Anxiety of the Young Lovers in The Romancers

The Romancers are the young lovers called Percinet and Sylvette. Percinet reads Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Sylvette. She loves the verse very much. She expresses sympathy towards the poor lovers and feels sorry for their cruel destiny and the wretched world. She compares her love, and the situation to the young lovers of Romeo and Juliet and their situation.

She becomes quite serious. Then Percinet says that her father and his father hate each other and that is the main cause of their separation. Last month when Sylvette came home from the convent, her father showed her his father's park and said that it is the lair of his enemy. He told her to keep away from Bergamin and his son. Then he warned her that if she did not promise him to regard them as her enemies he would abandon her. And then she gave him her word and she has to keep it. Percinet also promised his father to hate her forever. So they are anxious. Moreover, Bergamin wants to re-plaster the wall that divides their parks and put the broken bottle end on the top to stop the lovers seeing each other. Similarly, Pasquinot also plans to put a row of spike to harm the attacker. Their fathers' plans to keep the young lovers separate worry them. They plan that even their fathers do not allow them to get married, they will marry secretly. They fear that they have to face the destiny of Romeo and Juliet.

But the parents have done this just to make them love each other very much. The more the lovers are kept apart, the more they want to love. Everybody wants to taste a forbidden apple. At the end of the play when Percinet proves himself a hero by rescuing Sylvette in kidnapping, their fathers agree to get them married and make them happy.