Some folks may object heatedly to me saying this, but Romeo and Juliet is not a love story. If two crazy kids in Verona, Italy, had simply become smitten centuries ago and gushed in sonnets and iambic pentameter, who would really care?

What made Shakespeare’s tale tragic was the blind closed-mindedness of feuding families (in the bard’s words, “the fatal loins”) who denied the lovebirds their happily ever after. Romeo and Juliet is about fear and loathing in northern Italy’s Veneto.