Although Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is the tragedy of two young lovers caught in the vortex of their youthful passion, it is also the tragedy of two young people at the mercy of a feud unprovoked by them and fatal events over which they have no control. Regardless of our individual response to this play, we have a common response of deep sadness at the senseless deaths of the two young lovers. Regardless of the cause of the tragic events, we stand with them. There are different ways of thinking about Romeo and Juliet, but recent discussions of the play look at the form and language of love that Shakespeare uses and how he uses one particular form, the sonnet, heightens our sense of the play. By directing our attention to the qualities of the sonnet in Romeo and Juliet, we are able to discern a growing maturity in these two characters, a maturity that, especially in Juliet's case, belies their untested youth. This article will examine how the sonnet conventions found in Romeo and Juliet reflect the play's stance on young love and how Juliet's resistance to the sonnet reveals a character that allows her to endure the abandonment of virtually everyone around her. The sonnet is a fourteen-line love poem of two lines. Perfected by the Italian Petrarch in the 15th century, the form followed certain conventions. The topic was that of unrequited love. The sonnetist will write a cycle of sonnets dedicated to a woman, his "sonnet lady", whom he knew only from afar, who was unavailable, whose mere presence transformed earthly existence into paradise. The fourteen-line sequence was often marked by an inversion, a "turn" between the first eight and last six lines. Often the turn moved from ph...... to the center of the card ......m to abandon Juliet in the tomb of her dead ancestors with Romeo's body. Despite the chaos that occurs when the tragedy in the tomb is discovered by the outside world, Juliet remains steadfast and resolute, in stark contrast to the confusion that also spills into the streets of Verona: "For I will not go away" (5.3.160) . Preferring death to the hostile world around her, she stabs herself with Romeo's dagger. Even as we see the chastened adults receive their greatest punishment, the death of their children, it seems too high a price to pay for the resolution of a feud. Our hearts remain with Romeo and Juliet, who found passion in love rather than hate and who matured far beyond their adult role models. "You perceive this, which makes your love stronger. To love well what you must leave before long. ."-- Sonnet 73