SOURCE: "'death-Marked Love': Desire and Presence in Romeo and Juliet," in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production, Vol. 49," 1996, pp. 57-67.

In the following essay, Davis searches the poetics of desire in Romeo and Juliet, maintaining that the drama links desire, death, selfhood and the forces of time.

I

The action of Romeo and Juliet occurs between two speeches proclaiming the lovers' deaths—the prologue's forecast of events and the prince's closing summary. The vicissitudes of desire take place in this unusual period, after life yet before death. It is a kind of liminal phase in which social and personal pressures build to intense pitch before they are settled. Such liminal tension, as Victor Turner suggests, is the very stuff of which social dramas are made.¹ It figures a mounting crisis that envelops those observing and taking part in the unfolding action. At the same...