There is no official record of the first performances of Romeo and Juliet. Evidence from information in the two quartos, compiled in 1598 and 1599, suggests that the play was performed often and successfully by the Chamberlain's Men during Shakespeare's lifetime. The First Quarto describes the play as follows:

An Excellent conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet, As it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the Honourable the L. of Hunsdon and his Seruants.

Although there is no conclusive evidence, Thomas Whitfield Baldwin suggested that Richard Burbage (c.1567-1619) was most likely to have played Romeo, with Master William Goffe playing Juliet. He also proposed that Shakespeare himself most was most likely to have played the Prince. Clues in the bad quarto have led several scholars to place William Kemp in the role of Peter. In Shakespeare in Production, James Leohlin tells us, 'Q2 has the stage direction 'Enter Will Kemp' for Peter's scene with the musicians at 4.5.99'


The first officially recorded production of Romeo and Juliet took place after the Restoration (1660). On 1st March 1662 at Lincoln's Inn Fields the Duke's Company performed the play under the direction of Sir William Davenant (1606-68), a poet and playwright who claimed to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son. Davenant's text was never published so we do not now how close or removed it was from Shakespeare's but Jill L. Levenson tells us in her introduction to the Oxford Shakespeare edition that when Davenant received exclusive rights to nine Shakespeare plays, he resolved to reform them and make them 'fit' for performance. It seems likely, therefore, that there were some differences between Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Davenant's. His cast included Henry Harris as Romeo, Mary Saunderson as Juliet and Thomas Betterton in the role of Mercutio. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)saw the production when it opened and noted in his diary:

It is a play of itself the worst that I have ever heard in my life, and the worst acted that I ever saw these people do; and am resolved to go no more to see the first time of acting, for they were all of them out more or less.'


The next major version of Romeo and Juliet was Thomas Otway's 1679 play, The History and Fall of Caius Marius, which used 750 lines of Shakespeare's play in a 2,850 line script. The plot was essentially the same but the focus was far more political. Set in Rome, Juliet became Lavinia and Romeo, Young Marius, children of rival senators. In the tomb scene, Lavinia awoke before Marius had died from poison. Lavinia then watched her own father being killed before committing suicide as a public protest over the feuding of the families, she died with a curse:

'And now let rage, distraction and despair
Seize all mankind, till they grow as mad as I am.'

Many scholars have noted that Otway's text was a reflection of the unstable political situation in England:

'The scenes of civil conflict throughout are directly related to the exclusion crisis; Otway feared that Whig attempts to keep the Catholic Duke of York from succession would lead to Civil War.' (James L Loehlin. Shakespeare in Production)

The play was immensely popular and was the only version performed on major stages for around seventy years. When actor-managers did return to Shakespeare's text, their adaptations were greatly influenced by Otway's.


Theophilus Cibber (1703-1758, son of the actor-manager-playwright Colley Cibber) staged Romeo and Juliet at The Little Theatre in September 1744. His version borrowed both from Otway's play and The Two Gentleman of Verona. Juliet still awoke before Romeo died in the tomb (this was standard practice for over 100 years after Caius Marius). Cibber's alterations to the plot included cutting Rosaline so that Romeo was in love with Juliet from the start of the play - there was, therefore, no ball scene. Romeo's father suggested the match between Romeo and Juliet to end the feud between the Lady Capulet and Lady Montague. The wives rejected this idea, leading to the play's tragic ending. Cibber himself played Romeo to his 14-year old daughter Jenny's Juliet. Some had strong opinions about the casting of father with daughter in these roles. According to John Hill, Cibber was 'A person... too old for her choice, too little handsome to be in love with, and, into the bargain, her father.' David Garrick's opinion was similar: 'I never heard of so vile and scandalous a performance in my life... the girl, I believe, may have genius; but unless she changes her preceptor, she must be entirely ruined' (Shakespeare in Production - James Loehlin). Despite this negativity, Cibber wrote that 'our audiences were frequently numerous, and of the politest sort' and the play ran for ten nights, only closing due to theatre licensing problems.


