January 23, 1997
William
Shakespeare
Stratford upon
Avon
Dear Mr.
Shakespeare
Just recently, I have read what it
probably your most highly acclaimed works, Romeo and Juliet. I must give you credit for doing some great
work with it, being that there are many people who enjoy it tremendously,
however, I have a few problems with your story.
I guess the main point that I am trying to stress, is that your story,
yet good, is written to be understood by people from many centuries ago. Much of the script is written in old English,
and it is very hard to understand and comprehend for people living today. I know that the setting for the story is
several centuries ago, but I think that you could make a more revised version
of the story for people today to read.
One part that really stuck out to me was
the very famous "balcony scene".
Much of the language here could use some revision. For example, when Juliet says, "Romeo,
Romeo, where for art thou Romeo?", I think it would be much better if she
simply said something to the affect of "Romeo, where are you?" since
that is practically all she is saying.
And at the end of the balcony scene, instead of Juliet saying
"Parting is such sweet sorrow," although that is very dramatic, she
could just say something like, "I wish you didn't have to go so
soon."
Another part that I noticed was in the
scene where Mercutio was insulting Tybalt, right before they fought in the
streets of Verona. Mercutio had called
Tybalt "prince of cats" since Tybalt was an ordinary name for house
cats at that time. I think that it would
be all right to keep this part, however you might want to think about changing
Tybalt's name to something that is more common for cats today like Felix or
even better, Whiskers, however that might not be a suitable name for a normal
person. I think that in making these
changes in your story, that it would make it much easier to read for people
today, and I think that it might make school students who have to read it, like
it even more.
You might even want to think about
changing the names of the characters to something more modern, or even
something just completely stupid so it would appeal to people even more. For example, you could change Romeo and
Juliet to Cocaine Chris and Kitty or Josh The Trashman and Maud. I think that would capture the readers'
attention much better than just a couple of 16th century names. You might also want to change your name since
it is so long. You could make it
something like Weird Wally Shaker or just change it to Unknown. That would be a lot easier to spell and
remember. It would help a lot of people
even more if you changed your place of residence. Stratford upon Avon is just to hard to
remember sometimes. Today, Avon is
cosmetics, not a place to live. You
could change your address to House upon Hill or something really easy like
that.
In doing this, I hope that I have given
you some ideas on how to improve one of your greatest writings and a little bit
of your personal information as well so that others can benefit from it and be
able to appreciate you and your hard work even more. Don't just stop with this story though, you
could use these suggestions on all of your writings. I hope that I haven't been a nag. Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
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