Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet 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. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and along with "Hamlet", is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers. "Romeo and Juliet" belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet" by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and
Their Eyes Were Watching God is about every one, or at least every one who isn't so civilized that he has lost the capacity for glory." As universities across the country developed Black Studies programs in the 1970s and 1980s, they created greater space for Black literature and academia. Several prominent academics, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Addison Gayle, Jr., established a new "Black Aesthetic" that "placed the sources of contemporary black literature and culture in the communal music and oral folk tradition". This new respect coupled with a growing Black feminism led by Mary Helen Washington, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and others would