Is there a point where Romeo and Juliet just seems less and less relevant, more and more a relic of some distant forgotten world?
Aren’t we already there for people who know the details rather than the outline? She was thirteen, they knew each other for less than a week, and he spent Act One mooning about a different girl. We no longer consider romantic difficulties between college boys and middle school girls to be the pinnacle of tragedy.
While we are arguing fictional evidence, I will take the third season of Buffy as its pinnacle, and that ends in triumph rather than tragedy (although again triumph over adversity). It might say more about your preferences if you think all the great works are tragedies; I know someone who thinks the sixth season of Buffy was the best, which is definitely a statement on her sense of life.
Is there a point where Romeo and Juliet just seems less and less relevant, more and more a relic of some distant forgotten world?
Aren’t we already there for people who know the details rather than the outline? She was thirteen, they knew each other for less than a week, and he spent Act One mooning about a different girl. We no longer consider romantic difficulties between college boys and middle school girls to be the pinnacle of tragedy.
While we are arguing fictional evidence, I will take the third season of Buffy as its pinnacle, and that ends in triumph rather than tragedy (although again triumph over adversity). It might say more about your preferences if you think all the great works are tragedies; I know someone who thinks the sixth season of Buffy was the best, which is definitely a statement on her sense of life.