Garrick staged his own adaptation of Romeo and Juliet two years later at his Drury Lane Theatre. His version of the play was much closer to Shakespeare's than Cibber's but alterations were still made. Garrick set out to remove 'the jingle and quibble which were always thought a great objection to performing it.' (Garrick's Adaptations, 1748 in Shakespearean Criticism, Vol 11). For Garrick's eighteenth-century audience, much of the more obvious rhyming was removed, Juliet was 18, rather than 14 and the part of Mercutio was considerably cut. Also lost were Juliet's references to 'amorous rites' and 'stainless maidenhoods'. Garrick's additions included an elaborate Masque in the ball scene as well as a funeral procession for Juliet. He still used the concept of Juliet waking early in the tomb scene and gave the lovers 70 lines of dialogue before their deaths. His justification for this was as follows:

'Bandello, the Italian novelist, from whom Shakespeare had borrow'd the subject of the play, has made Juliet to wake in the tomb before Romeo dies: this circumstance Shakespeare has omitted… from reading the play in the French or English translation, both of which have injudiciously left out this addition to the catastrophe.' (Garrick's Adaptations cited in Loehlin.)

Garrick's play was wholly focussed on the story of the lovers. Wider issues of the play were minor. His Romeo and Juliet was a love story. Rosaline was reinserted but later cut, to 'render Romeo's love more uniform' (Garrick's Adaptations 1748). Spranger Barry (1719-77) and Susannah Cibber (1714-66) played the lovers in this production. Susannah, a hugely successful actress and singer, was the wife of Theophilus Cibber and sister of the composer, Thomas Arne. The production was very successful and played for eighteen performances at Drury Lane. Garrick's adaptation was the standard text used for the next 97 years.


Barry and Cibber left Drury Lane after 18 performances and moved to Covent Garden under the management of John Rich, who immediately announced a revival of Romeo and Juliet. On hearing this, Garrick decided to take on the role of Romeo himself at Drury Lane with the young actress George Ann Bellamy (c.1727-1788) in the role of Juliet. Bellamy had played the role for Sheridan in Ireland two years previously. The productions opened on 29 November 1750. Barry and Cibber performed for 10 days until Barry withdrew, complaining of fatigue. Garrick and Bellamy played an extra night to seal their victory. Critics of the two productions pointed out merits and drawbacks in both. It was general opinion that Barry's 'fine person, and silver tones spoke the very voice of love.' (William Cooke, The Memoirs of Charles Macklin). Audiences felt he gave the better portrayal of an ardent young lover, but Garrick was more moving in the tragic scenes at the end of the play. 'Some of them supported this opinion by frequently leaving Covent Garden in the middle of the play, to see it finish at Drury Lane.' An anonymous woman (thought by some to be the actress, Hannah Pritchard) compared the two actors as follows:

Had I been Juliet to Garrick's Romeo - so impassioned was he, I should have expected that he would have come up to me on the balcony; but had I been Juliet to Barry's Romeo - so tender and seductive was he, I should certainly have jumped down to him!' Of the two Juliets, Cibber, being more mature, was felt to be the more touching but Bellamy was more appealing to the eye: 'I shed more tears in seeing Mrs Cibber, but I am more delighted in seeing Miss Bellamy,' wrote one reviewer in Gentleman's Magazine.

Towards the end of the run of the two productions audiences began to get fed up with the lack of choice of production in London's two major theatres. The Daily Advertiser voiced the opinion of its readers in this short verse:

'Well, what tonight, says angry Ned,
As up from bed he rouses.
Romeo again! And shakes his head,
Ah! Pox on both your houses!'

Both Barry and Garrick continued to play Romeo until the 1760s and Garrick's version of Romeo and Juliet was offered nearly every season at Covent Garden and Drury Lane until 1800.


In 1809, the rebuilding of Drury Lane and Covent Garden after fires meant both theatres practically doubled in size, taking audiences of up to three and a half thousand. This meant a much more demonstrative style of acting became necessary. The large stages made room for elaborate scenery, which often cost a fortune. With the installation of gas lighting for the stage, theatres became particularly interested in the way they could create grand spectacle on stage. In 1841, this style of staging reached its peak when Charles Kean's production included incredibly detailed and meticulously researched Italian Renaissance architecture in its set.


The role of Juliet was becoming a crucial starting point for many young actresses. One of the most successful was Eliza O'Neill (1791-1872): 'There was in her look, voice, and manner, an artlessness, an apparent unconsciousness… that riveted the spectator's gaze' (Charles Macready, Reminiscences).


