Let's play a little game. Just
read this little poem:
But saying o'er what I have
said before:
My child is yet a stranger in the world;
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years.
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
(Romeo and Juliet, Act
1,Scene 2)
If you are a Shakespeare
buff you probably got through that pretty well, otherwise, maybe not.
If you had trouble understanding some of that, it really isn't your
fault. This is what we sometimes call archaic language, meaning old
language that is seldom if ever used anymore. Here is what that same
poem might read like if updated to the way we speak now:
But saying again
what I have said before:
My child has little experience in this world.
She isn't even fourteen yet.
Let two more glorious summers come and go
Before we regard her as ready to marry.
Now that we are all on the same
page with the same familiar modern language we can understand these verses
quite well. However, now that we get the basic meaning, we may not like what
these words say. The girl who is the subject of the poem is not even
fourteen years old. Yet the speaker here is saying she will be ready to
marry in two years? No way! That's not even sixteen yet! What kind of a
pervert is this guy?! This can't be right!
Actually, what we have just run
into here is a difference in culture. This was written in William
Shakespeare's 1500s England. Life was very different then. Most people died
a lot younger back then. Typically, most families experienced the death of
some of their children. For these reasons it was thought prudent for women
to marry much younger than they do now, to make the most of their
child-bearing years.
There was nothing unusual about
this at the time - meaning the speaker in the poem was not a pervert, but
was an ordinary father by the standards of his time. When reading the
verses, what they say is clearly not the norm today, but it was back then,
and understanding that helps us to understand the story of Romeo and Juliet.
What we can glean from this is
the importance of common ground with one's audience. Shakespeare, of course,
had common ground with the people who shared the common culture of 16th
Century England with him. Since we are not part of that group, it takes us
some effort to rightly understand his words.
Can you see how this might
effect our reading and understanding the Gospels?
