Reviews for The Temple Beau

The average rating for The Temple Beau based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-05-18 00:00:00 Antonio Cotten Romeo and Juliet, abridged. ROMEO: I'm Romeo, and I used to be emo and annoying but now I'm so totally in luuuuurve and it's AWESOME. MERCUTIO: Okay, three things: One, there's only room in this play for one awesome character and it's me, bitch. Two, you're still emo and annoying. Three, didn't you say that exact same stuff yesterday about Rosaline? ROMEO: Who? *meanwhile, Juliet prances around her room and draws hearts on things and scribbles "Mrs. Juliet Montague" in her diary over and over. Because she is THIRTEEN. How old is Romeo supposed to be? Let's not talk about that, k?* CAPULET: Good news, Juliet! I found you a husband! PARIS: Hello, I'm a complete tool. JULIET: Daddy, I don't want to marry that apparently decent and unflawed guy! I'm in love with Romeo Montague - we met yesterday and it was HOT. CAPULET: I WILL BE DAMNED IF I SEE MY ONLY DAUGHTER MARRIED TO THE ONLY SON OF THE MAN WHO IS MY MORTAL ENEMY FOR REASONS TOO UNIMPORTANT TO SPECIFY IN THIS PLAY! JULIET: *stamps foot, runs off to her room to watch High School Musical again and sulk* TYBALT: Hey Romeo, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! MONTAGUE POSSE: Oh, snap. MERCUTIO: YOU TAKE THAT BACK! TYBALT: MAKE ME! ROMEO: No! You can't fight him, Mercutio because I already married his cousin! TYBALT: I KEEL YOU! *Romeo attempts to stop the fight and fails miserably* MERCUTIO: FUCK YOU ALL! *dies* ROMEO: Okay, forget what I said about not fighting. I KEEL YOU! TYBALT: *dies* PRINCE: I've had enough of your shit, Emo McStabbypants. You're banished. ROMEO: Waaaaaahhhhhh! I'm banished and Juliet is going to marry another guy and it's not fair WHY DOES GOD HATE ME? FRIAR LAURENCE: Jesus Christ, not this again. Okay, if you promise to grow a pair, I'll help you and your wife out. Here's the plan: she takes a potion that'll make her go into a coma, and then she'll get put in the family tomb and then you'll sneak back into town, break into the tomb, wait until she wakes up, and then the two of you escape and live happily ever after! It's perfect! AUDIENCE: …the hell? *Shockingly, the plan fails. Romeo goes back to the tomb (pausing to kill Paris just for good measure), but he thinks Juliet's dead and drinks poison and dies, and then like two seconds later she wakes up and sees that Romeo isn't mostly dead like she was, he's dead, so she stabs herself.* MONTAGUE: Wow, we are awful parents. CAPULET: I have an idea - let's make solid gold statues of our dead children to commemorate their love and serve as a constant reminder of the fact that our only children killed themselves because we were such uncaring parents. *they actually do this.* SHAKESPEARE: Beat that, Stephenie Meyer. THE END. Read for: 9th grade English BONUS: courtesy of The Second City Network. Every Shakespeare heroine needs a sassy gay friend

Review # 2 was written on 2008-08-27 00:00:00 Steven Stukes I'm not sure what annoys me more - the play that elevated a story about two teenagers meeting at a ball and instantly "falling in love" then deciding to get married after knowing each other for one night into the most well-known love story of all time, or the middle schools that feed this to kids of the same age group as the main characters to support their angst-filled heads with the idea that yes, they really are in love with that guy/girl they met five minutes ago, and no one can stop them, especially not their meddling parents! Keep in mind that Juliet was THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. (Her father states she "hath not yet seen the change of fourteen years" in 1.2.9). Even in Shakespeare's England, most women were at least 21 before they married and had children. It's not clear how old Romeo is, but either he's also a stupid little kid who needs to be slapped, or he's a child molester, and neither one is a good thing. When I was in middle school or high school, around the time we read this book, I remember a classmate saying in class that when her and her boyfriends' eyes met across the quad, they just knew they were meant to be together forever. How convenient that her soulmate happened to be an immensely popular and good-looking football player, and his soulmate happened to be a gorgeous cheerleader! That's not love at first sight, that's lust at first sight. If they were really lucky, maybe as time went on they would also happen to "click" very well, that lust would develop into love (it didn't), and they would end up together forever (they didn't). But if they saw each other at a school dance, decided they were "like, totally in love," and then the next day decided to run off and get married, we shouldn't encourage that as a romantic love story, we should slap the hell out of them both to wake them up to reality. For what it's worth, my cynicism doesn't come from any bitterness towards life or love. I met my wife when we were 17, and we've now been together almost 10 years, married for a little over 2. Fortunately for me, she turned out to be awesome. If we had decided the day after meeting each other that we were hopelessly in love and needed to get married immediately, we would have been idiots, and I hope someone who I trusted and respected would have slapped me, hard. If we were 13 at the time, that would be even worse. Enlightened adults injecting this into our youth as a classic love story for the generations, providing further support for their angst-filled false ideas of love and marriage, is probably worst of all.