Romeo and Juliet Through the Ages

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.8 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2015

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." —ROMEO AND JULIET(5.3.320) Though the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet is a perennial favorite, the world around the play has changed in the four centuries since it was first performed. Shifting attitudes about taboo love and marriage, gender roles, and even guns and street violence inform the way we read or see the play today. Rebecca Sheir, host of our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series, talks with theater scholars and artists about how ROMEO AND JULIET has been cut and molded to fit certain cultural expectations in different time periods. Among those featured in this podcast: - Libby Appel is the former director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. - Joe Calarco is the adaptor and original director of Shakespeare’s R&J. - Linda Charnes is professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. - Michael Kahn is artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. - Peggy O'Brien is director of education at Folger Shakespeare Library. - Lindsey Row-Heyveld is assistant professor of English at Luther College in Iowa. - Anne Russell is an associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. ----------------- From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. Written and produced for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is associate producer. Edited by Esther Ferington and Gail Kern Paster. The music was composed and arranged by Lenny Williams. We had help gathering material for this podcast series from Esther French.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the
0:08.6	Folgers director. This podcast is called Never Was a Story of More Woe than this. It's about a drama
0:16.1	that has not changed in 400 years, the one that begins when Juliet Capulet kisses one particular boy at a party.
0:24.5	We sometimes think that youth and love don't change.
0:27.9	And that's what this podcast explores, how the world around Romeo and Juliet has shifted,
0:33.7	and the impact those shifts have had on the words Shakespeare first wrote down somewhere between 1591 and 1595.
0:42.3	Our narrator is Rebecca Shear.
0:44.9	For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
0:53.7	Whether or not that was true when Shakespeare wrote it,
0:56.5	for the past 400 years or so, few tales have been as enduring,
1:01.4	for more than three centuries on stage,
1:03.5	and then, once it was possible, over and over again on the screen.
1:08.4	It is my lady.
1:10.4	Oh, that she knew she were.
1:12.6	Oh, Romeo.
1:14.6	Wherefore out thou Romeo?
1:16.6	Deny thy father.
1:19.6	And refuse thy name.
1:21.6	What's Montague?
1:22.6	It is not hand,
1:24.6	nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man.
1:31.3	Romeo doth thy name. And for that name which is no part of thee, take all myself.
	...

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