Romeo and Juliet : A Postmodern Play?
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are not great and powerful figures who o’er-reach themselves, but inexperienced
offspring who do not seem to know what to reach for. In a sense, the text even
mocks itself. It begins with a promise of tragedy, and immediately delivers
comedy. It seems to move like the classic boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets
girl romantic comedy, and just when it look s as if all will work out in the end
(after all, every other time Romeo and Juliet have met an obstacle has been
removed), a series of rapid-fire accidents suddenly confronts the audience,
almost without warning, with the deaths of the two title characters. In short, this
play seems more like a comedy gone sour than a tragedy with comic relief.
Hence, perhaps the best way to analyze Romeo and Juliet is to abandon
assigning it to the genre of tragedy, and instead view it from the more multiple
perspectives of comic vision and postmodern eclecticism. Perhaps, too,
therefore, we might consider including this work by Shakespeare within the
postmodern canon.
Bowling Green State University
James H. Forse
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