Romeo and Juliet

Play with Annotation, introduction by Burton Raffel and easy by Harold Bloom.

This application brings to you William Shakespears’s famous play Romeo and Juliet with fully annotated, with an introduction, by Burton Raffel with an easy by Harold Bloom.

Written four centuries ago, in a fairly early form of Modern English, Romeo and Juliet is a gorgeously passionate, witty, and complex text. Many of the play’s social and historical underpinnings necessarily need, for the modern reader, the kinds of explanation offered in the Introduction. But what needs even more, and far more detailed, explanation are the play’s very words. Toward the end of act 1, scene 1, Romeo and his loyal friend, Benvolio (the name means, in Italian “well loved,” just as Romeo’s name, in Italian, means “pilgrim”), spar wittily about the nature of love:

Benvolio Alas that love, so gentle in his view,

Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.

Romeo Alas that love, whose view is muffled still,

Should without eyes see pathways to his will.

(lines 78–81)

For comprehension of these lines—completely typical of the play’s language—the modern reader needs help. In Benvolio’s two lines,

gentle = courteous, noble

in his view = in his [Cupid’s] appearance (“his” frequently means “its’”)

rough = disagreeable, harsh

in proof = how it turns out/is experienced.

And in Romeo’s two lines,

view is muffled still = whose sight is forever/always blinded

without eyes: Cupid is blind

his will = his pleasure, desire.

The modern reader or listener of course will better understand this brief exchange in context, as the drama unfolds. But without full explanation of words that have over the years shifted in meaning, neither the modern reader nor the modern listener is likely to be equipped for full comprehension. I believe annotations of this sort create the necessary bridges, from Shakespeare’s four-centuries-old English across to ours.