INTRODUCTION

TO THE PROJECT:

*please note that white italicized hyperlinks will lead you to other pages within this hypertext,

& black italicized hyperlinks will take you to outside pages *

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While it remained in my periphery until April of 2021, this hypertext project began when Romeo & Juliet was assigned reading for what felt like the umpteenth time in my academic career. The first time I was faced with Shakespeare’s work was October of seventh grade—twelve years ago, half my lifespan—and I was one of the only students in the class that saw magic in his odd phrases and stilted language. We would be spending a month performing a dramatic reading of Romeo & Juliet, and when Mr. Swist tried to offer me a role as Rosalind, I politely—but determinedly—refused. I wanted Juliet. I wanted to step into her shoes, this fictional girl that lived centuries ago, her heart, her rashness, and figure out why her forbidden, doomed love led to her demise.

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“It’s a big role, Amy,” Mr. Swist had warned. I had only just begun to find my footing in class, finally working past my anxiety of my answers coming out wrong or ill-informed to engage with the material, and playing such a prominent part was terrifying to me—a far, far cry from the voracious student I am now who never puts her hand down—but I persevered.

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“I want Juliet,” I had insisted, even through my voice shaking. I got Juliet. I spent the next month reading soliloquies out loud, trying to inhabit this girl written five thousand years before my birth, trying to get into her head and figure out her motives, why her heart yearned so badly for what she could not have.

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That wasn’t quite possible at twelve. But twelve more years of wisdom and education later, I finally feel equipped to try. Attempting to understand Juliet—and by extension, her role in this gripping, transcendent trope of forbidden love—is possible through Lawrence Lessig’s hypothesis about remix culture, modern remakes of Shakespeare’s iconic and transcendent tale, and the role that adolescence plays in the romanticization of star-crossed lovers.

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Words are typically my specialty—understanding them and writing them—but this project, full of interwoven themes and narratives about a single text that was published in 1597, felt too massive to do justice to in a paper. There’s already an inherent overlap within the story and remixes of Romeo & Juliet, especially in the way this single story has transcended both space and time to still be just as relevant and modern today as it was in Shakespeare’s world. A hypertext version of this project will allow me to put the spotlight on crucial themes, narratives, and messages not only within Shakespeare’s work, but in these modern terms of remix culture and story tropes, especially fostering an exploration into how adolescence plays a role in the beloved, transcendent narrative of star-crossed lovers.

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So, if you will, please follow me along the space-time continuum to our fair Verona, and let’s unearth how the fate of Juliet and her Romeo still lives on, as vibrant and applicable to modernity today, as it was when Shakespeare first penned the prologue.