a dagger to my chest and take my life for the one I love.
But, strange as it may sound…I want that love. Of course, I like to think that I would never become so hormone-driven as to kill myself over a guy, but Juliet saw it differently. To be so devoted to someone that you would follow them even in the afterlife is, though morbid, beautiful – poetry of human nature.
It’s strange of me to be musing about this weeks after Valentine’s Day (or, as some of my friends have deemed it, Singles Awareness Day), but love shouldn’t be packaged into one Hallmark-blasted day of the year – love is everywhere around us in all different forms, romantic or not. Everyday should be an opportunity to embrace that experience.
And in this world of war and hate and chaos, it is a miracle that love has room to take root at all. To me, love is more than the bliss and happiness of two people: it is hope. Hope that humans may not be thoroughly evil to the core. Hope that the sun will always rise. Hope that we are all worth something. Hope.
Without love, what would make life worthwhile?
