Things that leap out at me whenever I read that play, which I must say I like less and less out of all Shakespeare's very fine work (but he never asks us to like his characters) are these:
At one point, Juliet says of Romeo- after learning he killed Tybalt -"O, serpent heart/hid 'neath a flowering face..." then,even when declaring remaining love for the (in my opinion) immature fellow, she talks of "cutting him up to be little stars" which I find to be a rather violent depiction of love.
And of course there is Mercutio, who like many of the Bard's characters is named as he is, mercurial, at one moment funny and the next enraged. He was wrong to challenge Tybalt over Romeo's protest; too temperamental, and he died for it.
Then again, when Romeo finds Paris swooning over the supposedly dead Juliet at the tomb, Romeo is enraged, and tragically and needlessly kills both Paris (for just being there) and himself, because he thinks Juliet is dead. Hellooo! Can't a man wait and grieve a bit first; be a man?
Then Jule immediately decides she would also rather be "cut up" (though that isn't said here) and kills herself too. What a mess! Friar Laurence and Benevolio (sp. Think it was him, waiting-) are nearly charged with stabbing all three.
Much ado about nothing = the setup of a family feud between Montagues and Capulets, et cetera, but done so that Shakespeare, I learned it right here, could change the normal course of such goings-on and compress the action into about a week; also to let it occur with young 'nobodies' instead of a king and queen over months and even years.
Morality is a slim thing here, from the moment Romeo immediately forgets what was supposed to be undying love for Rosaline, Act One, Scene One. Seems to me no one but the Prince behaves at all, though even he has to say something he couldn't possibly know at the very end- "For never was a love so/like that of Juliet and her Romeo."
I sigh with relief 'til I look for a specific quote again.
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