ROMEO AND JULIET by William Shakespeare,...

ROMEO AND JULIET by William Shakespeare, edited by C. S. Strachan and Patrick O’Shaughnessy (Iverna: $4.95). This excruciating paraphrase reduces Shakespeare’s most popular tragedy to the literary equivalent of junk food--adulterated, emulsified and pumped full of artificial sweeteners, dyes, flavorings and other noisome additives. Instead of suggesting how modern students can better appreciate the poetry and passion of the original text, Strachan offers a clunky, line-by-line “contemporary English” version “for easy reading.” Contemporary reading apparently means devoid of meter, grace and beauty, and many of his lines are real howlers. At the beginning of the balcony scene, Romeo asks, “But wait! What light is it that breaks through that window?”/ It is the east, and Juliet is the sun./ Arise beautiful sun, and kill the envious moon goddess,/ who is already sick and pale with grief/ that you, her servant, are far more beautiful than she./ Don’t be her servant, since she is envious;/ the uniform of her servants is sickly green, and only court jesters wear green./ Throw it off.” In turn, Juliet demands, “Why must you be Romeo--a Montague?” As the late Sir Kenneth Clarke observed, “Civilization may be difficult to define, but it’s not hard to recognize barbarism.”