Parodies of Romeo & Juliet

Family Guy, Saturday Night Live and more!

Hi all,

Forgive the long absence. Been working away on a longer essay arguing that Shakespeare’s was the original parody of the Romeo & Juliet story, based on the changes he made to the original story, including making Juliet younger (13 rather than 16 or 18), Romeo more violent (responsible for not 2 but 7-8 eight deaths), and so on. I plan to submit it to an online magazine. Fingers crossed!

In researching, I discovered several parodies I didn’t previously know about. Here are my favorites, which really made me laugh. I hope you too will enjoy them.

Funniest first:

Our next love story is Romeo and Juliet, a 500 year-old-tale about horny preteens that society somehow decided is classy and not perverted even though two middle schoolers bang in it.

Ex-act-ly. (Using the above as an epigraph in the essay I’m working on).

As Seth MacFarlane’s Romeo dies, he says,

Children having sex. Two murders. Double suicide. Very irresponsible to teach this in schools.

Is he wrong?

This too is great, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Juliet and Don Rickles as Friar Laurence. From January, 1984. Favorite line:

Hey I’ve known Romeo since he was a kid. You can do a lot better, listen to me. You can do a lot better. This guy’s a stiff, I’m telling you.

Then there’s Julie Nolke, a talented, independent comedian. In this parody, another girl counsels Juliet out of killing herself, saying she wasn’t exactly Romeo’s first. “Were you sleeping with him?” Juliet asks the girl. “O come on, honey, everyone and their mom was sleeping with him.”

Finally, at the end of Hulu’s Rosaline, which gets several things right (and which I may write about separately), Romeo and Juliet, having faked their deaths, set out excitedly on their honeymoon—only to discover they have, well, an enjoyment of eating and only that in common. “Do you like sports?” asks Romeo. “Um, not really,” answers Juliet.

—Okay. Food?

—What?

—Do you like food?

—Do I like food?

—Like, what's your favorite food? What would your favorite food be?

—I like... I like pizza.

(The following clip unfortunately includes only the first part of this exchange, which continues in the credits).

I’ll share the new essay when I can. For now, here’s an earlier piece where I argue we’ve gotten Shakespeare’s play wrong and it’s actually a satire:

Romeo & Juliet—A Satire?

More to come soon! Thanks for your continued support. Please don’t hesitate to share. Likes and comments most welcome!

John

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