The Shakespeare Book

104

R

omeo and Juliet is perhaps

the most familiar of all

Shakespeare’s plays: a tale

of two young lovers, doomed to be

kept apart. There are many other

stories of separated lovers, but the

intensity of Romeo and Juliet’s

romance gives Shakespeare’s

drama an emotional charge that

has resonated through the ages.

Romeo and Juliet fall in love

instantly, marry the next day, and

have one brief and precious night of

love before they are forced asunder

by their families’ feud, and plunged

into the spiral of events that brings

them both to suicide. Few plays

have ever captured so well the

wild and heady energy of youthful

emotion—not only its loves, but its

rage, its vitality, and its volatility

in a fractured world where elders

fail to provide wise guidance.

No wonder this play often seems

to speak to contemporary youth

with such startling immediacy.

Shakespeare makes the fate

that awaits the lovers clear right

from the start. In the short 14-line

opening verse, the Chorus reveals

the entire plot, telling us that the

play is about two “star-crossed”

lovers—lovers whose sad and

conjoined fate is written in the

ROMEO AND JULIET

stars—and that they will die

before their parents see sense:

“The fearful passage of their death-

marked love / And the continuance

of their parents’ rage—/ Which but

their children’s end, naught could

remove—/ Is now the two-hours’

traffic of our stage;” (Prologue.9–12).

To modern audiences, used to

films whose plots are constructed

to keep the audience guessing,

with plot twists right up until the

end, this is a surprise, and today’s

reviewers might feel obliged to

put in a spoiler alert. Far from

spoiling the play for the audience,

however, it gives the drive that

makes Romeo and Juliet a

compelling drama. We know

exactly what is going to happen

to the young lovers as they

come together, even though

they don’t. We know that their

love is doomed even as they

embark on it with such beguiling

charm, innocence, and optimism,

and we can hardly turn away as

they hurtle blindly toward their

fateful end.

Indeed, it is the sense that their

love is so powerful and inevitable

that it can only end in death that

has made their story captivating

ever since the play was first

performed in the 1590s. For

IN CONTEXT

THEMES

Jealousy, loyalty, betrayal,

romantic love, male

friendship

SETTING

Verona, Italy

SOURCES

1562 Arthur Brooke’s poem

The Tragical History of

Romeus and Juliet.

LEGACY

1679 English dramatist

Thomas Otway resets the play

in ancient Rome, with a happy

ending that stresses the play’s

political dimensions.

1745 David Garrick and

Spranger Barry perform rival

versions at Drury Lane and

Covent Garden in London.

1845 American Charlotte

Cushman plays Romeo at the

Haymarket, London, with her

sister Susan as Juliet.

1935 Actors John Gielgud and

Laurence Olivier alternate roles

as Romeo and Mercutio in an

acclaimed production at the

New Theatre, London.

1938 Russian composer Sergei

Prokofiev’s ballet version opens

in Brno, Czechoslovakia.

1957 Leonard Bernstein and

Steven Sondheim’s musical

West Side Story moves the

story to modern New York City.

1994 The exiled Macedonian

Romany Company Pralipe

stages a version in Bosnia

with a Muslim Juliet and a

Christian Romeo.

Did my heart love till now?

Forswear it, sight,

For I ne’er saw true beauty

till this night.

Romeo

Act 1, Scene 5

That which we call a rose

By any other word would

smell as sweet.

Juliet

Act 2, Scene 1