Romeo und Julia

Romeo and Juliet: The names have long stood for a myth, the myth of tragic passion. The story has found countless imitators, and the turmoil of emotions within it has today, trivialized and in fragments, become part of the repertoire of no fewer soap operas: the deadly feud between two families; the lightning strike of forbidden love between the children of these households; the fervor and tenderness with which both assure each other of this love; the courage with which Juliet agrees to the plan to be "kidnapped" as a pretend dead person in order to escape another marriage and follow Romeo. And then, of course, the most tragic of all scenes, the death of love: Romeo, inadequately informed about the plan due to a fatal coincidence, believes Juliet is dead and poisons himself in her tomb; Juliet awakens and stabs herself with Romeo's dagger. All of this seems more romantic than Elizabethan, and through the familiar lens of the 19th century (when the play became a great success as a tragedy, while in the 18th century it was sometimes allowed to have a happy ending without hesitation), we still see today that "great love" that is not accepted by "society." However, Shakespeare invented something completely unknown in his time with "Romeo and Juliet": the first English love tragedy.