Dear reader,

I had a mini-me! Okay, my wife might have had something to do with it too: a healthy 7.8lb Canadian-Peruvian boy named Theodore Federico McGee.

My wife went into labor just after midnight on Jul 28, right at 40wks, and gave birth in the early morning of Jul 29 following an intense, unmedicated, doula and midwife-supported labor.

For us, this birth is a miracle. Why? Seven years ago, we were told we would be unable to have children. Now, seeing and holding our little boy—it’s beyond a blessing. While this isn’t the place to discuss our infertility journey, including the pivotal role of functional medicine, I may write about it separately, and if I publish something I’ll share a link here.

I’m now on a 12mo parental leave and working daily on my Romeo & Juliet book, which I aim to complete in the next number of months. In the meantime, I’ll post several excerpts and other essays.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

John

Well that didn’t go as expected!

Last month (September), I published a critique of the Jordan Peterson Academy lecture on Romeo & Juliet by Andrew Doyle in the online magazine New English Review.

In it, I discuss how Doyle “rhapsodizes” about Shakespeare’s lovers, calling their love not just “true” but “transcendent,” a term he repeats half a dozen times.

I shared the essay on X, tagging both the Academy and Doyle, yet not really expecting a response. But to my surprise, Doyle didn’t just respond. He wrote angry tweet after angry tweet.

At first, he accused me of misinterpreting him:

You appear to have misread everything I said. But don’t worry - it happens a lot.

I responded with a quote from his lecture:

“Shakespeare is dealing with transcendental love, the transcendental heights of love, and when you are in love, Shakespeare seems to say, nothing else matters.”

He answered,

Yes, the intensity of love can blind its subject to all other concerns. That’s precisely why it can be so dangerous.

Then, after Canadian columnist Barbara Kay retweeted my article, calling it a “fascinating and persuasive argument against the received wisdom that Romeo and Juliet is a great love story,” Doyle responded,

A remarkably literal-minded misreading of my words from this chap! He seems to believe I say things I don’t, in fact, say. Romeo is not the idealised form of love - he’s an infatuated adolescent who is drawn into an emotional state too intense for his understanding.

Again, I responded with a quote from his lecture:

“We have true, transcendental, celestial love, as depicted so beautifully in the relationship of R and J... The sexual act between Romeo and Juliet is not degrading. It’s elevating, it’s spiritual. Romeo’s journey is from adolescent lust to a higher form of love.”

He answered,

Well done. You can quote one sentence out of context and ignore the broader points. You’ve wildly misunderstood the lecture, and you’ve also misread Shakespeare. A double whammy! 👏

I responded with a link to my essay and saying,

Perfectly happy to let people decide for themselves whether I’ve misrepresented you and misread the text.

And that’s when the name-calling began.

First, he compared me to the “woke”:

You strike me very much like the woke, trying to impose one narrow interpretation where there are many.

In response, I took the transcript of his lecture and pasted it into both Grok and ChatGPT and asked, “Is it fair to say the presenter romanticizes the lovers?” Both answered affirmatively. “Yes,” said Grok,

it’s fair to say the presenter romanticizes the lovers in Romeo and Juliet. The presenter emphasizes the transcendental, almost divine nature of their love…

“Yes,” said Chat,

It’s very fair to say that the presenter romanticizes Romeo and Juliet in this transcript… The presenter’s emphasis is consistently on the sublime, poetic, transcendental qualities of Romeo and Juliet’s love…

Despite this, Doyle persisted in saying I’d misrepresented him—and proceeded to call me an “ideologue, not a critic”:

Okay, since you are content to write factually inaccurate information in order to make your point, you can’t be taken seriously. You’re an ideologue, not a critic.

At this point, Barbara Kay chimed in, saying she was “disappointed” in his “mean-spiritedness” and calling for “civility.” In response, Doyle criticized her too, saying he “expected better” of her.

The next day, I asked Peterson Academy if they found this behavior “becoming” of one of their professors:

Dear @petersonacademy and @jordanbpeterson. I wonder if you consider this conduct becoming of one of your lecturers. I publish a critique of his talk. In response, he calls me an “ideologue, not a critic,” implies I’m a liar (”You have been caught out lying”) and compares me to the “woke” (”You strike me very much like the woke”). CC @MikhailaFuller, @jordan_m_fuller.

Doyle responded by calling my tweet “pathetic” and telling me to “grow up”:

How pathetic. If don’t want to be criticised, try the following: Don’t attempt to intuit the private thoughts of others and then present your intuitions as fact. Don’t refuse to retract factual inaccuracies in your work once they have been pointed out. Don’t use AI algorithms to support your misinterpretations of someone else’s analysis. In short: grow up.

But then, the next day, poof! Everything was gone. Doyle had deleted all his tweets—and blocked me.

Did he have a change of heart? Or did Peterson Academy pressure him to remove the posts?

Here again is the essay, which apart from critiquing the lecture, presents an overview of my contention that Shakespeare is satirizing the young Italian lovers:

If you read it, I’d love to hear what you think!

Highlights

• Shakespeare wasn’t telling but retelling the Romeo & Juliet story

• His changes to the original story all suggest he’s satirizing the lovers

• The opening scenes are filled with jokes about Juliet’s indiscriminateness

First published in the September 2025 edition of New English Review. 1900w; 9m.

When Shakespeare’s contemporary and kindred spirit Robert Burton (1577-1640) read Romeo & Juliet, he didn’t call it a story of love. In fact, he didn’t romanticize it one bit. Instead, he called it a tale of “amor insanus” and grouped it together with many other stories of love-engendered insanity, including Pyramus & Thisbe, Dido & Aeneas and Anthony & Cleopatra.

And it’s not hard to see why, given some of the basic facts of the story, including that Romeo is tied to seven or eight deaths in four days; that Juliet, at thirteen years old, is a literal child (the Chorus calls her “tender Juliet”); that the play’s own built-in commenters—the Chorus, Friar Laurence and Mercutio—all say Romeo is just after sex; that the culminating event takes place in a ghastly subterranean “vault” filled with bodily remains, including the “bloody” corpses of Romeo’s victims, Tybalt and Paris; and that the story wasn’t Shakespeare’s to begin with but a century-old Italian soap opera.

These are some of the text-based reasons to doubt the romantic view—some of the dozens, no exaggeration. But in Andrew Doyle’s lecture on the play in his course The Shakespearean Tragedies for Jordan Peterson’s online university, Peterson Academy, you don’t learn any of this. Instead, you learn what pop culture taught you: Romeo & Juliet is the ultimate love story.

Many critics romanticize the lovers. Doyle rhapsodizes them. In his view, their love isn’t just “true” but “transcendent,” a term he repeats half a dozen times. There is how Mercutio sees love—that it’s all about sex. “Then,” says Doyle, “we have true, transcendental, celestial love, as depicted so beautifully in the relationship of Romeo and Juliet.” “The love is not transactional; it is not conditional,” he says, “it is rather a glimpse of the numinous, a transcendental experience.” “Shakespeare is dealing with transcendental love, the transcendental heights of love,” he goes on to say, “and when you are in love, Shakespeare seems to say, nothing else matters.”

As evidence, Doyle quotes Juliet’s words to Romeo at her window. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep,” she tells the boy who shows up uninvited outside her bedroom window, “The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” Doyle comments,

There’s a reason that is so famous. Could you change a single syllable in that and improve it? It’s not possible. It is a kind of perfect articulation. It can’t be paraphrased. If it is paraphrased, it becomes denuded of its power.

Doyle reads Juliet’s lines aloud not once but twice. For him, they evidently say everything. Indeed, in calling their love “celestial” and “transcendent,” it’s apparent Doyle is paraphrasing and re-paraphrasing Juliet’s lines, believing they constitute the quintessence of Shakespeare’s message about this innocent if doomed teenage love.

But the problems with this view are many. To start with, Juliet’s statement doesn’t convey what Doyle thinks it conveys. In Shakespeare’s time, bounty meant “liberality.” Thus, in calling her bounty “boundless,” Juliet says, in effect, I recognize no behavioral constraints, no norms of deportment but will do whatever I please. And that’s exactly what happens, the thirteen-year-old proceeding to wed and bed a boy within twenty-four hours of meeting him, radically flouting Elizabethan marital norms, like involving family and friends in your choice of a spouse and marrying in your twenties, not your tweens.

In context, Juliet calling her love “deep” is ironic many times over. It isn’t only that she’s just met Romeo. Isn’t only that she’s just been “dwelling on [his] form,” including the “part” that defines him as a “man.” Isn’t only that she’s so obviously a victim of seduction, Romeo touching and kissing her within seconds of meeting her—eyebrow-raising conduct even in the modern world let alone the early modern one. Isn’t only that her desire for him is, again and again, overtly, even eye-poppingly sexual (see “Hood my unmanned blood with thy black mantle,” etc.).

It’s that in succumbing so swiftly to Romeo’s advances, Juliet fulfills earlier foreshadowing she’ll hop unhesitatingly into bed with the first boy who propositions her! Indeed, while no one ever talks about them, the play’s opening scenes are replete with jokes about Juliet’s, um, well, easiness. The jokes start the first time she’s mentioned. Calling for Juliet, the Nurse cries, “What, lamb! What, ladybird! God forbid.” The Nurse adds “God forbid” because “ladybird” is slang for a wanton.

Twenty lines later, in an anecdote about Juliet as an infant, the Nurse tells how she fell and hit her brow, producing a phallic protuberance on her forehead. “Yea,” asks the Nurse’s husband, “dost thou fall upon thy face? / Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit.” Laughing heartily, he repeats, “Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age.” With this, he anticipates the action (no pun intended) that follows, where Romeo propositions Juliet one night and she welcomes him to her bed the next. But perhaps the funniest and most telling line is the Nurse’s “To see now how a jest shall come about!” According to the foreshadowing, Romeo’s same-night—excuse me, next-night—bedding of Juliet doesn’t represent the advent of true love. It represents a bawdy joke brought to life, a punchline lived out in reality.

Later, near the end of the Capulet party, the Nurse whispers in Romeo’s ear, “I tell you, he that can lay hold of her / Shall have the chinks.” That is, this girl, she’ll give you everything you want and then some sexually. Accost her, grab her and kiss her, jump her parents’ wall, show up this same night outside her bedroom window, ask her outright to “satisfy” you, be as bold or brazen as you like—and she’ll give up the goods.

As for Romeo, Doyle claims he “journeys from adolescent lust to a higher form of love.” But this too appears deeply at odds with the text. For example, when the Chorus—the most dispassionate voice in the play—comments on the lovers’ first meeting, it neither calls Romeo changed nor differentiates his second love (Juliet) from his first (Rosaline). Just the opposite! The Chorus calls Romeo shallow and irrational (“bewitched by the charm of looks”), emphatically equates his two loves, and in a series of bawdy puns, including one on “groaning and dying” and another on “tempering extremities,” suggests Romeo was and is seeking his own sensual gratification, and that alone.

Like other critics, Doyle seems to assume Romeo is peerless, his speech and conduct without precedent or parallel in the Shakespeare canon. In fact, in the Bard’s contemporary poems and plays—including Venus & Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Love’s Labor’s Lost—Romeo has peers aplenty, and these peers say everything about him. They include a rapist (Tarquin), a narcissist (Venus), a sophist (Berowne), a fantasist (Armado), a madman (Lysander) and an ass (Bottom as Pyramus). The similarities are many. They’re precise. They’re illuminating—like nothing else. And in Doyle’s talk, they go unmentioned.

