The first part (Retracing the Antecedents) of my article “Begetting the New: The Marrow of Originality as Discovered from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” has been freshly published by The Journal of Aesthetic Education, a reputed journal covering art creativity. The paper is focused on not so much Shakespeare or his tale about the unfortunate lovers (as it may seem if to judge superficially by the title) as what the essence of creative work consists in and what love is. The material is barely a suitable background against which the philosophical questions concerning the most mysterious points of human life are set, discussed, and solved. In a word, the text is manifold and multitask. And I’d like to hope for it to let the reader comprehend or recast in a new mould a lot of what has been eluding him or, to the contrary, appearing to be obvious. But I’ll be happy still more if it can delight aesthetically, too.

The story of Romeo and Juliet became the core of a whole number of self-sufficient original pieces before Shakespeare. Each of them contained its particular drive and had something to say to the world. The evolution of the tale in a close connection with the authors’ intents and the circumstances the different versions of it arose under is the red thread running through the first part, their peculiarity and place in the historical context being shown in relief.