Romeo and Juliet (Vol. 33) | Irene G. Dash (essay date 1981)
Irene G. Dash (essay date 1981)
SOURCE: "Growing Up: Romeo and Juliet," in Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare's Plays, Columbia University Press, 1981, pp. 67-100.
[In the following excerpt, Dash provides a detailed examination of Juliet's character, whom she describes as an adolescent struggling to gain self-knowledge.]
In Kenneth MacMillan's ballet of "Romeo and Juliet," Juliet enters carrying a rag doll, a symbol of youth, demonstrating the attachment of a young girl to toys and the world of childhood.1 Taking a hint from the debates that have persisted concerning the play, particularly those centering on Juliet's fewer than fourteen years, the choreographer dramatizes her youthfulness through symbol and gesture. Along with the doll, the movements—jerky, exuberant, and impulsive—establish Juliet's age. To demonstrate the transition to womanhood, gesture, symbol, and movement shift. The turn of her...
[The entire page is 12569 words long]
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