Book Description

Offers a literary analysis of the classic play and includes discussions of its performance history, historical context, and modern interpretations. Hager (English, the State University of New York-Cortland) draws from both historical and contemporary materials to examine the classic play from many perspectives. He explores subjects as specific as copycat suicide based on fictional models, and as general as the nature of vendetta and group violence. Following a literary analysis, there are commentary and primary documents on its narrative backgrounds, and discussions of its performance history, historical context, and modern interpretations such as the recent film with Leonardo DiCaprio. The tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet has touched the hearts of young and old for nearly four hundred years. In this work, Alan Hager has compiled a rich collection of primary and contemporary materials ranging from information about the earliest performances of Romeo and Juliet to discussions of suicide in the 1990s. Designed to help students of the play, Understanding Romeo and Juliet highlights many different aspects of the play's context. Such aspects include a discussion about religions of love in the East and West, an examination of vendetta and collective violence, and an analysis of the play in the context of classical and medieval thought. Hager relates the work to issues as recent as the so-called Werther Syndrome (copycat suicide based on fictional models) and as remote as the notion of reincarnated love such as that of Rama and Sita in the Sanskrit epic Ramayana.