For example, when Romeo dumps Rosaline suddenly for Juliet, then justifies his change of heart by calling the second a dove, the first a crow—“So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, / As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows”—he is the exact parallel of Lysander, a young man who, upon dumping Hermia for Helena, employs the very same black-and-white bird analogy (“Not Hermia but Helena I love, / Who will not change a raven for a dove?”). Similarly, in embarking upon a certain-to-be-fatal sea-voyage with blind Cupid at the helm, Romeo is the parallel of Tarquin, as I discuss in my 2014 article, “Piloted by Desire: The Nautical Theme in Romeo and Juliet.” These and other parallels between Romeo and the most dubious “lovers” in Shakespeare’s canon suggest he was up to something not sentimental but satirical.

In idealizing the lovers, the Peterson lecturer is far from alone, and thus to conclude this critique I want to zoom out from his talk to discuss the play’s critical status quo, including its near-universal romanticization by scholars and the single biggest problem with that view. Surprising as it may sound, most scholars understand the play romantically, including the biggest names in the field. For example, Sir Stanley Wells calls the play “perhaps the greatest of all expressions of romantic love.” Similarly, Stephen Greenblatt calls it “one of the greatest love stories in Western literature.” Thus, in dealing with the romantic conception, we’re dealing with an orthodoxy, one of the most intractable and longstanding in the field of English literature.

What’s the foremost reason to doubt this view? Shakespeare’s changes to the original story. For it wasn’t his to start with. It was an Italian tale, or rather, an Italian melodrama, one that had been told and retold across the continent of Europe for more than a century, and one that, in 16th century England itself, had already appeared on both the page and stage. It wasn’t new, wasn’t original, wouldn’t have left his audience in awe. Shakespeare wasn’t telling but retelling the Romeo & Juliet story, and that may be the single most important fact about it.

Specifically, Shakespeare adapted Arthur Brooke’s Romeus & Juliet (1562), a 3000-line poem published about thirty years before his own. While this isn’t the place for an in-depth discussion of the Bard’s departures and innovations, they include lowering Juliet’s age from eighteen or sixteen to thirteen, or ten plus years younger than the typical Elizabethan bride; making Romeo far more violent, including stabbing and killing Count Paris just 50 lines before he kills himself and threatening to “tear” apart his servant Balthazar “joint by joint”; having Romeo bribe a “bawd” or procuress to arrange his one and only night with Juliet; having the lovers liken their suicides to self-inflicted shipwrecks; having the surrounding characters (the Friar, Chorus and Mercutio) all deride rather than endorse their love; and having the lovers “remain” forever in the hellish, corpse-filled Capulet tomb rather than ascend to and reunite in heaven.

To judge by these and other changes, Shakespeare didn’t seek to romanticize (or re-romanticize) the young Italian couple. Rather, he retold their tale precisely in order to satirize it—an argument I made in my PhD thesis, Anti-Petrarchism in Early Shakespeare, and one I’m in the process of remaking for a nonspecialist audience on my Substack, Shakespeare Reconstructed.

There’s what Shakespeare changes in terms of plot. Then there’s what he changes in terms of import, in terms of the very meaning of the story—and here too there is a great deal that is new. Indeed, Shakespeare weaves in at least three major, never-before-seen ideas, including Mercutio’s intimation that Romeo is a walking, talking parody of the Petrarchan lover; the Friar’s intimation that Romeo’s “death” signifies the triumph of “rude will” over “grace” on the battlefield of his heart; and the Chorus’ intimation that the lovers “continue” rather than transcend the “rage” of their parents, the violence they inflict on themselves constituting a “continuance of their parents’ rage”—a play-on-words that, when I first saw it, gave me the chills.

According to the last of these, the story isn’t a tale about a circumstance-transcending love, as we’ve supposed now for centuries. It’s a generational saga about the parent-to-child passing-down of violent passions. And doesn’t that just make a million times more sense?

Argument

For centuries, critics have dismissed the Chorus’ speech at the start of Act 2, calling it pointless. In fact, it’s one of the most important and consequential speeches in the play. Following immediately after Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting, and commenting directly on that meeting, the Chorus in no way romanticizes the lovers. Rather, it calls Romeo an ill-natured, sex-driven boy, Juliet the girl who takes his “bait.”

Personal note: as a PhD student, I wrote a 40p paper on this speech and submitted it to the U Chicago journal, Modern Philology. One reviewer called it a “provocative essay on a meaningful and under-studied topic.” The essay underwent two rounds of review—a sign they were serious about publishing it. But ultimately the editor rejected it. Why? Did my contention truly lack merit? Or was the problem my contention itself? Here, you can decide for yourself.

Imagine there was a character in Romeo & Juliet whose only role was to comment on—not participate in—the action.

Imagine he spoke immediately after the lovers’ first meeting.

Imagine he commented directly on that meeting.

Imagine he said the opposite of what we’ve said for centuries. Not that their love is deep and true and destined to end the feud. That Romeo is an ill-natured, sex-driven boy, Juliet the girl who takes his “bait” (the Chorus’ actual word!).

Imagine he said Romeo was using Juliet to gratify himself carnally.

Now imagine generations of critics had simply ignored the speech, pretending it didn’t exist at all.

Unlikely as it may sound, this is precisely the case with the Chorus’ speech at the start of Act 2, the most important yet neglected discourse in the entire play.

While everyone knows how Romeo and Juliet are characterized by the first Chorus—as a pair of “star-crossed lovers”—no one knows how they’re characterized by the second, where Romeo “hooks” Juliet with his “sweet bait.”

Why not? Because, for centuries now, critics have dismissed the speech as unimportant.

Most famously, Samuel Johnson said its “use” is “not easily discovered” and that it “adds” nothing to our understanding of the action.

Since Johnson, many other critics have said the same. According to one, the speech is a “useless appendage.” According to another, it’s of “no dramatic use.” And another: it “provides no needed information.”

Still others betray they’ve given the speech zero thought or attention. For example, Harold Bloom says this speech “reassures the audience that Romeo’s old love is gone and that he and Juliet now love each other.” Similarly, Stanley Wells says this Chorus “reminds us that Romeo’s love for Rosaline is gone.”

These statements aren’t just mistaken, and demonstrably so. They betray a lackadaisicalness or outright illiteracy at the highest echelons of academia.

The Chorus “reassures” us about the love of the title couple? Actually, in bombshell after bombshell, it says everything we’ve said about the play for 400 years is fundamentally amiss, a comprehensive, start-to-finish misinterpretation.

Here, after hundreds of years of denial and obfuscation, is what Shakespeare’s own built-in commenter says about the action and its significance. Prepare to have your mind blown, and more than once.

1. Romeo’s second love is no truer than his first

“Now old Desire doth in his deathbed lie,” begins the Chorus, “And young Affection gapes to be his heir.” Here, the first line evidently refers to Romeo’s love for Rosaline, the second his love for Juliet. Yet the Chorus in no way contrasts the two. One may be “young,” the other “old,” but Desire and Affection are synonyms, not antitheses, conveying sameness, even interchangeability. As such, far from differentiating Romeo’s two loves, the Chorus equates them. And as we’ll see below, this equation is but the first of many.

Nor are Desire and Affection flattering terms—not remotely. Rather, they’re the terms Shakespeare uses to characterize the most dubious “lovers” in his corpus, including the Spanish braggart Armado and the lustful lord Tarquin. After falling for Jaquenetta, an indiscriminate dairymaid first seen sleeping with the clown Costard, Armado states,

If drawing my sword against the humor of affection would deliver me from the reprobate thought of it, I would take Desire prisoner and ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devised curtsy.

Armado proceeds to bribe a subordinate to arrange an encounter with the country-girl, fornicating with and impregnating her.

The same powers propel Tarquin toward Lucrece’s bedchamber. “Desire my pilot is, beauty my prize,” exclaims the lustful lord, “Affection is my captain, and he leadeth.” Driven by these forces, the Roman lord ravishes and destroys a woman with an otherworldly purity.

Therefore, Shakespeare isn’t just equating Romeo’s two loves. He’s identifying Romeo with one man who is ludicrous and another who is evil.

2. Romeo’s speech is absurdly hyperbolic

The Chorus doesn’t endorse Romeo’s love for Juliet. Nor does it endorse his poetic proclamations about her. Instead, it mocks them.

In particular, when the Chorus says, “That fair for which love groaned for and would die / ... is now not fair” (my italics), it comments sarcastically on how Romeo went from calling Rosaline the most beautiful girl ever to calling her plain or unattractive.

Specifically, it comments on how Romeo went from calling Rosaline the most attractive female in history—“The all-seeing sun / Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun,” he’d told Benvolio—to calling her ill-favored, but one more “crow” trooping with the “snowy dove” Juliet, as he proclaims at Capulet’s party.

That afternoon, Rosaline was so extraordinarily beautiful she was worth dying for. Since then, she seems to have fallen down the ugly tree, hitting every branch.

In the secondary literature, Romeo’s poetic proclamations are often understood as conveying the depth and sincerity of his feeling. But that’s not how the Chorus sees it. Rather, it suggests Romeo’s wild claims about the opposite sex are patently ridiculous.

3. Romeo is shallow and irrational

The Chorus’ third pair of lines—“Now Romeo is beloved, and loves again, / Alike bewitched by the charm of looks”—is ordinarily understood as referring to the second relationship alone, that is, to the mutual bewitchment of Romeo and Juliet.

In itself, this suggests their love is both irrational and shallow, founded on appearances, or founded on acts of looking, “looks” clearly having both of these senses. Based on this one pronouncement alone, it’s unclear how any empirically-minded reader can come away calling this a story of “love.”

But the implication appears more cynical still.

The subject of these lines is Romeo. It’s Romeo whose change of heart the first four lines comment on. It’s Romeo now who “loves again.” And it’s this phrase that immediately precedes the reference to a bewitchment that is “alike.”

Therefore, the primary meaning is that Romeo is bewitched with Juliet in the same way as he was bewitched with Rosaline!

Like the initial two pairs of lines, the third insists Romeo’s second love is no truer than his first. Again the Chorus isn’t just equating his two loves but emphatically equating them.

Here and throughout, it’s impossible to overstate the negativity of the language. If Romeo is “charmed,” he is comparable to the mad lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck’s love-juice is just this, a “charm,” and causes those under its influence to love most inconstantly and most indiscriminately. For instance, it’s Titania’s “charmed eye” that compels her to dote on an ass-headed “monster.”

Therefore, in calling Romeo “bewitched by the charm of looks,” the Chorus says his love for Juliet is about as true as Titania’s for Bottom.

But the parallels get crazier still!

For Romeo isn’t the only “lover” in Shakespeare who is “bewitched” with a “charm.” Another is the raper of Lucrece, Tarquin. Here, as the lust-driven prince premeditates on the consequences of his deed, he is described—how?

You won’t believe it.

As “bewitch’d with lust’s foul charm.”

Parallels this precise are relatively uncommon in the Shakespeare canon. As such, it should appear in all critical editions of Romeo & Juliet without exception.

Instead, how many editors mention it? Care to guess?

Bingo! Not one.

See now why the Chicago editor rejected my essay?

A grad student subverting centuries of criticism? Showing we’ve basically misread the play? Embarrassing major scholars (including me)?

Yeah, not happening.

4. Romeo is a menace

Next up is the Chorus’ most overtly sinister pronouncement, a statement that doesn’t just undermine a romantic take but flatly contradicts it. “But to his foe supposed [Romeo] must complain,” says the Chorus,

And she steal Love’s sweet bait from fearful hooks.

