罗密欧读后感130英语合集(10)

Your goal in this assignment should be to familiarize （or refamiliarize） yourself with exactly what Shakespeare wrote so that you can observe what it is Zeffirelli has done with it.
Shakespeare wrote almost no original plots. He used an English poetic retelling of an old Italian tale: Arthur Brooke"s The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet. Despite its Italian setting, the language, attitudes, and customs are generally English. In one respect, Shakespeare altered the story in a way which is shocking to modern audiences: he lowered Juliet"s age from sixteen to just under fourteen.
There are several reasons he might have done so. Boys played the female roles in Shakespeare"s theater, and they might have been more convincing as young girls than as more mature women （though audiences presumably found a boy playing Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth satisfactory）。 Shakespeare emphasizes the over-hastiness and premature nature of this love affair and probably felt he was underlining this theme at a time when marriage at fifteen was considered by no means shocking, though marriage at eighteen or twenty was in fact much more common.