ABSTRACT
The extended representations of the earthquake experiences partake in the humorous treatment of disaster that is common in William Shakespeare's more frequent and pithier employment of quakes in his writing. In these representations of the literal quake experience, Shakespeare shows that states of disruptive change can be registered without fear and sometimes with joy. The earthquake and the plague would be equal signs to the reader that Romeo and Juliet had veered from a path pleasing to God and that these were warnings to avoid acting upon the passion of love and rather to seek to tame it, redirect it. In the context of the whole play, Shakespeare's representation of the earthquake participates in additional through lines more easily interpreted by way of the materialist and Christian paradigms. The memory of the quake also underscores the impossibility of determining causality for complex life events, including earthquakes but also love and death.