Helen Faucit (1817-98) was 13 when she first took the role of Juliet. In her book Shakespeare's Female Characters, she wrote that she felt she was, at that time, 'too near that age of Shakespeare's Juliet, considering the tardier development of the English girl, to understand so strong and deep a nature.' Faucit continued to play the role on stage and at private readings for 34 years.


Fanny Kemble (1809-93), Charles Kemble's daughter, played Juliet in 1829 with her father as Mercutio and her mother as Lady Capulet. The critic for The Times commented on her 'innocent gracefulness' in the role. Romeo was played in this production by Ellen Tree. At the time, it was deemed perfectly acceptable for women to play Romeo, and many did without significant comment.


When the American actress Charlotte Cushman (1816-76) played Romeo in London and the United States, with her sister Susan as Juliet, she was considered to be one of the greatest Romeos of the century. She did not use Garrick's version, but worked from a heavily cut version of Shakespeare's text. Thus, Rosaline was reinstated, but Juliet's funeral procession, as well as the instance of her awakening in the tomb before Romeo dies, was lost. Critics and audiences were often staggered by Cushman's performance: 'a creative, a living, breathing, animated, ardent, human being'. (The Times)


The role of Romeo was not popular with major actors in the 19th Century as they considered it rather feminine. John Philip Kemble played the part for only three performances in 1789. His biographer, James Boaden wrote 'youthful love… was never well expressed by Kemble: the thoughtful strength of his features was at variance with juvenile passion.' (Memoirs of J.P. Kemble)

His brother Charles took the role more successfully, performing not only in London but in the United States with Eliza O'Neill as his Juliet. He was most famed for his portrayal of Mercutio, a role he took in 1829. James Loehlin calls his performance in this role 'the definitive Mercutio of the nineteenth Century'. (Shakespeare in Production)

Charles Macready played Romeo in 1810 and was reasonably successful. However, as he himself was willing to admit his 'want of personal attractions' was a problem. Macready wrote, 'nature has interposed an everlasting bar to my success' as it was 'unaccommodating in the formation of my face.'

Henry Irving played the part opposite Ellen Terry in an extravagant production with carefully choreographed crowd scenes (Rosaline herself made an appearance at the Capulet Ball), fights, a melodramatic tomb scene involving Irving carrying the corpse of Paris down a flight of stairs into the tomb where Juliet lay. As a visual production it was extremely popular, but Irving and Terry were criticised. Irving was considered to be physically unsuited to the role of Romeo, 'How little Mr Irving is Romeo is not worth while even to attempt to declare' was Henry James' comment on the production. Terry's portrayal was unsatisfactory for similar reasons, 'Miss Ellen Terry is very charming but she is not Juliet,' was one critic's comment on the actress' performance.

A successful Romeo was Johnston Forbes-Robinson who played the part opposite the Polish actress, Helena Modjeska in 1881. Modjeska was in her forties at the time. He also toured America in the role with Mary Anderson, an American actress-producer as his Juliet. Forbes-Robinson's Romeo was an immense hit and was compared to the performances of Barry and Garrick by the magazine, Athenaeum. 'He played Romeo with a chivalrous grace and a subdued ardour; equally rare and delightful' wrote Westland Marston in The Critic (1881) (Quoted in Loehlin, Shakespeare in Production)


Samuel Phelps refused to take on Romeo, but in 1843, when the monopoly of Drury Lane and Covent Garden was abolished due to the Theatre Regulation Act, he staged Romeo and Juliet at Sadler's Wells, removing all the nineteenth Century extravagance and concentrating on the poetry and the acting. He went back to the folio and used almost the full text of Shakespeare's play.





In 1894, William Poel created the Elizabethan Stage Society, the object of which was to experiment with Elizabethan theatre techniques. During his career, Poel used both good and bad quarto texts, placed the audience on the stage with the actors and occasionally tried using boy actors to play the female roles. For Romeo and Juliet, however, two young actresses played the title roles. The performance used nearly the full text of the good quarto and was extremely well paced.


Poel had some influence on twentieth century productions of the play. While Victorian styles were still being used by the likes of Beerbohm Tree in the 1910s, Barry Jackson's production in 1924 at the Birmingham Rep was praised for its pace and simplicity. It was once again becoming important to use Shakespeare's text as it was in the quarto.


