Was the most classic love story of all time actually meant to be gothic horror?

Is Romeo and Juliet supposed to be Scary?

Good morrow my Gothic gogglers! Since Spooky Season is upon us, I’d like to discuss the notion that, rather than being an iconic story of romantic love, maybe Romeo and Juliet is actually supposed to be gothic, disturbing, and maybe even terrifying!

I got the idea for this post after perusing the Michaels halloween displays, and realizing that many of them are Shakespeare themed in general, and Romeo and Juliet in particular. It got me thinking that, although Shakespeare died before such writers as Poe, Shelly, and Byron, his work has many ideas, themes, and tropes that are common in what we call Gothic literature; a kind of genre dominated by imagery of terror, disgust, and a fascination with the macabre.

Point 1: Romeo and Juliet was originally a cautionary tale.

One common trend in horror is punishing young people for their indescretions, especially disobedience and premarital sex. This is still common today; once you see a couple kiss in a horror movie, you know a grizzly death is coming. People see this story as the ideal love story, which it definitely is not. Shakespeare isn’t trying to put these lovers on a pedestal, he’s trying to show how hard it is for love to flourish in such a toxic, violent world.

This might shock you, but Shakespeare didn’t invent the story of Romeo and Juliet; he based it on an English poem by poet Albert Brooke, whose attitude to young lovers would’ve made Norma Bates blush! Look at the Introduction to the 1593 edition of the poem Romeus and Juliet:

The  good
man’s  example  biddeth  men  to  be  good,  and  the  evil  man’s mischief  warneth  men  not  to  be  evil.  To  this  good  end, good
Reader,  is  this  tragical  matter  written,  to  describe  unto thee  a  couple  of  unfortunate  lovers,  thralling  themselves  to
unhonest  desire  ;  neglecting  the  authority  and  advice  of parents  and  friends ;  conferring  their  principal  counsels
with  drunken  gossips  and  superstitious  friars  (the  naturally fit  instruments  of  unchastity)  ;  attempting  all  adventures  of
peril  for  th’  attaining  of  their  wished  lust ;  using  auricular confession,  the  key  of  whoredom  and  treason,  for  further-
ance of  their  purpose ;  abusing  the  honourable  name  of lawful  marriage  to  cloak  the  shame  of  stolen  contracts ;
finally  by  all  means  of  unhonest  life  hasting  to  most
unhappy  death. -Albert Brooke

Brooke’s introduction reads like a sermon, suggesting that we look at the lover’s unfortunate lives like a parable designed to “scare us straight.” Even though Shakespeare takes a more sympathetic tone to the story, he actually makes the love story even more rushed and intense. Shakespeare’s play makes it so Romeo and Juliet only know each other for six days! Again, even though Shakespeare resfuses to judge them, Romeo and Juliet’s roots as a cautionary tale come through in the plot and characters.

What is Gothic Horror?

Probably these days when you think of “gothic.” you think of a pale person with black hair wearing piercings, crosses and black clothes, but back in the 19th century, gothic was a genre of “Romantic literature” that emphasized the unusual, the mysterious, the grotesque, and the terrifying.

To understand what gothic literature is, you have to first understand what Romanticism is. Elizabethans like Shakespeare emphasized the concept of reason and a devotion to logic and subduing passion and superstition to reason, which is why most of his tragic heroes fall victim to their passions and almost never use their reason. By contrast, 19th century Romantic literature favored the opposite approach- rejecting cold reason and machine-like rationality and embracing the passions that make people human- passions like love and awe and devotion, but also terror and desire, which became the tentpoles of gothic literature. Gothic stories like those of Mary Shelly (Frankenstein), Bram Stoker ( Dracula) and of course Edgar Allen Poe, took the Romantic concept of emphasizing feeling and mood, and crafted masterpieces of terror and suspense.
In short, you could think of Romanticism as the moody child of Shakespeare, and gothic literature as his even moodier grandchild.

