While it has clearly cultivated a mass following amongst the teenage youth of the world, I feel absolutely no connection with Romeo or Juliet. Knowing the story and just a little about cerebral development, it is difficult to perceive their actions and emotions as anything less than hormonal. While the writing of the story is undeniably beautiful, with lilting and captivating prose, I find the protagonists unconvincing, little more than silly caricatures of people with equally shallow perspectives. As dignified by Romeo's hopeless love for Rosaline, their drastic and melodramatic feelings make me more irritated than anything else, abandoning the plot as a horrible teenage cliche rather than an epic Shakespearean tragedy. Give me Macbeth or Twelfth Night any day. Those stories we can at least appreciate beyond their contemporary remakes and interpretations.
As for the reading, I think its definitely easier than I expected. It helps to be taking foreign language, because those skills can really be applied here. The more I read, the more I am able to appreciate the intent and nuance of Shakespeare's technique. I am unable to define whether the in class reading is redundant or not. There hasn't been a day yet where we haven't read in class. However, I believe our time might be more efficiently directed towards comprehension activities, where we would be able to exercise our provided roles that have seemed a little underused thus far. Because students are so confident about being able to read in class, some might not even be reading on their own, which could be seriously detrimental later in high school where AP English classes assume their students know how to interpret difficult language without classroom review.
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