One major 20th Century production of the play was John Gielgud's production at the New Theatre in 1936, with Laurence Olivier playing opposite Peggy Ashcroft as the lovers, Gielgud himself as Mercutio and Edith Evans as the nurse (Gielgud had previously staged a production at Oxford with Ashcroft and Evans in these roles, in an otherwise all-male cast).

After 6 weeks, Olivier and Gielgud swapped roles, a decision much praised by critics who felt Olivier more naturally a Mercutio than Romeo. According to Alec Guinness, his performance as Romeo was 'a bit cheap...making nonsense of the verse', while Gielgud's poetic style made him ideal for the lover's role. He had 'a much greater sense of the beauty of the language' (Daily Telegraph). With hindsight, critics have suggested that the two performers showed the difference in style of acting, Olivier's performance was much more naturalistic, 'fumbling for the words with which to say his love.' (St John Ervine, Independent.) It was leading the way to the modern realistic method of performing Shakespeare, while Gielgud's poetic rendering was somewhat reminiscent of the great Victorian actors.


In 1947, Peter Brook staged Romeo and Juliet at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. The young couple were played by Laurence Payne, 21 and Daphne Slater, 18. The production was extremely controversial and heavily criticised. Brook's version was heavily cut, ending just after Juliet's death in the tomb. There was no reconciliation between the families. The critics felt that Payne and Slater were struggling. Payne's Romeo was described by a critic in The Times as having 'scarcely a note of music in him', while Ivor Brown ( Observer felt it was 'wrongly cast and nonsensically directed.' In defence, Brook gave a lecture about the play at the British Council Centre, where he pointed out, 'Romeo and Juliet were only two characters among many, almost, if not quite equally, as interesting. The parts of Romeo and Juliet were created for two boys to play, not for stars.'


Zeffirelli's play was about the 'breakdown of understanding between two generations.' Zeffirelli, wanting his production to be as 'real' as possible, made his male cast members grow their hair to avoid the necessity of wearing wigs. Judi Dench, who played Juliet, described the opening: 'the audience gasped when the curtain went up because it was all misty in this very real looking Italian Street and people were throwing sheets out into the air: nothing as realistic had been seen for a very long time in Shakespeare.' (Shakespeare, Bate and Jackson.) Kevin Tynan described the characters as 'precisely life size' (Observer) According to James Loehlin, 'The street life of Verona was at the centre of the production, with wholly convincing scenes of young people idling, playing, fighting, and making love.' While initially poorly reviewed, the production went on to be the most influential interpretation of the twentieth century.


Romeo and Juliet has been performed all over Europe in the forms of play, ballet and opera. Daniel Mesguich's 1980s French experimental version of the play for the Théâtre de l'Athenée set the play amongst literature and psychoanalytic theory. Jill L Levenson described the production as follows: 'The set was an enormous library and protagonists from other related narratives of frustrated desire - Cyrano and Quasimodo, lovers from later Shakespeare tragedies and from the works of Chekhov, Marivaux and Racine - appear on the stage moving in and out of the action'.

The play was enormously popular in Italy. Productions were often staged in puppet theatres and involved key characters from Commedia dell'Arte, Brighella and Arlecchino (Harlequin), generally servant characters who satirised important social figures of the time. In Germany, a clown called Pickl Haring was added to one adaptation of the play. He succeeded mainly in lowering the tone. '


The story of Romeo and Juliet has inspired operas, ballets and musicals:

Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi composed in 1830 was not based on Shakespeare's text, but on one of the original source stories and the main focus was factionalism, which was still a major issue in Italy when this opera was composed.

Nine years later Berlioz' operatic score used some of Shakespeare's verse to recreate the story. Romeo and Juliet where orchestral parts in this version. Berlioz explained that instrumental language 'is richer, more varied, less punctuated, and thanks to its very indefinition, incomparably more powerful'.

Gounod's 1867 opera Romeo et Juliet was mainly a sentimentalist love story in extravagant settings. Conrad described the whole spectacle as 'lush, upholstered, comfortable' (Conrad, To Be Continued quoted in James Loehlin, Shakespeare in Production.)

