For a love story, Romeo and Juliet contains more violence and bloodshed than most television miniseries. The play begins with a riot, ends with a double suicide and in between there are three murders. And all of this happens in the space of four short days. Of course, when you're dealing with love and passion, you operate on a basic level. The funny thing is that they have their roots in the same soil. It is common for love to turn into hate, in the blink of an eye. Love and hate are twin children of different mothers, separated at birth. They have a duplicity. This ambiguity is reflected in Romeo and Juliet, whose language is full of oxymorons. "O quarrelsome love, O amorous hatred", cries Romeo in the very first scene of the play, using a figure of speech and setting a theme that will be represented in the following five acts. Like the poles of an electrical circuit between which the high tension of emotions, love and hate runs, it creates a dialogue and a dialectic, a dynamic tension that fuels the action and generates heat. Hot Enough for You? When I noticed that two of this season's comedies were set in Verona, I decided to find out a thing or two about the place. Reading the "climate" section in Harold Rose's rather chatty book, Your Guide to Northern Italy, I noted that "Italy is very hot in summer" and that Rose recommends the intelligent traveler "avoid August if he can" because it is the "hottest month." Checking another book, I found that Rose, in typically English fashion, was underestimating the severity of the summer weather quite considerably. The second book pointed out that there are times when Scirocco winds "sweep the Saharan conditions northward"; winds that, when they reach Italy, bring "a humid and suffocating climate" with temperatures that commonly exceed 100 degrees. After reading this, much of the violence in Romeo and Juliet became more understandable: they are all short-tempered due to the heat! This is also noted by Benvolio when he warns Mercutio that "The day is hot, and Capulet is abroad, / And if we meet we shall not escape a brawl, / For now, in these hot days, mad blood stirs." Unfortunately, he warns too late and the fight he tries to avoid comes in the form of Tybalt.