The ROMEO AND JULIET, likely written around 1595, has been characterized as "the most complex product of Shakespeare's lyrical period." It begins by developing all the typical conditions of a romantic love comedy, but halfway through, with the unexpected death of Mercutio – one of the most brilliant creations of Shakespeare's comedic imagination – the world suddenly contracts and the wedding vision abruptly transforms into tragedy.

The work is a rhymed wedding tale, an extended wedding ceremony which – like a random complication of its transport system – suddenly found itself to be literal and was transformed into a bloody sacrifice.

Therefore, the richest language we have to understand the awakening of love, its excesses unto death, remains this delight of the senses provided by the company of the youths from Verona: the generous Juliet, the impulsive Romeo, the voluble and relentlessly sarcastic Mercutio.