What is the analysis of the title Romeo and Juliet?

Answer 1

The full title is "The most excellent tragedie of Romeo and Juliet." Well, we can see that it is going to be a tragedy ("tragedie" is just a variant spelling), which means that in all likelihood the main characters are going to end up dead at the end of the story. That's how tragedies go when they are written by Shakespeare, except Cymbeline which was called a tragedy in The First Folio even though the main characters survive. So we can expect that the main characters are going to die.

Also we can see that it is going to be about two main characters called Romeo and Juliet. Now, usually in Shakespeare, when there are two names in the title (Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida), it means that the main characters are lovers. Even though in some cases a title like this might mean that the characters are partners (Starsky and Hutch, Sanford and Son) in Shakespeare's case it usually means lovers. So we can deduce that Romeo and Juliet are lovers. And putting that together with our precious deduction we see that they are lovers who are going to die.

Note that it is "Romeo and Juliet", not "Juliet and Romeo". This is no doubt a reflection of the male-centred world in which Shakespeare lived. You can see that the same applies to both of Shakespeare's other two-named plays.

Now this is the "most excellent" tragedy. Why is it necessary to call it excellent? Is it to compare this version of the story with others, so that the others are "The Mediocre Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet"? Or is this just puffing up his product?

The title in the second Quarto is slightly different: "The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie . . ." It is generally thought that the first Quarto was a "bad quarto" and needed fixing--that is why the second quarto claims to be "newly corrected, augmented and amended". Clearly, the first Quarto was in error for failing to include the word "lamentable". The newly revised version must have been calculated not merely to have been tragic but also to inspire crying and lamentation. It is probably not right to conclude that the play was thought to be "lamentable" in the sense of regrettable, seeing as how it has already been called excellent.

There's an analysis of the title, although I suspect that our efforts would be better rewarded if we spent them analysing the play instead.