This image isn’t just unromantic but about the most unromantic conceivable. Who or what is doing the baiting and hooking? According to some editors, “fearful hooks” refers to the feud. But the feud in no way qualifies as something that looks “sweet” but is in fact “fearful” in nature, there being nothing superficially attractive about it.

Rather, “fearful hooks” clearly refers to Romeo, and for a host of reasons.

First, Romeo is the explicit subject of these lines. In the immediately preceding line, “he” and “his” obviously refer to Romeo. Indeed, throughout its 14 lines, the Chorus’ most striking feature is its focus on Romeo—a point I’ll return to in Part 2.

Second, in Shakespeare’s source, Brooke uses the exact same imagery in connection with Romeus. In particular, as Juliet wonders whether Romeus means merely to use and discard her, she asks herself, “What if with friendly speech the traitor lie in wait, / As oft the poisoned hook is hid, wrapt in the pleasant bait?”

Third, the imagery constitutes one more distinct parallel between Romeo and Tarquin. Here, as Lucrece welcomes the evil-minded prince, she is described as touching “no unknown baits, nor fear[ing] no hooks,” that is, completely failing to apprehend the fact that Tarquin means to ensnare and devour her—in another parallel that should but doesn’t appear in all critical editions of the play.

Fourth, the idea of a gap between appearance and reality suits Romeo very well indeed, a young man who is repeatedly characterized as attractive on the outside but something else on the inside. Indeed, after he kills her cousin Tybalt, Juliet herself condemns him as a “fiend angelical,” “dove-feathered raven” and “beautiful tyrant,” not to mention “vile” on the inside but “sweet” on the outside—using the exact same adjective as the Chorus.

Put simply, Romeo’s what? Not a lover. A menace. The kind of guy you attach yourself to at your peril. Who’ll ensure you meet a quick, execrable demise.

And Juliet? The girl who takes the bait.

5. Romeo would have killed himself for Rosaline!

But the Chorus goes still further in equating Romeo’s two loves. Specifically, when the Chorus calls Rosaline “that fair for which Love groaned for and would die,” it asserts the truly unthinkable: that Romeo would have committed suicide for his first love!

That statement shouldn’t give you pause.

It should make your jaw drop.

And drop.

And drop again.

Romeo Montague, Juliet’s Romeo, the boy who ends the play by killing himself for girl #2… would have killed himself for girl #1?!

How can this possibly be explained? Does the author grasp what his Chorus is saying? How consequential this idea is? How it undermines if not precludes a romantic take on the action? How it takes the defining event of the story and makes a mockery of it?

Some of the Chorus’ ideas are difficult indeed to discern. For instance, in Part 2 I’ll contend the Chorus says Romeo embodies the power of Cupid—a point that’s far from obvious. By contrast, there’s nothing ambiguous about “groaned for and would die.”

Again the question is: Does or does not Shakespeare know what he’s doing?

And what’s astounding is how few readers have been humble enough to answer affirmatively, surrendering the ideas with which they entered the play for those actually found in it.

In effect, the Bard himself here stands up and tells the romanticizers of this sensationalistic Italian tale that they’re wrong, and not by a little.

And they respond how?

With a tilt of the head.

And a quick flip of the page.

No, the neglect of this speech is no accident.

Conclusion

Unambiguously unfavorable as they are, the Chorus’ pronouncements don’t just lend credence to a skeptical take on the play. They suggest a skeptical take ought to be the default one, and abandoned only in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary—evidence that never has been and never will be found.

As you may recall, the first Chorus asks us to listen closely to what follows. For twelve lines, it previews the action. It then states,

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Pay attention! Pay very close attention, urges the most authorial voice in the play.

It’s exactly what we haven’t done with the second speech of the Chorus.

Nay, with the play as a whole.

[Part 2 coming soon!]

Dear reader,

Bit of exciting personal news: my younger brother Patrick, the San Francisco correspondent for The Financial Times, has just published his first book: Apple in China. It has already received some remarkable accolades, including Robert Kaplan calling it a “once-in-a-generation read.”

Patrick argues that “China wouldn’t be China” without Apple’s quarter-century investment in capital and technological know-how. He says there’s no corporate precedent for investment on this scale and thus compares it to nation-building efforts like the Marshall Plan.

If interested, check out his interview with Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press:

Other upcoming appearances include The Source with Kaitlan Collins, The Andrew Klavan Show and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Couldn’t resist sharing this with you!

Thank you,

John

Argument

At the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play published 425 years ago as of 2025, Demetrius is NOT left drugged. Rather, Oberon restores him with a supernaturally sound sleep. Therefore, Dream is a complete, unqualified comedy. [1900 words; 9 min]

Scholars call A Midsummer Night’s Dream a qualified comedy, believing one of the couples—Demetrius and Helena—don’t live happily ever after.

They’re dead wrong.

In fact, it’s the quintessential comedy, culminating in the marriages of Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena, fairy blessings to ensure both the couples’ faithfulness and fruitfulness, and festivities that are to last an entire “fortnight.”

Here’s the 425-year-old problem—and its solution. A solution that may surprise you with its simplicity.

The problem

Near the end of the play, Oberon restores one of the young Athenian males, Lysander, but seems to forget about the other, Demetrius. “Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye,” he instructs Puck. Puck proceeds to do exactly that, applying the “remedy” to Lysander’s sight. As for Demetrius, there is no mention of him receiving the same antidote. Therefore, scholars conclude he remains indefinitely drugged.

“For many critics and audiences, there is a residual unease about the fact that Demetrius does not receive an antidote,” says Peter Holland, editor of the current Oxford critical edition of the play. Supposing the Athenian man remains “under the influence of the charm,” Holland adds,

If the play moves from the world of Cupid to that of Diana, Demetrius appears to stay in the world of Cupid, still charmed by the ‘Flower of this purple dye, / Hit with Cupid’s archery’.

Similarly, in her influential “A Modern Perspective: A Midsummer Night's Dream,” Catherine Belsey remarks, “The plot leads up to the marriages of the lovers, but it does not quite confirm the distinction we might expect it to between true love on the one hand and arbitrary passion induced by magic on the other.” Believing “Demetrius still has the love-juice on his eyes,” Belsey comments,

If marriage is a serious social institution, it seems to rest on a remarkably precarious base.

Precarious indeed.

For being “charmed” doesn’t just mean being captivated or spellbound in some conventional sense.

As the night of enchantment makes abundantly clear, it means loving at once violently, arbitrarily and involuntarily.

Means following every fleeting carnal impulse.

Means sexual subjugation—as opposed to sexual sovereignty.

Means loving “not with they eyes but the mind,” that is, loving an abstract idea as opposed to an actual person.

More specifically, it means abject enslavement to the blind god of blind lovers, Cupid.

According to definitions found inside the play itself, Cupid is the god of infidelity, his subjects serially unfaithful. As Helena says, “As waggish boys themselves forswear, / So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.”

More generally, he’s the god of violent, transient sexual passion, instigating desire that’s utterly incompatible with mutual, lasting love—an obvious point but one many critics have somehow failed to apprehend. Early on, Oberon tells Puck about “Cupid’s flower” and its efficacy. The juice extracted from this plant, says Oberon,

Will make or man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

To dote means “to be silly, deranged, or out of one’s wits” (Oxford English Dictionary 1). Thus, to madly dote is to go altogether crazy. Of course, the plot itself illustrates this, and to hilarious effect. For instance, the narcotic compels Titania to fall for Bottom, a “monster” who is part man and part donkey.

Therefore, if the prevailing view is right—if, as Holland says, Demetrius “stays in the world of Cupid”—then he remains completely irrational, his “love” unstable in the extreme. With Demetrius and Helena’s marriage doomed from the start, Dream is no comedy at all. At best, it’s a “problem comedy,” a category of plays with unresolved endings.

That “fortnight” of festivities? Apparently it’s meant ironically, even sardonically.

The resolution

But is that right? Does Demetrius remain charmed? Not only is the answer No. It’s an emphatic, demonstrable No half a dozen times over.

Nor does Oberon employ one antidote alone. He employs two.

The main problem with the prevailing view? There’s nothing in the text to support it. That is, there’s zero evidence of Demetrius’ persistent enchantment. The opposite: there’s every indication he’s changed. Three symptoms in particular are noticeably absent.

First, his speech is no longer absurdly hyperbolic. The night before, Demetrius had made a number of preposterous assertions about Helena’s beauty, calling her “perfect” and “divine,” and declaring that compared to her bright eyes, “crystal is muddy.” By contrast, the next morning, his speech is substantially plainer. “And all the faith, the virtue of my heart, / The object and the pleasure of mine eye, / Is only Helena,” he says, professing his love for and commitment to her.

Second, he’s no longer belligerent. At the end of Act 3, Demetrius repeatedly insults and threatens Lysander, calling him a “runaway” and “coward” and threatening to impale him at sunrise. As his energy fails, he tells Lysander, “Thou shalt buy this dear / If ever I thy face by daylight see.” Repeating the threat, he says, “By day’s approach look to be visited”—his final words before falling asleep.

If critics are right and Demetrius remains unchanged, one would expect him to wake up, see Lysander, and instantly make good on his threat, “visiting” his fellow with a violent attack. Instead, his animosity is simply gone—a fact which Theseus notices, comments on, and finds extraordinary. “I know you two are rival enemies,” Theseus tells the two men, before asking,

How comes this gentle concord in the world,

That hatred is so far from jealousy

To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?

Before there was “hatred” and “enmity.” Now there is “gentle[ness].” Before there was “jealousy.” Now there is “concord.” Before the two were “rivals.” Now they appear to be friends. It isn’t that Lysander is composed and Demetrius still combative. Rather, the friendliness appears to be common, the change in attitude shared. Clearly, the morning has brought with it a sharp break, and the change is seen not in one man but both.

Third, Demetrius is no longer lovesick. The night before, he had begged Helena for “remedy.” The next morning, he speaks of his new-found “health.” “But like a sickness did I loathe this food,” he says,

But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will forevermore be true to it.

Oberon’s antidote is called an “herb” and “bud” and “remedy.” Therefore, Demetrius’ reference to his “health” forms part of a larger pattern of references to healing and indicates that, along with the others, he too has been released from the detrimental effects of Puck’s floral extract. Gone is the hyperbole, the jealousy, the belligerence—and gone too is the lovesickness.

Nor is there any gap between Lysander and Demetrius in the final part. Were one man under the influence of Cupid, the other Diana, there could be little mistaking the disparity. In general, the difference is anything but small. The difference is between being “fancy-sick” and “fancy-free,” between possessing, or not possessing, reason, judgement and self-determination. In the case of Titania, the difference is between loving or loathing a bare-brained mechanical with the head of an ass.

But if Demetrius doesn’t receive the antidote “Diana’s bud,” how has he been transformed? Because Oberon uses multiple means in restoring the lovers and readying them for marriage. Most notably, he gives the lovers rest, singing them to sleep with a lullaby and then ensuring their slumber is extraordinarily serene and therefore salutary.

In Act 4, Scene 1, with the lovers before them on the ground, Oberon calls on Titania to

strike more dead

Than common sleep of all these five the sense.

Titania responds,

Music, ho—music such as charmeth sleep.

As Oberon’s words indicate, the sleep is no “common” sleep, but one that wholly deadens the senses, allowing for a supernaturally deep—and therefore supernaturally regenerative—level of stillness and repose.

Further, the music is such as “charmeth” sleep, a verb that suggests that the sleep constitutes a counter-charm to Puck’s love-charm, neutralizing the effect of the earlier spell. In other words, like “Diana’s bud,” the rest harbors a counteractive potency, undoing the lovers’ enchantment and nullifying the influence of Cupid.

