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Romeo and Juliet is not just a beautiful story of tragic love. Shakespeare's work affirms the advanced for that time life principles of humanism in public and personal life. The cessation of feudal discord, peace and order in a state headed by a wise and fair ruler - this is the social basis of the tragedy. The affirmation of love as the basis of family life - this is the moral idea approved by Shakespeare.

The artistic power of the tragedy is determined by the skill that Shakespeare showed in characterizing. No matter how small the role of this or that character, Shakespeare distinguishes him from others by even cursory features. So, in the character of the elder Montecca, poetic words about how his yearning son spends time somewhat unexpectedly. Is this feature completely random? Rather, it can be assumed that Romeo's father had inclinations that were more developed in the poetic personality of the young Montecca. But of course, not secondary, but the main characters of the tragedy attract attention due to the expressive outline of them by Shakespeare.

How much truth in life and how much genuine poetry in the image of young Juliet! Despite her youth - and she is only thirteen years old - Juliet has a rich spiritual world. She is smart beyond her years, her heart is open to great feelings. She is spontaneous, as is natural for a girl. Of course, she is embarrassed when she finds out that Romeo heard her talk about love for him. But, making sure that he answers her with the same feeling, she first asks when they are married. Juliet is bold and decisive. Of the two of them, she is more active than Romeo. And the circumstances are such that she needs to find a way out of the situation in which she found herself when her father categorically demanded her consent to marriage to Paris.

Shakespeare surprisingly subtly showed that Juliet is not indifferent to issues of family honor. When she learns from the nonsense story of the nurse that her cousin Tybalt is killed by Romeo, her first feeling is anger at the young Montecca. But then she herself reproaches herself for being able to reproach her husband almost immediately after the wedding.

Juliet’s courage is especially evident in that fateful scene when she, on the advice of a monk, drinks a sleeping pill. How natural is the fear of the young heroine when she reflects on the terrible sight she will see when the eye wakes up in the family crypt among the corpses. Nevertheless, overcoming fear, she drinks a drink, because only after going through this test can she connect with her beloved.

The decisiveness inherent in Juliet also manifests itself when she, waking up in a crypt, sees a dead Romeo. Without thinking twice, she commits suicide, for she cannot live without Romeo. How simple, without false pathetics, Juliet behaves in the hour of the last choice.

The strikingly integral heroic image of Juliet is a living embodiment of a young love that does not know compromises, love, conquering dangers and fears. Her love is truly stronger than death.

Worthy of such love is Romeo. He is seventeen years old, but although he is older than Juliet, his soul is just as pure. Love unexpectedly took possession of Juliet. Romeo was a little more experienced than her. He already knew that there was such a wonderful feeling in the world, even before he met Juliet. His soul already longed for love, was open to its perception. Before meeting with Juliet, Romeo had already chosen a subject for adoration. That was, incidentally, a girl also from the Capulet clan - Rosalina. Romeo sighs about her, but this love is speculative.

The Soviet theater in its productions of Romeo and Juliet took the path of overcoming metaphysical, idealistic concepts. He sought to realistically truthfully reveal the historical and social content of Shakespeare's tragedy.

An analysis of the performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Moscow Theater of the Revolution provides rich material for understanding the path of our Shakespearean theater. This production was a very important stage in the development of Shakespeare’s drama on the Soviet stage, indicative of both its achievements and some errors.

What new did the director bring to the interpretation of the play? First of all, he took the path of the greatest aggravation of conflicts, revealing their social subtext. He understood the images of tragedy as a typical product of time, social relations. It was precisely this that gave him the opportunity, speaking out against the philistine idealization of love, against the opera "Italian", to paint a broad historical picture of the era.

The Theater of the Revolution turned to the tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet” immediately after the staging of Soviet plays depicting the free creative life of our youth. He dedicated his performance to the Leninist Komsomol. Through the eyes of our young men and women, who are provided with the opportunity to freely create, love and enjoy life, the theater wanted to see the tragedy of love of those who in ancient times heroically exercised their right to love and happiness.

Popov wrote: “Romeo and Juliet perish, as if having no historical future, and the reconciliation of two warring clans takes place over their corpses, the historical descendants of which — the bourgeois in the future — continue to be torn apart by intra-class contradictions to this day. The bourgeois theater has always interpreted this scene as touching, touching, wishing to emphasize that love is an all-reconciling force.We see in Romeo and Juliet's love not a reconciling force, but corrupting feudal ties. Without resorting to any violence against av to the torus, helping only him, as a brilliant artist, against his limitations as a politician, we hope by the means of the theater to reveal the hypocrisy of this reconciliation. "

The director here very convincingly speaks of the need to overcome the abstract-idealistic approach to tragedy and contrast it with a concrete historical assessment of it. But the meaning of the socio-historical processes in these arguments is not clearly disclosed, and in some respects simplified.

The death of Romeo and Juliet led to the reconciliation of the warring families. The dialectic of the historical process was such that such a reconciliation was the beginning of the decomposition of feudal principles. Therefore, one cannot contrast these concepts. Bourgeois society, of course, "up to the present day is torn apart by intra-class contradictions," and, of course, it forgotten the humanistic principles proclaimed at the dawn of its existence. But at some stages, these advanced views influenced life and defeated the inertness of obsolete ideas. People who realized the depravity of their outdated views were not hypocritical when, as a result of the harsh lessons of life, they abandoned them. And it is not here and not in this that Shakespeare's limitation as a politician affects.

In an effort to contrast his interpretation of the bourgeois theater, which saw the triumph of virtue in the reconciliation of Montecca and Capulet, Popov wants to impose concepts uncharacteristic of his era on Shakespeare, but essentially makes the great playwright a bad psychologist, because it turns out that Shakespeare himself was deceived by accepting the expression of new feelings Montecchi and Capulet

at face value. "Knowing the subsequent history of the development of bourgeois relations," Popov nevertheless does not take into account the features of this historical phenomenon.

In “Romeo and Juliet” it is a question of enmity, characteristic of feudal society and alien to bourgeois relations, of clan struggle, which was put to an end by the triumph of bourgeois relations, replacing it with the competition of entrepreneurs and traders alien to any kind of family prejudice. After all, the old Grande at Balzac even pushes his own brother into the noose when it comes to the wallet. It is impossible to identify the struggle of the Renaissance against feudal principles with the intraclass contradictions of the emerging bourgeois society. Popov, arguing this, inaccurately interpreted historical facts.

In the reconciliation of Montecca and Capulet, the defeat of feudal morality is symbolized. This act marks the beginning of the implementation of the new principles of life that were proclaimed by the humanists in the Renaissance, for which there was a struggle during the period of bourgeois revolutions. At the time when Shakespeare was creating his first tragedy, he was still far from the consciousness of the crisis of humanism, which was reflected in the subsequent period of his work. In his early work, the great playwright sang a hymn to the high principles of humanism.