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“Ro, whr r u?”
That’s the way it would have sounded if Shakespeare had lived today and had decided that Juliet should text her famous question — “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” — instead of saying it.
And Romeo would have texted back.
“Fmly thng. Text u ltr.”
How exciting would that play have been? All the characters would have been standing around, sort of spelling things out on their smart phones, until somebody passed a law — for the safety of the actors — about no texting on stage while a theater production is in progress.
Apparently, there would have been a danger of actors falling off the stage or running into other actors, because they were fiddling on their phones instead of watching for their marks.
The last texted thing the audience would have seen, if they’d been following the dialogue from “Romeo and Juliet” on their own phones, would have been Romeo’s pondering about Juliet, “wt lit thru yndr wndo braks? ...”
CAUSED CHANGES
You scoff, but a lot of things have changed over the years in the way we communicate.
Take Romeo’s loving soliloquy as an example. In the play, after he goes on and on a little more about Juliet being the sun and other things most audiences never have really understood, Juliet takes the potion that will make her seem dead. A messenger is supposed to tell Romeo that, but he never arrives. So Romeo thinks she is dead and drinks poison, which is a whole different thing than a potion. That’s why, when Juliet wakes up, he actually is dead. She sees that and kills herself.
Now that’s a fun ending for the audience, but the main characters could have solved themselves a bunch of problems if they lived in a time of texting. Juliet quickly could have texted Romeo, “Slepng a bit.” And Romeo could have answered, “K, txt whn u wk up.”
A play like that might not remain a classic through the centuries — “Nding stnk,’ audience members might have texted friends — but it would have lengthened Romeo and Juliet’s lives long enough for them to text each other “luv u” and “luv u 2” before the curtain came down.
OTHER DIALOGUE
Now, a tear-jerking ending like that doesn’t exactly get the heart to throbbing. But I’m more disturbed about the effect of texting on other famous lines in Shakespeare’s plays.
Hamlet: “2 b or nt 2 b, thts th ?”
Julius Caesar: “A 2 Brta”
King Richard III: “Dis wntr discntnt”
Macbeth: “Dbl, dbl, tol n trbl”
Romeo and Juliet: “Ros by nuthr nam wld stl sml gd.”
Yeah, I suppose the rose would smell as sweet. But spelled like that it wouldn’t sound as good.
“Ro, whr r u?”
That’s the way it would have sounded if Shakespeare had lived today and had decided that Juliet should text her famous question — “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” — instead of saying it.
And Romeo would have texted back.
“Fmly thng. Text u ltr.”
How exciting would that play have been? All the characters would have been standing around, sort of spelling things out on their smart phones, until somebody passed a law — for the safety of the actors — about no texting on stage while a theater production is in progress.
Apparently, there would have been a danger of actors falling off the stage or running into other actors, because they were fiddling on their phones instead of watching for their marks.
The last texted thing the audience would have seen, if they’d been following the dialogue from “Romeo and Juliet” on their own phones, would have been Romeo’s pondering about Juliet, “wt lit thru yndr wndo braks? ...”
CAUSED CHANGES
You scoff, but a lot of things have changed over the years in the way we communicate.
Take Romeo’s loving soliloquy as an example. In the play, after he goes on and on a little more about Juliet being the sun and other things most audiences never have really understood, Juliet takes the potion that will make her seem dead. A messenger is supposed to tell Romeo that, but he never arrives. So Romeo thinks she is dead and drinks poison, which is a whole different thing than a potion. That’s why, when Juliet wakes up, he actually is dead. She sees that and kills herself.
Now that’s a fun ending for the audience, but the main characters could have solved themselves a bunch of problems if they lived in a time of texting. Juliet quickly could have texted Romeo, “Slepng a bit.” And Romeo could have answered, “K, txt whn u wk up.”
A play like that might not remain a classic through the centuries — “Nding stnk,’ audience members might have texted friends — but it would have lengthened Romeo and Juliet’s lives long enough for them to text each other “luv u” and “luv u 2” before the curtain came down.
OTHER DIALOGUE
Now, a tear-jerking ending like that doesn’t exactly get the heart to throbbing. But I’m more disturbed about the effect of texting on other famous lines in Shakespeare’s plays.
Hamlet: “2 b or nt 2 b, thts th ?”
Julius Caesar: “A 2 Brta”
King Richard III: “Dis wntr discntnt”
Macbeth: “Dbl, dbl, tol n trbl”
Romeo and Juliet: “Ros by nuthr nam wld stl sml gd.”
Yeah, I suppose the rose would smell as sweet. But spelled like that it wouldn’t sound as good.
