6 Things Wrong with Shakespeare’s “Epic Romance” Romeo and Juliet

Valentine’s Day; a holiday chock full of passion, romance, and chocolate. For some, the day is awaited with eager anticipation of receiving flowers, gorging ourselves heart-shaped candy, and spending time with a loved one. For the rest, we barricade ourselves in our room with a bowl of popcorn and nurse our lonely hearts by binge-watching Netflix. But what ever happened to good ol’ romance? Where are the heartfelt declarations of love? Perhaps you fill this void by reading Shakespeare’s celebrated Romeo and Juliet, a tale of star-crossed lovers destined for tragedy.

Well, this year I highly encourage you to reconsider your choice of literary satisfaction, because I’m here to tell you 6 things that are wrong with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and trust me; after this, you won’t be longing for a Romeo to come clambering up your balcony any time soon.

1.They knew each other for a day

I can’t even imagine going on a date with someone I’ve known for less than a day, let alone marrying them. For those of you who might be a bit fuzzy on the finer details, the timeline of Romeo and Juliet goes like this; on Sunday night, Romeo goes to the Capulet’s party. He and Juliet lock eyes and fall passionately in love. They get married the next day and die a few days later. The end.

This famous Shakespearean tragedy was based on Arthur Brooke’s 1562 narrative poem, Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, which was taken from another fable, which was taken from another. Seriously, the story behind this play is ancient. Shakespeare published his play thirty-five years later, in 1597. Brooke’s version may be a little drier, but their relationship took place over nine months, which allowed for a more development than Shakespeare’s condensed version, which happened in less than a week.

2.  Juliet is the rebound

After Romeo gets friend-zoned by Rosaline (who has taken a vow of chastity), his Montague bros take him out to a party to forget about her, “By giving liberty unto thine eyes. / Examine other beauties” (1.2.225). Here he sees Juliet and enters into a whirlwind romance that seems completely unrealistic today, unless you need a green card or get drunk in Vegas and make questionable decisions. And even if he does truly love her, our precious, naïve Juliet is nonetheless Romeo’s rebound in an attempt to mend his broken heart and piece together his shattered manhood.

3. In Romeo’s case, “creepy” is often mistaken for “romantic”

Sure we all know Romeo’s legendary pickup line: “O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do / They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair” (1.5.102). But using religion to coerce her? Okay, I might be exaggerating, but doesn’t this seem a bit like Romeo is forcing himself on her? And this is not the only time he does it.

After the party ends, Romeo creeps around Juliet’s backyard until he sees her on the balcony. He does not tell her that he is there, but listens to her private musings. Upon his exposure, Juliet says, “What man art thou that thus bescreened in night / So stumbles on my counsel?” which is pretty much saying “WTF dude?”

Romeo proceeds to flatter her with words of love that—let’s be honest, would probably win over anybody, male or female—until he forces her to say the big ILY. At first Juliet shows promising signs of sensibility and refuses him, saying, “Although I joy in thee / I have no joy of this contract tonight; / It is too rash, to unadvised, too sudden” (2.2.116-118). However, Romeo then guilt’s her into professing her love, crying, “O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” and asking for “Th’ exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine” until she finally gives in (2.2.125-127). Keep in mind, this takes place only hours after they met.

4. Marriage

Okay, so this one isn’t bashing on Romeo, but on Juliet’s other suitor, Paris (if you can even call them suitors). At first, Capulet, Juliet’s father, wants Paris to “woo” Juliet because he values her consent. Juliet’s mother thinks he’s beautiful, so she cannot fathom why Juliet would be opposed to the marriage. Later, when Juliet is upset about Romeo’s banishment and Tybalt’s death, Paris (now with her father’s blessing) tries to force her into a marriage, which makes her take ridiculously extreme measures to get out of it. Neither Paris nor Romeo actually court Juliet, which makes me kind of feel bad for the girl.

