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Romeo and Juliet's early stage history is only based on speculation. As Andrew Dickson writes in The Rough Guide to Shakespeare, ''It seems probable that Romeo and Juliet was put on initially at the Theatre in Shoreditch [outside London], then perhaps at the nearby Curtain after Shakespeare's company moved there temporarily in 1597.'' But there is no recorded evidence to prove this. It was not until William Davenant, a possible godson of Shakespeare's, produced his version of the play in 1662 that the event was actually recorded. Samuel Pepys, a famous seventeenth-century English diarist attended, and according to Davenant, wrote that after seeing the play, he ''couldn't decide which he detested more, the play or the actors.'' Despite this disapproving comment, as Anthony Davies states, writing for The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, ''the early quartos [published texts of the play] attest to the play's popularity in the theatres.'' Davies also mentions that proof of the popularity of this play could also be found in the fact that a preacher named Nicholas Richardson quoted the play ''in a sermon in 1620.'' However, literary critics tended to point out Shakespeare's ''over-indulgence in punning and rhyming.''

The play went through changes in the next decade, returning to the stage as the adapted The History and Fall of Caius Marius (1679), written by Thomas Otway and set in ancient Rome. Otway emphasized the politics of the day, for one thing, but he also changed the ending. Unlike Sir James Howard's version, which gave the play a happy ending, Otway had Juliet awakening before Romeo dies, giving the lovers an extra scene in which to exchange their love. This version brought audiences back to the theatre, and the ending was retained in future productions in the next century.

However, Davies points out that prior to the late nineteenth century: ''Romantic writers and artists across theEnglish-speaking world and continental Europe . . . regarded the play as an unqualified presentation of an ideal love too good for the corrupt world.'' After this, critics began to focus on whether the play was truly a tragedy. As Maurice Charney writes, in his All of Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, although classified as a tragedy has more of an affinity with Shakespeare's romantic comedies written at the same time. ''Shakespeare has trouble endowingRomeoand Julietwith tragic stature; in some ways they are not tragic at all.'' These characters do not bring tragedy onto themselves, states Charney, ''and they have no identifiable tragic flaw or weakness of character.'' Therefore, Charney believes, ''they don't qualify as tragic protagonists.'' Charney goes on to say that Shakespeare filled the beginning of the play with ''forebodings and portents,'' but these ''aren't always relevant to the dramatic context.'' It is not untilMercutio's death, according to Charney, that the play takes a turn toward tragedy. ''There seems to be a rush now to realize the implications of all the forebodings.'' Despite these misgivings, Charney does refer to a part of this play that he likes: ''The representation of love is magical in this play,'' he writes. However, Charney concludes: ''It is exceedingly difficult tomake an emotion as complex and ambivalent as love seem an adequate motivating cause for tragedy.''

Countering Charney's point of view is Northrop Frye, in his book Northrop Frye on Shakespeare. Frye writes that tragedy has an ironic side, by which Frye means, in this instance, that the audience knows more than the characters. Tragedy also has a heroic side. Frye contends that Juliet and Romeo were heroic. ''Romeo and Juliet are sacrificial victims, and the ancient rule about sacrifice was that the victim had to be perfect and without blemish.'' The belief underlying this concept was that nothing that is perfect can exist in this world of imperfection. That which is perfect, ''should be offered up to another world before it deteriorates.'' It was not only the beauty of Juliet that was perfect, it was also the passion that the two young lovers shared. Their ''passion would soon burn up the world of heavy fathers and snarling Tybalts and gabby Nurses if it stayed there.'' This not merely a story of love that goes wrong, Frye writes, ''It didn't go wrong: it went only where it could, out. It always was, as we say, out of this world.'' Frye concludes his opinions of this play by stating: ''It takes the greatest rhetoric of the greatest poets to bring us a vision of the tragic heroic, and such rhetoric doesn't make us miserable but exhilarated, not crushed but enlarged in spirit.'' That is why, he contends, that people all over the world, all through the past centuries have fallen in love with this tragedy.

The variation of productions is vast. In 1845, the American actress Charlotte Cushman, ''caused a sensation when she played Romeo to her sister's Juliet at the Haymarket,'' writes Dickson. The critics loved it. Dickson quotes a newspaper review that states: '''Miss Cushman's Romeo is a creative, a living, breathing, animated, ardent, human being.''' Then in the mid 1900s, as Dickson writes, Peter Brook used ''a virtually bare stage,'' meant to emphasize ''the play's violence.'' Brook also ended the play without the reconciliation of the feuding families after the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, further darkening the mood of the play.

In more modern times, as Dickson writes, the play has gained in popularity, having been ''revived over 350 times internationally in the half-century following World War II.'' There are at least sixty different filmed versions, with the 1996 version by Baz Luhrmann staging the production near a Miami beach filled with bikini-clad women; with young boys who drive supped-up cars; and an innocent Juliet who falls head-over-heels into a swimming pool when she first meets her Romeo.

Norrie Epstein, in The Friendly Shakespeare sums up the play with these words: ''Like adolescence itself, the play has many moods: it is delicate yet intense, occasionally obscene, sometimes funny, and always heartbreaking . . . you're in for a delightful surprise. This play is terrific.''

References:

Charney, Maurice, All of Shakespeare, Columbia University Press, 1993.

Dickson, Andrew, The Rough Guide to Shakespeare, Rough Guides, Inc., 2005, pp. 305-12.

Dobson, Michael and Wells, Stanley, eds., The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 397-401.

Epstein, Norrie, The Friendly Shakespeare, Penguin Books, 1993, p. 316.

Fallon, Robert Thomas, How to Enjoy Shakespeare, Ivan R. Dee, 2005.

Frye, Northrop, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, edited by Robert Sandler, Yale University Press, 1986, pp. 15-33.

Mack, Maynard, Everybody's Shakespeare, University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

Shakespeare, William, Romeo and Juliet, edited by Peter Holland, Penguin Books, 2000.

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