Two stage directions draw attention to the importance of the sleep. At the end of 3.2, a direction reads, “They sleep all the act.” A hundred lines later, another direction reads, “Sleepers lie still.” Here, the term “still” conveys something about both the duration and quality of the sleep. Before, Demetrius and the others were extremely restless. Now, unmistakably, right there in front of us, for as many as 200 lines of text, they all lie peacefully.

Immediately after asking Titania to “rock the ground whereon these sleepers be,” Oberon speaks of the happy ending that will result. “Now thou and I are new in amity,” he tells his wife,

And will tomorrow midnight solemnly

Dance in Duke Theseus’ house, triumphantly,

And bless it to all fair prosperity.

There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be

Wedded with Theseus, all in jollity.

As these lines suggest, the happy ending results from the exceptionally sound sleep the lovers experience at the hands of the fairy king and queen. Perhaps the most notable detail here is the inclusion of Demetrius and Helena as a pair of “faithful” lovers. Clearly, Demetrius is no longer subject to the boy-god who is “perjured everywhere.”

Later, in his final speech in the play, after instructing his fairy-teams to bless the lovers, Oberon remarks,

So shall all the couples three

Ever true in loving be.

Of course, the “three” couples are Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena. As such, this constitutes an explicit remark on Demetrius’ new-found capacity for fidelity and thus his transformation. Earlier on, it was Oberon himself who drugged Demetrius (see 3.2.104). If he remained ill, Oberon would obviously know. Instead, not once in the final part does he give any hint of the Athenian man’s enduring intoxication.

Finally, sleeplessness is one of the effects of Cupid’s drug. As Puck charms Lysander, he enjoins,

When thou wak’st, let Love forbid

Sleep his seat on thy eyelid.

If sleeplessness is a symptom, sleep itself is a cure. Were it the case that Demetrius never went to sleep, it would be apparent his spell never wore off. What actually happens, of course, is that Demetrius goes to sleep and wakes up along with everyone else.

In Demetrius’ sleep, then, we have the cause of the transformation we see the next morning, his subjugation to Cupid ending when he experiences what Love forbids—a good night’s rest.

Therefore, Dream is a comedy, no qualification needed.

Wish to read more of my writing on A Midsummer Night's Dream? Check out Is Hermia Black? The dark lady that never was.

Argument

“Star-crossed”—one of the most iconic and oft-cited epithets in English—isn’t astrological but nautical in significance, conveying navigationally mixed up and thus doomed to shipwreck, which is precisely the lovers’ fate. In a major departure from his source, Arthur Brooke’s Romeus & Juliet (1562), Shakespeare locates the cause of the tragedy not somewhere out in the inscrutable zodiac but in the unskilled and incautious decision-making of the lovers themselves. [2800 words/13mins]

[Builds on my Piloted by Desire: The Nautical Theme in Romeo and Juliet (English Studies 2014)]

It’s the most iconic epithet in Shakespeare. But have we correctly understood its meaning?

“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,” reads Romeo and Juliet’s opening Prologue,

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.

Right now, everyone assumes Shakespeare is talking astrology: that the stars are Fate or Destiny, the lovers crossed by them in that their fate is predetermined, their decisions not their own, the course of their lives outside their own control.

Open any critical edition of the play, including the most recent and prestigious, and this is the one (and only) interpretation you’ll find.

According to the Oxford edition, star-crossed means “thwarted by a malign star.” The Cambridge: “Thwarted by the influence of a malignant star.” The Arden: “Thwarted by the influence of malign stars.”

Spiteful stars. Helpless adolescents.

And then there’s the Folger. “The prologue of Romeo and Juliet calls the title characters star-crossed lovers,” say the Folger editors,

and the stars do seem to conspire against these young lovers.

(What’s the Folger? The top Shakespeare research library in the world.)

The West’s greatest writer. In his best-known work. And that’s the message? The stars did it?

Romeo and Juliet make one reckless decision after another. Still, they’re not responsible. And the same goes for you, dear reader, reading the play for your eighth grade English class. Not your bad decisions but the spiteful lights in the nighttime sky determine your life’s trajectory. Forget character. Constellation is destiny.

Shakespeare the astrologist. That’s the prevailing view.

And it’s not just mistaken. It’s embarrassing. And gets the epithet exactly backward, or rather upside-down.

Think about it for a second… Is this star-crossed’s only possible significance?

What else might the stars signify? And how else might they relate to a person—or a person to them?

Say, for example, you’re a ship’s pilot traversing the treacherous sea. What then are the stars? And what then does it mean to have them crossed?

This question isn’t abstract or theoretical. It gets at a sense of star-crossed that, unlike the astrological one, is actually supported by the text and plot of the play.

The point isn’t predestination. It’s navigation. Not birth charts. Nautical charts. Not life-dictating astrology. Course-setting astronomy.

A seafaring epithet, star-crossed connotes seagoing and its perils. Connotes mistaken courses. Connotes journeying blind. Connotes a sea-voyage that’s ill-advised—and doomed.

Connotes rocks. Connotes shipwrecks.

And in this, the Prologue is looking ahead to something very specific and concrete. It’s looking ahead to Romeo and Juliet’s suicides.

Their shipwreck-like suicides.

It’s at once the most prominent motif in Romeo & Juliet—and most neglected. As we’ll see just below, Romeo likens himself throughout to a merchant-adventurer, precipitously setting “sail” in Act 1, just prior to the Capulet masque, and ultimately taking his wave-tossed vessel and driving it full-speed into the “rocks,” in an explicit shipwreck.

And yet you wouldn’t know it from the secondary literature, where this body of imagery remains almost entirely unexamined. As we’ll see, the nautical motif isn’t just important. It has the power to revolutionize our understanding of the action, locating the cause of the tragedy not somewhere out in the inscrutable zodiac but in the unskilled and incautious decision-making of the lovers themselves.

The motif begins with Romeo surrendering “steerage” of his “course” to Cupid, a deity whose despotism he complains of throughout Act 1:

He that hath the steerage of my course

Direct my sail. (1.4.119-20)

Gets developed at his lady’s window, where Romeo tells Juliet,

I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far

As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea,

I should adventure for such merchandise. (2.2.87-9)

Gets further developed as Romeo, anticipating his first night with Juliet, likens himself to one scaling a topgallant mast. In particular, Romeo tells the Nurse how his man will bring her

cords made like a tackled stair,

Which to the high topgallant of my joy

Must be my convoy in the secret night. (2.3.176–8).

A “tackled stair” is a cord-ladder used to climb a ship’s mast, “topgallant” the highest part of a ship, “convoy” a group of ships.

Finally, right before Juliet wakes up, Romeo takes his boat and knowingly, willfully smashes it to a thousand pieces.

It’s amazing how many scholars describe Romeo and Juliet’s deaths in either triumphant or transcendent terms. Amazing because the simple fact is that Romeo likens his life’s end to a ship run aground—and obliterated.

In his final words, an instant before he downs poison, Romeo cries,

Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!

Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on

The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark! (5.3.116–8)

A bark crashed ashore and smashed to bits. A bark driven into rocks called “dashing,” that is, pulverizing, devastating.

A self-sunk ship, destroyed beyond recognition.

A total, unsalvageable wreckage.

In today’s terms? A plane deliberately nosedived into the ground. A steep descent, a big fireball, and nothing left but a hole in the ground.

Romeo’s fate as described by—Romeo himself.

Which may make you wonder: what do scholars say about this all-important, death-defining imagery? And more particularly: How do so many maintain a romantic notion of the play in the face of destruction that’s so vivid and so total and so obviously voluntary as opposed to compelled? How has this imagery been explained?

And the answer: it hasn’t. Scholars don’t explain it. Don’t discuss it. They seem to pretend it isn’t there. They just. don’t. mention. it.

That’s my conclusion after scouring the secondary literature, where Romeo’s play-concluding shipwreck—the most important figurative event in the play—has received hardly more than a word of commentary.

Is it denial? Is it ignorance? Is it having a preconceived or long-held idea of the play and not wanting to question it?

Whatever the answer, and as incredible as it may sound, to read the critical literature as it exists today is to remain almost totally in the dark about the fact that Romeo, in the final scene of the final act, in the actual event of his self-murder, in the last words he utters, last breath he takes, likens his suicide to a self-inflicted shipwreck.

Presumably because to acknowledge it is to admit the obvious.

It ends here. It lasted days. Really, hours. Romeo and Juliet are over. Finished. Obliterated by Romeo.

What else is there to say? Some images are complex. Some aren’t. A shipwreck? Not a test of hermeneutics. Less a metaphor than a statement.

But, before moving on, there’s one detail crucial not to forget. Juliet is right then waking up!

The potion’s wearing off. Magically, miraculously, the Capulet girl is returning to life, her face regaining its color, her lips and cheeks turning red (5.3.91-6, 101-2), about to be reunited with her love.

When, crash! Her two-day old husband runs himself on the rocks. With supreme obliviousness. Supreme precipitousness.

Abandoning her for the next world. And not the one you were told…

But it isn’t just Romeo whose suicide is a shipwreck. Juliet’s is too!

Toward the end of Act 3, Juliet continues to mourn the death of her cousin, Tybalt. (At least, that’s what her parents assume, knowing nothing of Romeo or Romeo’s exile). Her father, finding her crying, asks,

How now, a conduit, girl? What, still in tears?

Evermore show’ring?

Then warns her about the danger of unchecked sorrow—and does so by means of an elaborate nautical conceit. “In one little body,” Capulet tells Juliet,

Thou counterfeits a bark, a sea, a wind:

For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,

Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,

Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs,

Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,

Without a sudden calm will overset

Thy tempest-tossed body. (3.5.129–36)

Juliet’s raging, wind-like sighs and raging, rain-like tears are creating a storm that threatens to “overset”—that is, capsize and sink—her bark-like body.

In The First Quarto, Shakespeare actually uses the word shipwreck. “Thy body,” says Capulet,

will without succor shipwreck presently (14.103).

In plainer terms: unless Juliet can check her runaway emotions, she is bound to precipitate her own demise.

Well, subsequently, Juliet receives no “succor.” Finds no “sudden calm.” In no way recovers herself. Rather, in the very next scene, with Friar Laurence, she’ll pull a knife on herself and threaten to commit suicide right there in his cell! And the next day she’ll pull a knife once again. This time with no one to restrain her…

The implication is unambiguous. According to the foreshadowing, Juliet’s suicide too is a self-inflicted shipwreck.

Above, we had one wreck that was no accident. Here we have another. In both instances, adversity of the external kind is precisely not what the imagery symbolizes. Juliet’s bark may sink as a result of the combined forces of wind and wave, but, remarkably, the tempest that swallows her up originates not from her environment but from her own person, from the orifices of her own face.

For 400+ years, we’ve thought of the lovers as helpless victims of outside powers. But according to the nautical motif, the real threat isn’t outside but in. These two are a danger—to themselves.

Shakespeare is doing something radically new and different in having his play conclude this way—with maritime disaster.

In the pre-Shakespearean versions of the story, Romeo faces imminent shipwreck—and successfully, heroically avoids it!

