One of these, Romeo and Juliet, was to become, over the ensuing centuries, the modern paradigm for romantic passion. The other two plays, Troilus and Cressida and Antony and Cleopatra, put onstage the love stories of “mutual pair[s]”—to use a suggestive phrase from Antony and Cleopatra—who were already legendary in Shakespeare's time. The three love tragedies have much in common.
