SOURCE: "Love and Grace in Romeo and Juliet" in English Studies in Africa, Vol. 20, No. 2, September, 1977, pp. 95-106.

In the following essay, Hutchings considers Romeo and Juliet "a study of love and passion " in a social context.

In the Prologue Shakespeare summarizes his plot; we know what to expect. He also tells us what sort of play he is writing: a story of love overthrown by misadventure in the context of social hatreds, and not an Aristotelian tragedy.¹

Shakespeare was beginning to exploit the idea that lovers are essentially vulnerable in a wicked world. Paradoxically, just because love "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things", those who love are vulnerable. Indeed, if I may, in discussing so punning a play, make my own very serious word play, love bareth all things in both senses of the verb; and what is bare is vulnerable...