Romeo and Juliet (Vol. 33) | G. Blakemore Evans (essay date 1984)
G. Blakemore Evans (essay date 1984)
SOURCE: An introduction to Romeo and Juliet, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 1-48.
[In the following excerpt, Evans provides an overview of the play's sources, structure, style, characters, and tragic qualities with an emphasis on the theme of love.]
SOURCES AND STRUCTURE
The general type of story represented by Romeo and Juliet has its roots in folklore and mythology. Best described as a separation-romance, it shows obvious analogies with the stories of Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan and Isolde, and with later medieval works like Floris and Blanchefleur and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.1 Chaucer's poem leaves its mark strongly on Shakespeare's principal source for the play, Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet, and, independently perhaps, on Shakespeare's play itself.
The earlier history of the Romeo and Juliet story has been...
[The entire page is 12978 words long]
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