Romeo and Juliet

By William Shakespeare

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex.

The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal.

Romeo and Juliet is the world's most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage and sexual fulfilment; but a combination of old animosities and new coincidences brings them to suicidal deaths.

This play offers a rich mixture of romantic lyricism, bawdy comedy, intimate harmony and sudden violence. Long successful in the theatre, it has also generated numerous operas, ballets and films; and these have helped to make Romeo and Juliet perennially topical.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781848703766

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen. He produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. He died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.

Book preview

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

Edited by Cedric Watts

WORDSWORTH CLASSICS

Romeo and Juliet first published by Wordsworth Editions Limited in 1992

New introduction and notes added in 2000

Introduction and notes © Cedric Watts 2000

Published as an ePublication 2011

ISBN 978 1 84870 376 6

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Contents

General Introduction

Introduction

Notes to the Introduction

Romeo and Juliet

Prologue

Act 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 5

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Notes on Romeo and Juliet

General Introduction

The Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare Series, with Henry V as its inaugural volume, presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare’s works. Wordsworth Classics are inexpensive paperbacks for students and for the general reader. Each play in the Shakespeare Series is accompanied by a standard apparatus, including an introduction, explanatory notes and a glossary. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. The apparatus is, however, concise rather than elaborate. We hope that the resultant volumes prove to be handy, reliable and helpful. Above all, we hope that, from Shakespeare’s works, readers will derive pleasure, wisdom, provocation, challenges, and insights: insights into his culture and ours, and into the era of civilisation to which his writings have made – and continue to make – such potently influential con-tributions. Shakespeare’s eloquence will, undoubtedly, re-echo ‘in states unborn and accents yet unknown’.

Cedric Watts

Series Editor

Introduction

1

The hero and heroine of Romeo and Juliet are probably the most famous literary representatives of intense romantic love: consequently, many people know something of the play even if they haven’t read it. But if they actually read it, they may well have some surprises. Romeo and Juliet proves to be stronger, livelier, more radical and more paradoxical than hearsay suggests.

Admittedly, in the twentieth century, various influential literary critics (A. C. Bradley, H. B. Charlton and D. A. Traversi among them) [1] argued that this early tragedy by Shakespeare was variously immature, a failed experiment, a work marred by romantic sensationalism. It lacked, they suggested, the psychological subtlety and philosophical profundity of such later works as Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. But there are many ways of gauging the success of a literary work. One test is the scale of influence; another (related) test is fertility, its ability to produce literary offspring. Some works have been splendid but of limited influence and fertility. By those tests, Romeo and Juliet is one of the two or three most successful of Shakespeare’s plays, and, indeed, one of the most important works in the history of the world’s drama.

The influence of Romeo and Juliet has been exerted internationally through countless stage productions, films for cinema and television, videos, radio, records, tapes, cassettes, adaptations and modernisations (including ballets, operas and musicals), parodies, burlesques, cartoons, tours of Verona, and even bank-notes – for the British twenty-pound note used to portray the first ‘balcony’ scene. If not profound and tempestuous, Romeo and Juliet is lively and engaging. Though the play is so famous, however, it has not always been fully appreciated. For instance, modern readers may under-estimate the extent to which it is a political work – a work of sexual politics – whose influence has been extensive and, on the whole, good, helping to change the world for the better. Generally, the play’s vitality depends on a range of contrasts or paradoxes, and I’ll discuss some of them in the following sections.

2

The origins of the plot are ancient. As early as the second century of the Christian era, Xenophon of Ephesus told the story of two teen-age lovers who become separated. The young woman, to evade marriage to a suitor whom she does not love, takes a potion which makes her appear dead, and for a while she is buried in a tomb; but eventually the lovers are reunited. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the tale was elaborated by various writers including Masuccio Salernitano, Luigi da Porta, Matteo Bandello, Pierre Boaistuau and eventually the English poet Arthur Brooke.

