from Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom
"Chaucer's ironic yet amiable religion of love... is the essential context for Romeo & Juliet
love dies or else lovers die
the virtual identity of the torments of love and jealousy is a Shakespearean invention later to be refined by Hawthorne & Proust
the sexual becomes the erotic when crossed by the shadow of death
Romeo and Juliet is unmatched, in Shakespeare and in the world's literature, as a vision of uncompromising mutual love that perishes of its own idealism and intensity
[Juliet's] sublimity is the play and guarantees the tragedy of this tragedy
The permanent popularity, now of mythic intensity, of Romeo and Juliet is more than justified, since the play is the largest and most persuasive celebration of romantic love in Western literature."
