Shakespeare Didn't Write "Bella and Edward"

"Just like Romeo and Juliet," — The Reflections
"It's like Romeo and Juliet", — Silk E. Fyne
"It's like Romeo and Juliet," — Pink

Twilight is a popular read. Not a great read. Yet, it’s compared with one of the most well-known texts in English literature, Shakespeare’s very own Romeo and Juliet.

This juxtaposition comes up with frequency among fans. However, even people close to me tried conjuring up reasons and motifs which deeply interrelated Twilight with Romeo and Juliet. Something something forbidden love… Something something two different families…

The comparison strikes me as trite and saddening.

What love story hasn’t been compared to Romeo and Juliet? Wasn’t Titanic? Wuthering Heights? Even our own love stories we’re all too willing to compare to the superlatively popular drama.

While I would regard Romeo and Juliet as being something exquisite, I do not think the comparison is very flattering. In fact, that so many people are given to compare Twilight to, as my theatre friends have called it R&J, shows a severe misunderstanding of both texts. Perhaps, what is needed is a second reading of R&J.

What makes R&J a work of art is its accurate and opulent portrayal of the subject matter, and not the love affair between the title-characters itself. We’re all introduced to the bard’s great love story at too young and hormonal an age to realize its depth. By the time we first see an interpretation of the text, either on stage, screen, VHS or blueray, we’ve seen it parodied and alluded to in countless programs. Before actually approaching the play itself, which is inevitable, its ubiquity in the culture predisposes us to a singly premature impression: it’s a love story.

There is always debate in the academic community on whether or not R&J can be classified in such a romantic way. A closer reading of the text might leave one with the impression of two teenagers chasing the other’s loins with “star-crossed” fervor…

While forces outside of either Romeo’s or Juliet’s control, such as family matters (after all, their families were pitted against each other before they both met) make R&J a tragedy—mercurial adolescent megrims don’t assuage the situation. In fact not focusing on either Romeo’s or Juliet’s severe character flaws makes the text fall flat. While they might love each other, the tragedy is they might not be good for one another.

Romeo “falls” for Juliet on sight and initially, Juliet is mighty recalcitrant to his advances.

ROMEO [To JULIET]: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

While quick and coy enough to be read as coquettish, Juliet’s words are, in fact, what we might call a “burn.” Romeo, in referring to Julie as a “shrine” and his lips as “pilgrims” he leaves himself open to an acrid riposte. Juliet follows through countering this allusion to divine love by alluding to religious celibacy. She diffuses his sexual advances by asserting chastity. This use of wit is meant to ruffle Romeo’s feathers, to deter him, to shoo him away.

One of the overlooked details in the story is Romeo goes to this fated party to take his mind off of a girl named Rosaline. After meeting Juliet for a moment, "Now Romeo is beloved and loves again" as the Chorus of Act II says. So quickly do teenage passions change! Perhaps because they're a little premature.

Romeo is no Romeo. His boyish angst and stubbornness are apparent throughout the play. He’s a self-aggrandizer, and Juliet quickly falls for this illusion.

Romeo & Juliet is less a tragedy of a love so-strong that was doomed, but of two people who through a series of premature intrigues wind up dead. It’s a story about human fragility. Foibles of pride and pride in love. The story is not about the exalted emotion of the human experience, but how two people could think the other was perfect for them—and in the end be wrong.

After all, what is so perfect and crystalline about the romantic death? I’d be inclined to argue that love is only for the living…

The comparisons between the bard’s bitter tale and Meyer’s mawkish myth certain resonate. Yet, as with R&J, Twilight really isn’t a love story. It’s a story of two people who may love each other but aren’t healthy for one another’s physical, mental and emotional well-being. The emphasis is definitely put on the feeling Bella feels for Edward, and because of this, the narrative falls rather flat. All of the action, depth, and substance that Romeo and Juliet captivates us with is lost in Twilight because it fails to truly focus on the clash of two characters.

Though, considering my previous posts, it’s not as if there are characters in Twilight who have enough personality to clash with one another.

The Swan Princess IV

There's a moment in the book, perfectly visualized in the film. In this scene Edward Cullen describes to Bella his initial curiosity with her. This is one of the main reasons why he is so fascinated with her. Edward's "vampirism" comes with a unique gift; he can read other people's minds. Even so, he cannot cipher Bella's thoughts. He gets a blank every time he tries. This remains unexplained throughout the novel, or it was so terribly explained I forgot it.

Understandably, we each begin our romances questioning the thoughts of our prospective lovers. However, for the purposes of understanding Edward, his inability to read Bella's mind isn't a sufficient reason to explain his interest.

There is also some slop about how Bella's blood smells pleasant to Edward. Yet, this doesn't strike me as romantic either. Nor do I think it reveals anything about Edward's personality at all.

Bella and Edward only fall in love with each other because the book needed to go somewhere, not because they as characters have any chemistry. The novel itself is an amateur effort to keep a plot going. This isn't good writing but people've eaten it up! People claim their love for Edward. Yet, who is it they love? It isn't quite clear.

I cannot make out who he is from the screams of "bite me Robert!" from Edward's fans. I cannot make out who he is from what I've read. I cannot make out who he is from watching a poor young man act out the amorphous role of Edward Cullen on screen. I cannot make out who he is from the girls that are trampled at Robert Pattinson's autograph signings. I cannot make out who he is from this glittering new ideal women I know hold their men too.

Oh! But it's no use! Who is Edward Cullen?

The Swan Princess Part III

For a benevolent bloodsucker, his dating strategies are as blunt and unsophisticated as a stalker. He watches Bella while she sleeps, unbeknownst to Bella herself. He follows her around, claiming:

"I followed your scent."

Reader, I thought that men who did this got a face-full of pepper-spray, not wet kisses.

How is he romantic? A total unknown quantity, without any shade of personality but for his indecision on whether to kill or kiss this girl. And of course, he thinks the answer will reveal itself if he ogles her enough. Does this sound like Romeo?



Yet, female readers of all ages, and even some gentlemen, passionately thirst for a taste of his love. I've heard it said that Edward is "selfless," or "a perfect gentleman." He doesn't seem to be watching Bella while she sleeps for any other pleasure than his own, that is: if he even derives pleasure from it. I cannot say I know him well enough after an entire novel's worth to clearly state what Edward likes.

Edward's personality, beyond his frustrated dither, again "fang or fuck," cannot be discovered in the entire book. Anything he says comes back to this teeter-totter, anything he does is connected to this see-saw. He does nothing else but brood over the situation.

Oh! But he enjoys baseball. Alas, reader! it's a common interest among vampires.

Back into vagueness again we plunge!

That Edward loves Bella should reveal something about him. After all, our loves are a reflection of the things we value in life and in others. However, Bella, as I'm sure you remember, has no real character distinction either. So, it's difficult to say what he sees in her thereby allowing us to say: "Oh, he likes girls who ___; that might mean he's a ____ kind of guy."

(Is Stephanie Meyer a mystery writer? She certainly has a knack for leaving out important details to throw us off!)