I rather like being a hopeless romantic.

Funny - I find varied possibilities much more interesting than the knee-jerk Romeo and Juliet interpretation. Star-crossed lovers make for just as serious a story, and aren't about love so much as they are about the injustices of society. My three quick hit stories are also about running afoul of the rules.

Even when I think of this as involving a romance - the moment they were discovered, the young lovers drank poison - I still see "they died very young for no good reason" instead of "oh, they were in love!"

Aye, but isn't that what Romeo and Juliet is all about - a senseless death of two young lovers - but it was the only way to preserve love's first blush. How dull the story would become if we took it through marriage, kids, divorce, public drunkenness, depression, reckless behavior, and a slow death brought on by a chronic and debilitating illness.

Heh, don't get me wrong, no WAY I'd say that R&J is a bad story. :) I love it, actually. You're right about all that. I just mean to say that there are a billion other possibilities, and I love that.

Just as I can't resist getting in a longjohns jab every now and then, despite that I found your three scenarios very clever and interesting.

Merry Wives of Windsor is a fairly approving look at stable marriages. There are a lot of dangerous and destabilizing passions at work in Romeo and Juliet, and I think Shakespeare would not exempt youthful lust, love at first sight, etc. from that view, even if he was in love with Gwyneth Paltrow when he wrote it.

As for the corpses, I vote for buried alive.

Inspiration 8.0?

I think that's a good idea.
:)

I think that they're both blokes.

I agree. An everlasting embrace.:)