What makes Romeo and Juliet the world’s most famous and enduring love story? What brings us back again and again? Surely the language is some of Shakespeare’s most poetic and lyrical and the dramatic tension between the warring families, whose hatred seems more of an historic pattern than a legitimate battle, resonates with our modern, troubled world. However, it is the love story—the electric, palpable love between Romeo and Juliet that beckons us across time and place.

The young lovers, Romeo in particular, are often criticized for their impetuousness. Many have considered their love to be based more on lust and the power of attraction than on an abiding commitment. However, is it not remarkable that on the very night that they meet, they also make wedding arrangements—indicating a deeper devotion than they had previously experienced? Could it be more than love at first sight? In her introduction to the Text and Contexts edition of Romeo and Juliet, Dympna Callahan explores the concept of love at first sight and its origin:

The convention of love at first sight is so compelling in part because
it draws up on a perceived truth about the nature of desire. In the
Symposium, the Greek philosopher Plato (428-327 B.C.E.), tells
Aristophanes’ story that all human beings were once quadrupeds, male
and female conjoined in one creature, who were split in half when they
incurred the wrath of the gods. From that time on, humans were destined
to search and long for the lost part of themselves. According to Platonic
theory, the striking moment of recognition often described as love at first
sight is the apparent recovery of a perceived loss, and is, in some sense,
a reenactment of the original, founding moment of our identity in the
ecstatic merging of the lover’s identity with that of the beloved (Joyce 38-67).

Elizabethans lived in a world that was ordered by duty. Most often, one did not marry for love. Elizabethan art and culture, however, were also heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. Perhaps these two opposing elements of life in Early Modern England prompted Shakespeare to explore what it would mean in his day and age for two young people, equally bound by their parents’ hatred for each other and their inexplicable, undeniable, destined union. It is the power of their love in the face of such extreme odds, the sacrifices that they are willing to make, and the lengths to which they are willing to go to be together that makes Romeo and Juliet the most treasured love story of all time.

Lucy Tobin
Director of Education
The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival