Romeo and Juliet, by Shakespeare (1597)

When the play starts, the 16-year old Romeo is already suffering from an extreme bout of love sickness - but for one Rosaline, as he still has to meet his Juliet. Apparently, he is a serial and obsessive lover, a hot-headed teenager who would profit from frequent cold baths. Instead, he gatecrashes a party at the Capulets, a family with which his own house of Montague is locked in mortal enmity. There he falls head over heels in love with the 13-year old daughter of the family, Juliet. After the ball, in what is now famously known as the "balcony scene", Romeo sneaks into the Capulet orchard and overhears Juliet at her window vowing her love to him in spite of her family's hatred of the Montagues. The next afternoon they are already secretly married by Friar Laurence, who, hoping to end the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets, disregards their very young ages and lack of parental consent. Such a priest is not an asset for the Church. Of course, nothing good comes of this hasty union...

[Juliet, by  John William Waterhouse (1898)]

I shouldn't be so cynical - Romeo and Juliet is the archetypal love story in the Western tradition and was, with Hamlet, Shakespeare's most popular play during his lifetime (and probably still is today). This type of tragic love story goes back to antiquity: in "Pyramus and Thisbe," from Ovid's Metamorphoses, the lovers' parents also despise each other, and Pyramus falsely believes his lover Thisbe is dead (eaten by a lion...) after which he kills himself with his sword. From there, a thick trail of bread crumbs leads via Dante, Da Porto and Bandello to Shakespeare.

The theme of fate looms large, but in this early Shakespeare play it is not set up according to the classical rules of drama: when skillfully used, tragedy must occur because of some character flaw, not a mere accident of fate, as here. Things start going wrong when Romeo refuses to fight a duel against Tybalt, Juliette's cousin, who has insulted him. His friend Mercutio then takes his place and is killed. Romeo then kills Tybalt to avenge Mercutio. As a result he is banished from Verona, under penalty of death.

Before leaving town, Romeo secretly spends the night in Juliet's chamber, where the teenagers consummate their marriage. But Juliet's father has decided that she must marry her long-time suitor Count Paris (he of course is ignorant of the fact of his daughter's secret marriage), and doesn't allow that already agreed-upon union to be delayed. Friar Laurence (who always makes things worse) offers Juliet a potion that will put her into a deathlike coma for 42 hours - this will help her escape from the marriage. On the night before the wedding to Paris, she takes the drug and, when discovered apparently dead, she is laid in the family crypt.

Romeo should have been notified about this trick, but the messenger misses him. Heartbroken when the news of Juliet's death reaches his ears, Romeo buys poison from an apothecary and goes to the Capulet crypt. He encounters Paris who has come to mourn Juliet privately, and in the ensuing fight, Romeo kills Paris. Still believing Juliet to be dead, he drinks the poison. Juliet then awakens and, discovering that Romeo is dead, stabs herself with his dagger and joins him in the underworld.

After this terrible ordeal, the families are finally reconciled and agree to end their violent feud. The play ends with the lines: "For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." But wasn't it just because of hastiness and bad advice? After all, I now for the first time realized that Romeo and Juliet were in fact still almost children... it is their extreme youth that gives gives the tragedy much of its force.

(Shakespeare himself married when he was 18, but such a young age was an exception. In some noble houses marriages were contracted at a young age, for reasons of property and family alliance (Juliet and Count Paris), but in fact the average age of marriage was quite old - for the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras it was 27. Young love in fact had to be kept in check as it could leave the lovers without subsistence or inheritance.)

[Balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet by Frank Dicksee (1884) - the lovers in this painting are much older than those in the play]

At least 24 operas were based on the play, and numerous symphonic works. The most interesting work is Roméo et Juliette, a "symphonie dramatique" by Berlioz, a large-scale work for mixed voices, chorus, and orchestra, which premiered in 1839. Romeo and Juliet is also one of Shakespeare's most-illustrated works. It is possibly also the most-filmed play of all time - I like the adaptation by Franco Zeffirelli (1968). Many other books, films and plays were inspired by Shakespeare, such as West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein. The story of the star-crossed lovers gave rise to a whole industry.

Text of the play at Project Gutenberg. I have read Romeo and Juliet in the edition of The Arden Shakespeare.


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