What's in a name? Why Should I Care
Why Should I Care?
A lot of people think the balcony scene is about as deep as a twelve-year-old interpretation of true love can get. Boy meets girl, they stare into each other's eyes and say a lot of poetic things. Cue sappy music. Anybody who makes it past the age of fourteen, of course, realizes that's not what love is about. Swearing undying commitment to each other fifteen minutes after they've met isn't love—it's infatuation.
Juliet is trying to make her infatuation for her family's enemy okay because it all boils down to nothing more than a name. But it turns out that someone's last name means a whole lot more than she realizes.
No one loves in a vacuum. And Juliet really wishes that she could protect her love for Romeo from all the drama between their families, but she can't. In the first few weeks of a love affair, you might feel like you and your main squeeze are in a world of your own—but pretty soon, reality comes crashing back. You've got homework to do, or jobs to go to, parents breathing down your neck, or employers wondering why you keep calling in sick. And that's not even to mention your friends, who've stopped inviting you to hang out because your honey's not welcome in the clique.
But let's say that you do stay together. You marry your teenage sweetheart and set up a life. Pretty soon, you've got bills to pay, maybe kids to feed, or you're the one who's waking up at six in the morning to take the dog for a walk again.
Our point? Romeo and Juliet is at least partly a tragedy about the clash between private love (you and your honey) and public interest (convenient marriages, or paying bills, or raising a family). And this is exactly the type of rationalizing that only takes place in those first few weeks of infatuation.
We may not have quite the same roadblocks that Romeo and Juliet have, but intense, passionate love can be just as antisocial in the 21st century as it was in the 16th century. And so can pretending names aren't important in our society when they really are. How do you negotiate the minefield? Well, hopefully better than Romeo and Juliet did.