They… Pray!

Dearest Rachel –

I realize just how silly this statement sounds as I’m preparing to type it, but it has to be said; there are times when I have no idea what my mind is thinking.

That would seem completely oxymoronic on its face; it’s my mind, I’m inside of it, I am it, in fact. If anyone could, I should be the one person able to understand and explain my own thought processes, for the most part. And, to be fair, both of us recognize the clip from one of the mix tapes I sent you back in the day when we were courting.

But why is it crossing my mind now?

As always, this is probably a case of overthinking an issue; this was going through my head as I was sleeping, and stayed there upon attaining consciousness, so, given the oxymoron that is ‘dream logic,’ I shouldn’t ascribe too much importance to the scene as it ran through my head, both in slumber and in waking memory. We both know the scene and the lines well; what of it? Sure, it’s odd that it struck me in the current moment, as there is no Juliet for me to direct these lines to (I’ve given up sending encouraging text messages to “Lee,” and she hasn’t sent any texts wondering what’s happened to me, so that bit of ghosting has been managed successfully, but I’ve nowhere to go from here at the moment). But dreams don’t care about stuff like that, and I probably shouldn’t insist that they do.

I will say that this particular scene has always struck me as a particularly brilliant and witty exchange, especially between a couple of hormone-addled teenagers. How on earth could each of them, at their tender age, be such masters of verbal… well, ‘sparring’ isn’t quite the word for it, as they’re clearly not truly at odds with each other. Maybe ‘grappling,’ since that’s what at least one of them wants out of the encounter (and, from some of Juliet’s later lines about wanting Romeo ‘dead’ at her feet when she’s really referring to le petit mort, probably both of them)? In any case, I know I could only dream of being so silver-tongued with my intended, that letter to you notwithstanding.

(Of course, sometimes one doesn’t have to be armed with scintillating repartee in order beguile a female into such moments. I think I told you a couple of times about my first encounter with “Christie” back at college and how that wound up being the only time I ever stayed up for an entire night while there – no ‘all-nighter’ study sessions for me, thank you. The weird thing is that it never went anywhere from there, either that night or throughout the next few years we continued to cross paths on campus. We remained friends – and I think you became closer to her than I did – but it was a moment we never really spoke of thereafter. Not out of shame – we didn’t do that much time one time, especially since we were in the front common room the whole time – but out of a tacit mutual realization that that night was an anomalous moment in time we had together, not to be pursued further.)

Although, given who was feeding them their lines, what could one expect? Calling Shakespeare “brilliant” seems almost more like a statement of fact, as opposed to any measure of praise. It has the same energy to me as the opening line in the Lord’s Prayer, “hallowed be Your name.” Is that meant to honor Him, when all it is is the truth? He’s holy, and nothing we could say (or refuse to say) could change that. But I’m getting off the subject; we can save that for another time.

For all Shakespeare’s brilliance with the written word, though, what sells this particular adaptation of the work is the character business. Remember that blocking (or costuming or scene design, for that matter) wasn’t a thing in Elizabethan theater, or at least weren’t a part of the playwright’s domain. Those sorts of instructions weren’t included in the text, allowing for a great deal of leeway in interpretations. Most productions try to be period-realistic – like this one – but that’s by no means a requirement, nor is varying from it necessarily a hindrance. But when Juliet makes to fend off Romeo’s request for her lips, by saying they are to be used for prayer, his response, while seeming to be affirmative in the text alone – “let lips do what hands do… they pray” – his visual demonstration of how prayer is effected instead presses his suit, as he takes her hand in his and intertwines their fingers as one would with one’s own hands in prayer. It’s always struck me as the perfect gambit for the situation.

Which is why the whole of the story can be so frustrating, when you come down to it. For all that these two young lovers are so preternaturally gifted at repartee (and who speaks constantly in iambic pentameter, either?), the fact that they cannot seem to bring themselves to take a moment to reflect on the decisions they are about to make – and the consequences that may come of them – gnaws at the viewer who has loved and lost, and thus knows better. Although even Romeo himself, having come off of being rejected by one Rosalie at some point in the recent past (his buddy Mercutio needles him about it early on in the play), ought to know that, as the saying goes, there are plenty of fish in the sea, and hooking Juliet might not be the be-all and end-all in life, or at least, the fishing process ought to involve a little more time and effort than he takes.

To be sure, the one person who might otherwise be a calming influence – and who could remind him what hands and lips ought to be doing – seems to have concluded that the two of them getting together might be the one thing to put an end to the conflict between the families, and helps push them together at a time when he ought to be the one counseling them otherwise. You’ll remember the counseling sessions we had with Pastor Gerry before our wedding (including the one situation where I misunderstood the question and had both of you raising your eyebrows to the point where they could have flown off your faces); they didn’t serve to delay our nuptials, but then, we weren’t going from “would you?” to “I do” in the course of a week, if that. A prayer to seek God’s will – whether on the friar’s part or the kids’ – would have done wonders for their long-term chances.

Of course, if Father Lawrence had been as sensible as Pastor Gerry – and was able to talk an equal amount of sense into the two young lovers – we wouldn’t have ourselves a story, now, would we? And he wasn’t entirely wrong, as they did manage to end the long-running family feud, albeit at the cost of their lives. Then again, how many lives had already been lost before theirs? Tybalt and Mercutio were simply the last of a long line of such casualties; what would another couple of deaths mean? But once they stop being mere statistics, and start being real people (not to mention being the scions of both houses, as opposed to servants, friends and hangers-on), then it becomes meaningful tragedy, enough to cause those generations before to rethink their differences.

Be that as it may, this is what’s been going through my mind this morning. I’ve no idea why, but I thought I might as well share it with you, honey, and let you ruminate on it. Would that I could find out what you thought of it at this point. For now, all I can do is ask that you keep an eye on me for the rest of the day, and wish me luck, as I’m sure I’ll be needing it.