5. Family does not seem to be a priority

Romeo finally gets over Rosaline by latching onto Juliet, who is none other than Rosaline’s cousin! (Somebody has a thing for Capulets)

There’s also the whole thing that hey, nobody else—not even Juliet’s trusted nurse—thinks this relationship is a good idea, but they do it anyway! YOLO

Granted, there are a lot of great themes in this play, such as the pointlessness of blind hatred perceived through the feud between the Capulets and Montagues. This tension culminates in the scene where the two sides fight for their pride, which only leads to meaningless death and suffering. Tybalt of the Capulets hates Romeo because he’s a Montague, and because Romeo won’t fight him (none of them know of his marriage to Juliet), his friend Mercutio impulsively decides to fight Tybalt himself, and is promptly killed. In a fit of rage, Romeo kills Tybalt, Juliet’s beloved cousin, to avenge his friend’s death. Apparently “an eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind” hadn’t been written yet. (Gandhi, by the way, and he was born in 1869)

Juliet basically says, “Romeo killed my cousin, my childhood companion, my own flesh and blood! But then again, Tybalt would have killed Romeo, who I have been married to for three hours and have known for about a day, so you know, the pros outweigh the cons.” Basically. Loosely translated. Anyway, then she doesn’t even want to mourn Tybalt’s death: “Wash they his wounds with tears? Mine shall be spent, / When theirs are dry, for Romeo’s banishment” (3.2.130-131). She won’t cry for her dead cousin, but will for her banished husband of three hours? I don’t know about you guys, but I think she really needs to sort out her priorities. (Harry Potter, anyone?)

6. Pretty much every one dies because of two kids’ infatuation with each other

I mean seriously, why is something so violent, corrupt and bloody considered one of the greatest love stories of all time? I guess there are the good elements, that love conquers all (except, you know, death), tragedy can bring people together, the individual versus society, and the inevitability of fate, but seriously; do yourself a favor and read Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice. They’re much more satisfying.

Written by Jennifer Rohrbach

Used the Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare 2012 edition

New year, new issue!

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Welcome back everyone! To kick off a new semester, we’ve launched Issue 15, which can be viewed here! These pieces truly are the best of the best…out of the dozens of submissions we received last semester, the 8 featured in this issue truly blew us away! Take this relaxing Sunday to read each piece in the issue and get inspired, because we are reading submissions for Issue 16 now through March 1st!

Continue to follow our team this semester by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, and keeping up with the blog here. Best wishes for a successful and happy spring semester from everyone at the Blue Route!

We did it!

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Happy end of the semester everyone! From all of us here at the Blue Route, we hope you crushed your finals/final essays/projects, had safe travels home, and are ready to enjoy an awesomely relaxing winter break. Keep an eye out for our next issue launching in January…until then, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!

Sara Jaffe’s “Dryland” Provides Splashes of Feeling in a Hard-Set Reality

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Need a break from the billion assignments you have to complete as the semester wraps up? Staff member Kelsey reviews and recommends Dryland by Sara Jaffe for your reading pleasure in the midst of all the insanity.

Dryland, Sara Jaffe – Tinhouse Books, Sept 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941040-13-3

dryland“I looked at my reflection in my dad’s computer screen. In a way I looked like my brother, and in a way I didn’t.” Julie Winter, the narrator of Sara Jaffe’s latest novel Dryland is a young fifteen year old girl in 1992 who struggles to find her own identity after her brother Jordan almost became an Olympic swimmer. Through a novel that doesn’t rush or drag, but beats back and forth like water, Jaffe creates a tangible world that addresses identity of all types.

