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What Antony Tudor did in his 1943 Romeo and Juliet, now revived by Ballet Theatre, makes it one of the most brilliant and interesting of recent ballets. In particular, he has worked with the structure of the play so as to situate it in the kind of Renaissance time and space with which Shakespeare's work has so many affinities.

As Wylie Sypher pointed out in his Four Stages of Renaissance Style, the plot of Romeo and Juliet is an essay in symmetry and proportion. Capulet is weighed against Montague, Romeo's passion against Paris's suitability, love against hate, night against day, rashness against prudence, etc. Time is compressed into 42 hours; space is defined and confined by the walls of Verona's chambers, gardens, piazzas, there is none of the depth, irregularity, or ripeness of the later Hamlet or Macbeth.

Tudor has set his version of this sad and lyrical equation in what might be compared to a continuous Botticelli frieze. There is an emphasis on elegant, agitated, fastidiously sensual flow rather than on volume. It is as if Tudor had speeded up the heartbeat of the play, so tremulous is one's reaction to it. His space, like Botticelli's, is almost more medieval than Renaissance: depth is created by temporary hierarchies, events separated in time can coexist in space. When Romeo and Juliet wind through the pillars of the piazza in an ecstatic return from their wedding, they are small upstage figures, seen through the minor bustle of the square. When Juliet enveloped by the Nurse, weeps over Tybalt down left, their figures are balanced by those of Romeo and Friar Laurence consulting hastily down right. And the two tableaux are separated by a temporary "wall" formed by two watching women. Tudor's use of these women is another odd detail. They witness the action from different positions, like those little faces in the corners of certain medieval paintings.

The effect of all this compression on the spectator is fascinating. There is no blood, thunder, bombast; the action is drawn lightly over you like a veil while you sit in a state of almost febrile tension. Events, briefly sketched, flow out of each other; even what Tudor has chosen to show or not show is revealing. Nothing seems to have any preliminaries. The Montague boys' decision to attend the Capulet ball is conveyed by Mercutio's brusquely beckoning finger, while the powerful effect of the lovers' first meeting on Romeo and his friends is shown more fully. Letters are not delivered, potions are drunk, marriages are arranged at high speed and with pictorial clarity.

Eugene Berman's marvelous pillars, archways, and porticos hold and shape the action, add to the morbid delicacy of atmosphere. When a curtain is drawn to reveal the ball in progress, the dancers first appear cramped, too large for the space they inhabit-another painterly touch. Tudor's choice of excerpts from Delius is extremely unusual. The music meanders along its own path-painting a lush, summer atmosphere that is neither dramatically nor rhythmically assertive, but full of feeling. Often it creates a curious tension between its dreamy flow and the action of the play.

For instance, the insistent little tappings and steppings of the court dances begin to be almost ominous against the inconclusive music.

Since nothing in this ballet ever really stops, pauses for large scale "dance numbers" would have been unthinkable. Tudor has built the dancing out of gesture so subtly and naturally that you are not aware of anything but the continuous unfolding of this lyrical disquisition on action. There is a ball scene, of course, quietly and slowly built-up. There is no grand pas de deux for the balcony scene: alone on the stage floor, Romeo bursts into an exulting stammer of leaps and postures and wide flung gestures, while Juliet on the balcony above returns his passion with slow and happy stretchings and curvings of her body and arms. Even the morning-after-the-wedding scene turns into a dance imperceptibly through a series of muted rushings, claspings, near -swoons.

Because nothing seems calculated, no particular moments of dance can be easily isolated. Pointework has a special expressive function. Juliet steps up onto pointe as if some delicate emotional balance were at stake, or as if she were on unfamiliar ground. In some of her steps, she might be swooning upward.

I saw only one of the two casts - John Prinz and Natalia Makarova rather than lvan Nagy and Carla Fracci. Prinz was a surprise - impetuous, hot-eyed, he looked caught in an affair he couldn't fathom. Except for some overflung arabesques as he exited, he was splendid. Makarova presented some problems. Strong and sensitive, holding herself in admirably, she still didn't seem quite spontaneous. Her modesty, expressed by a head thrust forward and down, had something calculated about it. Perhaps she has been trained to think of ballet acting as a series of attitudes that can be easily formulated. She's not helped by an ugly wig that's a shade too carroty and makes her look hard. Dennis Nahat made a bright and flippant Mercutio. His death, as Tudor conceived it, is wonderful -poignant, a waste, over before you know it; like the ballet, it speeds through time, while seeming suspended in space.