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Keith Hill's avatar

Hello John. I am very much enjoying your de-romanticising of R+J.

This issue of Romeo's suicide, his desperation - whether motivated by impetuous youth or something else - giving rise to eternal damnation, reflects interestingly on the later tragedies,, especially King Lear. Some critics view Lear as reflecting Shakespeare at the end of his tether, depressed, played out. Yet your reading of R+J suggests Shakespeare possessed a dark view of the human situation, or at least of Elizabethan society, in the mid 1590s. Lear is bleaker overall. But when we consider the plays written around the time of R+J - Love's Labour's Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard II - we can see Shakespeare pushing the envelope in comedy, history and tragedy ... and that these genres bleed into each other in all four plays. A dark streak washes through them all, but varying to greater or lesser degrees.

Your observations suggest that R+J is the key to unpicking the overlaps and identifying their psychological and moral complexities, because it is the play the is most misread out of these four. I'm looking forward to further insights from you.

PS. Your interactions with Stanley Wells are hilarious - in a straight-faced scholarly way.

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Donna T's avatar

What a fantastic challenge to the status quo approach to Romeo and Juliet. You back up your thesis well, and I'd love to see a response/debate. Unfortunately, mischief appears to be in the air!

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