It was Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562) which provided Shakespeare’s main source. Brooke provided bases for most of the familiar characters and the main features of the plot; but his version, a long narrative poem, is pedestrian, prolix and rather naïve. In converting that verse-narrative into a play (first performed in or around 1595), Shakespeare has added direct physicality, lively movement, dramatic colour, intense vitality, and a diversity of modes of eloquence in poetry and prose, to what formerly was relatively inert. Everywhere there is new life, intelligence and questing cogency. Contrasts in characterisation, themes, style, tone and scene are repeatedly introduced or accentuated.

In Brooke, the time-scale of events is vague but lengthy: at least nine months elapse. In Shakespeare, the time-scale is dramatically compressed to just four days (from Sunday to Thursday morning), so that the momentum is impetuously rapid. [2] Furthermore, this momentum is given thematic force, for one of the main themes then becomes the attraction and danger of impetuous action. The love-relationship gains the intensity and poignancy of precipitate brevity. And Shakespeare not only enlivens the structure but also coordinates it very systematically. He provides numerous speeches of ominous anticipation and clarifying recollection, numerous dramatic ironies, and a range of recurrent leit-motifs or images – particularly the recurrent imagery of light against darkness. One paradox of the plot is the prominence of both accidentality (most obviously, the miscarriage of Friar Lawrence’s letter) and destiny (Romeo and Juliet are ‘star-crossed lovers’). The paradox is crystallised in the recurrent term ‘Fortune’, which could either be merely a poetical term for fluke, chance and change, or could denote a supernatural power who deploys accident as part of a divine plan – ‘All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see’, a later poet declared. [3] In the play, Shakespeare provides so many instances of impeded messages (beginning with the invitation which the servant cannot read) that even the miscarriage of the friar’s letter begins to look like part of a design rather than mere bad luck.

There are further ways in which a comparison with Brooke makes clear Shakespeare’s organisational skills. Brooke’s poem begins with a sonnet summarising the plot; Shakespeare places a summarising sonnet at the beginning not only of Act 1 but also of Act 2, and (with superbly symbolic use of poetic form) lets the first dialogue between Romeo and Juliet blend into a formally perfect love-sonnet, and one which wittily plays on the meaning (‘pilgrim or palmer’) of the Italian name Romeo itself. They then embark on a second sonnet, but it is interrupted, perhaps portending the tragic outcome. In Brooke, the feud between the two main families is presented with relative vagueness as a matter in the background of the main action until the killing which leads to the hero’s banishment. Shakespeare boldly emphasises the feud first at the outset, secondly near the mid-point (Act 3 scene 1), and thirdly at the conclusion, so that the contrast between the private and the public, the intimate and the political, becomes much more prominent and forceful. Brooke introduced Tybalt and Paris at a relatively late stage in the action; Shakespeare introduces them early on. This change not only gives greater coherence to the action; it also engenders suspense and cruel ironies, and enhances the variety by adding to the arrangement of mutually-emphasising contrasted characters. Paris becomes prominent as a noble, civilised and unwitting rival to Romeo. By rapidly establishing the implacable ruthlessness of Tybalt (now much more strongly characterised than in Brooke), Shakespeare adds to the sense of impending disaster and amplifies the contrast between impetuous hate and impetuous love. The play’s profusion of minor characters helps to provide comic variety and to make amply plausible the society in which the main action occurs. The love-story thus becomes inseparable from matter that, in various ways, is social and political. Masculine conduct, and even the definition of masculinity, is one of the coordinating topics; and the play offers plenty to interest feminists.

3

Although Shakespeare’s Juliet is only thirteen years old (Brooke’s was sixteen), she displays a precociously independent intelligence. [4] Consider the famous ‘balcony’ scene, in which Romeo, standing in the garden, addresses Juliet at her window. Romeo attempts to offer the conventional rhetoric of the ardent lover:

Lady, by yonder blessèd moon I vow,

That tips with silver all these fruit tree tops[;]

but he is at once checked by Juliet:

O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Romeo, temporarily baffled by this shrewd rebuke, asks ‘What shall I swear by?’; and she replies:

Do not swear at all;

Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,

Which is the god of my idolatry,

And I’ll believe thee.

