@Lightwizard,
ah, Mr. Wizard, I think, perhaps, that is the reason they called them "star crossed lovers." (I love Cassius remark to Brutus in Julius Caesar: "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in ourselves.")
My favorite soliloquy from Romeo and Juliet:
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death: O, how may I
Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
To sunder his that was thine enemy?
Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again: here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
Here's to my love!
Poor County Paris was the real loser.
" O one whose name is writ with mine in sour misfortune's book."
Yes, Zefferelli' version was strong as well.
I was referring to the NYC Ballet version with the mobile walls, the ballerina who played Juliet acting (the whole cast were in their teens) in anguish over Romeo poisoning himself -- the plot being Juliet takes the Friar's drug (those dang Catholics always have the best drugs and liquor) he gave her to fool her parents into believing she was dead from poisoning and later she could wake up and take off with her new husband Romeo; Romeo, being informed that she has committed suicide, enters the tomb and believes she is dead, happens to have his own flask of poison and drinks it, dies -- then Juliet wakes up, see's he killed himself with poison and stabs herself with his knife Samurai style. Prokofiev originally composed the ballet with a happy ending where Romeo and Juliet live and escape together, dancing off the stage. Diaghlev and others convinced him to retain the tragic ending.
