SOURCE: Lerner, Laurence. “Shakespeare and Love: Romeo & Juliet.” In Essays on Shakespeare in Honour of A. A. Ansari, edited by T. R. Sharma, pp. 117-35. Meerut, India: Shalabh Book House, 1986.

In the following essay, originally published in 1979, Lerner explores the connections between love and death in Romeo and Juliet.

‘Oh she doth teach the torches to burn bright’: Romeo's first glimpse of Juliet transforms his world, and the line tells us, instantly, that it is a play about the transfiguring power of love.

If there ever was a play which had to be in poetry, it is this: for only through heightened language can the heightened quality of the love experience be conveyed. Falling in love can be seen both as extraordinary and as completely natural, as an experience that takes us out of the everyday onto a higher plane, and as one that takes us from sophistication...