These persons overshoot themselves and other folks deceive,
Not able of the author’s mind the meaning to conceive
—Arthur Golding, Preface to the Reader, Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1567)
My study of Shakespeare began in 2007, when I took a graduate seminar on Shakespeare’s poetry at the University of Dallas. A school I discovered and then drove more than halfway across the continent to attend.
Motivated equally by my belief in and excitement about the program, which I believe to be one of the best in North America. A curriculum still focused on primary texts. A graduate-level Great Books program. Have you even heard of such a thing?
And by my determination to escape “theory’s empire,” that is, the leftist indoctrination centers masquerading as English departments on campuses across North America.
Early on, I decided I would study Shakespeare’s works exhaustively on my own before looking at the secondary literature.
I would try to understand every word of every line of every scene of every act—and only then find out what others thought.
I did this with Romeo and Juliet. Obsessing over the play, I took hundreds of pages of notes on the characters, themes and so on.
I discovered a work unlike any I’d read before or have since (Shakespeare’s other works excepted). A work with sophisticated, pervasive wordplay, intricate thematic development, and profound irony. A supremely coherent work demanding intense scrutiny, hiding many secrets. A work composed with unbelievable care.
And then I turned to the scholarly literature. And was stunned.
By the romanticization, which is ubiquitous. As I’ll discuss later, there’s little if any meaningful difference between the critical conception of the play and the popular one.
But even more so by the groupthink. By the absence of evidence-based analysis, of argumentation, of dissent. By the casual disregard for the empirical reality of Shakespeare’s text. For the empirical method itself.
Today, having read as much criticism as anyone, I know of no more than a handful or two of skeptics. As one critic writes,
It has become standard in criticism and performance that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet represents an ideal and an endorsement of romantic love.
An “endorsement” of romantic love. And an “ideal” love at that. That’s the “standard” interpretation. It’s what most critics think.
And it’s preposterously at odds with the evidence in the text. A complete interpretive travesty.
Let the demythologizing begin.
Hi there! 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. That their sacrifice of love was beautiful and romantic when I personally found it so unromantic. 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!