Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

                This piece, of course, is a classic and I don’t think that there is a high school student in the US who hasn’t had to read it at one point or another during their grade school education. Considering this, one is forced to look at the play in a way as to determine what it is about this particular text that so many school districts and educators find so important.

                I understand that as a work the language and structure of this classic piece is remarkable and any student would benefit from being introduced to writing such as this. I also understand that as the main characters are teenagers themselves and are struggling with something that virtually every teenager goes through (that of love and loss), this text is something that teenagers can relate to, and, as far as Shakespeare goes, it is fairly simply written. What I don’t really get, and have never really gotten about this work is that it has always struck me as a bit on the whiney side and full of over-reaction to what is a romance that spans the whole of 2 or 3 days.

                While I do realize that high school students (myself included) often over-react to everything in their lives, it seems that there are works by Shakespeare that I think students would benefit more from and that have just as good, if not better, language, structure and plot. I would personally prefer to use some of Shakespeare’s comedies in the high school classroom. These texts would introduce students to the same beauty of language and would allow them to experience the funny side of Shakespeare, a side that I think is often under-represented in the high school classroom.