Discussion Main / SillyRabbitRomanceIsForKids

• The contrarian Shakespeare critic Gary Taylor was writing about a play by one of Shakespeare's contemporaries. The premise is like a sequel to Romeo and Juliet — they elope together, and instead of killing themselves, they live together, and he pimps her out to the local nobleman. Taylor called it "Romeo and Juliet for grown-ups."
  • Sounds like this one.

It is not clear to me from this description that the play contains an example of the trope. Or is it Taylor's review that's being proposed as an example?

The trope description conflates two things that should probably be subtypes of the trope.

• The belief that love does not exist, at least not in a form resembling what it's "supposed" to be—eg. romance is exactly the same thing as regular friendship (with or without benefits), but everyone involved tries to make it look deeper and more meaningful in an attempt to make it so.
• The belief that love exists, and has all the effects on people that it's said to—and this is a bad thing. Some people really do want to remain The Drifter til the day they die.

"While we can never know for sure whether this whimsical and mysterious emotion exists"...

What? Is there a Sarcasm Mode pothole missing? 'Love' as popularly defined doesn't mean anything, because it's defined in so many different ways, and so broadly. That's what happens when you chuck everything but the kitchen sink into a definition. You get mud.

Personally I think such a mystical statement, if serious, doesn't belong on a website devoted to serious analysis of creative works. Even accounting for the fact that many creative works allude to or promote the meme that " love is mysterious ", that's not something that we should buy into; it's just an extremely common trope, which is basically irrelevant to the main trope being defined here :)