The phrase "star-crossed lovers" was coined in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
The terms "star-crossed" and "star-crossed lovers" refer to two people who are not able to be together for some reason. These terms also have other meanings, but originally mean that the pairing is being "thwarted by a malign star" or that the stars are working against the relationship.[1]Astrological in origin, the phrase stems from the belief that the positions of the stars ruled over people's fates, and is best known from the play Romeo and Juliet by the Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare. Such pairings are often said to be doomed from the start.
The phrase was coined in the prologue of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life (5–6).[2]
It also refers to destiny and the inevitability of the two characters' paths crossing. It usually but not always refers to unlucky outcomes, since Romeo and Juliet's affair ended tragically. Further, it connotes that the lovers entered into their union without sufficient forethought or preparation; that the lovers may not have had adequate knowledge of each other or that they were not thinking rationally.[1]
(The original texts of the prologue, Q1 and Q2, use the spelling "starre-crost", but the version "star-cross'd" is normally used in modern versions.)
Examples of famous star-crossed lovers vary in written work. Pyramus and Thisbe are usually regarded as the source for Romeo and Juliet,[3] and is featured in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Wuthering Heights, considered to be one of the greatest love stories in literary works,[4] is a tale of all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between the star-crossed Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.
In Virgil's Aeneid, the Trojan exile prince Aeneas and Dido, queen of Carthage, fall passionately in love – but the gods order Aeneas away to Italy and the spurned Dido commits suicide. Of course, Virgil's readers in Rome in the first century BC would know in advance that this love was doomed, since Aeneas' and dido's progeny – respectively the Romans and the Carthagenians – would eventually become mortal enemies.
Lancelot, a trusted knight of King Arthur's Round Table, and Guinevere, the queen of Camelot and wife of Arthur, were involved in a star-crossed affair. In some versions of the tale, she is instantly smitten, and when they consummate their adulterous passion, it is an act which paves the way for the fall of Camelot and Arthur's death.
The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the lovers. The narrative predates and most likely influenced the Arthurian romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, and has had a substantial impact on Western art and literature since it first appeared in the 12th century. While the details of the story differ from one author to another, the overall plot structure remains much the same.
Pedro of Portugal and Inês de Castro shared a true and tragic love in the Portuguese 14th century. The dramatic circumstances of their relationship, forbidden by Peter's father, King Afonso IV, Inês' murder at the orders of Afonso, Peter's bloody revenge on her killers and the legend of the coronation of her exhumed corpse by Peter, have turned their story into a frequent subject of art, music, and drama through the ages.
Hero and Leander is a Greek myth, relating the story of Hero (Greek: Ἡρώ), a priestess of Aphrodite who dwelt in a tower in Sestos, at the edge of the Hellespont, and Leander (Greek: Λέανδρος, Leandros), a young man from Abydos on the other side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the Hellespont to be with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way.
Pelléas and Mélisande (French: Pelléas et Mélisande) is a Symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck about the forbidden, doomed love of the title characters. A classical myth, was a common subject for art during the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. The play (also described as one of Shakespeare's problem plays) is not a conventional tragedy, since its protagonist (Troilus) does not die.[5] The play ends instead on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus and Cressida.[5]
Layla and Majnun (by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi) is a classical Arabian love story. It is based on the real story of a young man called Qays ibn al-Mulawwah from the northern Arabian Peninsula,[7] in the Umayyad era during the 7th century. There were two Arabic versions of the story at the time.[8] In one version, he spent his youth together with Layla, tending their flocks. In the other version, upon seeing Layla he fell passionately in love with her. In both versions, however, he went mad when her father prevented him from marrying her; for that reason he came to be called Majnun Layla, which means "Driven mad by Layla". To him were attributed a variety of incredibly passionate romantic Arabic poems, considered among the foremost examples of the Udhari school.
The Butterfly Lovers is a Chinese legend about the tragic romance between two lovers, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai. The legend is sometimes regarded as the Chinese equivalent to Romeo and Juliet.[9][10]
In soap opera, modern examples of star-crossed lovers have included couples such as Cliff Warner and Nina Cortlandt, JR Chandler and Babe Carey and Bianca Montgomery and Maggie Stone from All My Children.[25][26][27] In 2008, a web-based reality soap opera was created based on the concept of being star-crossed. In Starcrossed, Fox News astrologer Greg Tufaro takes a couple in crisis and separates them for one cycle of the moon. Each is then set up with individuals who are a better match astrologically. The show puts the question "Is love written in the stars?" to the test with the couple deciding on the 28th day of their separation whether they will stay together or remain apart.[28]
in comics, the decision of Marvel Comics to kill off Gwen Stacy, the girlfriend of Spider-Man, made the two of them into star-crossed lovers - though that was not the original intention.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
Pyramus and Thisbe are a pair of legendary, ill-fated lovers from Babylon whose story forms part of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The story has been retold by many authors.
Pandarus or Pandar is a Trojan aristocrat who appears in stories about the Trojan War.