The book opens with Julie poring through swimming magazines in search of her brother’s face at Rich’s News, an activity she seems to have done often. Forced under her brother’s shadow, Julie herself has no base personality. Nothing interests the character at all; every force in Julie’s life at the start of the novel seems to be spurred by her best friend Erika, a girl who is easily wrapped up in boys, shopping, yearbook club, and anything a stereotypical middle-school girl would love, though she’s old enough to be in high school. In a scene at an outdoor river market early in the book, Erika points out all the skater boys who take her fancy. “Which one do you think is the cutest?” She asks. Julie pointsat a boy who Erika also agrees is cute, until the guy “took off his baseball cap and his long hair went down past his shoulders… It wasn’t a guy. It was suddenly so obviously not a guy.” Julie’s anguish reaveals more to the reader than she herself is aware of. This is the audience’s first encounter with her sexuality, a motif she must learn to come to terms with.

Julie trudges through her life until she is invited onto the swim team by Alexis, the girls’ team captain. Julie takes the bait, expecting to be a natural in the water like her brother. She’s awful. She doesn’t have enough strength or stamina to finish training without stopping for breaks. She does badly at meets. She doesn’t even seem to be making new friends on the team apart from Alexis, who snakes into Julie’s life and invites her to club parties. Meanwhile, Julie is making friends with Ben, an ex-acquaintance of her brother’s who lost contact with him after Jordan moved away.

As Julie reveals her sexuality both to herself and the reader through fragmented experiences with Alexis, she learns more of her brother’s hidden homosexual past. Scandals with Jordan’s swim coach and a porn magazine leave Julie worrying if her brother was healthy or sick with AIDS— and if he was even still on the other side of the world like he’d last said. “He could be in San Diego, one hand on his coach’s dick,” thought Julie. The two intertwined discoveries chip at Julie’s personality in a way that feels almost suspenseful; readers are enticed to learn more about the connections between Julie, her sexuality, and the ever-expanding world around her, driving the book forward.

Early on in the novel, Julie had addressed the lack of common interests shared by herself and Erika. “If Erika and I stopped being friends, it might be sad for a moment, and then okay. It would be what got called growing apart, which sounded calming, a floating, a benign disintegration.” Surprisingly, the two keep a complacent relationship. In this way, Jaffe hints at the forced high school relationships people cultivate for the sole purpose of having someone else. The usual novel arc would have seen a split between the two girls, but thankfully the relationships in Jaffe’s novel are neither typical or simple. Something much more complex beats beneath the surface.

Julie’s relationship with Alexis also goes much deeper than a stereotypical young-adult-novel-type relationship. The way the two girls gravitated around each other created a dynamic that was both interesting and intelligent. The way that Julie obsesses over Alexis caused the relationship or lack thereof to feel much more realistic. The reader believes Julie is crushing on Alexis before Julie herself realizes it.

Like the themes of friendship, sexuality, and identity Jaffe molds in her book, Jaffe’s prose cultivates very real images that shimmer for the reader. “It was shiny out. The pavement was slick and the streetlights were starfishes of light… My mind felt foamy and clean.” Lines throughout the book ebb and flow like waves. “Country Feedback” by R.E.M. is a recurring song that follows Julie throughout the piece, pulling the novel like the moon pushes the tides. When it is first introduced, Jaffe writes, “The song scooped something out of me. It was listening to me and watching me in ways it shouldn’t.”

Dryland feels real in the best way possible, making it seem more like a piece of creative nonfiction. Jaffe has created a world so much bigger than Julie herself.So many issues in Julie’s life exist outside the bounds of the story, creating a sort of poetic glimpse into this young girl’s life; as in poetry, Jaffe takes a moment, stretches it, digs into it. While Julie herself never goes through any sweeping changes, she does develop, and her world does grow over the course of the novel. Having a passive main character is a risk, but Jaffe creates an elegant world that encompasses Julie and overwhelms her. Jaffe offers readers a story vivid enough that it is not only seen, but felt.

By Kelsey Styles ’17, originally published on The Blue&Gold

Community Bridge Bridges Community

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Lately, there’s been a huge push on our campus to connect the city of Chester and Widener University through art…we love it! Staff member Kelsey Styles tells more about the latest of such events, Boundaries and Bridges, which seeks to both strengthen the art and cultural presence in the city, as well as connect the university to the city.

