Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"

Abstract

The author looks at some of the ways in which this play has been made accessible, as a romantic story of young love, as "West Side Story" or a colourful and spectacular historical pageant and suggests that they lead away from the Elizabethan play-text. Holderness attempts to relocate the play back into its original performance conditions - he examines and analyzes its language to show how it is designed to work as theatre - and revalues the characters in the light of some reflections on the nature of dramatic roles. On this basis it should be possible to propose some thoughts about the play as a "tragedy" which will take us beyond both Aristotle's poetics and the popular notion of the play as the teenager's experience of heartbreak.