Five Reasons Why Shakespeare
Would Have Approved

Notes from a Nitpicker

You certainly know that the fire escape is really a balcony in Verona, and you probably also know that the Dance at the Gym is really a fancy ball given by Juliet's family. You can most likely identify the modern-day counterparts of Mercutio and the Nurse, and you confess skepticism when you learn that Maria's line "When I look at Chino, nothing happens" is based on a similar remark of Juliet's ("The last time I saw Paris..."). Starting out as a kid whose initial (and for many years, sole) interest in West Side Story was the gang warfare—and, especially, the brilliant dances attached thereto—I found it easy to scoff at the notion that this jazzy jumping jiving JD-populated work was even remotely connected to Shakespeare's dusty old romance. Though comparison studies have been enthusiastically undertaken in music and drama courses since the musical was produced, I was not easily persuaded—the facile observation that both works open with the feuding factions engaged in a street scuffle, or that both works introduce the heroine in Scene Three, only betrays the indifference of someone who is working with Cliff Notes and who will probably fail the course. I have to admit that throughout most of those years of cynicism, my acquaintanceship with the musical grew deeper and warmer, while exposure to Romeo and Juliet remained virtually non-existent. The scales have never quite balanced, but they have finally tipped to a fair angle, and it is now more than clear to me that the better you know Shakespeare, the more you realize and appreciate the debt to the Bard. It ain't just a fire escape, folks, and my scoffing is at an end. There would be no West Side Story without William Shakespeare, that is a fact, and one of the less obvious legacies passed from the tragedy to the musical is a recurring infatuation with the downright absurd.

Whatever critical analysis the great playwright was subjected to in his day, his plays have come down to us with a happy disregard for literal and practical credibility. He wrote to suit the story, and in so doing was able to invent, spin and concoct the most unimaginable coincidences and improbable occurrences, all presumably within the boundaries of the audiences' tolerance, not to say approval. Today we are a little more disdainful of a town clock chiming the hour in the Rome of Julius Caesar, but Will put it there and there it has stayed till this day. A good modern drama is not above the requisite suspension of disbelief, and West Side Story contains some pretty fantastic stuff presented in the great sloppy spirit of the great sloppy Shakespeare. But one does not hold a dramatic piece, much less a musical one, to the same impeccable standard of, say, a legal contract, and the minor implausibilities are accepted in the cheerful spirit of a forgiving audience who came only to be entertained.

1. "I never asked the time of day from a clock." The story cannot get going until Tony gets himself to the dance, admittedly the most expedient way of meeting Maria by pure chance. (In Shakespeare, the heartsick Romeo sneaks into the ball hoping for a glimpse of Rosaline; the suggestion that Tony already had a love interest, even a remote one, was either dropped or not considered at all.) But there is no logic to the plan to attend the neighborhood dance, it is pure Shakespeare-Sloppy. Why does Riff tell the gang that he needs Tony there, why isn't he more interested in proving his own leadership without the help of the renegade former Jet? There is something to be said for Strength in Numbers, but Riff himself states that the event at the dance is only a challenge ("I'm gonna make nice there."), and he should possess, or at least indicate, the confidence to undertake this executive mission on his own. (It is, nevertheless, a testament to his ultimate leadership that his gang accepts the decision to include Tony without necessarily agreeing with it.) The theory is more or less proven by the fact that Tony's contribution at the dance was exactly zero: He shows up, performs half a cha-cha (would half a cha-cha be a "cha"?) and disappears into the night, muttering some girl's name aloud. What was the deal there? The whole event is Shakespeare-Sloppy, a device that was necessary only to the drama and completely unnecessary to the plot. Everything Riff wanted to accomplish was accomplished with no help from Tony; it was the narrative (and thus the audience), not the character, that was served.

2. "You will keep both eyes on Maria tonight if I cannot." Yeah, that worked out real good. If Chino had to excuse himself, even briefly, to grab a smoke, powder his nose, make a phone call (and has anybody ever noticed that, as far as West Side Story is concerned, neither the telephone, the radio nor the television had been invented?) he might have let Bernardo or Anita know he was doing so, or, if they happened to be busy mamboing someplace, he could have asked any of his fellow Sharks to "keep an eye" on things in his absence. Even in the main event, it is Bernardo, and not Chino, who pulls the budding sweethearts apart. One little assignment—keep your eye on your own girlfriend—and he blows it. Well folks, that's because the balance of the story rests on this Shakespeare-Sloppy lapse; if Chino had followed the instructions there would be no cha-cha, no fire escape, no bridal-shop wedding, no love story period. Great drama results from his inattention, but for Chino himself, all things considered, it wasn't much of a date. As it turned out, his dancing days were over after that night anyway.

