The most complex of Shakespeare's early plays, Romeo and Juliet is far more than "a play of young love" or "the world's typical love-tragedy." Weaving together a large number of related impressions and judgments, it is as much about hate as love. It tells of a family and its home as well as a feud and a tragic marriage. The public life of Verona and the private lives of the Veronese make up the setting for the love of Juliet and Romeo and provide the background against which their love can be assessed. It is not the deaths of the lovers that conclude the play but the public revelation of what has happened, with the admonitions of the Prince and the reconciliation of the two families.
Shakespeare enriched an already old story by surrounding the guileless mutual passion of Romeo and Juliet with the mature bawdry of the other characters--the Capulet servants Sampson and Gregory open the play with their fantasies of exploits with the Montague women; the tongues of the Nurse and Mercutio are seldom free from sexual matters--but the innocence of the lovers is unimpaired.
Romeo and Juliet made a strong impression on contemporary audiences. It was also one of Shakespeare's first plays to be pirated; a very bad text appeared in 1597. Detestable though it is, this version does derive from a performance of the play, and a good deal of what was seen on stage was recorded. Two years later another version of the play appeared, issued by a different, more respectable publisher, and this is essentially the play known today, for the printer was working from a manuscript fairly close to Shakespeare's own. Yet in neither edition did Shakespeare's name appear on the title page, and it was only with the publication of Love's Labour's Lost in 1598 that publishers had come to feel that the name of Shakespeare as a dramatist, as well as the public esteem of the company of actors to which he belonged, could make an impression on potential purchasers of playbooks.
Bibliographies.
WALTER EBISCH and LEVIN L. SCHÜCKING, A Shakespeare Bibliography (1931, reprinted 1968), and a supplement for the years 1930-35 (1937, reissued 1968), are comprehensive. They are updated by GORDON ROSS SMITH, A Classified Shakespeare Bibliography, 1936-1958 (1963). JAMES G. McMANAWAY, A Selective Bibliography of Shakespeare: Editions, Textual Studies, Commentary (1975), covers more than 4,500 items published between 1930 and 1970, mainly in English. LARRY S. CHAMPION, The Essential Shakespeare: An Annotated Bibliography of Major Modern Studies, 2nd ed. (1993), includes works in English published from 1900 through 1984. STANLEY WELLS (ed.), Shakespeare, new ed. (1990), provides bibliographies on topics ranging from the poet to the text to the performances. Shakespeare Quarterly publishes an annual classified bibliography. Shakespeare Survey (quarterly) publishes annual accounts of "Contributions to Shakespearian Study," as well as retrospective articles on work done on particular aspects. A selection of important scholarly essays published during the previous year is collected in Shakespearean Criticism (annual).