The Scarlet Letter: Fill & Download for Free

“'Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter“And my daddy said, ‘Stay away from Juliet…’”…from the Taylor Swift song “Love Story,” which debuted at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2008 and peaked at number 5.Full lyrics here. Video here.I like Taylor Swift’s music and even this particular song, but that lyric makes my eyelid twitch every time.The song is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, purportedly inspired by a boy Swift liked in real life but whose past initially made her friends and family skeptical. The song’s surprise happy ending makes the narrative unlike Romeo and Juliet, but okay: It’s a song about lovers who are “star-crossed” because of parental disapproval.“The scarlet letter” refers not to Romeo and Juliet but to the 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne novel The Scarlet Letter: A Romance, in which the adulteress Hester Prynne is forced by her puritanical community to wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ on her clothing as a public mark of shame.It’s the only other literary reference in the song. Swift isn’t using the scarlet letter as a symbol of adultery or any form of shame whatsoever. She seems to be using it as a metaphor for “forbidden,” which makes it a clumsy metaphor.Hester Prynne also wore the scarlet letter. She was not, herself, a scarlet letter.I don’t think you have to be hyper-literal or hyper-literary to think this line clunks. It does neatly fit the rhyme scheme, but so would countless other lines ending in “letter.” Letter-writing, in fact, is integral to the plot of Romeo and Juliet.If Swift was attached to “scarlet letter,” then it could at least have been rewritten:“'Cause you were Romeo, you wore a scarlet letter…”…since the song is all about “Romeo’s” bad reputation being the problem.As it is, it’s kind of like saying, “I want us to be together forever like Gatsby and Daisy.” Every time I hear it I wonder why no one urged her to revise the lyric, because it sounds like she’s ignorantly referencing a book she never read.First runner up is this line from “I Am… I Said” by Neil Diamond (1971):“’I am’... I said“To no one there“And no one heard at all“Not even the chair”This requires no explanation.

My vote definitely goes to this incredible actor: Gary Oldman, with innumerable characters to his credit without us even realising it sometimes.To name a few:Sirius Black (Harry Potter saga)Commissioner Gordon (The Dark Knight saga)Mason Verger (Hannibal)Count Dracula (Bram Stoker's Dracula)Sid Vicious (Sid and Nancy)Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (The Fifth Element)Ludwig van Beethoven (Immortal Beloved)Arthur Dimmesdale (The Scarlet Letter)Shelly Runyon (The Contender)Drexl Spivey (True Romance) [suggested by Rebecca Gold]And so many others…This one puts it rather perfectly:You'd never know you're watching the same actor until and unless you see the credits. Forget the obscure ones like Mason Verger, I was even stumped when I realised that Commissioner Gordon and Sirius Black were the same person!True genius.

The Scarlet Letter