Social Structures In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

West Side Story is a brilliant updating of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the two warring families of Verona now two streets gangs of kids from two different immigrant cultures coexisting in one New York City neighborhood. West Side Story demonstrates yet again the enduring quality of Shakespeare's work, how he explored personal desires and social structures so intrinsically human that we can still identify with his characters 400 years later and recognize how our reinvented society mirrors those of his plays. Young lovers Maria and Tony are caught in a storm of racial intolerance, family traditions, and street-gang rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks against the back drop of New York City's west side during the last days of summer, 1957.
In addition to the racial barrier between the two groups, there's the huge culture gap: the Jets are first-generation Americans, children of European immigrants; the young Sharks are themselves recently arrived from Puerto Rico. For all their brief history as Americans, the Jets feel they've got a right to defend their turf against newcomers; the Sharks feel the torn loyalties of most immigrants, homesick for their mother country and facing an uphill climb against discrimination, but also eager for the opportunities America offers. In such an insular atmosphere, the divide between the Jets and the Sharks seems insurmountable. Tony and Maria bridge that gulf briefly, despite the misgivings of his friend Riff (Russ Tamblyn, in the best performance of the film) and her friend Anita (Rita Moreno). The inescapably tragic story plays out through Stephen Sondheim's clever lyrics; Leonard Bernstein's classic, eminently hummable score; and Jerome Robbins's fabulous choreography, all of which could be seen as a forerunner to rap in acknowledging that there is a culture of the streets, in seeing lyricism in the way kids jump on a basketball court or saunter down the