Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Star-crossed lovers have become completely cliché as a result of Shakespeare's classic Romeo and Juliet and perhaps this is for the wrong reasons. As pointed out in Shakespeare's Sexual Comedy: A Mirror For Lovers by Hugh Richmond, the naïveté of Juliet and the flightiness of Romeo may have been intended as a counter-example to what true and enduring love should look like, especially since this is a tragedy that ends in the deaths of the protagonists.

Romeo starts out the play already head over heels for Rosaline before catching a glimpse of Juliet at a party and almost instantaneously forgetting one for the other. For Juliet, things are more complex, she is slated to marry the appealing Paris whom she does not love, but in two years when she is considered by her father to be old enough. Romeo's rashness and impetuousness (as in his murder of Tybalt and his suicide) reflect a great immaturity of character while Juliet is rather young and thus easily influenced and led to her fate by Romeo's faulty character.

That isn't to say that the piece does not have some extraordinary poetry, au contraire. But, I would say that Shakespeare in the comedies gives us examples of more realistic, mature, and reasonable love relationships particularly that between Benedick and Beatrice in As You Like It or even Petruchio and Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew. It is not coincidental that the comedies with marriages whereas Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy that ends in death.

Fino's Reviews of Shakespeare and Shakespearean Criticism
Comedies
The Comedy of Errors (1592-1593
The Taming of the Shrew (1593-1594)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594-1595)
Love's Labour's Lost (1594-1595)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-1596)
The Merchant of Venice (1596-1597)
Much Ado About Nothing (1598-1599)
As You Like It (1599-1600)
Twelfth Night (1599-1600)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600-1601)
All's Well That Ends Well (1602-1603)
Measure for Measure (1604-1605)
Cymbeline (1609-1610)
A Winter's Tale (1610-1611)
The Tempest (1611-1612)
Two Noble Kinsmen (1612-1613)

Histories
Henry VI Part I (1589-1590)
Henry VI Part II (1590-1591)
Henry VI Part III (1590-1591)
Richard III (1593-1594)
Richard II (1595-1596)
King John (1596-1597)
Edward III (1596-1597)
Henry IV Part I (1597-1598)
Henry IV Part II (1597-1598)
Henry V (1598-1599)
Henry VIII (1612-1612)

Tragedies
Titus Andronicus (1592-1593)
Romeo and Juliet (1594-1595)
Julius Caesar (1599-1600)
Hamlet (1600-1601)
Troilus and Cressida (1601-1602)
Othello (1604-1605)
King Lear (1605-1606)
Macbeth (1605-1606)
Anthony and Cleopatra (1606-1607)
Coriolanus (1607-1608)
Timon of Athens (1607-1608)
Pericles (1608-1609)

Shakespearean Criticism
The Wheel of Fire by Wilson Knight
A Natural Perspective by Northrop Frye
Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber
Shakespeare's Roman Plays and Their Background by M W MacCallum
Shakespearean Criticism 1919-1935 compiled by Anne Ridler
Shakespearean Tragedy by A.C. Bradley
Shakespeare's Sexual Comedy by Hugh M. Richmond
Shakespeare: The Comedies by R.P. Draper
Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

Collections of Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece and Other Poems
Shakespeare's Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint
The Complete Oxford Shakespeare