3. "I saw only him." That happens to be a great line, soapy or not, because it precludes any possible speculation that all of Bernardo's protective training fell on deaf ears. It is clear, from dialogue before and after the scene at the dance, that Bernardo has taken charge of his sister's well-being. How she happened to forget everything he tried to teach her is expediently (too easily) explained by the good old Shakespeare-Sloppy standby, love at first sight. Four eyes meet, and the rules are shattered, there are no rules. This is no reflection on Bernardo's strict training. Maria learned her lessons well, but she could not apply them to this interesting new face. Fine with me. Sometimes Maria is played with a little more impatient rebellion and wily savvy ("Lower the neckline," "I think I will tell Mama and Papa…," "Use the back door," etc.) than the more familiar and decidedly soft-pedaled performance of the film, and that hint of fire in the interpretation makes her defiance part of the character rather than a dramatic departure from it. According to the timeline indicated in the playscript, she had no way of knowing that her beau-to-be was a former Jet. The objection that "one of them" refers not to a white gang member but a white human being may be taken as an indication that Maria was not merely more innocent than her brother, but perhaps more tolerant as well.

4. "Tonight is my wedding night." The interpretation of this odd line (which is omitted in the film) depends on your age when you first heard it. In the play, the second act opens immediately after the rumble, in the bedroom of Maria, where she is entertaining three of the Shark girls to whom she makes this rather astonishing prediction. Depending on how Maria is played (and, again, there is most assuredly more than one way to play it), one may assume that Maria is excitedly and youthfully exclaiming what she feels must happen when you are getting married – the ultimate commitment to one man and no other. For the benefit of the most ingenuous doubt, a young girl of the day might have used this flippant expression to describe an emotional commitment and not a physical one. But in the twenty-first century, it is hard to read that line any way but literally. Jolting though it may be, today's audience will hear the actress say that she is prepared to give up her virginity. Chances are this is exactly what Mr. Laurents originally intended, for, when you think about it, if he meant something less intimate he would surely have phrased it so. In the event, the stage Maria appears quite content and even eager to give herself without benefit of the marital blessing, a fantastic coming of age for a naïve girl who only attended her first dance twenty-four hours earlier, but a development that would have pleased Shakespeare enormously. Since the line is not in the final screenplay, filmgoers are spared the implications of this unsettling decision by the Girl in White, and the reasons for the omission are easy to guess. The act itself, when it does occur, may be even more dramatic in the film, coming as it does solely out of a passion that must be strong enough to supersede the murder of her brother. Maria gives herself willingly to the abject boy as a declaration of love despite the tragedy, and not just because she had been toying with the idea all afternoon.

5. "Chino found out." This delicious lie is the most Shakespearean event in the musical, and possibly the most contrived, beginning with the unlikely favor Maria requests of Anita: Maria does not trust Tony to wait for her until Schrank is done his interrogation, so off Anita must go on her fatal mission. (The fact that Maria ends up being delayed about as long as it takes her to slip on her memorable dress and shawl seems worth a mention here.) In the candy store, the subtle disappearance of Ice is another obvious device. With Tony safely tucked away, why should Ice slip out and be on the lookout for Chino? The reason is to get Ice out of the room, on any pretext obvious or otherwise. Ice's solid, serious nature has already been displayed in the garage. (Also note that he does not perform in "Gee, Officer Krupke," though he is right there among those who do, with no real reason to be set apart. His serious attitude is already subliminally projected.) Ice's departure from the candy store can only mean one thing: the taunting of Anita would not take place with this practical, stalwart fellow on the scene. So when she arrives, she is confronted only by the less principled remainder of the gang. So far so good. Her insistence on seeing Doc also does not hold up to scrutiny: With the score nine to one, she might have better taken the advice to back out of the store quietly. Her spitfire determination does her credit, but there is something to be said for recognizing a lost battle before it starts. Her brutal taunting is of course unjustified, but the lie that is forced to her lips is vintage Shakespeare. How much more likely it would have been for her to continue her diatribe against the Jets themselves: ("If one of you was bleeding in the street...") How much more dignified and victorious simply to leave the candy store without a word. But the drama must be served here, and not the logic. Anita must speak the silly untruth that brings Tony up the stairs. There is nothing in the play, nor perhaps in all of American musicals, that is more in keeping with William Shakespeare's knack for the implausible than this contemptible lie.

Does any of it matter? None of it matters. Is the book for West Side Story among the most vivid, compact and admirably underwritten books in the canon? By far. Do I enjoy it any less as a result of these questionable contrivances? Not for a minute. Will West Side Story live forever, and even outlast its famous forebear?

Could be—who knows?