SOURCE: Chang, Joseph S. M. J. “The Language of Paradox in Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Studies 3 (1967): 22-42.

In the following essay, Chang disputes criticism that considers love the primary concern of Romeo and Juliet, citing themes of time, death, and immortality as more important to the play.

Critical insight has foundered in the case of Romeo and Juliet,¹ in part because critics restrict their readings to the level of understanding defined by the two choric sonnets, and in part because students of the play have misread Shakespeare's major artistic tool here, making it subserve their own penchant for analysis of character. For example, since Dowden, it has been commonly accepted that Shakespeare employs a low order of Petrarchanism in the first act to indicate the shallowness of young Romeo's conventionalized devotion to Rosaline.² Petrarchan oxymorons tediously issue from the boy, when he is not playing the role of...