What Shakespeare Really Needed Was a Twitter Account

We like technology. (I mean, come on, we're bloggers, of course we like technology.) But sometimes technology makes us a little bit sad. Sad the way Shakespeare would write sad instead of the way people would Tweet sad. With tears instead of emoticons. In more than 140 characters.

Fine, call us old-fashioned. The lady doth protest too much, yeah, yeah. We've heard it all. Frankly, none of it lessens our inner conflict related to the Royal Shakespeare Company's new production, "Such Tweet Sorrow," in which a cast of trained actors improvise Romeo and Juliet in real-time through a series of Tweets.

We're well aware of the possibilities of bringing together great technology and great art ... and also of the dangers. Grave things may happen. (That title alone!) There are portents, you know. And teens being as easily influenced as they are these days, we can hardly support a glorification of mutual Tweeticide.

Juliet, played by RSC actress Charlotte Wakefield, is a teenager who finds solace over the fact that she has never had a boyfriend by chatting incessantly on the Internet.

That means she gets to sayTweet typo-filled missives like:

''Ok now dads beeping at me from the car!! Gotta dash!! Wish I could tweet at school but... I can't :( I promise I'll be back on after school."

Talk about dramatic tension!

Meanwhile, Tybalt, played by Mark Holgate, Tweets an array of wisdom-filled nuggets much like what you might hear in locker rooms around our nation.

''A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement."

Thank you, Royal Shakespeare Company, for bringing Shakespeare to young people in this innovative new fashion.

Full disclosure: We hated that movie with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, too. So there.