Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. It might also be a reference to the Bible, and the fact that Romeo uses outwardly Christian reasoning to get a kiss from her, hence he kisses according to ‘the book’.Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. She’s not comparing it to anyone else, but to love stories and etiquette she’s familiar with. Essentially, she’s joking that he gets kisses according to the instruction manual and doesn’t deviate from the rules that his method is ritualistic, if courtly. Juliet’s ‘You kiss by th’ book’ (110) is a response to all of this and especially to Romeo’s elaborate and ritualised wooing style: the poetic language, the elaborate metaphors, and rationale for getting a kiss from her. Also, it’s clear that Romeo has taken Juliet’s comment as a maidenly request when he says that it is ‘sweetly urged’: she’s given him a modest and acceptable courtly reason that they can kiss again. It’s a ‘trespass’ because they’ve been setting up the idea that kisses are sins (at least for the duration of this role play). This is a veiled hint that Romeo ought to kiss her again, and he takes it as such, purportedly kissing her in order to take back the sin that he’s left on her lips: ‘Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! / Give me my sin again. But Juliet playfully responds that if she’s taken his sin from him, then her lips now have his sin on them: ‘Then have my lips the sin that they have took’ (107). The idea is that, because she’s a saint, she can purge his sins. Setting Juliet up as a saint (or the statue of a saint that a pilgrim is visiting), Romeo kisses her and says ‘Thus from my lips by thine my sin is purged’ (1.5.106). The rhyme is part of it, but this line is part of the elaborate pilgrim/saint role play metaphor that Romeo and Juliet are playing with during their first encounter.
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