As Romanticism took hold in literary circles, it also took hold in the way Romeo and Juliet was staged too. In 1882, a celebrated production of the play debuted at the Lyceum theater in London, the same theater managed by Dracula author Bram Stoker.

The production had an emphasis on the gothic elements of the story with dark, moonlit scenery, gothic crypts, and an eerie scene where Sir Henry Irving as Romeo carries the slaughtered body down a long, winding staircase to lay him in Juliet’s tomb.

A few years later, Stoker would finish Dracula, and adapt it as a stage play at the Lyceum.Legend has it that Stoker based the character of Dracula on Sir Henry. Sadly for Mr. Stoker, Irving never played the role onstage. Therefore you can see how Shakespeare’s writing helped form the ideas of gothic writers like Shelly and Stoker, and Romeo and Juliet was re-interpreted from a medieval morality tale into a Romantic story of two people whose desire is both powerful and destructive (Source: Royal Shakespeare Company)

Violent Delights/ Monstrous Ends

1. Courtly love- the trope of star-crossed lovers requires a tantalizing distance; the feelings engendered are primarily longing and unfulfilled desire; the lovers express joy from finding love, but they also suffer as long as they cannot totally be together. In Romeo and Juliet, the distance is simply an accident of birth- they happened to be born into families that hate each other. It is a simple step to turn this fate unto something much more horrible
2. Romeo in particular, rather than using lawful means to overcome the stars, use violence to express their love- Romeo can and does kill for Juliet, twice. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine Romeo as a vampire or some other monster who kills to maintain his relationship. In our culture, such relationships are toxic, but the romantics ate them up.

The Play’s obsession with Death

Romeo and Juliet is just as obsessed with Death as it is with love. One classic trope of gothic literature is the concept of Death as a character that physically lusts after a beautiful woman. Look at this disturbing passage by Lord Capulet:

O son! the night before thy wedding-day
Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,

Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;
My daughter he hath wedded: I will die,
And leave him all; life, living, all is Death’s.

Even more striking is the passage where Romeo discovers Juliet in the tomb, and feels that Death himself has claimed her:

O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer’d; beauty’s ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.

Shall I believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again: here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids;

O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh

Once Twilight became popular, it spawned a massive backlash against teen romance, and Shakespeare’s play faced some of the same criticism. Twilight exposed the toxic nature of age gaps, using the threat of suicide as a guilt tactic, the ludicrous nature of “love at first sight.” Once Twilight exposed how unhealthy the star-crossed romance of Romeo and Juliet is, the play’s popularity never recovered.

The man difference between Twilight and Romeo and Juliet, is that that Shakespeeare intentionally gave star crossed lovers a boundary that was easy to morally get past- the feud is arbitrary and pointless. By contrast, Edward’s desire for Bella is physically and emotionally unhealthy- he could literally kill her and Edwrd worries that Bella will cause him to lust after human blood. He even compares himself to a drug addict who is in love with his own drug. While this might please the Romantics, it strikes modern people as a deeply toxic basis for a relationship.

Case Study- Twilight: A Failed Attempt To Make Shakespeare Cool for goth kids

Like Romeo, the vanpiric hero is a reluctant killer who is skilled in wooing using music and poetry, but is also a bloodsucking monster. Bella is attracted to him because he makes her feel special, but he is tortured because he’s afraid being with her will kill her. Twilight wants to be Romeo and Juliet so badly that it directly parallels the plot in book 2.
1. Edward tells Bella they can’t be together
2. There’s a love triangle with a guy her father approves of
3. Edward hears she’s dead and goes to Italy to kill himself
In addition- they even reference Romeo and Juliet

In short, there are some great gothic potential in the story of Romeo and Juliet, and I’d love to explore a more explicit interpretation, which is why it’s so sad that the most high-profile one is so sickly and pale. Then again, I might satisfy my craving in another fashion… stay thirsty my friends!

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