1641. This appears to have been based on another relation of the
story, earlier and cruder than Shakespeare's. The Shakespearean
version probably came from these two earlier plays, with considerable
additions in plot.

The two latest students of the play, Dr. Fuller and Mr. Robertson,
differ as far as they well can on the question of authorship. The
former believes Shakespeare wrote every line of the present play; the
latter that he wrote none of it, and that Greene and Peele had their
full share. Kyd and Marlowe are assigned as authors by others. One
fact stands clear, that in the face of the evidence of the First Folio
and of Meres, no conclusive internal evidence has disposed of the
theory of Shakespearean authorship. The play was enormously popular,
if we may judge by contemporary references to it, and a mistake in
attribution by Meres would therefore have been the more {143}
remarkable. Incredible, too, as it may seem, the earlier versions must
have been more revolting than Shakespeare's; so that there is really a
lift into higher drama.

+Romeo and Juliet+ stands out from the other great tragedies of
Shakespeare, not only in point of time, but in its central theme. It
deals with the power of nature in awaking youth to full manhood and
womanhood through the sudden coming of pure and supreme love; with the
danger which always attends the precipitate call of this awakening; and
with the sudden storm which overcasts the brilliant day of passion.
The enmity of the rival houses of Montague and Capulet, to which Romeo
and Juliet belong, is but a concrete form of this danger that ever
waits when nature prompts. Romeo's fancied love for another disappears
like a drop of water on a stone in the sun, when his glance meets
Juliet's at the Capulet's ball. Love takes equally sudden hold of her.
Worldly and religious caution seek to stem the flood of passion, or at
least to direct it. The lovers are married at Friar Laurence's cell;
but in the sudden whirl of events that follow the friar's amiable
schemes, one slight error on his part wastes all that glorious passion
and youth have won. It was not his fault, after all; such is the
eternal tragedy when Youth meets Love, and Nature leads them
unrestrained to peril.

In perfection of dramatic technique parts of this play rank with the
very best of Shakespeare's work. When to this is added the
extraordinary beauty and fire of the poetry, and the brilliancy of
colo