Cressida is a character who appears in many Medieval and Renaissance retellings of the story of the Trojan War. She is a Trojan woman, the daughter of Chryses, a Trojan priest. She falls in love with Troilus, the youngest son of King Priam, and pledges everlasting love, but when she is sent to the Greeks as part of a hostage exchange, she forms a liaison with the Greek warrior Diomedes. In later culture she becomes an archetype of a faithless lover.
Mercutio is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's 1597 tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. He is a close friend to Romeo and a blood relative to Prince Escalus and Count Paris. As such, Mercutio is one of the named characters in the play with the ability to mingle around those of both houses. The invitation to Lord Capulet's party states that he has a brother named Valentine.
Troilus is a legendary character associated with the story of the Trojan War. The first surviving reference to him is in Homer's Iliad, composed in the late 8th century BCE.
The Butterfly Lovers is a Chinese legend centered around the tragic romance between Liang Shanbo (梁山伯) and Zhu Yingtai (祝英臺), whose names form the Chinese title of the story. The title is often abbreviated as Liang Zhu (梁祝).
Shakespeare's plays are a canon of approximately 39 dramatic works written by the English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare. The exact number of plays as well as their classifications as tragedy, history, comedy, or otherwise is a matter of scholarly debate. Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world. The plays have been translated into every major living language.
Romeo.Juliet is a 1990 film-in-concert adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The motion picture is an original creation by American director, producer, writer and cinematographer Armando Acosta. With a cast of feral cats from Venice, New York City, Verona and Ghent, the dialogue is vocalized by award-winning British film and theater talent. The soundtrack features Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet ballet music.
Le Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, probably written between 1155 and 1160, is a 30,000-line epic poem, a medieval retelling of the theme of the Trojan War. It inspired a body of literature in the genre called the roman antique, loosely assembled by the poet Jean Bodel as the Matter of Rome. The Trojan subject itself, for which de Sainte-Maure provided an impetus, is referred to as the Matter of Troy.
Rosaline is a fictional character mentioned in William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet. She is the niece of Lord Capulet. Although an unseen character, her role is important: Romeo's unrequited love for Rosaline leads him to try to catch a glimpse of her at a gathering hosted by the Capulet family, during which he first spots her cousin, Juliet.
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet may be one of the most-screened plays of all time. The most notable theatrical releases were George Cukor's multi-Oscar-nominated 1936 production Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, and Baz Luhrmann's 1996 MTV-inspired Romeo + Juliet. The latter two were both, at the time, the highest-grossing Shakespeare films. Cukor featured the mature actors Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard as the teenage lovers while Zeffirelli populated his film with beautiful young people, and Baz Luhrmann produced a heavily cut fast-paced version aimed at teenage audiences.
William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, set in Verona, Italy, features the eponymous protagonists Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. The cast of characters also includes members of their respective families and households; Prince Escalus, the city's ruler, and his kinsman, Count Paris; and various unaffiliated characters such as Friar Laurence and the Chorus. In addition, the play contains two ghost characters and an unseen character (Rosaline).
Women in Shakespeare is a topic within the especially general discussion of Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic works. Main characters such as Dark Lady of the sonnets have elicited a substantial amount of criticism, which received added impetus during the second-wave feminism of the 1960s. A considerable number of book-length studies and academic articles investigate the topic, and several moons of Uranus are named after women in Shakespeare.
Layla and Majnun is an old story of Arab origin, about the 7th-century Arabic poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his lover Layla bint Mahdi.
The Lovers of Verona is a 1949 French romantic drama mystery film co-written and directed by André Cayatte, loosely based on the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet. The film was a joint project of screenwriter Jacques Prevert and director Cayatte and enjoyed great international success. It was released in Italy in 1949, then internationally in 1951.
Romeo and Juliet is a 2008 ballet choreographed by Krzysztof Pastor based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. Pastor's three-act version is set to the same score used in the Prokofiev version of the ballet. The libretto is by Pastor and Willem Bruls.
Leyli and Majnun a classic Azerbaijani story of love couple; it is a one-act ballet by Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev. The libretto is based on Nizami Ganjavi's poem Layla and Majnun. The choreographer of the original production was Nelya Nazirova. The premiere, conducted by R. D. Abdullayev, took place on 25 May 1969 at the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in Baku, with V. N. Pletnev as Majnun and T. N. Mamedova as Leyli. Nazirova's production was the basis of the ballet film In the World of Legends that was filmed by the creative association Ekran in 1975.
Troilus and Cressida is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1602.
Troilus And Cressida; Or, Truth Found Too Late is a 1679 tragedy by the English writer John Dryden. It was first staged by the Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theatre in London. It was a reworking of William Shakespeare's 1602 play Troilus and Cressida, set during the Trojan Wars. In acknowledgement of this Dryden has the prologue spoken by Shakespeare's ghost, defending the alterations made to the play.
References
1 2 Levenson (ed.), Jill L. (2000). Romeo and Juiliet, The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford World's Classics). Oxford: Oxford University Press. page 142 ISBN0-19-281496-6.
1 2 Oates, Joyce Carol (1966/1967). The Tragedy of Existence: Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Originally published as two separate essays, in Philological Quarterly, Spring 1967, and Shakespeare Quarterly, Spring 1966.
↑ Johnston, Andrew. "Final Flight". Time Out NY. Archived from the original on August 11, 2011. Retrieved 2008-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
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