To my pleasant surprise one day in class a fellow BYU student announced the opening of Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. I was so excited for the performance I immediately went and bought my sister and I tickets for opening night.
Romeo and Juliet was the first Shakespeare play I read my freshman year in high school and ever since then I have taken every opportunity to read more of his plays. Going into the play I knew BYU had changed the setting to the Guilded Age in America but that did not affect my anticipation for the performance. Even though I knew the setting had been changed it was still shocking to see the actors dressed and act is a more familiar way. Even though Shakespeare composed his works far before the Guilded Age and in another country the same principles and themes affect life. The themes in Romeo and Juliet are very applicable to Shakespeare’s time, the Guilded Age time period, and even now.
When I got home from the play I quickly jotted down some of the lines exchanged between Romeo and the apocrypha. The two men exchanged poison something that I hadn’t noticed before but was greatly emphasized in this rendition of the play due to the setting. Romeo paid the apocrypha gold and received literal poison to intake. Money and gold as explained in the play is a poison and can have just as much control over a person’s life as drinking poison. In Romeo and Juliet for instance the Montague’s and Capulet’s were completely torn apart because of their lust for money. Amazingly, as I read through the pamphlet given out at the play the exact quote that I had unknowingly written down was emphasized.
That Romeo’s money is “worse poison to men’s souls; doing more murders in this loathsome world that [the] poor compounds [the apothecary] sells”.Both money and poison were poisons that led to destruction. The Guilded Age embodies that destruction. This rendition of the play does a good job of pointing out that Romeo and Juliet is not solely about lovers’ suicides but about the role of money and society that they lived in. Their families were at war due to society, status, and wealth. Society had a huge impact on Romeo and Juliet’s lives which got me thinking about the society I live in today and how am I affected by it?
One influence that I am facing as I am approaching my 21st birthday is whether or not to go on a mission. As I turn 21 that becomes an option. The society in which I live I know a lot of girls my age that have chosen to go on a mission and if I do choose to go on a mission would be very supportive of me going on a mission. I honestly feel like most girls my age are going on mission and so I feel a lot of pressure from society to serve a mission but in reality I will not go on a mission simply because of societal pressures.
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