This is kind of a broad question but why do you like Romeo & Juliet?

antigonick:

How could I not?

It’s infused with such beauty, such feverish energy, exhaled with the fervour of youth, each word a cry of joy or a cry of pain, a shooting star of a play. Read in one sitting, immersed in waves of impossible passion, of temerity, of impetus, it feels like written life.

Romeo and Juliet is a masterpiece of timelessness. Hazy in the sun of a bright summer, hot, swift, meteoric, it transpires a joy of living, a complete, tragic optimism. They still believe in everything, these boys, that girl, those youths with violent delights and violent ends. They have never been limited, educated, warned of life : and thus they act with their heart and scream with their lungs until death catch them by the throat. They do what we wanted to do when we were younger, more idealistic, less cautious, and they are both an unachieved dream and a lesson to be remembered.

Of course it is written beautifully. It’s one of the most beautiful thing I have ever read. It is witty, romantic, poetic, cruel and true. The hormonal boys with their changing desires and their ambiguous friendships and their eternal bonds, ready to die for each other – no, ready to die and for nothing, happy to find in Verona a cause to fight for, yes, any cause would do, don’t you feel it, their itchy lust, their brutality, their verbal ruthlessness, all of these mingled and sparked by their brazen brains and their petty fights? Still teenagers and in the midst of chaos, full of delusions, about love, about immortality, about beauty, full of the courage that defines gods, and then struck mid air by reality. 

It is so… real, all of this. The teasing and intimacy, the impulses, the changing desires, the hubris and thoughtless hate, the softness of love, the searing pain of loss, the clever, useless planning, the atrocious fingers of Fate – and that need, above all, that need to go all the way to the end, to always target the extremes, even if it means exile, even if it means tragedy, even if it means death.

Romeo and Juliet has always fascinated me and I have grown up with it – and my reading of it as well. Actually, I don’t think my perception of a book has ever changed as it has changed for this one, along with the metamorphosis of my mind. First, when I was very young, Romeo and Juliet was a dream to wish for, that boy appearing out of nowhere and sweeping you off your feet with words of velvet and kept promises; the ball, the kiss, the fights and the blood. Then of course not only did I become a more critical reader, but also a more or less rational human being, and the love story fleshed itself out to become a never-ending fascination to me, each reading a source of new discoveries, an incursion into those characters’ souls. (How, in so few pages, in so macabre a day, did Shakespeare manage to show us who they were ? And yet I felt and feel I know them all : the words chosen, the poetic forms for each of them, the rhythm of their verses, all of it contributes to make them appear before the reader not as ink and letters, but as timeless ghosts.)

And yet, in reading Romeo and Juliet, a more rational, more cynical angle is no less exquisite than the first romantic fires of early teenage-hood. There’s a bite to it, a sweet cruelty that Shakespeare instils between the lines : of course we know they are mistaken, they are drunk with lies, they are jumping to their deaths, all of them, of course we know that the adults are not the Manichean enemies but clumsy, selfish bores, that Romeo is not a golden prince but a dreamy kid, that Mercutio is no great leader but just a proud idiot. Of course we know that this blazing love story is born of loneliness, of frustration, of dreams and rebelliousness and need and lust, that it wouldn’t have worked, that it was destined to be ephemeral, and yet, because of those weaknesses, because of this sincerity and dark mockery and hushed tenderness, are they not all the more endearing, all the more honest, these children of passion? 

I don’t know if I explained myself well, I’m not sure I would be able to recap or answer your question efficiently. I just… I like Romeo and Juliet because it speaks to me. It sings to me. It’s truth and fire and dirty, uncompromising beauty.