Professor Evans helps the reader to visualise the stage action of Romeo and Juliet , a vital element in the play’s significance and useful to students approaching it for the first time. The history of the play in the theatre is accompanied by illustrations of notable productions from the eighteenth century onwards. A lucid commentary alerts the reader to the difficulties of language, thought and staging. For this updated edition Thomas Moisan has added a new section to the Introduction which takes account of the number of important professional theatre productions and the large output of scholarly criticism on the play which have appeared in recent years. The Reading List has also been revised and augmented.