Romeo starts again with ‘If my heart’s dear love’ – and is again checked when she says:

Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,

I have no joy of this contráct tonight:

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say ‘It lightens’.

Her forebodings prove accurate, since their love will indeed be short-lived. What is notable in the quoted exchange is that Juliet is shrewdly critical of conventional lovers’ rhetoric; and it is criticism that Romeo needs. Although Romeo is probably several years older than Juliet, it is he who seems relatively immature and callow. His protestations of undying love for Rosaline have abruptly given way to his fuller love for Juliet. The plot-summary in The Oxford Companion to English Literature says that Romeo ‘wins her consent to a secret marriage’, [5] but that summary falsifies the radicalism of the text, for it is Juliet, not Romeo, who decisively presses the courtship towards marriage:

If that thy bent of love be honourable,

Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow,

By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,

Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite[.]

So, although she says that she will regard him as her ‘lord’, the play gives the impression that Juliet is actually shrewder and more decisive than is Romeo. Dramatically, greater emphasis falls on her than on him, for she is given the theatrical accolade of the later death.

The lovers’ deaths have many causes, and a prominent cause is, of course, the feud between the Mountagues

Reviews for Romeo and Juliet

[judithrs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare. Folger Shakespeare Library. 1992. As I said above, this was a book club selection. Cannot remember when I last read this play, but I loved reading it this time. How can I forget how much I love Shakespeare?!! After I read the play, I found a BBC Radio production with Kenneth Branagh playing Romeo and Judie Dench playing Nurse! I really enjoyed reading along as I listened and got more out of the play the second reading. I sort of wanted to listen to it again, but instead decided to watch Zeffierlli’s movie and am so glad I did. A great way to enjoy Shakespeare!

[jonfaith · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

O teach me how I should forget to think

I was prepared to be underwhelmed by a jaded near fifty return to this plethora of love-anchored verse. It was quite the opposite, as I found myself steeled with philosophy "adversity's sweet milk" and my appreciation proved ever enhanced by the Bard's appraisal of the human condition. How adroit to have situated such between two warring tribes, under a merciful deity, an all-too-human church and the wayward agency of hormonal teens. Many complain of this being a classic Greek drama adapted to a contemporary milieu. There is also a disproportionate focus on the frantic pacing in the five acts. I can appreciate both concerns but I think such is beyond the point. The chorus frames matters in terms of destiny, a rumination on Aristotelian tragedy yet the drama unfolds with caprice being the coin of the realm. Well, as much agency as smitten couples can manage. Pacing is a recent phenomenon, 50 episodes for McNulty to walk away from the force, a few less for Little Nell to die.

Shakespeare offers insights on loyalty and human frailty as well as the Edenic cursing of naming in some relative ontology. Would Heidegger smell as sweet? My mind's eye blurs the poise of Juliet with that of Ophelia; though no misdeeds await the Capulet, unless being disinherited by Plath's Daddy is the road's toll to a watery sleep. The black shoe and the attendant violent delights.

[sdtaylor555 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm not a big Shakespeare fan, so I won't rate any of his works very high

[df5b_roberts · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ah, my favorite classic.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Publiekslieveling, maar ik vond het niet altijd overtuigend, soms zelfs stroef. Bevat uiteraard weergaloze passages. Vertaling van Komrij.1595, bekend verhaal, midden XV², maar wel afstand van moralistische behandeling,exuberante poêzie, evolutie van romantische komedie naar tragedie, maar heel vlot alsof het door Shakespeare zelf niet serieus werd bevonden. Twee stijlen: hoogdraven-maniëristisch en rijper en sober. Thema is de roekeloze hartstocht; daarom een noodlottragedie: ondergang buiten hun wil om (bij de andere tragedies komt de ondergang door een tekort aan krachten of een gebrek).Huis van Montague tegen het huis van Capulet in Verona. Julia is 14 jaar.Boodschap van de prins tegen geweld I,1 (“Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace…, p 1012); omschrijving liefde I,1 (“Love is a smoke rais’d with the fume of sighs:/Beining purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;/Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears:/What is it else? A madness most discreet,/A choking gall and a preserving sweet.”, 1013)Hoogtepunt: de dialoog Romeo-Julia II,2 en III,5Vlottere taal dan de vorige, maar toch ook stroeve delen; opvallend korte, komische entractes.