Tchaikovsky's score of Romeo and Juliet allowed the lovers' melody to become lost amongst the more powerful sound of conflict. The lovers theme becomes 'twister, broken, and accompanied by a lacerating dissonance' (Brown, Tchaikovksy, quoted in Loehlin).

A ballet by Prokofiev compose in 1934 was originally rejected by companies as undanceable. Once again, romance was secondary to political statement about the misuse of power.

West Side Story, staged in 1957 and filmed in 1961, was highly successful.

LINK: See also APPROPRIATING R&J in LEARNING and USING FILM in TEACHERS




Laurence Harvey and Zena Walker in the title roles in this hugely popular production. Some critics quibbled about Motley's set, which was described as 'like a pair of raised bathing-huts joined by a bald, spindly, balcony' (Gloucester Echo). Walker was just 19 at the time and often critics felt that, while she portrayed Juliet's innocence well, the passionate character of the later scenes was not yet coming through. 'Juliet is an Italian girl ablaze with her first passion, and not just a little candle alight on a child's birthday cake. This Juliet… needs a year or two more', wrote Alan Dent in theNews Chronicle. Dent felt that Harvey also needed more time, but, in his case, 'only a week… he will be the most superb Romeo of our time - passionate, urgent, stricken, Italianate and proud even in his distress.'


'Swift as a wagtail, nimble as a trout' was Dent's description of Dorothy Tutin's Juliet in Byam Shaw's next production of the play. Tutin played Juliet to Richard Johnson's lyrical Romeo. 'This Romeo does feel, and deeply', ( Birmingham Post).


Peter Hall's production was a surprise to many critics, for he brought out the more comic aspects of the play. 'Hardly a comic chance was missed' wrote Ken Griffin (South Wales Evening Argus). Bernard Levin wrote: 'The opening brawl between the Montagues and the Capulets… turns into a pillow fight about the stage and the party at the Capulets is a regular scream.' (Daily Express). Brian Murray replaced Zia Mohyeddin as Romeo just a week before press night, because Moyheddin had a throat infection. Norman Holbrook described Murray as 'on the way to being a more-than-useful Romeo' (Birmingham Evening Despatch), well supported by Dorothy Tutin: 'Miss Tutin distils emotion by her mere stage presence, and her speaking improves with every Shakespearean part she plays' wrote TC Worsley (Financial Times). The most universal praise, however, was for Dame Edith Evans in the role of the Nurse. Levin described her as having 'absolute command in every line and word and movement. The warmth and gentleness, the bewilderment and pathos is radiated from this splendid performance.'


Koun directed his version in the style of Greek tragedy, starring Ian Holm and Estelle Kohler. As many pointed out, this concept gave the production 'a note of unrelieved gloom from the start' (Felix Barker, Evening News). However, this did affect its popularity with most critics. Keith Brace described some key moments from the production: 'the dancers at the Capulets' Ball freeze like figures in a dream when the lovers meet. Shadowy figures wander as if drugged in the background like ghosts on the other bank of the Styx.' (Birmingham Post)


Critics felt this another rather bleak conception of the play: 'Farrah's oppressive set, a complex arrangement of sliding steel towers linked by a gigantic bridge- [suggested]… a Hollywood prison movie' (wrote Michael Billington in The Guardian) … there was 'on a high balcony hovering over the whole affair a hooded, bearded actor looking like some fickle figure [i.e. the apothecary] of fate' (Milton Shulman, Evening Standard). Timothy Dalton played Romeo and Estelle Kohler Juliet.


The production was both praised and criticised for its frenetic energy. Ian McKellen's Romeo was described as a 'live Latin bomb full of emotions and with a tendency to explode at the slightest touch of his delicate fuse mechanism' (Simon Lancaster, Evening News, Hereford). Other critics described him less sympathetically as 'psychotic' (Felix Barker, London Evening News). Milton Shulman noted, 'he propels himself through almost every exit as if he is afraid of missing Verona's last midnight bus' (London Evening Standard). He felt Francesca Annis (Juliet) was more 'sedate'. Chris Dyer's set was a recreation of an Elizabethan theatre, with the audience extended round to the back of the stage.


