Shakespeare's transition from comedy to tragedy

Romeo & Juliet

The Most Tragic Comedie of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is without a doubt one of the Western world's most well-known love stories, if not the entire world's most well-known love story, period. Almost every pre-pubescent and teenage girl has dreams of playing the innocent young lover onstage, and almost every sitcom with teenagers has an episode dedicated to such a production; the story, or at least its essential elements, are so much a part of the popular culture that most would be hard pressed to recall the first time they learned the basics of the story, or the identities of its tow titular characters. Yet despite the degree to which the outline of the story is known, the popular knowledge of the play is rarely accompanied with a knowledge of the actual text from whence it springs, or the many issues dealt with in the text -- and that must be dealt with concerning the text -- in order to come to a full understanding and appreciation of this play.

First and foremost, it should be noted that the story was in no way an invention of Shakespeare's, but rather -- as with almost all of his other plays -- there was a long and substantial history of the same or similar stories from which it is certain Shakespeare drew (Riverside 1101). The problems that exist in his version, however, are unique, and must be considered purposeful. Specifically, the play is problematic because it begins as a high comedy and suddenly turns into a tragedy that "offends against [Shakespeare's] own criteria for tragedy by allowing mere chance to determine the destiny of the hero and heroine" (Riverside 1101). It is quite possible, however, that this statement of the issue has the problem backwards. Though the play has been performed as a tragedy for centuries, it is very possible to read the play as an incredibly dark and even sinister comedy.

Interpreting a script when there is no real evidence surrounding the original performances of the play, and especially when the amount of editorial interpretation of the printed word is as great as it is with Romeo and Juliet, is at best a piece of guesswork. When dealing with a script of Shakespeare's, the notion has been proposed that the script is little more than "the incomplete written trace of a dramatic work which can only fully be realized in performance" (Dobson 235). How to realize this in performance is a choice that is left up to the director, and on a lesser degree to the other members of the production, and there is no reason that this script couldn't be played for comedy. In fact, this does a better job of uniting the first and second halves of the play, as the chance misunderstandings that occur in the latter half are more typical of Shakespearean comedy than tragedy.

The emotional extremity of the characters in both the first and second half of the play can definitely be read as comedic, even in the most intense moments of drama. Juliet's speeches to the Friar after learning that she must marry Paris in a week's time indicate this as she lists the horrors she would rather endure: "bid me leap... / From off the battlements of any tower...lurk / Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears..." (Riverside 1130, IV.i. 77-80). She continues in much the same vein, and this is not her only moment of such emotional extremity. To see this as comedic, it must be remembered that Juliet is only twelve years old, and Romeo probably around fourteen, and although people married younger in those days it is ridiculous to assume that they could possibly have had the same emotional maturity as other of Shakespeare's heroes and heroines.