MB UNIUD

ROMEO AND JULIET

Shakespeare has been dead for over 400 years, but his plays are still read by all. Instead, who doesn't know the tagical story of Romeo and Juliet? It is a tradition of tragic romances. Shakespeare embellished the story with plots, murders and brawl between Montagues and Capulets.
To whom that doesn't know the story or doesn't remember it, here is a little summary: the two prominent families of Verona, Montague and Capulets, fight themselves. When Capulets give a ball, Romeo(the son of Montague), that wasn't invited, meet Juliet (the daughter of Capulets) and he falls in love to her. After the ball, Romeo goes into the Capulets' courtyard and overhears Juliet on her balcony vowing her love to him. Romeo makes himself known to her and they agree to be married. But, the next day, after that Romeo and Juliet went to Friar Laurence and asked his help, Tyblad, Juliet's cousin, challanges Romeo to a duel, because he went to the ball and he wasn't invited. Romeo refuses, but Mercutio, Romeo's friend, accepts the duel for Romeo and he was killed by Tybalt. Romeo wants to take a revenge and he kills Tybalt. Exiled Romeo from Verona by the Prince, Juliet asks again To Friar Laurence his help and he offers her a drug which will put her into a death-like coma for two hours. The Friar sends a messanger to Romeo to inform him, but he doesn't receive the message, so he goes back to Verona and, after that he kills Paris, he drinks a poison and dies near Juliet. When she awakes and sees Romeo dead, she kills herself with the Romeo's dagger. The families are reconciled by their children's deaths and agree to end their violent feud.
Scholars have founded four difference themes: love, fate and chance, light and dark and time.
Critics have noted some weak points in Romeo and Juliet, but it is still considered as one of best Shakespeare's plays. Samuel Pepys wrote in 1662:” it is a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life”; this is one of the first critic of the play. In the later part of the 18th, criticism centred on debates over the moral message of the play.
Shakespeare employs several dramatic tecniques: the most notably is the passage form comedy to tragedy. Before Mercutio's death, the play is a comedy, then it becomes serious and takes on a tragic tone.
Shakespeare uses also a variety of poetic forms: at beginn, there is the form of a Shakespearean sonnet; when Friar Laurence speaks, he uses sermon and sentential forms; when the Nurse speaks, he uses aq unique blank verse form and when Romeo talks about Rosaline, he uses the Petrarchan sonnet form and when he speaks with Juliet, he uses the contemporary sonnet form.
A queer theory says Romeo and Mercutio are homosexsual, because Mercutio, in a friendly conversation with Romeo, mentions Romeo's phallus and this suggests traces of homoeroticism. In addition Juliet aks to Romeo if there is any difference between the beauty of a man and the beauty of a woman.
But even if Romeo and Juliet was criticed by all, this play likes yo all young people and also old people, specially to girls and women.