“A Plague O’ Both Houses!”
Friends and Feuds in Romeo and Juliet and Spongebob Squarepants
Two establishments, both alike in dignity, In fair Bikini Bottom, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny. One may think that the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and the extremely popular kids television series Spongebob Squarepants have nothing in common, but it is quite the opposite. Both of these pieces of literature have a strong friendship, and in both of these, those friendships are broken. Over the course of this essay, the connections between the two literary articles in respects to friendships and feud will be exposed.
Romeo and Juliet does a great job of showing the strength of friendships and highlights them emphatically. Throughout the play, many friendships are made, broken, and revealed on numerous accounts. A classic example of this is the relationship between Romeo and Mercutio, steadfast friends to the end. They do practically everything together during the beginning of the play before Romeo’s marriage, from joking around to teasing, and they always have each others backs.
When Romeo is mourning because Rosaline is becoming a nun, his best friends Benvolio and Mercutio keep teasing him to make him less depressed. Friends will comfort someone when they’re down, but only a best friend will tease you to make you feel better when you’re sad. The constant nagging and teasing makes Romeo and Mercutio’s friendship stand out crystal clear as an everlasting bond.
“I am hurt. A plague o’ both houses!” (3.1.93–94). In act 3 scene 1, Romeo and Mercutio, the once “power couple”, are now farther from being friends than they ever were after Romeo tries to stop Mercutio and Tybalt from fighting. The cause of the outbreak of fighting is the long running feud between the Capulet and Montague houses, which had pushed Tybalt over the limit after Romeo came to the Capulet party and got him in trouble. When Mercutio gets stabbed, the friendship between Romeo and Mercutio, along with Mercutio himself, is slowly and painfully killed.
As Mercutio is dying and being dragged into a house by Benvolio, he repetitively yells “a plague o’ both houses!”, signifying that the everlasting conflict between the houses is what killed him, not just Tybalt. He hopes that a plague, or some other terrible disaster, will befall the two houses, so that this conflict will end and nobody else will die because of this. At this time in the text, Romeo and Mercutio are officially over.
What other cartoon duo is more recognisable than Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick Star? This iconic pair of undersea bottom-dwellers is discernable by kids of all ages, and all languages, airing in 61 languages from Albanian to Zaza. Whether it be Bob Sfungjeri Pantallona-katrori or Spanç Bob Skver Pents, these friends are always together, always hanging out with each other, and always laughing.
They don’t even have to be doing anything to enjoy each others company, which shows in the episode Life of Crime where Spongebob and Patrick are just walking and asking each other “What do you want to do today?”. During the time that they are asking each other this, they are smiling, showing that they are enjoying themselves. Towards the end of the episode, there is one line that demonstrates this point the most, which comes about when Spongebob and Patrick are trying to survive in the wilderness. Spongebob is trying to convince patrick that living in the wilderness isn’t the worst situation that they could be in, and says “But it doesn’t have to be all bad, right? I mean, at least we have each other.” and Patrick emphatically responds with “Yeah!”. Patrick and Spongebob are so in tune and are such good friends that even in a terrible situation that makes them leave Bikini Bottom, their bond keeps their hopes up, a bond that only true friends could have.
What could possibly break apart the everlasting bond of friendship? Oh wait a minute, that’s right, The Fry Cook Games. In this episode, Spongebob and Patrick’s now almost two season long friendship was broken over the course of one episode, because of an olympics style tournament to test the limits of a fry cook. It just so happens that when Patrick gets on Spongebob’s nerves, and vice-versa, they decide to compete in this competition to prove their superiority.
Patrick goes to the only other fast food restaurant in town, the chum bucket, which automatically starts a feud between the two intrepid pals. This feud between the two restaurants killed a friendship between two best friends, who went from “Hi Patrick.” to “I never liked you!” within 11 minutes. Although there are no huge brawls in the streets, and nobody gets stabbed and dies from their wounds, the feud definitely broke up this duo, because the two result to fighting at the end of the episode, beating each other and doing hateful, personal things to each other, such as Patrick licking Spongebob’s foot because Spongebob is such a clean freak, and Spongebob erasing Patricks name tag so that instead of Patrick, it reads Rick. The feud between Mr. Krabs and Plankton has not only consumed the lives of the store owners, as many episodes are dedicated to Plankton stealing the formula, but it has now consumed the friendship between the two main characters which has destroyed the tie that holds these characters together.
There is no denying that within these texts lie many similarities pertaining to the comradeship in these two texts. The way that the vendettas tore apart the two buds was apparent in both Romeo and Juliet and Spongebob Squarepants, and both gave examples of the friends being their normal selves, and then the change they went through. To conclude, you may miss it if hours aren’t spent on analysing Spongebob and constantly question what the show is really about, but there are many underlying connections between Romeo and Juliet and Spongebob Squarepants, and this connection is just one of them.
Citations
“The Fry Cook Games (Transcript).” Encyclopedia SpongeBobia, spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/The_Fry_Cook_Games_(transcript).
“Life of Crime (Transcript).” Encyclopedia SpongeBobia, spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/Life_of_Crime_(transcript).
“SpongeBob SquarePants — S02E24 — Life Of Crime — Video Dailymotion.” Dailymotion, 14 Jan. 2017, www.dailymotion.com/video/x58i8f7.
“SpongeBob Squarepants S02E30 — The Fry Cook Games — Video Dailymotion.” Dailymotion, 25 Dec. 2016, www.dailymotion.com/video/x56akvn.
Library, Folger Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/html/Rom.html.
This is the digital text
Abstract
I thought that this project was more challenging than the last, but also more fun in my opinion. The main question I was trying to answer was how the feud in Spongebob and Romeo and Juliet tore apart friendships. I thought this was interesting because there is an entire episode dedicated to this and a fair part of a scene made just for this topic. To research these I had to first read the book, and watch a lot of spongebob. Then, I made a chart to compare the different kinds of comparisons. I then turned that chart into a paper. I learned that Spongebob and Romeo are not that different. Both are male characters and both tend to overreact to everything. They also both cry a lot. Although my results may not have nation wide effect, it still furthered me as a student and helped me withmy writing, which makes it pretty significant to me. Overall, I enjoyed this project very much.