On November 13, students, faculty, and professors of Widener University meshed with members of the community on the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge as part of the much larger Boundaries and Bridges project.

John Carr performs a song for Devon Walls' promotional Boundaries and Bridges video.

John Carr performs a song for Devon Walls’ promotional Boundaries and Bridges video.

The hum of engines pulsed in the background, but that did little to deter performers as they stood in front of Devon Walls’ camera and read their work or talked about their projects or sang songs inviting change. Some cars honked up at them, but that only encouraged the crowd. To Walls, a Chester artist, their noise promotes notice. It means people are wondering why so many individuals are hanging out over Interstate 95.

At the end of the event, attendees dance and have fun as part of a larger celebration.

At the end of the event, attendees dance and have fun as part of a larger celebration.

The Walnut Street Bridge doesn’t connect the communities between Widener and Chester—it separates them. The highway whirring underneath acts as a wall between one group and another. The goal of Boundaries and Bridges is to mend these two broken worlds through art, because art is the medium connecting all living things.

Artists collectively share canvases to create a joint masterpiece as a symbol of what the Boundaries and Bridges program aims to do.

Artists collectively share canvases to create a joint masterpiece as a symbol of what the Boundaries and Bridges program aims to do.

The program truly kicked off the Friday previous when an information session was held discussing what the program planned to do after it received a Catalyst Grant from the Barra Foundation, which “works to advance Greater Philadelphia’s culture of innovation.” The goal of Boundaries and Bridges is to both strengthen the art and cultural presence in the city, as well as connect the university to the city.

Blue Route staff member Kim Roberts takes her turn with a brush.

Blue Route staff member Kim Roberts takes her turn with a brush.

Widener students, children, and members of the community all worked to create a new piece of art.

Widener student, children, and members of the community all worked to create a new piece of art.

To find out more, like the Boundaries and Bridges page on Facebook, or visit The Artists Warehouse on 515 Avenue of the States in Chester. It’s time to move with the movement, cross that boundary, and build a bridge. What is your university doing to spread the arts around your community? Comment and let us know!

blue and gold 2

By Kelsey Styles ’17, originally published on The Blue&Gold

Happy FUSE Conference Week!

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It’s finally here! From everyone on the staff at the Blue Route and all those in the English & Creative Writing department and beyond, we cannot wait to welcome everyone to Widener to have an awesome FUSE conference!

The theme of the conference this year, “Will You Look at That?” places a focus on aesthetics and its interactions with such topics as individual publications, the process of evaluating submissions, the digital realm, and the community. We’ve got two and a half days packed with panels by student editors from 14 different universities around the country, as well as some awesome special events such as:

  • Keynote speaker Lisa Funderburg, the author of Pig Candy, speaking on Thursday afternoon
  • Special Presentations by professional editors and Widener faculty, as well as one by Widener students engaged with textual scholarship
  • Fun evening activities like an Open Mic hosted by the English Club and a concert by Smart Barker (rock-n-roll with a literary twist)
  • A Saturday morning excursion to the Brandywine River Museum to finish out the conference

Remember to take tons of pictures and hashtag everything with #FUSE15 on social media so we can live tweet the conference!

It’s going to be the best FUSE conference yet…see you soon!

Written by Emma Irving

Moore, please!

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Dinty W. Moore recently visited Widener’s campus as part of the Distinguished Writers Series. Throughout the week he met with students who have been reading his creative nonfiction books and essays in class and a shared a few selections from his new book, Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, at a public reading on Wednesday. As a published author who has taught creative writing at multiple universities and has been writing for over 30 years, Moore had a lot of insightful advice for aspiring writers, which he generously shared:

1. What’s important about writers is what they say

Every writer has their own voice, “which is going to be different from any other voice,” said Moore. “That is something that can’t be taught. That we have to discover.” He also emphasized the importance of trial and error and repetition for a writer. “Your first draft is you wandering around the page trying to figure out what’s going on.” For him, the first few drafts are the hardest parts of the writing process. He writes the first draft of a book or essay solely to help him figure out what he is trying to say. Only during later drafts, when he understands what needs to be said, does he writes with the reader in mind.

