Romeo and Juliet (Vol. 33) | Leonora Leet Brodwin (essay date 1971)
Leonora Leet Brodwin (essay date 1971)
SOURCE: "The Classic Pattern of Courtly Love Tragedy," in Elizabethan Love Tragedy: 1587-1625, New York University Press, 1971, pp. 39-64.
[In the following excerpt, Brodwin discusses Shakespeare 's presentation of Courtly Love in the play and speculates on the allegorical meaning of the love between Romeo and Juliet as they "embrace the love-death. "]
Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece of Courtly Love was written in 1595,1 when the vogue of courtly sonneteering was at its height. In considering "the fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,"2 critics like E. E. Stoll have been at considerable pains to show that the love of Romeo and Juliet was the normal product of youthful innocence, that "not because there is anything wrong with them do the youth and maiden perish but only because 'love is strong as death,' and fate unfriendly."3 Granville-Barker has written with...
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