What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks? It Is Juliet (And Romeo!)...

There’s something so delightful about the unrestrained drama of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. As I wrote in the foreword to my annotated edition--on sale now!--very few of the characters act with anything resembling common sense. It’s all, “This is how I feel! Hang the consequences!”

Most of us have probably been tempted to act that way, but we subsume* those instincts so we don’t die of our own stupidity. Romeo and Juliet is under no such obligation, giving us a glimpse into what happens when an entire town has the self-control of a child and the impulses of an adult. 

Spoiler alert: there is some fantastic dialogue, and a lot of people die. 

If you've ever wanted to read Shakespeare, but worried you wouldn't quite get it, this is the edition for you. As with every book in my annotated classics collection, you'll find a helpful foreword, explanations at the bottom of each page, and even a book-specific glossary of terms at the back of the book!

I'll be honest: when I first read Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade, I loved it. We spent so much time on it, eventually the whole grade knew most of the play by heart, and we'd find ourselves ironically saying things like, "Hark! What light through yonder window breaks?"

Technically the line begins, "But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" but I've always preferred "Hark! What light..." It's the one word in which I daresay I could improve upon the bard's brilliance. And as you've probably noticed from the title, there's something about Shakespeare that just makes you want to keep quoting, even if you do change the quote a bit for your own purposes.

But I digress! I loved Romeo and Juliet then, and really did not like Macbeth at all. Now I find that I still quite like R&J, but I actually like Macbeth more! Strange how that happens...

Luckily for you, I've annotated them both! Which is your favorite?

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*Subsume - Suppress; absorb into something else