In particular, in Shakespeare’s source, Arthur Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet (1562), Romeus is a pilot doing all he can to avoid ending up on the rocks. After Romeus is banished from Verona, he goes to Friar Laurence for help. The Friar gives him counsel on how to endure adversity. In particular, he likens Romeus to a ship’s pilot assailed by a winter storm and doing everything in his power to survive:

As when the winter flaws with dreadful noise arise,

And heave the foamy swelling waves up to the starry skies,

So that the bruised bark in cruel seas betost,

Despaireth of the happy haven, in danger to be lost,

The pilot bold at helm, cries, “Mates, strike now your sail”,

And turns her stem into the waves that strongly her assail;

He seeth his ship full right against the rock to run,

But yet he doth what lieth in him the perilous rock to shun. (1361–70; my italics)

Next, the Friar describes what would happen if the pilot were to give up:

But if the master dread, and overpressed with woe

Begin to wring his hands, and lets the guiding rudder go,

The ship rents on the rock, or sinketh in the deep,

And eke the coward drenched is. (1375–8)

Finally, he concludes with a moral:

So, if thou still beweep

And seek not how to help the changes that do chance,

Thy cause of sorrow shall increase, thou cause of thy mischance. (1378–80)

In other words, you have to fight! Give up in despair and and you’d be both a “coward” and the “cause” of your own “mischance,” your ruin no one’s fault but your own.

So, what happens?

Romeus, applying the Friar’s advice, prevails. Steers clear of the perilous rock. Saves himself. Saves Juliet. Saves their young marriage. And the story ends with the narrator describing how the two will reunite in heaven and enjoy eternity together.

The very threat of a wreck: a distant memory by the end.

From the worldly to the otherworldly: that’s the unmistakable drift and tenor of Brooke and other pre-Shakespearean versions of the Romeo and Juliet story.

And precisely what’s not true in Shakespeare’s story itself, where, shockingly, radically, the nautical motif re-appears at the end, and the calamity-at-sea all earlier Montagues were warned against actually takes place.

Brooke’s Romeus, as we’ve just seen, does “what lieth in him the perilous rock to shun.”

Shakespeare’s Romeo? Makes straight for that rock kamikaze style. The same instant his bride is waking up.

Previous Romeos fought to save their wind and wave-tossed barks. Shakespeare’s alone takes his vessel and wrecks it on the rocky seashore.

It’s the exact antithesis of earlier tellings.

And somehow, the change has gone unnoticed. Somehow, the romanticization of Shakespeare’s version of the story persists.

Romeo saves his ship. Destroys his ship. To scholars, it makes no difference.

How about you and me? Can we agree this changes everything?

That this one image demolishes beyond hope of repair the romantic conception of the play?

Forget the experts. There’s no one to turn to. What do you think?

Do you recall how Shakespeare began? With an appeal to our attendance? Our patient attendance?

The which if you with patient ears attend…

Don’t assume too quickly I’m telling the same story as my Italian predecessors, he seemed to be saying. Set aside your presuppositions—and listen. Listen as if for the first time.

Do you think this may have been one of the changes he had in mind? An alteration he wanted and expected us to notice?

Shipwreck where there had been survival…

Just maybe?

Finally, let’s return to the opening Prologue and look at more immediate evidence of star-crossed’s nautical and not astrological significance.

The Chorus begins by describing the feud between the two households. It then states:

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.

The fearful passage of their death-marked love,

And the continuance of their parents’ rage—

Which but their children’s end naught could remove—

Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage.

I’ve italicized five terms or compounds, star-crossed included. Do you see what’s so interesting and important?

Passage suggests a “journey by water” or “sea-crossing” (Oxford English Dictionary 2).

Traffic connotes a “trading voyage” (OED 1).

The mark in death-marked suggests the end or objective of a voyage, as well as the seamarks used to designate areas of danger to seafarers (OED 8).

Finally, misadventured suggests a disastrous nautical excursion. Later on, in fact, Romeo speaks of his willingness to embark on just such a misadventure-at-sea, telling Juliet, “I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far / As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, / I should adventure for such merchandise.”

Sea-crossings. Sea-voyages. Sea-marks. Sea-adventures. A nautical juxtaposition—because a nautical implication. Pretty robust corroboration—agree?

In the First Quarto, Shakespeare uses not the adjective misadventured but the noun misadventures:

A pair of star-crossed lovers took their life,

Whose misadventures, piteous overthrows…

It’s a fascinating and illuminating variant, and a plain pejorative. But then so is the adjective, though no one’s wanted to admit it.

The misadventures of Romeo and Juliet… Not my word. Shakespeare’s. Is that incredible or what?

Of course, today almost no one describes the story that way: as a journey gone badly, fundamentally awry. And yet it’s a self-evidently apt characterization in light of the plot, in light of the play-concluding events discussed here.

Shakespeare has rewritten the story so that it culminates in the lovers’ shipwrecks.

And here, in the first speech of the Chorus, he prefigures his never-before-seen, truly tragic climax.

Shakespeare’s Prologue anticipates his altered ending, comments on it, and comments on it in non-neutral terms: A fearful passage. A sea-voyage that’s misadventured and death-marked and star-crossed.

Misadventured… Death-marked… Star-crossed… They’re synonyms! And no one’s noticed. They’re aptly portentous, plainly nautical characterizations. And convey not undeserved astrological persecution but a self-dooming, ignorance-driven going-forth. A misreading of and not mistreatment by the powers in the sky.

Star-crossed connotes a sea-journey that ends as most ill-judged journeys end: badly. It means navigationally—and thus behaviorally—mixed up.

Romeo and Juliet aren’t crossed by the stars. They have their stars mixed up. Are themselves mixed up.

Shakespeare is calling these two troubled Italian teenagers—the girl a mere thirteen years old, the boy perhaps fifteen—just what the saner among us would hope he’d call them.

Reckless.

Ignorant.

Misguided.

Argument

The first 17 of Shakespeare’s Sonnets suggest unattractive people should refrain from reproducing. Why? Because they’re sendups of a Petrarchan tradition absolutely obsessed with beauty. [500 words/3mins]

NOTE: The text below is excerpted from my PhD thesis, Anti-Petrarchism in Early Shakespeare, which argued that Shakespeare satirizes Petrarch in five works from the 1590s: Venus & Adonis, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labor's Lost, and yes, the Sonnets, or at least the first 17 of them! (Wouldn’t claim the same about the rest). See what you think!

The speaker’s preoccupation with beauty also leads him to denigrate ugly people, and not only that, but to wish for their elimination. In Sonnet 11, the speaker enjoins,

Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,

Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish. (9–10)

As editors agree, the lines refer to people who are not physically attractive, but ill-favored or ugly. According to the speaker, such people do not deserve to live. “Let” them all “perish,” he says, speaking in his favorite mood, the imperative. And not just that. Let them perish “barrenly,” that is, die childless. In short, ugly people and their ugly children should cease to exist. Nature does not desire their multiplication.

As a call for ugly people’s extinction, if not extermination, the command may appear to be something of an anomaly in sonnets whose ostensible focus is human “increase.” In fact, the call is consistent with what the speaker has both valued, and advocated, from the start. Indeed, the couplet reads almost as a gloss on the speaker’s thesis-statement,

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die. (1.1–2)

At first glance, this couplet may appear to mean something very different from the couplet in Sonnet 11. In fact, they say much the same thing. To qualify for self-reproduction, you must be among the “fairest” of all creatures. Unless you are among the elite of the attractive, you do not meet the speaker’s criteria for procreation. You are attractive but not exceptionally so: no reproduction for you!

At one point, the speaker accuses the youth of threatening to depopulate the world (11.7–8). But it may be the speaker himself who threatens this, given his impossible-to-meet standard for who ought, and who ought not, breed. Indeed, the statement, “From fairest creatures we desire increase” could be re-stated as “From unfairest creatures we desire decrease.” In other words, Sonnet 11 simply makes explicit what is implicit in Sonnet 1. Let featureless people perish is not antithetical to the speaker’s thesis; it is that thesis stated inversely. “From fairest creatures we desire increase” has the air of a profound universal truth. It is really more of a statement of preference about demographics, even eugenics, both based solely on aesthetics. From here, it is a small step to the view that unattractive people should refrain from procreating lest they fill the earth with their unsightly offspring.

Argument

Contrary to what you’ve heard, there are many reasons to think Romeo & Juliet is a satire, and a full-fledged one. In fact, Shakespeare names his target: the 14th-c. Italian poet, Petrarch. Shakespeare v. Petrarch: it’s the battle of the Renaissance, and the story’s never been told. [1500 words/8mins]

Do you have any idea just how unlikely it is that Shakespeare would romanticize the short-lived love affair of a pair of impetuous, suicidal, homicidal Italian teenagers from troubled families?

Or how utterly ill-founded that interpretation actually is?

I’m here to tell you that Shakespeare thought of the lovers just what you the non-expert think. Romeo reckless. Juliet naive. Their love shallow. Their suicides damnable. Mercutio clear-sighted. Romeo indiscriminately after sex. Juliet easy. And so on. (Did I say the last two aloud?)

My premise is twofold. Not just that Romeo & Juliet is Shakespeare’s most misunderstood play. That it’s his most understudied play.

Everything Shakespearean’s been analyzed to death, right? Not at all. Quite the opposite here.

Books on Hamlet might be countless. Books on Romeo can be counted on one hand. And only one or two is worth reading.

There are skeptics but they’re few. And ignored. Open a recent critical edition and you won’t hear of their work. Won’t find them discussed. Won’t find them cited. The very idea of a skeptical much less a satirical reading—you won’t find the concept.

Fundamental questions remain not so much unanswered as unasked. 

Here are some crucial issues you’ve probably heard nothing about.

The role of Cupid

At Juliet’s window, Romeo attributes his leap of the Capulet wall to Cupid: “With Love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls” (2.2.71). Yet no one ever discusses the allusion or its significance. The god of violent, indiscriminate affection—the god responsible for Titania’s “love” for Bottom, Armado’s “love” for Jaquenetta, and Tarquin’s “love” for Lucrece, among others—Cupid has a massive presence in Shakespeare’s works from the period, a presence that’s been largely overlooked. The fact that Romeo is one more Cupid-led lover changes everything you thought you knew about the type and quality of his affection as well as the supposed beauty and originality of his speech.

Romeo’s resemblance to some of Shakespeare’s most dubious “lovers”

Right now, Romeo is considered peerless. In fact, he has peers aplenty—and his peers say everything about him. They include a rapist (Tarquin), a narcissist (Venus), a sophist (Berowne), a fantasist (Armado), a madman (Lysander) and an ass (Bottom as Pyramus). The similarities are many. They’re precise. They’re illuminating—like nothing else. And they’ve received almost no attention, the critical tradition having systematically neglected to consider Romeo & Juliet’s significance in relation to Shakespeare’s other poems and plays from the mid 1590s. Studying Romeo & Juliet in a largely non-Shakespearean vacuum, it’s as if critics knew that as soon as Romeo got compared to, say, Tarquin, their principal suppositions about the play would be shattered.

The nautical motif

What’s one such parallel between Romeo and Tarquin? Both are doomed seafarers. Both share premonitions of their watery demise—and venture forth regardless. Both have Cupid as their helmsman—a god who can’t see! And both end their figurative journeys in violent, self-inflicted shipwreck. All this according to a central and defining motif. Sound important? It’s decisive. It is the story. Why didn’t Prof Greenblatt tell you about the nautical imagery and its parallel in Lucrece in your Harvard seminar? He himself’s just hearing of it for the first time. (Coming soon: “The Meaning of Star-Crossed,” which will argue that the epithet is about seafaring, not astrology!).

