SOURCE: Levenson, Jill L. Introduction to Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, edited by Jill L. Levenson, pp. 1-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
In the excerpt below, Levenson highlights Romeo and Juliet's themes, discusses its structure and its use of rhetoric, and notes that in terms of genre, the play provides an original arrangement of the tragic, comic, and sonnet sequence forms.