[unkletom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This review is for the 2012 edition of The Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet as annotated by Demitra Padadinas, founder and producing art director of the New England Shakespeare Festival.I’ve been a big fan of Shakespeare ever since high school when a clever English teacher pointed out that, in his day, Shakespeare was looked on as anything but high-brow. His audiences were more likely to consist of pickpockets, tavern-goers and whores than fine lords and ladies. Consequently, his scripts had to be snappy and laced with bawdy humor and innuendo to keep the audience coming back. While some of Shakespeare’s double entendres have survived the editors’ quills over the centuries, most of what we see in the editions taught in schools is muted and laced with safe footnotes that do more to conceal Shakespeare’s intent than to illuminate it. As an example, in Act 1 scene 3, the nurse, a comic character known for her bawdy humor, swears by “by my holidam” which Folger describes as referring to a holy relic while Papidinis explains that what she was swearing on was her “holy place”, an oath that, if accompanied by appropriate body language from the performer, could have an entirely different meaning.This version of Romeo and Juliet is as it appeared when the First Folio was first published in 1623 so its spelling and punctuation is a little more challenging to read than the modernized versions. It doesn’t take long, though, for the reader to catch on that, if read phonetically, such lines as “sailes upon the bosome of the ayre” are easily understood.I also like that Papadinis carries on the format seen in Folger editions of putting the text of the play on the left page and the annotations on the right. This makes it a lot easier to read the annotations and still keep you place.*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review copy of this book was obtained from the publisher via the LibraryThing Early Reader Program.

[dukefan86 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful language, classic Shakespeare.

[katieloucks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

great classic

[oscarwilde87_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd.For never was a story of more woeThan this of Juliet and her Romeo."So ends the play Romeo and Juliet which is probably the most popular play by William Shakespeare. You will have a hard time finding someone who has never heard of its plot. It is a timeless tragedy of two star-crossed lovers finding eternal love in death. While it is one thing to read the script on paper, it is a truly amazing experience to see it performed on stage. The play explores themes that will never be out of date: friendship, love, family rivalry, desperation, and mourning, to name but a few. It is well worth having a closer look at Romeo's relation to love and whether he is really in love with Rosaline or Juliet or just in love with the feeling of being in love. Then there is Romeo's unlikely friendship to Mercutio, two very different characters. Generally, there are many aspects to explore and with every new reading I discover yet another one. You might want to watch the 2014 Broadway performance with Orlando Bloom as Romeo. At least I enjoyed it very much. 5 stars. A true masterpiece.

