Again, no death, but a depressing ending all the same. It is a glorious track by Dire Straits, with beautiful guitar-playing and a melancholy tale about a couple that cannot stay together. It is a song Melinda and I would listen to together as we considered lost loves. ' Romeo And Juliet' by Dire Straits (1980) This is told from the point of view of the idealised Romeo character and is a wonderful track. Not necessarily to death, but still that withdrawal from everything to be together was what Romeo and Juliet wanted. It is about withdrawing from the world with your lover. This is because the title does not appear in the song. And it is a decent track off the quite wonderful Jailbreak album.Ī tune that many recognise but few know the title of. It paints a picture of a depressed man, which probably suits the character in the play. In this case, the Romeo makes a pass at a girl, is rebuffed and the girl goes onto someone else. This is one of those songs where Romeo is a metaphor for a guy unlucky in love. ' Romeo And The Lonely Girl' by Thin Lizzy (1976) And so why not have popular songs based on his work… songs for the people?
And no matter what academics might say, that was who he was writing for – the people. Shakespeare was an absolute genius, and I stand by that.
Why do they work? Because the teenagers are still the same, be they Verona in the 1300s or Adelaide in 2020, and seem to always have been. Still, here are ten songs featuring these Shakespearean characters or based on the play's ideas. Oh, and I'm not using the music from the Prokofiev Ballet because that was music for Romeo And Juliet, not about them. As it is, a lot of the songs I found use Romeo and/or Juliet as metaphors for either lovers in general or lovers that are out of reach. I did decide to get rid of songs that only mentioned Romeo and Juliet in passing (like ' (Don't Fear) The Reaper' by Blue Öyster Cult). Or maybe there are a lot of songs based on this play that just slipped under the radar of my searching because of the language used. Maybe the song-writers feel all that can be said has been said. Why is this? Maybe it feels too much like a cliché. I own eight, and so when I went looking for two more to make up this list, I was shocked at how few I had to choose from. Having said that, not as many as I would have thought. Hardly surprising, but a number of musicians have used the themes from this play and its titular characters as inspiration. And, of course, when films like West Side Story and Romeo & Juliet come out and make large amounts of money, it just shows that the appeal is still there, as strong as ever. Still, it is the one Shakespeare play that continues to sit in the zeitgeist of each age, as new audiences find its tragedy and love story to their liking. It is sad, and the added complication of parents feuding (the "star-crossed lovers" thing) adds to that, but on any objective viewing, the story is more a tale of sad stupidity than a love that would never die. And that is why it is timeless – teenagers still act like that to this day. Yes, it is a tragedy, but is it really an eternal love story? Lack of communication, not trusting one's instincts and listening to friends instead, and then over-reacting are what occur in this story.
Has there ever been a play more misunderstood by audiences than William Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet? It is a story of two teenagers – Juliet is thirteen, remember – who, through a series of misunderstandings, end up killing themselves.