Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story
The tragedy of love thwarted by fate has always intrigued  writers.  In the sixteenth century, William Shakespeare took this theme  and fashioned one of the world's great plays:Romeo And Juliet.   In our own time, Shakespeare's drama has been used as a basis for the  overwhelmingly successful musical playWest Side Story.  Though  one of these works is set among the nobility of Verona, and the other  among immigrant families of New York's West Side, both tell the story  of the plight of young star-crossed" lovers.As Norris Houghton  writes in his introduction: "What we see is that all four young people  strive to consummate the happiness at the threshold on which they stand  and which they have tasted so briefly.  All four are deprived of the  opportunity to do so, the Renaissance couple by the caprice of fate,  today's youngsters by the prejudice and hatred engendered around  them...."Poets and playwrights will continue to write of youthful  lovers whom fate drives into and out of each other's lives.  The  spectacle will always trouble and move us, even as the two dramas in  this volume do today."