‘Death-marked love’: Desire and Presence in Romeo and Juliet

The action of Romeo and Juliet occurs between two speeches proclaiming the lovers’ deaths — the prologue’s forecast of events and the prince’s closing summary. The vicissitudes of desire take place in this unusual period, after life yet before death. It is a kind of liminal phase in which social and personal pressures build to intense pitch before they are settled. Such liminal tension, as Victor Turner suggests, is the very stuff of which social dramas are made.1 It figures a mounting crisis that envelops those observing and taking part in the unfolding action. At the same time, this temporal setting has a range of interpretative implications.