CRITICISM

Andrews, Michael Cameron. “Cock-a-hoop.” Upstart Crow 12 (1992): 91-5.

Explicates the phrase “set a cock-a-hoop” used by Capulet in Act 1, scene v of Romeo and Juliet, regarding it as an expression of “masculine self-assertiveness and self-display.”

Cole, Douglas. Introduction to Twentieth Century Interpretations of “Romeo and Juliet” A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Douglas Cole, pp. 1-18. Englewood Cliffs: N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Surveys the sources, contexts, structure, and themes of fate, time, and the balance of good and evil in Romeo and Juliet.

Fein, Susanna Greer. “Verona's Summer Flower: The ‘Virtues’ of Herb Paris in Romeo and Juliet.” ANQ 8, no. 4 (fall 1995): 5-8.

Highlights a possible allusion to the plant Paris quadrifolia (commonly known as “truelove”) in regard to Count Paris, who makes a shallow and ephemeral offer of love to Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.

Fitter, Chris. “‘The Quarrel Is between Our Masters and Us Their Men’: Romeo and Juliet, Dearth, and the London Riots.” English Literary Renaissance 30, no. 2 (spring 2000): 154-83.

Offers a sociohistorical reading of Romeo and Juliet that emphasizes the context of social violence in late Elizabethan England. Fritter focuses particularly on the London class riots of 1595 and the fear of famine between 1594 and 1597, around the time the play was written and first performed.

Kiliński, Janusz. “Elements of Neo-Platonism in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.” Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 16 (1984): 271-77.

Analyzes the relationship of Romeo and Juliet in terms of the doctrine of transcendent love found in Renaissance Neoplatonic thought.

McCown, Gary M. “‘Runnawayes Eyes’ and Juliet's Epithalamium.” Shakespeare Quarterly 27, no. 2 (spring 1976): 150-70.

Studies Juliet's soliloquy in Act III, scene ii of Romeo and Juliet as a slightly altered version of the classical lyric genre of epithalamium.

Nosworthy, J. M. “The Two Angry Families of Verona.” Shakespeare Quarterly 3, no. 3 (July 1952): 219-26.

Claims that Henry Porter's drama The Two Angry Women of Abingdon was written before Romeo and Juliet and likely influenced Shakespeare's play.

Wells, Robin Headlam. “Neo-Petrarchan Kitsch in Romeo and Juliet.” Modern Language Review 93, no. 4 (October 1998): 913-33.

Illuminates Shakespeare's proclivity to “satirize sentimental self-deception”—from the clichés of Petrarchan love poetry to the destructive potential of the masculine heroic ideal—in Romeo and Juliet.

Whittier, Gayle. “The Sonnet's Body and the Body Sonnetized in Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Quarterly 40, no. 1 (spring 1989): 27-41.

Reads Romeo and Juliet as a thorough reworking of Petrarchan poetics.