ABSTRACT
The relationship between Romeo and Juliet is clearly the principal site of resistance, as they reject both the feud and the demeaning sexual language of patriarchy, but it is not the only one. While Romeo and Juliet’s story of romantic love has thrived because of its constant repetition over the centuries, many writers have also located it within the changing ideologies of family and state, of power and patriarchy, looking at how these contexts impact upon the construction and enactment of desire. Since Romeo and Juliet enact an overtly predetermined plot, their language is correspondingly suffused with references to death and to the grave. The vision Romeo and Juliet enact of facing death for the sake of an ideal of boundless, unconfined love is a romantic trope that is at once located in and transcends its historical context.
