Forbidden Love Through the Ages: Romeo and Juliet, the Scarlet Letter, and Livin’ on a Prayer

It goes without saying that the most famous story of forbidden love in the Western canon is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. However, whether you consider him the archetype of love’s self-sacrifice or a prime example of teenage hormonal idiocy is another story.

Broken down, the plot is pretty simple: boy meets girl, boy woos girl, boy and girl die in a messy triple murder/suicide. Romantics (and Twilight fans) will tell you that true love is the willingness to die for someone. Detractors will argue that sleeping with an impressionable thirteen-year-old girl is creepy. It’s a debate for the ages.

Although it’s hard to break from the romantic tradition established by Romeo and Juliet, let’s fast forward a few years to puritanical New England. “Hot” probably isn’t the first word that comes to mind, especially considering that the Puritans came to the New World because Old England was too “unbecoming.” Then again, this heaviness is exactly the kind of weather that, no pun intended, makes for a good fuss.

The novel we had in mind is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, which is a much more complicated love story than Shakespeare’s three-day Verona fest of hormones. Everyone knows that Hester Prynne has committed the crime, but what no one in Boston realizes is that the father of her child is none other than… oh whack! -her beloved shepherd.

However, God throws a quick one at Pastor Dimmesdale, burning a painful scarlet A into his flesh as a gentle reminder that a confession is in order. Many of us will remember wishing that Hester and Dimmesdale would just run off together, as they nearly did, but instead, obeying the social mores of the time, living separate lives, admitting their crime, and dying alone. God: 1; Twilight fans: 0.

Fast-forward a few more years to 1980s New England and you’ll be glad you were born in the computer age and not the public whipping age. Take Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer, a 20th-century take on Hawthorne’s novel, for example. This arena rock song is an epic low-income worker love story with an unplanned parenthood subplot. It’s not your typical rockout material.

What really gives the lyrics an impact is the fact that it’s based on the story of two of Bon Jovi’s high school classmates. All that stuff about working on the docks, serving food in the mess hall, and surviving suddenly becomes so much more real when really, you know, it is. And frankly, even if Bon Jovi didn’t base the song on anyone in particular, the story is so common today that it might as well have.

While all that talk of hardship and broken dreams might be depressing, the anthem’s chorus reinforces the idea that love (and enough money to get by) conquers all. In that sense, the song is a hopeful (if not happy) medium between the two extremes established by Romeo, Juliet, Hester and Dimmesdale. Looks like we’re halfway there, after all.