Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet Study Guide

Despite its fame, Shakespeare's great play about doomed young love has attracted less serious critical attention than it deserves. In this brilliant, provocative and entertaining new book, Palfrey, a leading Shakespearean scholar, seeks to put this right. He shows us why the play is such an extraordinary work of art, why Juliet is such an unusual and captivating heroine, and what Shakespeare is really saying about her hopeless passion for Romeo - and about the nature of love itself.

Simon Palfrey is Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, and a Fellow of Brasenose College. His books include Late Shakespeare: a New World of Words, Doing Shakespeare (a TLS International Book of the Year), Shakespeare in Parts (written with Tiffany Stern), winner of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society’s prize for best new book, and the forthcoming Shakespeare’s Possible Worlds. He is the founding editor, with Ewan Fernie, of Arden’s series of original ‘minigraphs’, Shakespeare Now!. His creative work includes a novel, The Life and Death of the Brothers Macbeth(written with Fernie), and a new play, Demon’s Land, inspired by Spenser’s 1590s poem Faerie Queene, and set in Palfrey’s home state of Tasmania.