R om eo a n d Ju liet : A Postmodern Play?
A short, 14-line prologue (Chorus) “foreshadows” the “tragedy” of Romeo
and Juliet; we know both title characters die at the end of the play; we always
have been told this is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Therefore, analysis and
criticism of Romeo and Juliet generally has focused on applying theories of
tragedy to the script. Yet much that is assumed to be the focus or themes of
Romeo and Juliet ultimately stems from preconceptions subtly inherited from
late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century, neo-classical literary critics like John
Dryden, Samuel Johnson, and Alexander Pope, and also from adaptations of
scripts created by early modem actor-managers, like Nahum Tate, Colly Cibber,
and David Garrick. Those adaptations saw Juliet awake before Romeo’s death,
and gave the dying Romeo 62 lines to bid his love goodbye. Just like the neo
classical critics, those early modem actor-managers were steeped in neo
classical ideas of literary excellence, and they sought to please elite audiences
also steeped in those same ideas (Marder 17-33; Copeland 1-13).
Those neo-classical critics, adaptors, actors, and audiences adjudged Romeo
and Juliet solely as tragedy, characterizing the play as a tragedy somewhat
flawed by its seeming lack of Aristotelian notions of: “unity,” essential
“character flaws” evident in the protagonists, and a sense of tragic
“inevitability.” Literary critics from the Romantic Era rebelled against some of
these criticisms, but layered our inherited preconceptions with an enshrinement
of the nobility of the lovers’ resistance to authority, and their “Liebestod” (Watts
xv-xxvii). At the turn of the twentieth century, critics echoed the neo-classical
critics as they sought to explain some of these “flaws” in the “tragedy” by
emphasizing its position within the chronology of Shakespeare’s dramatic
works. Those critics called Romeo and Juliet a “transitional” drama. To them,
the play illustrated Shakespeare’s evolving skill as a tragic poet. Romeo and
Juliet was a midway point as Shakespeare’s writing moved from the bombastic
“potboiler” Titus Andronicus to the “great” tragedies Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and
Macbeth (Bradley xi-xii, 71).
These views still exist as subtle undercurrents in modem criticism of Romeo
and Juliet. Though Enlightenment-descended notions of “eternal verities,” and
Romantic-descended views of the play’s sentimentality, are challenged by
feminist, deconstructionist, poststructuralist, and cultural materialist criticism
(Watts xxx-xxii), critic-historians still debate what Shakespeare intended as the
“tragic” theme in Romeo and Juliet (Lawlor 123).
Yet most attempts to fit the play into some form of tragic theory circle back
upon themselves, creating a closed loop. R. Speaight (70-1) calls the play “a
flawed masterpiece,” because Shakespeare attempted too much in the script.
F.M. Dickey (63) characterizes the play as an early effort at tragedy which failed
because the characters lack the essential classical character flaw, and because