PhilosopherJay

With every fictional character, we can find traits that resemble historical characters. For example, Superman:

(http://joeshusterawards.com/hof/hall...ast-interview/)

Superman, with his heroic physique and glowing optimism, was patterned largely after Douglas Fairbanks Sr. And Clark Kent his name derived from movie stars Clark Gable and Kent Taylor was a combination of timorous, bespectacled Harold Lloyd and pale, mild-mannered Joe Shuster himself.

While elements of the character are based on elements of historical persons, it does not seem right to say that Superman is based on an historical character.

Likewise, Romeo and Juliet, cannot be said to be based on historical characters. Shakespeare based his 1597 play on The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke from 1562, and the 1582 prose version called Palace of Pleasure by William Painter.

These works were based on the story of Mariotto and Gianozza by Masuccio Salernitano, based in Siena, written in 1476. Salrnitano claimed the events took place in his lifetime. Luigi da Porto adapted the story in 1530 as Giulietta e Romeo, set the story in Verona and claimed it was an actual history from the 13th century. Our only historical reference to the story comes from Dante's Purgatorio (vi):

O German Albert! who abandonest
Her that has grown recalcitrant and savage,
And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow,
May a just judgment from the stars down fall
Upon thy blood, and be it new and open,
That thy successor may have fear thereof;
Because thy father and thyself have suffered,
By greed of those transalpine lands distrained,
The garden of the empire to be waste.
Come and behold Montecchi and Cappelletti,
Monaldi and Fillippeschi, careless man!
Those sad already, and these doubt-depressed!
Come, cruel one! come and behold the oppression
Of thy nobility, and cure their wounds,

Another translation: (http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1993/0405.html)
(Come, you careless man, come and see Montecchi and Cappelletti,
Monaldi and Filippeschi, the former already in open strife and the
latter about to start one.)

Dante was apparently in Verona for a few years around 1300. He is criticizing the Hapburg Emperor Albert regarding the poor state of Italy. Apparently Montecchi and Cappelletti are now fighting and Monaldi and Fillippeschi will soon be. Dante's story is taking place in 1300, although written between 1308 and 1324. It is assumed that Montecchi and Cappelletti represent Verona factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.

So did the story take place in Sienna in the mid 1400's as Masuccio Salernitano claimed in 1476 or in the 13th century in Verona as Luigi da Porto claims in 1530?

In fact, the characters in the story can be traced back much further to the Mid 2nd century or earlier in The Ephesian Tale of Anthia and Habrocomes by Xenophon of Ephesus. While only a few elements have made it into Shakespeare Tale, there is enough to recognize Habrocomes as the antecendent of Romeo and Anthia as the antecedent of Juliet. For example, Habrocomes (16) and Anthia (14) fall in love at first sight while attending a festival. While Romeo is exiled for breaking the peace proclaimed by Prince Escalus, both Anthia and Habrocomes are exiled from Ephesus because Habrocomes offended the Goddess Eros. Anthia, like Juliet later takes a poison which causes her to appear to be dead, while, in fact she is only asleep.


Incidentally, at one point Habrocomes is crucified, only to be saved by the Goddess Isis, so that he can later be reunited with his beloved Anthia. We may take it that in the original story, Jesus, while crucified, was given a drug like Anthia's, to fain death, while crucified. That is why Pontius Pilot is surprised that he dies so quickly. Later he is reunited with his lover Mary in the tomb. These last minute escapes from certain death was a staple of romance narratives of the period.

Habrocomes and Anthia are certainly not historical characters from the second century, nor of the 14th or 15th century, but only prototypes or architypes of intense lovers. Their story was originally designed to show what terrible things happen when you offend the Goddess Eros. Later in the 15th and 16th century, the characters were renamed and used to illustrate what terrible things happen when families or political factions feud in a city. The original religious and political reasons behind the stories have generally been forgotten and Romeo and Juliet have been widely mistaken for historical figures.

We may suggest that the same thing has happened with Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the original political and religious points of the original stories have been forgotten, and the characters mistaken as historical figures.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

youngalexander

Good old Babs Thiering Jesus The Man (or via: amazon.co.uk)Jesus the Man

aa5874

The existence or non-existence of Romeo and Juliet has no real bearing on the existence of the God/man Jesus.

Romeo and Juliet were described as human, Jesus was described as the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God, who walked on water, transfigured, resurrected and ascended through the clouds.

To establish the historicity of Romeo and Juliet, their description would be of utmost important and must be retained in order to be investigated, where as with Jesus, virtually every description of Jesus would have to be discarded.

Jesus is comparable to Homer's Achilles, he too was described as the offspring of a god, a sea-goddess, possibly universally, recognised as myth.

avi

Thank you Jay, a really interesting post. Much appreciated. I never realized that Shakespeare was adapting a romance from thirteen centuries earlier than his time. Makes me wonder about ancient Persian literature, or Egyptian literature....I wonder if the story is so universal that it is also found in ancient Sanskrit from 2500 years ago....?

Of course, back then, thirteen year old girls were often on their second pregnancy, so the story's impact may have been less poignant than in Shakespeare's time, or our own...

Wouldn't it be fun to discover a comparable tale from ancient Mayan carvings....

bacht

I thought that most if not all of the Greek heros were offspring of a god/goddess and a human? Heracles, Theseus, Jason et al

PhilosopherJay

Hi aa5874,

Good point. The multitude of supernatural elements associated with the Jesus character should make us reticent to accept his existence without solid historical evidence, nothing of which appears to exist.

However, Romeo and Juliet, originally Anthia and Habrocomes, shows that even in the best case scenario, where ancient fictional characters meant to be symbolic are given no supernatural qualities, these characters may later be mistaken for historical personages.

I like the analogy between Jesus and Romeo, because Jesus has widely become the archtypical son-of-God, hero figure, despite thousands of such characters being written, just as Romeo has become the archtypical young lover, despite thousands of such characters being written.

I would suggest that we can see the development of Romeo into an historical character clearly because the sources have been well preserved. Contrary-wise, the original sources of the Jesus character lie mainly in the passion narrative, but it has been censured, revised and corrected so often in the first hundred years since the story was created (the period circa 50-175) that it is difficult to reconstruct how it first appeared. Many clues in the NT gospels and gnostic literature suggest that it was originally much closer to the ancient romance genre then we now find it.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi Avi,

I'm not sure how universal the story is and if it can be found in all cultures. It is in Shakespeare's time because Shakespeare is living near Renaissance times and there is a revival of interest in Greco-Roman literature. While love seems to be a universal theme, the theme of young lovers and the interaction of their parents, may not have been as prevalent in other cultures.

We may take it that the original Ephesian Tale of Anthia and Habrocomes was written to warn young people against rejecting the Goddess Artemis, the protector of virgins.

One may suppose that Christian concerns about virginity originated from the worship of Artemis of Ephesus as it is reported that Paul stayed at Ephesus for a long time. Perhaps, the story of the virgin birth of Jesus is being influenced by the cult of Artemis.

As the Ephesian metalsmiths say in the New Testament's Acts of the Apostles, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

In the year 431, at Ephesus, the titles of Artemis, such as "Queen of Heaven", "Divine Virgin", "Mother of All" were taken from her and given to Mary, Jesus' mother. Considering all the connections, it would not be incorrect to say that Artemis is the real mother of Jesus.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

aa5874

But, was not Jesus eventually a political decision? Jesus might have been relegated to the dustbin of history were it not for Constantine. It was either you accept Jesus as an archtypical son of God, hero figure, or you perish, (persecuted and/or prosecuted).

The Jesus story is not like Romeo and Juliet.