To read the play in this way is not, therefore, to read it in the way in which Shakespeare wrote it. The problem is that we read the tragedy through the emotion-obsessed eyes of Romanticism, a movement in art and philosophy which would not emerge until almost two hundred years after the play was written. This should be obvious from the fact that the play does not end happily ever after with a marriage, as befits a comedy, but possibly damnably ever after with a suicide pact, as befits a tragedy.
The fact is that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, not a romance. It is, therefore, abused more often, with disastrous consequences, not just on our understanding of the play but on the moral outlook of the numerous high school students who are mistaught it every year. Romeo and Juliet is, however, taught more often than most, probably more often than any other of the Bard’s plays except, perhaps, Julius Caesar. Just about every play is being mistaught and misrepresented. Truth be told, Shakespeare abuse is rampant. Romeo and Juliet is not the only Shakespeare play that the modern world, modern critics, and modern teachers get wrong.
Seeing something noble in Romeo and Juliet’s self-obsessive and self-destructive passion is to see it with eyes that are blind to the moral that Shakespeare teaches.
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