Song Meaning

This song playfully skewers the idea that grand language equals grand love. Jimmy attempts to woo Mary Lane with Shakespearean phrases, believing fancy words are the key to romantic success. He explicitly states, "Four-dollar words that make a guy sound smart," revealing his motivation isn't genuine emotion but a desire to impress. The lyrics highlight a charmingly naive misunderstanding of courtship, where borrowed eloquence is mistaken for authentic feeling. The central tension lies in the disconnect between the characters' perceived romantic sophistication and their actual, innocent understanding of love. They adopt archaic language, like Mary Lane's "prodigious birth of love," and even quote directly, "My bounty is as boundless as the sea." Yet, their earnestness is undercut by their complete ignorance of the play's tragic conclusion. This contrast between their high-flown rhetoric and their blissful unawareness of the source material's actual story is the song's core comedic engine. The most striking element is the characters' misinterpretation of the play's ending. They confidently predict a happy, conventional outcome: marriage, children, and a life of friendship. This is directly contradicted by their final, albeit misapplied, quote, "put a plague on both our houses." The lyrics suggest that their embrace of Shakespeare is superficial, a stylistic choice rather than a deep engagement with the themes of love and tragedy. Their "Romeo and Juliet" are not the doomed lovers of Verona, but an idealized, sanitized version that fits their own simple desires. Ultimately, the song's effectiveness comes from its gentle mockery of romantic posturing and its celebration of innocent, if misguided, affection. The characters' joy in using "Elizabethan language" feels genuine, even if their application is flawed. The lyrics capture a sweet, youthful exuberance, where the *idea* of being romantic, fueled by dramatic language and a misunderstanding of classic literature, is enough to create their own happy ending, at least in their minds.