BY DIANNE LEE, Berkeley Prep

It seems fitting on Valentine’s Day to discuss Romeo and Juliet, often called the greatest love story of all time. We all know how it goes: Two tragic, star-crossed lovers choose death rather than face life without the other.

Let’s look a little deeper at the plot. In the beginning of Shakespeare’s classic play, Romeo is obsessed with a girl he swears he will love forever and her name is . . .    Rosaline. Then, an entire day later, Romeo is married to a completely different girl, Juliet (who is, FYI, 13 years old), with whom he is even more smitten. After a long marriage (many hours, at least!), plus several violent deaths of supporting characters, Romeo and Juliet (spoiler alert!) DIE. As John Green remarks in his Crash Course YouTube video, “That we consider this 'romance’ says quite a lot about humans.”

John Green is the author of several books, including Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars. He is also a YouTube blogger and regularly posts videos on the vlogbrothers channel and on Crash Course. Crash Course is a YouTube channel consisting of five video series: Literature, World History, U.S. History, Biology and Ecology. The Literature series contains eight videos, all narrated by Green. Two of these analyze Romeo and Juliet.

But it’s not the typical analysis. Green adds his signature quirkiness to the discussion. One recurring shtick is the replacement of curse words with names of famous authors. Green describes this prohibition of the usual curse words as “Emily Bronte annoying.” There’s also some standard analysis, concerning the play’s pentameter, for instance.

Then there’s the not-so-standard stuff. Take Green’s description of true love as eating Chipotle burritos on the couch together. That’s right. The reason that Romeo and Juliet did not have “true love” is because there was no Chipotle in the 1500s.

You might be wondering, so are Romeo and Juliet tragic lovers, or not? And what the Jane Austen does Chipotle have to do with anything?

If you’re not doing anything special tonight, watch Crash Course to find out.