There's a reason why Romeo and Juliet has endured for over 400 years. Shakespeare's plays aren't timeless - they're for all time. My grad school professor once said, "is it fair to cheapen the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to something as trivial as poor timing and miscommunication, or is the real tragedy the fact that both view death as a better alternative than living in the toxic world their families created?" Art certainly does reflect life, doesn't it? Yes, there is a love story within the play, but because it's a tragedy there's something more that we should be taking away, and Shakespeare gives it to us right there in the prol ogue: " Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife." Most times, it takes a great tragedy or loss for the world to wake up and make change happen. In fact, the full title is The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. And to those people I say: you're absolutely correct. There's a little saying (I suppose you would call it) that some cynics like to spout about this play: " Romeo and Juliet isn't a love story". And one of the plays Shakespeare likely wrote during this time was Romeo and Juliet, so it's very likely that one of the first Shakespeare plays performed after those 14 plague months was Romeo and Juliet. History has a funny way of repeating itself. Instead of leaving London for safer pastures, Shakespeare stayed and wrote. In 1593, a particularly powerful outbreak of bubonic plague struck England, causing the closure of theaters for 14 months.
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