What readers are saying
“Wonderful scholarship." —Rachel A
“Full of clear, accurate points—in prose with verve!” —Scott Crider, Professor of English, University of Dallas
“You show why it is important--to the degree that it is possible--to look at the plays with fresh eyes.” —Dennis Britton, Professor of English, University of British Columbia
“Mean-spirited, sneer[ing].” —Sir Stanley Wells (scolding me for “The "Love-feat" at the center of Love's Labor's Lost”)
About
I’m John McGee, a Shakespeare scholar with essays in leading academic journals, including Shakespeare, Shakespeare Survey and English Studies, as well as the media, including The Epoch Times.
Here on Substack, I’m writing short, accessible essays for the general reader.
No deep knowledge of his work required! Just the ability to follow an evidence-based argument. (As you’ll soon find, I’m obsessively empirical in my approach.)
Why might you want to follow my work?
I aim to show that we’ve completely misinterpreted the world’s most famous love-story, Romeo and Juliet, and that it’s actually a satire.
And not a partial satire. A full-fledged satire.
Where Romeo’s indiscriminately after sex. Where he bribes Juliet’s Nurse with gold to reach Juliet’s bedroom. Where his speech abounds—nay superabounds—in sexual innuendo. Where he’s a murderous brute responsible for or tied to the deaths of seven or even eight other persons—and that’s not even including the one he threatens to tear apart “joint by joint!” Where there are dozens of jokes about Juliet being, um, well, easy. Dozens? Dozens. Where Mercutio—a character who’s been universally dismissed and disparaged—is correct, demonstrably correct, in his every assertion. Where Romeo’s wrong about Juliet’s appearance and she’s actually plain or unattractive (her own father says so.) And where, ultimately, Romeo exits stage-right by means of a hell-mouth, a popular stage-prop and ubiquitous icon at the time.
You’ll think I’m kidding. I wouldn’t believe me either. Until you see the evidence.
Perhaps the most important fact about the story? It wasn’t Shakespeare’s to begin with!
It was an Italian tale. Or rather: an Italian melodrama. One that’d been told and retold across the continent of Europe for more than a century. And one that, in England itself, had already appeared on both the page and stage.
The idea that a serious English author would take this Southern European soap opera and turn it into a love-story meant to inspire and endure?
We’re talking historic alright. We’re talking one of the most senseless, most spurious ideas in history.
An idea destined for the pages of psychology textbooks. Under confirmation bias.
Or better: Inattentional blindness.
Why else?
I have several related projects. For example, my second project is on what was originally—and by far—Shakespeare’s most popular work.
Hamlet? King Lear? Othello?
No.
Venus & Adonis.
A 1200-line retelling of a tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Venus & Adonis was, as one critic puts it, originally “Shakespeare’s bestseller by a wide margin, far outstripping the modern blockbusters Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.”
Skeptical?
You’ve got reason to be. Not because the statement’s false. It’s not. It’s true. But because our idea of Shakespeare has changed so much in the centuries since.
An unrecognized companion piece to Romeo & Juliet, Venus & Adonis is itself an unrecognized satire and masterpiece. A satire twice over, in fact.
A satire of Venus, the goddess of love here raging the way she usually causes other to rage—with overpowering, irrepressible desire. And for a boy who wants nothing to do with her. A young boy. A very young boy. A boy too young to reciprocate her affection if he wanted to.
And a satire of the Italian poet, Petrarch, Venus giving voice to the Petrarchan cliche that the world will end if her beloved dies—and believing it literally.
The poem's long been considered entertaining. It's certainly that. But it's also brilliant and original and hilarious. The product of an incomparable poetic talent. Shakespeare at his wittiest, most innovative and irreverent.
Today, Venus & Adonis sits on the margins of the Shakespeare canon, neglected and ignored.
This project aims to bring it back to where it should be. Where it was originally.
At the very center.
What’s different about me or my approach?
Simple.
My engagement—my close, obsessive engagement—with the primary text.
And I mean obsessive. Something diagnosable. I’m sure I’ve put 10 000 hours into Romeo & Juliet alone. And I myself don’t understand how or why I could have devoted so much time to it.
Except that it was exhilarating. I couldn’t believe how the text kept opening up. How it responded to the closest possible scrutiny. How there was always something more going on that I hadn’t yet seen.
In richness, in depth, in compositional care, I just don’t know a work like it.
That. Plus this. How my study of Shakespeare began.
Not in a course on the “great” tragedies, like many or most. In a seminar on the poems.
Not with Shakespeare the playwright. With Shakespeare the poet. With Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
And these poems didn’t just give me a different introduction to Shakespeare.
They taught me something important, something momentous, something subversive, even. More subversive than I can say now.
They taught me how to read him.
“My life’s work—commentary”
I wrote that in the margins of a book some years ago.
(The book? A random one in relation to my project. Elie Wiesel’s Somewhere a Master).
Wrote it. Then forgot I’d written it.
Then rediscovered it years later. Deep into my doctoral work.
And thought wow. I knew. I just knew.
More reader remarks
“Who knew reading about Shakespeare could be so fun!” —Sue J
“I had no idea Romeo & Juliet was already in circulation as an Italian drama. That is crazy. Also Venus and Adonis—the things you point out. Its like holy sh*t… I am so fascinated to see more.” —Mary W
“OMG - I love this! Love it… I am inspired by your 'abuse' of grammar. The Romeo & Juliet is mind blowing and hooked me.” —Jill D
“This is really fun and playful and I love the pithy sentences… I’m not a Shakespeare person but I’m finding it really fascinating to read.” —Patrick M
“Wow, it's so refreshing and surprising to finally see a scholar with this point of view! I remember reading Romeo and Juliet in high school and being completely put-off by the idea that that these lovers were the supposed height of romance… Someone with so much knowledge of the text pointing out why I felt that way is just really fascinating to see, so thank you for your work!” —Olivia, A Ghost in the Post
“This is fantastic! I’m teaching Midsummer now, may I share with my students?” —Janna Rosenkranz, commenting on Is Hermia Black?
“This is so interesting! R&J has evolved to be the quintessential romance… It wasn't until I was an adult when I realized, this is actually not very romantic. But I thought I was an outlier. The fact that this the exact intention of Shakespeare; and that his audience would CRINGE, and was supposed to cringe, is actually a really validating and fantastic study.” —Maria W
