Greatest Love Story Ever Told?

  14-2-13

I was having a cup of tea with a friend yesterday and the topic of love stories came up. Mainly because we're close to "Singles Awareness Day" aka Valentines Day. We were discussing the greatest love stories of all time and my friend brought up the topic of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. "It's the greatest love story of all time!", she gushes.

But they both die in the end... Maybe it's just my cynical side coming out but maybe they just wanted to get laid or rebel against their parents? Is the more heavy thematic in Romeo and Juliet passion rather than love? The entirety of the story takes place over a week - they might have broken up if they had been together long enough to realize each other's bad habits...

I can make a reasoning in the story for passion. As everyone in the story is passionate about something. Even hatred in its purest form is passion. It takes a lot of energy to hate someone so much that you battle them to the death, as Tybalt did. Even Capulet's abuse of his wife and daughter is a misguided form of passion. I can't say the story isn't good because it is a good story and "the star crossed lovers" have inspired reinventions that have been equally as popular. But I have to argue that it's not the greatest love story ever told. Maybe it's the most popular or most well known love story but I can't say it's the greatest. For it to be a great love story for me they have to end up together in the end.

I'm not saying I hate Romeo and Juliet because I don't. I love a good production of it. I love how almost every character is destroyed in the story because of the hatred between two people. And I, like many teenage girls, had a serious crush on Leonardo DiCaprio after he did the Baz Luhrmann film.

What's your thoughts? Is Romeo and Juliet the greatest love story ever told? If so - make your arguements below. If not - what is your greatest love story?

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Comments

• June
  14 February 2013

  Odysseus and Penelope.
  Romeo and Juliet are overrated!

• Tim
  14 February 2013

  Han and Leia... duh.

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