Spiritual warfare—and the fate of the soul

What but love could Romeo and Juliet possibly be about? Improbable as it may sound, this: the fight between good and evil on the plane of the human heart. The triumph of the latter over the former. And all the attendant consequences, for both this world and the next. Sound unlikely? Abstract? Actually, it’s conspicuous. You have to try to miss it. The basis for this view is the first soliloquy of Friar Laurence, a 30-line speech where he suggests that, inside of Romeo, there’s a battle taking place between “grace” and “rude will.” That “rude will” is going to prove “predominant.” And that the result will be his “death”… Wish to see for yourself? Turn to the beginning of Act 2, Scene 3. Then to lines 23-30—the final eight of the Friar’s speech. Note how these are separated off by a stage direction, “Enter Romeo.” Note the obvious symbolism, the young plant standing for the young man. And how the Friar stops talking about human beings in general—and starts talking about this one human in particular. Could the possibility be plainer? In the critical literature, there ought to be hundreds of pages discussing the extent to which Romeo’s self-murder does indeed represent a moral struggle fought, and lost, on an interior battleground, his premature, self-inflicted death the outward consequence of an inward capitulation.

The satirizing of Petrarch

You may not have heard anyone propose that Romeo & Juliet is a satire. Yet the possibility of satire—plus the target—is right there in the text. “Now is [Romeo] for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in,” says Mercutio, comparing his friend to the Italian poet and biggest name in English literature at the time—and doing so just after uttering one of his dirtiest jokes in the play, comparing Romeo, or one part of Romeo, to a stranded fish (a “dried herring”). Some years from now, scholars will recognize this for what it is: one of the most important allusions in Shakespeare. Why does it matter so much? Because Shakespeare wrote at least three other satires of Petrarch at the same time: Venus & Adonis, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Love’s Labor’s Lost. Extraordinarily, this pattern of satire has been overlooked. As a consequence, the key question hasn’t been asked: is Romeo and Juliet a satire of the same? Overwhelmingly, the evidence says yes—Shakespeare’s subtlest and greatest. Shakespeare v. Petrarch: it’s the battle of the Renaissance, and the story’s never been told.

The work’s sheer difficulty

Romeo & Juliet has rightly been called “one of Shakespeare’s most punning plays.” It’s filled throughout with word-play. Not just on every page. In almost every line. It has multiple combats-of-wit, where multivalence is the norm, and featuring some utterances so abstruse no one has a clue what they mean. It is not an easy work. And the fact that it’s usually taught by secondary school teachers to secondary school students is itself some kind of joke. Just what kind of work is it? Shakespeare wrote Romeo & Juliet at the same time as his narrative poems, Venus & Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. These are substantial, intricate poems, each the length of a short play (1200 and 1800 lines, respectively). Together, they’ve been called “the most carefully patterned and structured works in [Shakespeare’s] canon, as well as the most explicitly literary.” Here’s the thing about Romeo & Juliet: it was written in the same manner! You’ve been told to go and see the play in order to understand it. I can’t think of worse advice. It’s actually pernicious. This isn’t the place to defend the eminently literary nature of the play, the need to study it closely—more closely than anything else you’ve encountered. But there’s a reason why you haven’t thought about or read about the issues raised here.

A teacher friend of mine has never wanted to teach the play, feeling she just didn’t understand it. There were too many speeches she couldn’t decipher. Too many dialogues she couldn’t follow. Too many puns, too many word-games, too many wit-combats. Just too much going on both semantically and thematically.

If only Harold Bloomers had been as humble.

Our impatient ears

Shakespeare tells us how to read his play, and it isn’t how most of us have read it. Patiently. And attentively. The Prologue gives a preview of the action. It then states,

The which if you with patient ears attend, 
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

“Attend” to the play’s meaning with “patient ears,” urges the Chorus, inherently the most objective, authorial voice in the play. Suggesting that the work requires close, careful scrutiny. That it may not mean what you, in your hurriedness, think it means. And more—that in studying it you may be surprised by what you discover.

Listen as you would to a parable, appears to be the challenge. A Shakespearean version of “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.”

“Our toil,” says Shakespeare, by proxy. Meaning mine in writing it. And yours in interpreting it. And that that second effort will be no less labor-intensive. No less great.

Judge before you’ve heard, decide before you’ve listened, fail to notice or reflect on what’s actually said here, and you’re liable to “miss” the point altogether, conveys the wordplay involving that term.

Four and a quarter centuries later, I think Shakespeare would be disappointed but not shocked by his play’s modern-day reputation.

I’m thrilled to announce I’ve just surpassed 500 subscribers!

To my surprise and delight, I’ve grown almost 25% since “The Age of the Sovereign Critic,” where I expressed my frustration with pitching—and declared my independence.

Later this morning, I’ll be posting “Mixed-Up Lovers—And Mixed-Up Critics,” which will present an overview of my argument about Romeo & Juliet. Tomorrow, Stacker of Subs Holly MathNerd will be sharing this essay with her readers, which is exciting. It’ll be the first time my work is cross-posted here on Sub.

Other pieces I’ll be posting soon include:

• “The Vindication of Mercutio”

• “Ugly People Shouldn’t Procreate: The self-evidently satirical message of Shakespeare’s ‘procreation sonnets’”

• "The Mother of All Fornication: Why Shakespeare’s original blockbuster—the 1200-line minor epic poem Venus & Adonis—is a satirical masterpiece”

Thank you again for your continued support,

John

Here are a few recent examples. They’re all clickable, so if you like what you see, please click through and like, comment and share away!

Thank you!

John

Argument

Romeo betrays the true nature of his interest in Juliet when, in a seldom-discussed fantasy voiced at her window, he imagines her as a dress-clad angel “bestride the clouds,” himself gazing up from the ground below with “white upturned wondering eyes.” [800 words]

According to TS Eliot, Romeo and Juliet’s encounter at her window involves poetry so beautiful it approaches the level of music.

But there are many problems with this view, not the least of which is that, again and again, Romeo’s poetic proclamations betray an exclusively carnal interest in the 13yo object of his affection.

The scene begins with the Montague eavesdropping on the Capulet for 50 lines. Before revealing his presence on her property, Romeo, hearing Juliet speak, voices a very peculiar fantasy about her. “O, speak again, bright angel,” he exclaims,

for thou art

As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,

As is a winged messenger of heaven

Unto the white-upturned wond’ring eyes

Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him

When he bestrides the lazy puffing clouds

And sails upon the bosom of the air.

The second-to-last noun is one hint of the suggestiveness here. But the key detail is the verb “sails,” which indicates how this angel is appareled—in a dress.

With that in mind, do you notice anything curious about the situation?

She’s above. In a gown. A light, airy gown. Mid-stride.

And he’s below. Directly below. Gazing thigh sky-ward. Gazing with “white upturned wondering eyes.” With eyes that are at once wondering in the sense of marveling and wandering in the sense of straying. And “white” in that they’re so turned up and transfixed you can’t see his pupils.

In critical editions of Romeo & Juliet, editors should but don’t cite parallel passages in Shakespeare. For example, the same trope appears in Love’s Labor’s Lost, a play written at approximately the same time. Here, Berowne supposes what would happen if his lady were walking and the street was “paved with eyes.” “O, vile!” answers Dumaine,

Then, as she goes, what upward lies

The street should see as she walked overhead.

The parallel is precise, “overhead” comparing with “over my head,” “upward” with “upturned.”

Romeo too is evidently thinking of “what upward lies” from his vantage-point on the ground, of what he can “see” as his lady “walk[s] overhead.”

(Why don’t editors note such obvious parallels? Because they’re biased in favor of the romantic view—a point I discussed most recently in Romeo’s Mischief and one I’ll return to again and again).

And so, you can add that to your list of Shakespearean poetic devices, to Romeo’s skills and accomplishments as a poetic speaker.

The upskirt.

Extended similes. Check. Extended metaphors. Check. Extended upfrocks. Check.

Romeo’s angel-astride-a-cloud fantasy might seem like an anomaly in a scene widely considered the height of romance. In fact, many of his other utterances are similarly suggestive. For example, he also urges Juliet to “cast off” her clothing, exhorts her to renounce Diana, the goddess of chastity, proposes to “take all” of Juliet, and even asks her directly to “satisfy” him (“O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?”).

Romeo’s known for his imagination—and he uses his imagination indeed: to repeatedly disrobe his new inamorata.

Glaring in itself, Romeo’s image is even more glaring in context, his friend Mercutio having just insinuated exactly this—that Romeo’s interest in his beloved extended but to her procreative part.

In particular, in a series of bawdy jokes voiced less than 50 lines earlier, Mercutio had suggested that Romeo’s true interest was his lady’s “quivering thigh, / And the demesnes that there adjacent lie” and joked that it “would anger [Romeo] / To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle.”

In the lines immediately following, one might have expected Shakespeare to show just how wrong Mercutio is, to show that Romeo’s interest in Juliet went well beyond the physical.

Instead, in having Romeo voice a nakedly sexual fantasy centered on that same area of the female body, Romeo’s iconoclastic friend appears both prescient and perspicacious.

Noticing a pattern? In The Trafficking of Juliet, we saw Mercutio suggest Romeo was about to pay for sex—right before Romeo did just that. “A bawd, a bawd, a bawd!” he cried, calling the Nurse a procuress, Romeo a john—right before Romeo pulled coins from his pocket.

Crazy-sounding insinuation followed by near-instant instantiation—that’s the pattern, again and again, and involving many of the play’s most definitive events.

But here’s the really astounding thing: in 400 years, no one has ever taken the play’s built-in satirist seriously. Never. Not once. Not that I’ve seen—and I’ve looked.

No scholar has carefully examined Mercutio’s claims and made an evidence-based assessment of their aptness.

He’s assumed to be wrong—because he just has to be. Because the alternative is inconceivable. Because Romeo & Juliet is a straightforward tale of circumstance-transcending love.

Because no work of art could be that cunning.

No poet successfully hide his meaning for centuries.

But what if.

What if Mercutio's right—and demonstrably so?

What if Romeo spoke and behaved exactly as his friend says?

What if the caricature were no caricature but apt, illuminating, Chorus-like commentary?

Coming soon: a two-part expose, “The Vindication of Mercutio.”

Argument

The term “traffic” in the Prologue’s “two hours’ traffic of our stage” has an overlooked significance, conveying “trade of an objectionable nature” and anticipating Romeo’s use of a two-part cash bribe to reach Juliet’s bedroom. [1200 words]

Did you know Romeo spends but one night with Juliet? Did you know he pays for it?

It’s the world’s most famous love story, and not for no reason. The children of two enemy families, Romeo and Juliet meet, fall instantly in love, and ultimately take their lives for one another.

What possible basis could there be for questioning the sincerity of their affection? Here’s one: Romeo’s use of a two-part cash bribe to reach Juliet’s bedroom.

As you’ll see below, there’s nothing equivocal about what Romeo does, or why. But a conspiracy of silence surrounds the event, critics simply never mentioning the self-evidently dubious, gold-for-girl commercial transaction at the play’s center.

The play actually opens with a suggestion that it’s going to feature a sinister form of trade. In particular, when the Prologue speaks of the “two hours’ traffic of our stage,” the term traffic conveys “trade of an illegal, immoral, or otherwise objectionable nature” (Oxford English Dictionary 2). As such, it suggests the characters may use finances in illicit ways.

So, are there any questionable business dealings in the action that follows? Yes, there are two.

There’s Romeo using gold to buy “drugs” in Act 5.

And there’s Romeo using gold to buy sex in Act 2.

It’s Act 2, Scene 3, and the day after the Capulet party. Mercutio and Benvolio run into Romeo on the street. Immediately, they wonder what he’s up to. The night before, he’d abandoned their company to pursue a girl, leaping a wall onto private property. Presently, he stands there in his dancing clothes—a sure sign he never went home. Further, he’s been extremely reclusive in recent weeks, avoiding both people and daylight. Why now is he out in public?

