ABSTRACT
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's first youthful tragedy, if people exclude for the present purpose Titus Andronicus, has a number of clear points of contact with the sonnets. These are most obviously apparent in the style of the play, which here and there incorporates actual sonnets into the dramatic structure and makes at all times a considerable use of sonnet imagery; but the theme too turns, as in some of the sonnets author have just considered, upon the relation of love to the action of time and adverse circumstance. Strong in the love which this determination reflects, Juliet is able at this crisis to dissemble beyond her years. Her deception of her father, in the very act of professing filial obedience is no doubt a sin, but a sin conceived in the name of natural love and in the face of an egoistic and unimaginative opposition; once more, people find themselves faced with the play's central tragic contradiction.
