One of William Shakespeare's best-known plays is not only a must-read, but a permanent part of the theater repertoire, a starting point for adaptations, and one of the first stories that promotes today's romantic understanding of love.
"This tragic play actually starts as a comedy: the soldiers joke and fight, Romeo's romantic dreams are ridiculous, the nanny is ridiculously funny. Later, friend Lőrinc hopes to reconcile the two hostile families with a secret wedding. It's full of comedic elements. Then, suddenly, in the middle of the comedy, something bad happens: someone they kill me. Then someone else immediately. Tybalt stabs Mercutio, Romeo stabs Tybalt. There's no stopping from there. It's like a fun class bus trip where the passengers suddenly realize the driver has had a heart attack, slumped over the steering wheel, and the bus is speeding away towards the gap", writes the translator Ádám Nádasdy in the book's afterword.