Penguin Classics: Romeo and Juliet

'Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!'

Set in a city torn apart by feuds and gang warfare, Shakespeare's immortal drama tells the story of star-crossed lovers, rival dynasties and bloody revenge. Romeo and Juliet is a hymn to youth and the thrill of forbidden love, charged with sexual passion and violence, but also a warning of death: a dazzling combination of bawdy comedy and high tragedy.

'Shakespeare invented the human as we continue to know it.' Harold Bloom

General Introduction on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan theatre by Stanley Wells
Edited by T. J. B. Spencer with an introduction by Adrian Poole