Disney Meets Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet and Beauty and the Beast.

Did you know that Disney’s musical “Beauty and the Beast” was heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet?” Even just story wise, the two pieces are quite similar: a woman is socially pressured to be in love with a man that she has no real interest in, and then she falls in love with a different very unlikely person. In “Romeo and Juliet,” Juliet’s marriage is arranged by her father so that she will marry a man named Paris. She has virtually no feelings for Paris, but she is still being forced to marry him. Not long after, she meets Romeo at a party her family hosts, but Romeo is a Montague; an enemy to Juliet’s family. In “Beauty and the Beast,” Belle is socially pressured by Gaston and the rest of the town to marry Gaston, though she never truly shows interest in him. The reason they want the two to get married is because he is known as the most handsome man in the town, while Belle is the most beautiful woman. She ends up kidnapped by the Beast and is trapped in his castle as a prisoner. She ends up falling in love with the ugly monster instead of Gaston. Through “Romeo and Juliet,” William Shakespeare conveyed that the norms of being socially pressured by family and social hierarchy to marry a noble could be broken to find true love in unlikely places. “Beauty and the Beast” also shows this aspect, however Belle’s father does not want to force her to marry anybody while the townspeople do.

Belle and Juliet are both faced with restrictive societal norms of marrying people of the same social hierarchy that are forcing them to be with very certain people. For example, Juliet’s father tried to force Juliet into marriage with a noble named Paris. “Capulet: I tell thee what: get thee to church o’ Thursday,/Or never after look me in the face” (3.5.167–168). This is a prime case of Juliet’s family treating her like property when forcing her into marriage; her father directly says that she needs to marry Paris or else he will disown her, and then Juliet’s mother and the Nurse both seem to agree with Capulet. In the next quotation, Belle is pressured by Gaston himself to spend the rest of her life doing chores for him.

GASTON:(Picks up LEFOU by the neck)
I’ll have Belle for my wife, make no mistake about that!
(GASTON drops LEFOU into the mud.)
GASTON: Plenty. Here, picture this.
(GASTON plops down in the chair and props his mud-covered feet up on BELLE’s book. He begins to kick off his boots and wiggle his toes through his hole-y socks.)
A rustic hunting lodge, my latest kill roasting on the fire, and my little wife, massaging my feet, while the little ones play with the dogs. (BELLE looks positively disgusted. GASTON gets up next to her face.) We’ll have six or seven.
BELLE: Dogs?
GASTON: No, Belle! Strapping boys, like me!
BELLE: Imagine that. (She picks up her book, places a mark in it, and puts it on the shelf.)
GASTON: And do you know who that wife will be?
BELLE: Let me think.
GASTON: (Corners BELLE ) You, Belle!

These two quotations from the script of “Beauty and the Beast” show that Belle is not only pressured by other townspeople to marry Gaston, but also by him personally. The confidence in which he tells her: “A rustic hunting lodge… and my little wife, massaging my feet…” gives the audience a clear image of Gaston’s ideal life with Belle, which would actually be less than optimal conditions for her. The boastful man practically pushes himself upon her as he “corners her,” giving a crystal clear impression that he will try very hard to marry her. Furthermore, a large difference between “Beauty and the Beast” and “Romeo and Juliet” is that Belle is not pressured by her own father to marry Gaston.

MAURICE: What about that Gaston? He’s a handsome fellow!
BELLE: He’s handsome all right, and rude and conceited and…Oh Papa, he’s not for me!
MAURICE: Well, don’t you worry, cause this invention’s going to be the start of a new life for us.

When Maurice mentions Gaston, it’s not in an assertive or forcing manor, it’s more like a recommendation, to which Belle says no. He kindly responds saying “don’t you worry,” showing that he does not wish to pressure her to marry someone she is not fond of.

Belle and Juliet both break these social stigmas by falling in love with the most improbable people due to social status, which causes calamitous issues to arise. Firstly, Belle and the Beast fall in love during a song called “Something There.”

BELLE:
There’s something sweet
And almost kind
But he was mean
And he was coarse and unrefined.
But now he’s dear
And so unsure,
I wonder why I didn’t see it there before.

BEAST:
She glanced this way
I thought I saw
And when we touched
She didn’t shudder at my paw
No it can’t be
I’ll just ignore
But then she’s never looked at me that way before.

These lines show the audience the sprouting love between Belle and the Beast as they are alone together through their thoughts. It can be seen that Belle and the Beast are both separately having thoughts about love on their brain, but then denying it because of how unlikely it really seems to them. “BELLE: New, and a bit alarming. Who’d have ever thought that this could be? True, that he’s no Prince Charming…” Here, Belle realizes just how silly all of this actually is: she feels herself falling in love with a monster while she could easily be with the man that every other woman is head-over-heels in love with. However, seen in the following quotation, this has repercussions later on in the play.

“BELLE: (Comes back out with MAGIC MIRROR. She yells to the crowd.) My father’s not crazy and I can prove it! (To MIRROR) Show me the beast! (MAGIC MIRROR again shines, then produces the image of the still depressed BEAST. The crowd oohs and aahs at it.)
WOMAN 1: Is it dangerous?
BELLE: (Trying to reassure her) Oh, no. He’d never hurt anyone. Please,
I know he looks vicious, but he’s really kind and gentle. He’s my friend.
GASTON: If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had feelings for this monster.
BELLE: He’s no monster, Gaston. You are!
GASTON: She’s as crazy as the old man. (He grabs the MIRROR from her hand.)
The beast will make off with your children!
He’ll come after them in the night.
BELLE: No!
GASTON: We’re not safe ’til his head is mounted on my wall! I say we kill the beast!”

When Belle tries to protect her father and the Beast against the townspeople, they do not listen to her — they just list her off as a crazy person, throw her into a wagon, and now they are going to try to kill the living being that she has fallen in love with. Moving on to “Romeo and Juliet,” our two protagonists fall in love and then immediately realize that they are in each other’s rival family; this also has major consequences later on in the play.

Juliet: O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris…
Or bid me go into a new-made grave
And hide me with a dead man in his [shroud]
(Things that to hear them told have made me tremble),
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstained wife to my sweet love. (4.1.78–90)

The desperation of this quotation from Juliet shows the audience that Juliet felt that she needed to be with Romeo. When she says “O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris…” she is practically saying that she would much sooner kill herself than be with Paris for the rest of her life. There are similar places in the text where Romeo states almost the exact same idea — the two are hopelessly in love. Additionally, it conveys that it would certainly be difficult for the two of them to be together, as Juliet practically offers to do all of these irrational actions just to be able to stay with Romeo. Even back during the night Romeo and Juliet both met, Juliet foresaw that this would be difficult: “Juliet: O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” (2.2.36)? Here, Juliet is asking herself why Romeo has to be Romeo, meaning that she is upset that he has to be a Montague. This tells the audience that she does not want her love for Romeo to be forbidden, however she loves him so much that she would go so far as to change her name just to be with him. Juliet knows even then that they are not supposed be together, especially because she was scheduled to marry Paris very soon. In fact, this aspect of their love ultimately leads to their death at the end of the play.

While “Beauty and the Beast” and “Romeo and Juliet” do have their differences, it is clear that both Juliet and Belle have successfully broken the norms of social hierarchical marriage to find their final true love. “Beauty and the Beast” does show William Shakespeare’s impact on literature even today, but there are also many other contemporary plays, songs, and movies that additionally validate Shakespeare’s everlasting influence.