[meandmybooks-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sigh. Well, another time through, and I still don't care for Romeo and Juliet. I've been a silly teenager, and I have silly teenagers, I have parents who have been wrong-headed, and I am a parent who is sometimes wrong-headed (some say “frequently”), and I still find the characters here utterly unsympathetic and annoying. In large part, I think, the idea of “love at first sight” just irritates me so much that all the stupidities that follow are just icing on the cake, and that's coming from someone who married her husband after two weeks' acquaintance, so I believe I can claim some experience in the area of efficient assessment of compatibility.. While I fully sympathize with those who find extended dating wearisome, Romeo and Juliet spend so little time in conversation – one joint sonnet does not a relationship make – that their “love” never appears to move beyond hormone crazed obsession. The most tragic aspect of the story is that the nurse and the friar, foolishly indulgent, assist these ridiculous kids in their melodramatic stunts.As with the other plays I've read so far in this “year of Shakespeare,” I read Garber's chapter on “Romeo & Juliet,” from her wonderful Shakespeare After All, before reading the play. Her analysis did improve my reading, but, sadly, recognition of artistic merit does not always translate into real appreciation. When Juliet wails that she'd rather her parents and everyone else she knows were dead than that the boy she's met just the day before was banished, and, across town, Romeo is lying on the floor of the friar's cell, howling and kicking his heels because there was a consequence for killing Tybalt (who'd have thought?), the play seems to me to shift, not as Garber suggests, from comedy to tragedy, but, rather, into the realm of farce. Overwrought teenagers yowling like a pair of sex crazed alley cats because their romantic evening plans have been overturned hardly qualify as tragedy, and the nurse's eager plan to accommodate them with one night of passion (her enthusiasm for the deflowering of the thirteen year old girl she's raised is just creepy) doesn't help. The “tragedy” is that, instead of sensible friends, these youngsters, deranged with sudden infatuation and lust, have dimwitted adults to encourage and pander to them in their harebrained schemes.The poetry is lovely, the literary and dramatic effects are masterful, but I just don't care for the story. The final couplet, “For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo,” leaves me not with any feelings of sorrow for these violent, petulant brats, but simply disgust.For this reading I used the Updated Folger Shakespeare Library edition, which is nicely formatted with notes opposite each page of text, and read along with the audio recording by L.A. Theatre Works (2012) starring Calista Flockhart, Matthew Wolf, etc. While I rate this play at three stars for my enjoyment of the story, the dramatic performance by Flockhart and Co. is really superb! Definitely a five star production. So maybe I should rate the play at four stars? (I notice that I previously rated it at four.) Still, my “inner teen” stamps her foot and pouts, and I stick with my emotion-guided three star rating.*Okay. I forgot LT allows half stars. Three and a half, then.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As long as you remind yourself that this is teen melodrama and not tragedy the essential vapidity of the central relationship and the frustratingly buried deeper and more complex relationships--actually all Romeo's, with Mercutio but also Benvolio, Tybalt, the priest--don't get in the way of good tawdry enjoyment. Now I think about it, Romeo's like a cryptohomoerotic sixteenth-century Archie.

[antao-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Teenage Proclivity for Conjugation: "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, J.A. Bryant Jr. Published 1998.

Upon each re-reading I always wonder why Shakespeare does not reveal the reason that the families hate each other. We are told that the households are alike in dignity (social status). We are even provided with a "spoiler alert" when we learn that the "star crossed lovers" will commit suicide, resulting in a halt to the feuding between the two families. In addition, we receive the clue that the feud has gone on for a long time (ancient grudge) However, the omission of the reason for the feud leaves us wondering and imagining a variety of scenarios--just as Shakespeare must have intended. I think it is important for an author to leave a mystery for the reader to explore. In Star Wars there was a sense of mystery about the Force, what was it. Are there any reasons needed, ever? The humankind's history is filled with feuds which are completely pointless... "Ancient grudge", servants' street fight -- and general desire to feel better than someone else. Isn't this very pointlessness that Shakespeare intended the viewers to see?

The rest of this review can be read elsewhere.

[agdbk · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I love Shakespeare. I simply detest this play.

[hopingforchange · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Classic story of love and loss. ;) It's Shakespeare, and it's beautiful.

[lhlogan1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's a classic, but not really a favorite of mine.

[eric_cheuk-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

overly compressed, beautifully-written play in which two teenagers fall in love, marry, fuck, and die, all in the span of three days. concessions should be made to late 16th century literary convention, but still...

[ajaygx · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Classic... what else is there to say?

