The Folger Shakespeare Library inWashington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe.In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a world of :violence and-generational conflict in which two young people fall in love and die because of that love. The story is rather extraordinary in that the normal problems faced by young lovers are here so very large. It is not simply that the families of Romeo and Juliet disapprove-of the lovers' affection for each other, rather, the Monta-gues and the Capulets .are on opposite sides in a blood feud and are trying to kill each other on the streets of Verona. Every time a member ofone of the two families dies .in the fight, his relatives demand .the blood of his killer. Because of the feud; if Romeo is discovered with Juliet by her family, he will be killed . Once Romeo is banished, the only way ithat Juliet can avoid being married to someone else is to take a potion that appar- ently, kills her, so that she is bun'ed with the bodies of her slain relatives. In this violent,death-filled world,the movement of the story from love at first sight to the hnion of the lovers in death seems almost inevitab

Editors' Preface

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Reading Shakespeare's Language

Shakespeare's Life

Shakespeare's Theater

The lubrication of Shakespeare's Plays

An Introduction to This Text

The Tragedy or Romeo and Juliet

Text of the Play with Commentary

Textual Notes

Romeo and Ju/iet." A Modern Perspective by Gaff Kern Paster

Further Reading

Key to Famous Lines and Phrases