Wordsworth Classics: Romeo and Juliet

This is a basic text element.

Cedric Watts is Professor of English Literature at the University of Sussex. His books on Shakespeare include William Shakespeare: 'Measure for Measure', (1986), Hamlet (1988), Romeo and Juliet (1991), and with John Sutherland Henry V - War Criminal? and other Shakespeare Puzzles (2000). He has edited the First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet (1995).

Love, sex and death are the components in this story of the love of two young people which reaches across the barriers of family and convention. It encompasses great love, high drama, low comedy and a tragic ending. Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeares works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. Romeo and Juliet is the worlds most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage and sexual fulfilment; but a combination of old animosities and new coincidences brings them to suicidal deaths. This play offers a rich mixture of romantic lyricism, bawdy comedy, intimate harmony and sudden violence. Long successful in the theatre, it has also generated numerous operas, ballets and films; and these have helped to make Romeo and Juliet perennially topical.

This is a basic text element.