[currerbell-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Romeo and Juliet is fairly far down on my list of Shakespeare's plays (compared, say, with The Tempest, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night at the top), so my five***** rating of this book (ISBN 978-0786447480) is not for the play itself but for the editorial work. I snagged Demitra Papadinis's "Frankly Annotated First Folio Edition" as an Early Reviewer, and after browsing it I've definitely wish-listed her similar edition of As You Like It (ISBN 978-0786449651, which I didn't win as an Early Reviewer) as well as her pre-order edition of Macbeth (ISBN 978-0786464791).I was particularly curious to see how Papadinis's "Frankly Annotated" editions would stack up versus the Norton Critical Editions (generically, that is, because there is no NCE of Romeo and Juliet to the best of my knowledge). There is simply no comparison between the two, and I say this in praise of both Papadinis and NCE. The strength of NCE is in its supplementary materials, which are completely lacking to Papadinis, while the strength of Papadinis is in her highly detailed line-by-line annotation. Papadinis and NCE, in other words, complement rather than compete with each other.Papadinis's annotation is highly detailed and presented in facing-page format, with the play's text on the left-hand page and the corresponding annotation on the right. What this means is that some left-hand text pages may contain only four or five lines while a corresponding right-hand annotation page will be completely filled, so that Papadinis's "Frankly Annotated" editions are not for a newcomer or casual reader, who will most likely find the design cumbersome and the trade paperback edition's price higher than a beginner would like. (Leaving out introduction and bibliography, both quite short, Papadinis's text/annotations for Romeo and Juliet run from pages 28 through 447 inclusive.)Another Early Reviewer has expressed some objection that these annotations represent a "tendentious study of the vulgar in Shakespeare's play." In reality, though, Romeo and Juliet (like Twelfth Night) in fact is one of Shakespeare's most bawdy plays, so I have to object to such a criticism. On the other hand, I also have to admit that I have not studied Papadinis's annotations that comprehensively, considering the time limit in posting an Early Review. In fact, this is not the kind of book that you are likely to read cover-to-cover, but rather one that you'll browse through, maybe just a scene (or even a few lines) at a time to savor the wealth of annotation that Papadinis provides. For that matter, I'm not such a Shakespeare specialist that I'd necessarily pick up on small annotational glitches anyway, so here's hoping some other ER can comment with more specificity on this subject.Papadinis's "Frankly Annotated" editions are available in both trade paperback and Kindle, but this does not seem like the kind of text that could be properly formatted for eBook reading, given the need for facing-page capability. I did download a Kindle sample, but it was too short (it included only some of the introduction, with none of the facing-page text/annotation) to be sure of this, but I'd definitely recommend the trade paperback edition. It's a bit pricey but worth it, though not recommended for a first-timer to the play.

[ctpress_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.Reading a Shakespeare-play and seeing one is two entirely different things. Having been to the Globe in London and experienced the magic of an evening with Shakespeare it seems a dry thing to "just" read the play. Still, reading it offers time to stop and contemplate and enjoy and savour all the famous quotes and lines of poetry.In this romantic tragedy there's plenty of over-the-top emotions, frantic pace, overwhelming love-songs and declarations of eternal bliss or eternal sorrow - it's just a thing you accept coming to Shakespeare. This is his world and it's just for us to drink it in.And although it's exaggerated the theme is eternal and universal - love - mixed with infatuation and madness - it's a force too powerful to be kept down - and it's explosive in the midst of a feud between two families. This emotional tour de force between Romeo and Juliet is something to be appraised and lamented at the same time. I'm not sure what Shakespeare does most. But both things are there. The admiration of such head-over-the-heels love and the warning against it's power to overwhelm and blinding the persons involved. Good Night, Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow

[la12hernandez · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Found this very easy to use and understand. I think my family is tired of me quoting the play then explaining it according to the book. As a theater major I found this book fascinating.

[papercrystals · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This review is for the Frankly Annotated First Folio Edition, with annotations by Demitra Papadinis.The layout of the book is fantastic, making it easy to keep your place in the play when checking on the notes. The notes themselves are fantastic, going in depth and not leaving out the dirty jokes. A thoroughly enjoyable and educational edition!

[literate0ninja · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Easily one of my least favorite of The Bard's works. Reading this in high school very nearly put me off Shakespeare for good. One of the first books I ever remember reading that made me want to smack both main characters upside the head and ask them "What the heck are you thinking?!"

