SOURCE: Levenson, Jill L. Introduction to Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, edited by Jill L. Levenson, pp. 1-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

In the excerpt below, Levenson highlights Romeo and Juliet's themes, discusses its structure and its use of rhetoric, and notes that in terms of genre, the play provides an original arrangement of the tragic, comic, and sonnet sequence forms.

‘romeo and Juliet’: the Play

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was, and still is, famous for its affect. In his essay on feeling and early modern theatre, Gary Taylor cites allusions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, notably to the tragedy's last couplet, indicating that audiences appreciated this play as ‘the ultimate in woe’.¹ However the text has been adapted since the Restoration, woe and love have remained keynotes of successful performance; and Romeo and Juliet has enjoyed a number of highly successful periods in production...