When the Nurse arrives, asking for Romeo’s “confidence”—that is, his participation in the “confiding of private or secret matters” (OED 6)—the friends have their answer. “She will indite him to some supper,” says Benvolio, suggesting they’re up to something illicit. Mercutio, suspecting outright procurement, cries,

A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! Soho!

A “bawd” is a paid procuress, “soho” a hunting call used to announce a discovery.

According to the insinuation, Romeo is going to meet with the old woman, arrange a surreptitious, that-same-night sexual encounter, and compensate her financially for her help.

It’s outrageous! The Capulet caretaker—a procuress? Pimping out the girl in her care? Romeo—a john? Trading cash for sex? Trafficking—at the heart of the world’s most famous story of “love”?

Outrageous and—exactly what happens next, Romeo proceeding less than fifty lines later to meet with the old widow, tell her how she can help him reach Juliet’s bedroom, and then remunerate her—and not once but twice.

First, he tells her to tell Juliet to make up an excuse to get out of the house. “Bid [Juliet] devise some means to come to shrift this afternoon,” he says. That is, tell her to tell her parents she’s off to confession. Then, he reaches out his hand:

ROMEO  Here is for thy pains.

NURSE  No, truly, sir, not a penny.

ROMEO  Go to, I say you shall.

NURSE  This afternoon, sir, well, she shall be there.

Romeo’s “Here” suggests he’s showing the Nurse the coins. His “Go to” suggests something more aggressive still—that he’s placing them right in her hand.

Romeo himself knows the tempting or corrupting power of gold. Later on, he’ll call it a “poison to men’s souls.” Yet here, he does not hesitate to use it to entice the deep-into-her-dotage Capulet caregiver.

Another ten lines later, following another series of instructions, Romeo promises still more money—on the condition she keeps quiet about what they’re up to. “Farewell,” he says,

Be trusty, and I’ll quit thy pains.

Be trusty: tell nothing to nobody. And I’ll quit thy pains: and I’ll reward you again. (To quit means to ‘‘pay or repay a person for a kindness or favour’’ (OED 3)).

Put differently: after I’ve successfully made my late-night visit, I’ll give you another handful of 24k coins. You wouldn’t expect it all up front, would you? Let’s talk again post-coitally.

Romeo’s so desperate for sex he’d pay for it, insinuates Mercutio one moment, preposterously. The next, Romeo’s slipping gold to a go-between.

One moment, Mercutio says Romeo’s up to something shady. The next, he’s planning his climb in “the secret night,” an index finger on his lips.

And do you know? I’m not sure what the bigger scandal is. The event itself. The Montague taking advantage of the unscrupulousness and avariciousness of a semi-senile old woman to set up a surreptitious carnal encounter.

With the thirteen-year-old he met at the previous night’s masque.

Or the near-total silence about the event in the secondary literature. Where it’s as if it just. never. happened.

Either way: the Nurse is a bawd indeed. A dealer-in-girls. Young girls. Girls so young they still sleep with you at night (as Juliet still sleeps with her live-in custodian).

And Romeo? A client. A user. A twice-paying john.

And Juliet? Well, as she herself says, as her wedding night approaches, in one of the most unwitting remarks in the play, she’s “sold, / Not yet enjoyed.” Indeed.

Thus, with its pronouncements about the “death” of the lovers and the “bury[ing]” of “their parents’ strife,” the Chorus anticipates such major events as the lovers’ suicides and the cessation of the feud. With its use of “traffic,” the Chorus looks ahead to the titular boy’s pecuniary pact with the Capulet caretaker-turned-procuress, where, clandestinely, apart from his friends, his pockets filled with gold, Romeo hire purchases his way into the bedchamber of the barely-out-of-childhood girl in her charge.

He traffics in drugs. He traffics in sex. And to this day his name remains universally synonymous with model romantic lover.

I’ve been badly neglecting this Sub for more than a year, and the main reason is I’ve been pitching pieces to the media. And wow, what a frustrating and hopeless endeavor.

As you know, I published my first newspaper article last year, and hoped it’d be the first of more essays in papers or mags. Instead, after dozens of rejections, I’ve decided I’m done with the world of gatekeepers.

In his essay, “Why I keep turning down The New York Times,” Erik Hoel argues in favor of writing independently, saying the traditional route (ie. building up a resume of publications) doesn’t necessarily work as well as one might hope. It “doesn’t drive readers to your other work,” he says, and “the impact/traffic of your piece will be less than you think.”

I certainly found that with my Epoch Times article. While it led to some nice comments, including National Post columnist Barbara Kay calling it “Terrific!… A very polished and persuasive gloss on Love’s Labor’s Lost,” it didn’t lead to a single new subscriber here on Substack.

Till now, I’ve hesitated to post some of my bigger or more provocative claims, as doing so makes a piece ineligible for publication. Going forward, I plan to post much more freely. I also plan to be more active on social media. For example, I’m looking forward to trying some essay threads on X. Follow me here: x.com/JohnMcGeePhD.

The rejects

Here are some of the rejects from the past year or so:

• “The Trafficking of Juliet.” On the Chorus’ use of the term “traffic” and how it anticipates Romeo’s use of gold to arrange his one (and only) night with Juliet.

• “Sadistic Little Bastard: Shakespeare’s Cupid.” On Shakespeare’s depiction of Cupid as a tyrant and sadist, after Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

• “The Second Antidote in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” On Oberon’s use of not one but two antidotes to restore the lovers at the end.

• “The Mother of All Fornication: Why Shakespeare’s Original Blockbuster—the 1200-line Minor Epic Poem Venus and Adonis—is a Satirical Masterpiece.” On Shakespeare giving Venus a taste of her own medicine, making her rage the way she makes others rage.

• “The Vindication of Mercutio.” On Mercutio mocking Romeo as a blind, Cupid-driven lover who pays for sex—and how he’s 100% right.

Another disappointment was being rejected to speak at Heterodox Academy’s 2024 summer conference. I proposed to talk about Mercutio—and man would it have been fun. No thanks, said the org with heterodox in its name.

The age of the sovereign critic

While the rejections have been frustrating, going forward I’m excited to have total freedom to say what I want, how I want. As the co-founder of Substack Hamish McKenzie wrote recently, we’re in the “age of the sovereign creator.” Yes, and critic. And maybe it’s better that way—for me and for you.

Help me bypass the gatekeepers by following me on X and/or sharing my Sub with people you think would enjoy it.

More to come soon! Thank you for your continued support,

John

I wanted to share a talk I gave on Romeo & Juliet at a recent conference for high school teachers. In it, I cover the prevailing romantic view, discuss some bases for skepticism, and argue that the play ties Romeo’s self-murder at the end not to his love for Juliet but to his love-melancholy at the beginning.

A few highlights:

• “They say every good presentation begins with a quote from Family Guy…” (1).

• How I studied the play “blind,” with no clue what critics thought about it (7).

• Structurally, the play appears to be built not around the titular couple but around the male protagonist and his mental decline (55).

One attendee said kindly, “Fascinating... very important message to communicate to young people today.”

I welcome any thoughts or feedback. Please like, comment and share.

Thank you again for your support,

John

Argument

At the height of the action of Love's Labors Lost, Shakespeare’s most popular comedy in his own lifetime, King Navarre and his courtiers embark on a Cupid-led mission to conquer the French princess and her ladies. But the women fight back—and trounce the men. Thus, “Love”’s labor is “lost” as opposed to won.

First published in The Epoch Times.

In this battle of the sexes, it’s the men who are made to lie down.

What’s the meaning of the title, Love’s Labors Lost (1598), the first work to bear Shakespeare’s name on its title page and a work published 425 years ago as of 2023?

To date, no one’s been sure. As the editor of the Arden critical edition says, “The form of the title and its meaning are uncertain.” Similarly, the Oxford editor says, “It is far from certain what Shakespeare intended his play to be called.”

Turns out, the answer has been right there in the text all along.

At the beginning, King Navarre and three courtiers, Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine, commit themselves to a three-year period of abstinence from worldly pleasures. Calling themselves “brave conquerors” who “war against [their] own affections,” they plan to devote all their time to study.

The lords sign a schedule delineating their self-imposed decrees, only to recall that a French princess and her ladies are scheduled to arrive imminently at their court.

And whether or not you’ve read the play, you know what happens next.

Rather than avoiding romantic endeavors, the men proceed to devote all their time to such endeavors. Rather than warring against their affections, the men go to war on behalf of “Affection” personified, Cupid. Rather than conquering themselves, the men set out to conquer the women.

Armed conflict ensues. The title conveys its outcome.

The key passage is found at the height of the action, in Act 4, Scene 3. At the very moment the men determine to fight on behalf of Love himself, Cupid, they announce their intention to “win” the women.

“Saint Cupid, then, and, soldiers, to the field!” the king exhorts his men. Longaville asks, “Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?” The king affirms, “And win them, too.” With Love himself as their general, the lords expect to prevail over the ladies.

They also say what this “win” will look like. In response to the king’s battle-cry, “Saint Cupid,” Berowne enjoins his fellows:

Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;

Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advised,

In conflict that you get the sun of them.

This is love-as-warfare, in which the men are soldiers entering a battlefield, ready to engage in “conflict.” “Pell-mell” suggests close, hand-to-hand combat. By “get the sun of them,” Berowne means attack them with the sun in their eyes, so they’re unable to ready a defense. The king’s “down with them” indicates the men intend to subdue the women. They will raise “standards” or military flags as symbols of their conquest.

But things don’t quite go according to plan. Having overheard the men’s stratagem, the Princess’s attendant Boyet goes and warns the ladies of the impending assault. “Prepare, madam, prepare!” he cries,

Arm, wenches, arm! Encounters mounted are

Against your peace. Love doth approach disguised,

Armed in arguments. You’ll be surprised.

Muster your wits, stand in your own defense,

Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence.

And arm themselves they do, with figurative swords, muskets, and bows-and-arrows. But the women don’t just stay and resist their assailants. They launch a counterattack, quickly overwhelming the men.

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As the scholars-turned-soldiers arrive, a trumpet sounds, announcing the start of the battle. Berowne engages with the Princess, the king with Rosaline, Dumaine with Maria, and Longaville with Katharine. As the women deliver barb after barb, Boyet remarks,

The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen

As is the razor’s edge invisible,

Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen;

Above the sense of sense, so sensible

Seemeth their conference. Their conceits have wings

Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.

Blades, bullets, arrows—it turns out the men are the ones under attack. After a hundred lines of jeers and taunts, Berowne asks aloud:

Can any face of brass hold longer out?

Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me.

Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout,

Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance,

Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit.

Quite simply, the men are being pummeled. In asking, “Can any face of brass hold longer out?” Berowne suggests at once that the men have been brazen-faced in their conduct and that their glossy shields are proving inadequate against the women’s onslaught.

After Rosaline instructs her ladies to “break off,” the prince and his allies see how they’ve been outsmarted. “By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!” exclaims Berowne. As the men retreat, the Princess wonders whether they will ever show their faces in public or not go commit suicide. “Will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight?” she asks, victoriously.

Clearly, this is the “loss” referred to in the title. Laboring under Love himself, the men had expected a decisive victory in the arena of romance. But the attempted conquest fails. Unexpectedly, the women fight back, vanquishing the men. Therefore, the title refers to the men’s unsuccessful pseudo-military endeavors in the name of Cupid.

With this in mind, the proper form of the title reveals itself. While “Labors” can be either singular or plural, apostrophized or not, “Love” needs to be in the possessive. Evidently the traditional form of the title, “Love’s Labors Lost,” is correct. Now, we have a better sense of why, the play dramatizing one of the all-powerful boy-god’s rare defeats.