[tiffanyak_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a great romantic tragedy, which I had to read for my Intro. to Drama class. This is one of those works of Shakespeare that has been done in a multitude of forms and variations, so it is quite likely that everyone has a rough idea of the story. Still, you really cannot replace the original. There is a lot of unbelievable story to it, which can overdo it to the point of being distracting, but overall the language and story are so supremely memorable that it automatically qualifies as a must-read. As to the edition itself, I found it to be greatly helpful in understanding the action in the play. It has a layout which places each page of the play opposite a page of notes, definitions, explanations, and other things needed to understand that page more thoroughly. While I didn't always need it, I was certainly glad to have it whenever I ran into a turn of language that was unfamiliar, and I definitely appreciated the scene-by-scene summaries. Really, if you want to or need to read Shakespeare, an edition such as this is really the way to go, especially until you get more accustomed to it.

[newskepticx · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is a tragedy in the sense that Shakespeare did so much better with his other plays. This one is weak. The amount of coincidence is down right ridiculous, Shakespeare plays way too much into the "love" for a tale that is supposed to be cautionary(or so I think it might've been senseless fighting between two families led to tragic deaths, never really capitalizes on it til the end). It's also the standard for classic love story although it is nothing of the sort. I despised it.

[richestgirls-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I give this book 5 stars because it uses creative and expresses a true form of writing that makes you want to read more until you've read the whole book!!

[seraphinac.b4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the book Romeo and Juliet, two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, who are worst enemies, try to discourage the love between their children Romeo and Juliet. Things only get worse when Romeo kills one of the Capulet’s kinsmen, Tybalt, in a duel. Romeo is banished and Juliet is broken hearted when she finds out that she will have to marry Paris. To get rest and pass the time, she drinks a vile which will make her appear dead. After she drinks the vile she is pronounced dead and put into a charnel house. Word reaches Romeo that Juliet is dead so he buys a bottle of poison and drinks it next to Juliet’s body. When Juliet wakes up and sees Romeo dead, she takes his dagger and stabs herself. This book was a page-turner! I think it was so exciting because it had just the right amount of romance. It was also a little sad because death could have been prevented. A lesson I have been reminded of is think before you act. I look forward to reading another Shakespeare book. This edition was useful because it had a vocabulary list for some of the Old-English. In my opinion this is a must read.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

While designing a board game based in Verona, Italy in the 1400's, I ended up reading the play 14 times. It stands up very well. If you're looking for a brilliant treatment in a film, the Francesco Zefferelli version is near perfect. Try to get a version that doesn't edit the Tibault/Mercutio sword-fight, a magnificent dramatic sequence. But for reading aloud in an evening, this is a great experience as well. Should I tell you that the male brain isn't fully matured until the age of 26? It is germane to the plot.

[epenton-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bruce Colville’s retells Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in story form. It includes a narration of the major plot points in a clear and easy to follow language that is appropriate for younger children (as early as third grade or so). The book also contains beautiful pictures that capture the important parts of the story and help to tell the story. What I like most about this book is that it incorporates quotes from the play itself. The way that it is mixed in with the easy-to-follow narration of the book would, I believe, help children develop a basic understanding of Shakesperian language that will be helpful to them as they advance into higher grades. This book could also be useful to students in middle and high school. This book could be helpful to me in my current situation as a high school English tutor: Many of the students I tutor are completely thrown off by the language that Shakespeare uses, which inhibits their understanding of the entire story. Supplementing a lesson on Romeo and Juliet with this book would be a good way to get students to grasp the basics of the play and also to ease them into the complex language of the play. Great Book!

[keksfan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Bekannte Geschichte.Junge trifft Mädchen und sie verlieben sich. Eltern sind dagegen. Tragisches Ende. Der Stoff aus dem heute noch jeder dritte Liebesfilm besteht.

[katie1802 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely love this! Romeo can be an idiot sometimes, their families are jerks and the Friar seriously screwed up but you have to love it all.

Favourite Quote ;

Oh she doth teach the torches to burn bright, it seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear, beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.