2. You need curiosity to be a writer

To truly discover your own voice and figure out what it needs to say, you have to ask questions. “The trick,” he explained, “is not knowing what you want to say, but to be curious. Have questions. Discovery is starting with a question and working the answer out on the page.” Curiosity about a subject is a quality that all good writers have. One debate in the literary world is if creative writing is something that can be taught. Moore believes so. “There’s a lot about writing—including creative writing—that can and should be taught,” he said. “Students take math so they understand a little bit more about how mathematics works, and students take science classes to understand how science informs the world,” he said. “I think if you take a writing class, and you don’t end up being a writer, it still opens the mind and lets people see how a certain part of the world works and thinks…You can’t teach creativity, but you can encourage it.”

3. There’s no such thing as writer’s block

“Writer’s block is when you listen to the voices in your head that say you can’t do it,” Moore said. The solution? “Talk back to the voices. Say, ‘I hear you, but I’m going to ignore you and write this now.’”

That’s easier said than done. But in his book, Crafting the Personal Essay, Moore dedicates an entire chapter to the idea of writer’s block and how to push through it. You’ve got to “Expect the Negative Voices” and “Expect a Lousy First Draft” (literally the section headings of this chapter), and realize that “the true definition of writer’s block is when the writer gives up.” You’ve got to keep trying. Which brings us to our next writing tip:

4. Persistence

Moore has a busy life teaching, writing, traveling, and just living in general. In order to make time for his writing, he implements the “ass-in-chair” method; he gets up early in the morning, sits down, and makes himself write for two hours a day. It’s not easy, especially for college students, to make writing a part of our daily schedule. For some who juggle classes, work, and a social life, writing can get pushed to the background. Moore suggests that aspiring writers set goals for themselves. “Maybe watch 6 hours of football on the weekend instead of 10,” he joked. But he is right; schedule some time to sit down and focus on your writing. Make it a priority.

Another piece of advice Moore offered is to make a lot of mistakes. “Write a lot of failed poems or failed stories,” he said. “You learn the most from trial and error. It’s like trying to learn how to play tennis. You get out there and swat at the ball and make a total fool of yourself. If you do that for two or three days, you won’t become a wonderful tennis player, but you’ll start to get a little bit of control. Eventually you’ll hit something that goes straight over the net. If you practice long enough you may not become Serena Williams, but you’ll be able to play tennis, and as wonderful and mysterious as the art of literature is, writing is kind of the same.”

If you’re craving Moore, be sure to check out Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals, Moore’s newest book of and on essay writing, available now.

Written by Jennifer Rohrbach

Why English and Creative Writing Majors Should Acquaint Themselves with Percy Shelley

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Here’s the simple answer: Shelley wants to make you cool again.

Picture from poets.org

Picture from poets.org

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, among other profound and fantastic things, “A Defense of Poetry.” If you never read a single thing by Shelley after this, it would be your loss, but not the end of the world. Ignoring “A Defense of Poetry” as an English kid should make you question your identity.

Shelley believes that poets are like philosophers, and that they should hold power in society. “Poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance and architecture and statuary and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society.” Poets, according to Shelley, “essentially comprises and unites both” the legislators and prophets of the world. How do they do it? “In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful.”

Shelley said that people who read poetry “open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight.” When a poem is good, the reader feels like he or she has gained a token of wisdom, which in turn causes the reader to feel pleasure. (For other writing on the power of good poems, “The Limits of Indeterminacy: A Defense of Less Difficult Poems” by Charles Harper Webb is an excellent resource.) Granted, this is not the only way to read poetry; people read poetry for sound, for pleasure, etc. But when people gain something from the poem—when the kicker hits a reader at the end—that moment is so much more likely to be pleasurable for that reader. This is what makes poets so great: They can teach in the best way, for “Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure.”

