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The central pair of lovers are the only characters in »Romeo and Juliet« featured as changing, against all the others who are static. The critical opinion on Romeo and Juliet is practically unanimous. The inseparability of their names reflects the very nature of love: people seeking »their other halves«, completeness in a union with the other. So all the critics agree that Romeo and Juliet are the ideal pair of lovers.
The tradition of psychological analysis of Shakespeare's characters was founded by S.T.Coleridge in his Shakespearean lectures (1811-1812). In the seventh lecture he described Shakespeare's unparalleled understanding of love: »Shakespeare has described this passion in various states and stages, beginning, as was most natural, with love in the young. Does he open his play making Romeo and Juliet in love at first sight — at the first glimpse, as any ordinary thinker would do? Certainly not: he knew what he was about: he was to develop the whole passion, and he commences with the first elements – that sense of imperfection, that yearning to combine itself with something lovely. Romeo became enamoured of the idea he had formed in his own mind, and then, as it were, christened the first real being of the contrary sex as endowed with the perfections he desired. He appears to be in love with Rosaline; but, in truth, he is in love only with his own idea. He felt that necessity of being beloved which no noble mind can be without. Then our poet, our poet who so well knew human nature, introduces Romeo to Juliet, and makes it not only a violent, but a permanent love. Romeo is first represented in a state most susceptible of love, and then, seeing Juliet, he took and retained the infection.«
The typical Continental point of view is represented by the words of the most influential Russian critic of the XIXth century V.G.Belinsky. In 15th installment of his »Alexander Pushkin's Works« (1844) he wrote: »The idea of love makes the pathos of «Romeo and Juliet», and the lovers' enthusiastic dialogues are like ocean waves shining in the stars' bright light. Their lyrical monologues are full not only of mutual admiration, but of the proud assertion of Love's divine nature«. Dmitrii Urnov considers »Romeo and Juliet«'s place among Shakespeare's early plays, because it does not express »the basically tragic view of life, as the later plays would; it expresses the tragedy of individual destiny under tragic circumstances«.
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