Beginning of Essay
Sex, drugs, and violence are usually a potent combination, and only William Shakespeare could develop them into a masterful, poetic, and elegant story. In the play, "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet," all these aspects of teenage life absorb the reader or watche ....

Middle of Essay
.... genuinely feeling the spirit of Shakespeare. First, the movie starts with an prologue masked as a news broadcast on television. This sets the scene of the play by illustrating the violence occurring between the two wealthy families, the Montagues and the Capulets. In Zeffirelli's film of "Romeo and Juliet," the prologue takes the form of a dry narrator relating the story of the Montagues and Capulets over a backdrop of an Italian city. For most modern viewers (especially teenagers), the Luhrmann picture is fast-paced, keeping the spectator intrigued, while the Zeffirelli picture is dreary and dull, an endless maze of long and boring conversations ....