Shelley goes on to say that “Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be ‘the expression of the imagination.’” Poetry, then, “is connate with the origin of man.” The use of the word connate here is essential; it means that poetry is innate. It also means that poetry has grown out of man, from pieces into a whole form. Shelley describes the ways in which early language played with poetry in sounds and words. Grammar came next in the building of language, followed by form. “Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the…distinctions of grammar are the words of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry.”

So according to Shelley, poets are the greatest teachers we have. They are the best resource to understanding life and love and everything right and wrong with the world. And unlike others of his time, Shelley is willing to open up his definition of poetry. “Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to [this] traditional form…The practice is indeed convenient and popular, and to be preferred…but every great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification.” Listen, creative writing majors of all genres: “The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error.” Is not a prose writer also expected to choose the best possible word to be used in the best possible place? Some may debate on this, however, ultimately the writers of prose will certainly argue that they’ve written the best piece they could. “The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition as a while being a poem.”

Shelley expands on this idea further by saying that “A single sentence may be considered as a whole though it be found in a series of unassimilated portions; a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought.” Some writing is so powerful that it may stand alone, though it is only a few words out of a larger text. In other instances, Ezra Pound’s “In A Station of The Metro” is a mere two lines, but the words stick. Haikus are seventeen syllables total—but we all classify that as poetry.

Why defend poetry? “A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.” Poets are commentators on our world. Listen to them, for they exist to guide us down the path of moral good. Listen to them; let them pump magic through the veins of our imagination. Listen to poets who lift “the veil from the hidden beauty of the world.” Let them make “familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” Listen to them as they play with sound and mind and soul.

Listen to us.

By Kelsey Styles

What’s on your October Reading List?!

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Happy October everyone! With the semester in full swing and the FUSE conference just 5 weeks away, things are getting pretty hectic for us at the Blue Route, and we’re sure you’re feeling the stress too! But fall is in the air and despite all the craziness, it’s important to take time out of the day to relax, enjoy some sort of seaonsally-inspired coffee drink, and read something not for a class. Whether it’s a fun blog, that YA novel your best friend has been bugging you to read for months, or a ridiculous high-fashion magazine (my personal favorite), use this fall to check out media you don’t always take the time to read. What’s your go-to fall read this season? Comment and let us know!

The Pursuit of Understanding Classic Reading from A Modern Perspective

My freshmen year of college introduced a new element of the publication of books that, I am certain, had I not pursued the furthering of my education, I never would have known. Reflecting now, as a junior, on my wealth of knowledge and inherent lack of it as well, I do know that I can never regress into not knowing what I have learned.

Textual scholarship is a layer of the publishing world that focuses on the origin of texts, usually manuscripts when considering the works of authors done in the 19th century and before, and preserving them as they were first originally published. (That is my favorable approach to textual scholarship but I will say some scholars approach texts with different means.) So imagine my excitement when having a conversation with a professor and he mentioned that Charles Dickens had published his novels in monthly installments! As a modern reader in the modern world there is hardly any piece of literature that is trickled out slowly to me, especially Dickens. I can pick up, say, David Copperfield and flip through every chapter until I’m satisfied. But Dickens wrote David Copperfield in a way that reflected how it was published.

So, in the pursuit of finding out what it is like for a modern audience to read the text of David Copperfield in a very slow, un-bingeful way, a small group has taken a step towards preserving its original structure. Each installment of David Copperfield, there being 19 of them, is distributed monthly with all engravings provided to recreate the response Dickens was going for originally. Each piece of this installment has significance that is lost to many readers when trudging through Copperfield in its complete form. But that’s where the purpose of pursuing the preservation of this novel begins to gain momentum.

Here’s to hoping that a modern audience learns more about their modernity when reading something in a very classic, out-of-date, bizarre way. Here’s to hoping the readers engage with and understand Dickens on a deeper level, like his original readership did. Here’s to preserving, and here’s to textual scholarship.

By Kimberlee Roberts