Romeo and Juliet

I'm sure you know that the study of some Shakespeare is compulsory in Chinese middle school.

It's normally Romeo and Juliet because that's kind of the least controversial one.

So I explained that and the response was, oh, yes, but that's just in the particular.

And I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but it didn't sound good.

This person is so like, you know, if it's too good to be true, then it's, you know, it's not true.

And I think that we're kind of fed this pop culture bullshit, you know, and rom-com bullshit, and Shakespeare, you know, Romeo and Juliet, whatever, about finding your other half.

And oftentimes, if you do find your other half, you're probably being manipulated.

So it's also that.

I was

wondering if there was maybe a Romeo and Juliet vibe here,

but it

sounds not Romeo and Juliet so much as Juliet and Mercutio.

This is more Agatha Christie.

This is less William Shakespeare.

Well, you're not wrong.

But actually, the archetype that we're going back to is Romeo and Juliet by Roman Shakespeare.

Listen to him.

By William Shakespeare.

But the it is a version of it's not a complete rip off, but it's a version of these two houses separated by, you know, dignity or whatever it is that, you know, the drama nerds who put on the plays of the musicals and the sports nerds, the jocks can never connect.

And

it also references Romeo and Juliet in the piece because they're putting on the spring musicale, Juliet and Romeo.

Oh, indeed.

So we'd end up getting into these four-hour-long conversations, and he was telling me his interpretation that I would go and I would know that he was referencing something.

He might have been referencing something from the Song of Solomon to – Romeo and Juliet to things that he was familiar with that it registered with him.

It hit him, but he didn't quite have the vocabulary.

But in his own way, he was absolutely he was really well informed, but also brilliant in his own different way, I guess.

I mean, just the good and the not good.

The other one is, I mean, I got to go because how can you not think of Romeo and Juliet and the Capulets and the Montagues? That's pretty big.

Right.

So I'm taking both them off.

All right, question number one.

Who wrote Romeo and Juliet?

Who the f***? What's his name? What the f***? The old man, the William Shakespeare person.

William Shakespeare is

A tragedy, which is what a lot of like earlier plays are where a character makes a grave mistake that just ends in some sort of downfall.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy.

Or any rebirth film is the last one where there's a character, kind of like any anti-hero really, where they're a bad person and they become a good person over time.

Think of the story of Red Dead Redemption with Arthur Morgan.