Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespearec. 1595
Influence88th pct
Popularity99th pct
Shakespeare

Read this if you…

  • want the most famous love story ever
  • have taken Groble's advice and decided Shakespeare is great

Skip this if you…

  • aren't willing to go slow, read notes, look up analyses of famous passages (only way to "get" shakespeare)
  • foolishly think shakespeare is overrated
  • don't like love poetry

The Groblé Take

Awesome poetry and word play. Very fun to read. A little tough in some parts so I recommend a side by side translation. Fun enough story. Mercutio was awesome. And is there a more classic expression of love than Romeo and Juliet? Also Shakespeare has a lot of fun with “opposites” in this one (how love can yield sorrow and darkness can be the light for example), top notch stuff

Connections

The lineage through Romeo and Juliet

Built Onwhat came beforeRomeo and JulietMetamorphosesCanzoniere

  • Metamorphoses by Ovid. Romeo and Juliet built on it. - The forbidden-lovers, mistaken-death plot was already perfected in Ovid — Pyramus and Thisbe, *Metamorphoses* Book 4 - Shakespeare's direct source was Brooke's *Romeus and Juliet*, but the tragic mechanism descends from the Ovidian tradition, and the play is studded with named allusions like Juliet's Phaethon - Read the Pyramus tale first and the lovers' deaths feel like the fulfillment of an old, inevitable pattern
  • Canzoniere by Francesco Petrarca. Romeo and Juliet built on it. - Romeo opens as a parody of the Petrarchan lover Petrarch perfected in *Canzoniere* — all sighs and idolatry for a woman who barely exists to him - The play knows the source by name: Mercutio dismisses Petrarch's Laura as "but a kitchen-wench," and the lovers' first meeting is staged as a shared Petrarchan sonnet - Read *Canzoniere* first and you see what Romeo grows past — the cliché he's trapped in until Juliet makes the love real
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Gallery

Depicted in Art

Romeo, one foot on a rope ladder over a balustrade, leans back to press a final kiss on Juliet's mouth at the bedroom window; the nurse waits in the shadows.

Francesco Hayez, 1823

Pre-dawn parting on a tiny balcony: Romeo, one leg already over the railing into his rope ladder, twists back to kiss Juliet one last time as the sky lightens.

Ford Madox Brown, 1870

Inside the dim Capulet vault, Romeo cradles the limp, white-clad Juliet across his lap, his face turned in anguish into her shoulder, the open sarcophagus behind them.

Eugène Delacroix, 1850

The lovers locked in a full-length embrace and kiss in a shadowy interior, divisionist brushwork dissolving their figures into colored light.

Gaetano Previati, 1891

Juliet lies pale and apparently lifeless on her bed, Paris recoiling at the foot, the nurse and Lord and Lady Capulet bent over her in grief on the wedding morning.

Frederic Leighton, 1858

Romeo, in red doublet and tights, leans back from Juliet's bedroom window at dawn for a final kiss; she clings to his arm as the nurse hovers behind with a curtain pulled back.

Benjamin West, 1778

Mercutio collapses backward into the arms of Benvolio and Romeo on a Verona street, hand pressed to his bleeding side, Tybalt's gang receding behind them.

Frank Bernard Dicksee, 1902

Three-quarter portrait of Juliet against a Venetian canal: a young woman in a brocaded gown nervously fingers a long blue lapis necklace, gaze averted.

John William Waterhouse, 1898

Romeo, on a ladder, leans across the carved stone balustrade to kiss Juliet, who reaches down to him in a white nightgown against a deep night sky.

Julius Kronberg, 1886

The two patriarchs clasp hands over the lovers' shrouded corpses laid side by side; family members weep around them, the friar and watchmen looking on.

Frederic Leighton, 1855

Romeo, halfway over the balcony railing with his foot on a rope ladder, turns back for one last kiss with Juliet at dawn; lilies and ivy spill across the stones.

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

Inside the vaulted Capulet tomb: Romeo and Paris lie dead on the stone floor, Juliet rises confused on her bier as Friar Laurence enters with a torch.

James Northcote, 1789

The balcony scene at dawn: the lovers embrace inside an arched stone balcony, golden morning light spilling over Verona behind them, lilies and a passionflower vine framing the couple.

Frank Bernard Dicksee, 1884

Editions

Recommended Editions

#1Top Pick$6.99$6.51

Folger Shakespeare Library

2004

Folger's the readable one. Text on one page, notes on the facing page, written in plain English instead of textbook-speak. Catches every word and reference you'd otherwise Google, without breaking the scene to do it.

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Notable Quotes

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

Juliet, Act II, sc. ii (balcony scene)
Adaptations

Screen & Stage

Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)

AcclaimPraised by 4 notable voices
  • Samuel Johnson, English critic, essayist & lexicographer, 1709–1784: "One of the most pleasing of our author's performances … the catastrophe irresistibly affecting."
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English Romantic poet & critic, 1772–1834: "All is youth and spring — youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipitancies; spring with its odours, its flowers, and its transiency."
  • Taylor Swift, singer-songwriter, 1989–: Built her 2008 hit 'Love Story' on the balcony scene, casting herself as Juliet — but rewrote the tragic ending into a happy one.
  • Harold Bloom, American literary critic, 1930–2019: "The largest and most persuasive celebration of romantic love in Western literature."

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