'Not since the legendary Zeffirelli version have I seen a production which so powerfully transmits the sense of awakening adolescence' wrote Irving Wardle in The Times. In Daniels' production 'the Montagues and Capulets [were] rivals whose street brawls [were] comparable with those of Mods and Rockers' (Felix Barker, Evening News). Anton Lesser's Romeo was 'a hot-blooded joker… who shows respect only for Shakespeare's verse and Juliet' (Jack Tinker, Daily Mail). Wardle concurred that 'even in Juliet's bedroom he remains a joker.' Judy Buxton's Juliet was 'comely and seductive' according to Michael Billington (Guardian). He added, 'I couldn't believe for a moment that this Juliet wouldn't have disguised herself as a page to follow her husband into exile or that this Romeo wouldn't have carried her off into the night.'


This fabulous and well-received production marked the 10th anniversary of The Other Place. 'Bob Crowley's marvellous set with the riveting icon-style portrait of the saviour looking down on the whole scene with its sombre glass and holy sculptures all adds to an awe-inspiring background.' (Norah Lewis, Birmingham Evening Mail). Amanda Root and Simon Templeman were 'a genuinely attractive pair of young lovers. At the end of the balcony scene, they drink each other in during a deep and unembarrassed silence.' (Michael Coveney, Financial Times)


'As we enter the Stratford theatre, a rock group is playing mood-indigo music, a black guy is cruising round the marble-smooth stage on roller-skates and there is a pervasive whiff of black leather' (Michael Billington, Guardian). Sean Bean and Niamh Cusack played Romeo and Juliet in this modern production. Tybalt (Hugh Quarshie)'s first entrance was in a 'low-slung red sportscar'. Romeo commited suicide 'by shooting up after a peculiarly creepy encounter with a Mantuan fixer' (Billington).


In Terry Hand's production, Mark Rylance played Romeo and Georgia Slowe Juilet. Slowe was praised for her 'unaffected' performance (Jack Tinker, Daily Mail). Tinker described Rylance as 'an actor who adds delicate grace notes to his tormented introspection.


Michael Moloney (Romeo) was much praised in this production, though Benedict Nightingale wrote: 'Maloney delivers [his opening lines] with the glazed disbelief of a traveller to Yorkshire who finds himself in Edinburgh when he meant to get off at Doncaster.' Andrew St George (Financial Times) called it an 'intense, compelling closet drama' and thought Claire Holman gave a fine performance as Juliet, managing to be 'melancholy and fresh, hesitant and decisive'.


'The setting is Verona in Victorian times, with open air cafés, men in suits and neckties, women in crinolines', wrote Alastair Macaulay, in the Financial Times. Macaulay was greatly impressed by Lucy Whybrow's Juliet, and dedicated much of his review to her performance: '[She] gives us a Juliet we have never encountered before - and yet we always seem to have known.' Most reviewers however felt there was little chemistry between the couple. According to Michael Billington the pair '[exuded] about as much sexual intensity as a couple in a Sunday school Bible class'.


'The supreme virtue of Attenborough's production [for the RSC Regional Tour] is that the action grows out of a sense of community. It is a country world, in which rival families lapse easily into settled hate' (Michael Billington, Guardian). This production was popular with audiences and critics alike. Robert Jones' designs consisted of a 'sun-baked set of tiles and bricks, the cast in trousers, belt and braces and cloth caps.' (Robert Gore-Langton, Daily Express) Zoe Waites' Juliet was 'remarkable' and 'judging by the lascivious way she dances with Paris…carnally desperate' (Billington). She was matched by Ray Fearon's 'gutsy, full-blooded, impulsive Romeo' (Gore-Langton).


Paul Taylor, writing in the Independent described the opening of Boyd's production: 'We are plunged headlong into the unedifying brawl between the Montague and Capulet servants. Furniture is hurled around; blood splatters against one of the two curving walls in Tom Piper's minimalist design; Benvolio and Tybalt cross swords. The melee freeze-frames and David Tennant's lean, haunting Romeo enters like a ghost revisiting the circumstances of his own death. With pointed glances at the feuding patriarchs, he acts as the chronicle of fate foretold, in an eerie moment of suspension before the affray resumes.' The critics thought there was little sentiment in this production. Benedict Nightingale noted 'a toughness in the air…You could accuse Alexandra Gilbreath's Juliet and David Tennant's Romeo of lacking gentleness, delicacy, even sweetness, but you can't doubt their intensity or commitment'.