Romeo and Juliet

Modern readers often think of Romeo and Juliet as the “love play,” to the extent that we still use the young couple’s names as a byword for head-over-heels couples. However, this play is as much about love’s illusions, deceptions, and dangers as much as its beauties.

Every character in the play knows that the intensity of new love can be “more inconstant than the wind” (1.4.107). The power of Romeo and Juliet’s love is beautifully and vividly drawn, but it emerges from a background of utter silliness. Romeo’s rapid flip from believing he shall never love anyone the way he loves Rosaline (who wants nothing to do with him) to having eyes for no one but Juliet is emblematic of a teenager in love. Romeo’s friends never let him forget that he’s being ridiculous, but they can’t hold him back.

The beauty and the danger of love is that it can be ridiculous and real at the same time—and that it has a power that goes far deeper than reason. Juliet is perhaps the best spokeswoman for this theme. Though she remains aware that the intensity of her feeling is dangerous and likely to vanish as soon as it appears, “too like the lightning” (2.