I watched Romeo + Juliet earlier this week, and I still can’t get over how much it hurts when Romeo and Balthazar go ripping off to Verona while the postman stands there helplessly, letter in hand. It feels like a terrible wrongness is happening. Of course, this is one of the reasons the play is such a tragedy.

Until Act V, Romeo and Juliet could have been a comedy. Even with Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s deaths, had the Friar’s plan worked, had Romeo gotten the letter, had he arrived at the Capulet vault a little later, he would have found Juliet in perfect health and all would have ended in joy and a wedding. Feud over, peace restored, if we shadows have offended blah blah applause.

Read Romeo and Juliet alongside the play-within-a-play of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Had it been played straight and standing alone, the “tedious brief scene” would have been the tragedy. In fact — and this is one of my favorite theories — since A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet were written sequentially or even concurrently, Pyramus and Thisbe might have been the “warmup” to Romeo and Juliet. The lovers thwarted and unable to meet except through a wall (played masterfully by Wall), they plan to meet outside the city, only Thisbe is sleeping and Pyramus takes her for dead; he commits suicide, then Thisbe wakes and kills herself out of grief. Naturally, the way the mechanicals play it, the whole thing is hilarious for their flubbed lines and hamming up the scene.

In Romeo and Juliet, until Mercutio dies, we expect a comedy. Yes, feud, but they’ll make it up in the end, right? (This may be the reason Shakespeare himself titles the play The most excellent Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet: Expect it right now, folks, it’s not going to have a happy ending.) Mercutio’s death in Act III is a double shock. Not only is Mercutio the plucky comic relief and one of the most likable characters, his is the first death in the play. After this, it’s difficult to see how a comedic ending could follow. And despite Lady Capulet’s gut-wrenching “Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live”, might Tybalt’s death end the feud or add fire to it? Might the play end well after all?

It might, until the exquisitely painful undelivered letter in V.2. From there, a happy ending is impossible; we, the audience, can only sit and watch V.3, the last scene. It’s the slim chance that Romeo will see that Juliet is alive (”Death … hath no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered; … Why art thou yet so fair?”), but he doesn’t — that Juliet might wake in time, but she doesn’t — that makes the tragedy so perfect, so enduring. It could narrowly have been a comedy, but it isn’t. It’s just … tragic.

Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quarto

Be sure to check out the “Texts” section to view and compare 93 copies of the 21 Shakespeare plays printed in quarto before 1642 and now digitized by the British Library.

via CNET News.com: “Unlike many commonly read texts, the quarto editions … were compiled during Shakespeare’s life. They are as close to the real deal as many fans of the Bard will ever have seen.”

*drool*