Having repulsed the men’s warlike assault, the play concludes with the women assigning the men year-long trials to be completed before they can approach them again.

Rosaline tasks Berowne with visiting the sick and dying at a hospital, where he is to use his cleverness to bring mirth to the sufferers. “To win me,” she tells her suitor,

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day

Visit the speechless sick, and still converse

With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,

With all the fierce endeavor of your wit,

To enforce the painèd impotent to smile.

Here we have the true “endeavor” by which this lady’s love can be “won,” in lines that effectively respond to and repudiate those voiced earlier by the Cupid-driven men.

No, Rosaline tells Berowne, you won’t conquer and subdue me. You won’t take me as some battle prize. But you can captivate my heart by showing that you can put the needs of others before your own and follow through on a commitment, that you can share a vow and stick to it.

Earlier on, Berowne himself had defined love as “charity.” In fact, he’d called love and charity inseparable. Thus, the man’s prospective wife isn’t imposing her own definition of love on him.

True love, Rosaline reminds Berowne, isn’t about the immediate gratification of your desires. It isn’t about promenading under the pennant of a nude, blind, wayward, bow-wielding baby boy, intent on triumph and occupation.

Fundamentally, it isn’t about your needs at all.

[First published in The Epoch Times]

Wish to read more of my writing on Love's Labor's Lost? See: The "Love-feat" at the center of Love's Labor's Lost.

Dear readers,

I’m thrilled to announce my first newspaper article, ‘Love’s Labor’s Lost’: The Meaning of Its Title, in The Epoch Times.

The piece proposes to solve a longstanding mystery, namely, the exact meaning of the title, Love’s Labor’s Lost, a play first published 425 years ago as of 2023.

Thank you,

John

Near the end of Romeo’s Mischief, I said, "Sometimes, silence is the best corroboration.”

This seems to have proven true again in a rather unexpected way.

On Tuesday, I shared my piece on Twitter. I tagged two leading scholars, Stanley Wells and Emma Smith, asking for their thoughts. I wasn’t sure they would respond, but Wells did.

Here’s my tweet:

About half an hour later, Wells wrote,

I replied,

As you can see, Wells cites the “Glossary” to The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, of which he’s the editor. In other words, he quotes his own dictionary.

By contrast, I cite the OED, or Oxford English Dictionary, or “the definitive record of the England language.”

Two days have now passed.

How did Wells respond? He didn’t.

Instead:

Silence.

Argument

In Act 5 of Romeo & Juliet, Romeo attributes his suicide to Mischief personified. In Shakespeare’s day, mischief didn’t mean “petty annoyance.” It meant “evildoing, wickedness.” Currently, critical editions, including the Oxford, Cambridge and Arden, fail to define mischief for readers—a blatant instance of editorial bias.

At the beginning of Act 5 of Romeo & Juliet, Balthazar tells Romeo that he has seen Juliet “laid low in her kindred’s vault.” Immediately, Romeo decides to go to the tomb and kill himself by her side. As he decides on the “means” by which he’ll take his life, he says something extremely revealing. “Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight,” he says,

Let’s see for means. O Mischief, thou art swift

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men.

I do remember an apothecary

(And hereabouts he dwells) which late I noted…

Romeo proceeds to describe the Apothecary’s shop, and then to go and make his purchase. In fact, he buys the poison less than twenty lines after the words above.

But my interest here isn’t the idea itself but its source, namely, Mischief personified. In my view, Romeo’s apostrophe to Mischief is one the most significant utterances in the play. What’s so important about it? Simple: mischief didn’t mean in Shakespeare’s time what it means now—not even close.

Today, mischief means “vexatious or annoying action or behaviour,” a meaning it’s had since about the end of the 18th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (or OED).

But at the time of the play’s writing, mischief was synonymous with evil. When used to refer to something bad that happened to you, the term could mean “misfortune, bad luck” (OED 1). But in a more active sense, mischief meant “harm, injury, or evil done to or suffered by a person” (OED 2) or outright “evildoing, wickedness” (OED 5).

Shakespeare often uses the term in this way. For example, in Venus & Adonis, the goddess tells the boy that failing to reproduce himself would constitute “A mischief worse than… theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay, / Or butcher sire that reaves his son of life”—that is, the greatest possible crime, worse than suicide or filicide.

Similarly, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Demetrius threatens Helena, “if thou follow me, do not believe / But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.” Helena responds that she would gladly “die” at Demetrius’s hands, suggesting she understands him to be threatening either murder or, as the figurative sense of “die” conveys, rape. As one editor notes, “Helena seems to suggest she would find ecstasy even in being raped by Demetrius” (Chaudhuri 165n).

Incidentally, in his gloss on mischief, this same editor (Chaudhuri) rightly defines it as “serious harm or injury,” points out that it had “a much stronger sense than [it does] today” and compares the phrase “hellish mischief” from Henry VI: Part 1. Of course, this is both correct and helpful. But as we’ll see below, editors of Romeo & Juliet all conspicuously fail to do the same. The question’s why.

In Shakespeare’s principal source, Arthur Brooke’s Romeus & Juliet (1562), Brooke uses mischief in the same way on the very first page of the text. In particular, in his “Address to the Reader,” where he describes the moral purpose of the work, Brooke says that just as “the good man’s example biddeth men to be good,” so “the evil man’s mischief warneth men not to be evil.” The “evil man’s mischief”—today, we would never see “mischief” and “evil” together in the same line, or only in a playful or ironic sense. But in the sixteenth century, such phrasing was normative.

Therefore, with little if any doubt, when Romeo apostrophizes Mischief embodied, he doesn’t address Annoyance embodied. He addresses Evildoing embodied. As such, he characterizes his suicide itself in about the most negative terms possible—as an act of unadulterated wickedness.

An editorial oversight—or omission?

But here’s where things get more interesting still, for editors of critical editions of Romeo & Juliet don’t seem to want you to comprehend Romeo’s—Shakespeare’s—meaning. Why would I say this? Because in most if not all critical editions available today, editors neglect to define the term for readers.

For example, here’s the Oxford edition, edited by Jill Levenson:

In the note for line 35, you can see that Levenson defines “see for,” a phrase that isn’t particularly ambiguous. Does anyone read “Let’s see for means” and not know what Romeo’s saying? But like other editors, Levenson apparently aims to provide readers with more rather than fewer glosses.

Yet conspicuously absent is a definition for the object of Romeo’s apostrophe and source for what is by far the most decisive action in the play.

Did Levenson not look up mischief’s meaning? That’s possible, but unlikely. If you glance at the other glosses on the page above, you’ll see “OED” multiple times—and for good reason. When editing such a volume, scholars don’t look up the odd word. They live in the OED. As such, it’s hard not to see the omission as deliberate.

And in this, the Oxford is representative. The Cambridge, the Arden, the Norton—all of the most recent and prestigious and comprehensive critical editions fail to define this term. I know this may be hard to believe, so here’s another screen-shot, this one of the Arden:

As you can see, exact same situation.

What can explain this? Is the problem that editors aren’t seeing the definition? Or is the problem precisely that they are? In this one instance, are editors neglecting to open up the OED? Or are they finding “evildoing, wickedness,” drawing back in modern-minded, academic-minded horror and going whoa, not sharing that with my readers?

Wouldn’t want to, you know, give them the right idea.

At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I’m not sure this editorial lacuna, universal in nature, is accidental. Rather, I think editors are reading the Elizabethan sense of mischief, perceiving the end of the romantic conception of the play, and knowingly leaving a gap in the notes.

And hoping no one ever notices.

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Mischief—the character

But there’s something else I haven’t yet mentioned, and it may be the most interesting and important point of all.

In sixteenth century drama, mischief wasn’t just a provocative concept. He was a character! And a well-known one, with a very specific role. Can you guess what it was?

Enticement to suicide. Soul-damning suicide.

In particular, Mischief was one of the personified vices in morality plays, a genre that flourished in England and across Western Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, and one that had a profound influence on Elizabethan drama.

For example, in Mankind (1470), Mischief does everything he can to entice the protagonist to take his own life. Near the end, Mankind despairs, considering himself corrupt and irredeemable. “A rope, a rope, a rope!” he cries, “I am not worthy.” Mischief responds,

Anon, anon, anon! I have it here ready,

With a tree also that I have get.

In other words, Move as quickly as possible! Here’s everything you need, including a rope and a tree-branch. Instantly, two of Mischief’s companions are setting up the makeshift gallows. They even demonstrate what to do, one holding the branch while the other puts his head in the noose.

Hilariously, the first gets distracted and accidentally strangles the second. “Alas, my throat!” the latter cries, “Alas, my weasand!” (A weasand is a “wind-pipe, or throat generally”).

Mankind is about to hang himself—when Mercy arrives with a rod, beating the vice figures and telling Mankind it’s not too late to repent. “Yet for my love ope thy lips and say ‘Miserere mei, Deus!’” Mercy tells Mankind. He further instructs him to “be repentant,” saying “now is the day of salvation.” As a result of the last-minute intervention, Mankind saves his life and soul.

Similarly, in John Skelton’s Magnificence (1516), Mischief and Despair work together to tempt the protagonist to take his life. “Thou art not the first himself hath slain,” Mischief tells Magnificence, handing him both a rope and a knife. Despair adds, “Yea, have done at once without delay.” Here too, the man is about to commit suicide—when Good Hope arrives, preventing the man from condemning his soul to eternal pain.

In Shakespeare’s play, Romeo clearly addresses this same figure. According to his own terms, Mischief’s “swift,” acting as quickly as possible—and urging his victims to do the same. In the same line, Romeo calls himself “desperate,” referencing both a damnable state of mind and Mischief’s companion in the play just mentioned. Finally, here too Mischief provides Romeo with the actual means to kill himself.

Do you see? It’s an allusion! And one of the most important and consequential in the entire play.

For modern readers, the reference is bound to seem obscure and pass without notice. But for Shakespeare’s audience, the opposite would have been true. Most if not all would have been familiar with Mischief and comparable Vice figures, and known exactly what they symbolized. The reference would have told them all they needed to know.

The point can’t be overstressed: a suicidal individual expressing allegiance to a personification of vice: in Shakespeare’s day, this idea wasn’t opaque or uncommon. It was conventional.

The main difference between Romeo and these other everyman figures? At the end of Shakespeare’s play, there’s no Mercy or Hope to step in to save him.

Therefore, Mischief doesn’t just deserve a note. It deserves an extended note. For example, it deserves to be in the “Supplementary notes” of the Cambridge edition, with other terms or references requiring more in-depth discussion. But I don’t think I’m telling editors anything they don’t already know.

In theory, editing is a dispassionate effort in which a scholar does everything he or she can to help the reader grasp the text as fully as possible. In practice, it works a bit differently, editors sometimes working to protect their own ideas—and egos.

Sometimes, silence is the best corroboration.

Conclusion

In effect, Romeo, like Magnificence, meets Despair and Mischief—and acts precisely in accordance with their evil-minded exhortations, capitulating to the worst and lowest of his own tendencies.

Were this a morality play, there would be no doubt about his fate.

And guess what? It is a morality play. A Renaissance morality play, where the protagonist’s story has the same eschatological significance, but where the forces of good and evil are reinternalized, fighting it out on the battlefield of the human breast.

At least, that’s one of my main contentions.

One I can’t wait to share.

O come on, honey, everyone and their mom was sleeping with him

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:

Shakespeare Reconstructed with John McGee

Romeo & Juliet—A Satire?

Argument Contrary to what you may have heard, there are many reasons to think Romeo & Juliet’s a satire…

Read more

5 years ago · 4 likes · 8 comments · John McGee, PhD

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

John

PS

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