Compare and Contrast Love StoriesSetting: Romeo and Juliet is set around 1954, Shakespeare's time, and is set in the city of Verona, Italy. While West Side Story is set in 1950s New York, where gangs abounded. Pyramus and Thisbe was set in ancient Greece. Plot: The plots are more or less the same but are slightly changed to fit the time period in which they are set. An example of this is the names of Romeo and Juliet compared to the other two plays. Juliet, Mary and Thisbe you could see that the characters belonged to different periods. The Hispanic name Maria symbolizes the large influx of Puerto Rican immigrants to New York. Romeo and Juliet and Pyramus and Thisbe are more closely related, because the conflict between these two works is between the two real families. While in West Side Story the two main lovers, Tony and Maria, the only families known are their gang families. Main Male Characters: Tony, Romeo, and Pyramus all die at the end. Tony dies at the hands of Bernardo. Romeo dies at the hands of Tybalt. And Pyramus is banished because he accidentally killed his wife. So in the end all the main male characters are gone, in a way. Main female characters: Mary, Juliet and Thisbe. Although not all of them die, they play a role in the plot of the play. They all have a relationship with their respective male characters. Maria shows a role as she is Tony's love interest. When Tony dies she is not so affected that she wants to commit suicide, although she doesn't show it in the play, the reader would be safe to assume that she moves on with her life. Juliet on the other hand is so affected that she kills herself over the body of her fallen lover. In Pyramus and Thisbe, Pyramus accidentally kills Thisbe. Thisbe learned from an unreliable source that Pyramus was cheating on her. He went to where Pyramus lay and rustled the bushes. Pyramus thought it was a wild animal shot into the bush that killed his wife. My theory as to why Mary gets over Tony and Juliet can't get over Romeo was the fact that Juliet and Romeo were kept apart by family ties: Juliet a Capulet and Romeo a Montegue. Blood ties are the essence of families and tend to be very strong.