Romeo and Juliet

The first 200 words of this essay...

Romeo and Juliet

by William Shakespeare, 1564-1606.

Romeo and Juliet is one of the best-known and most famous plays by William Shakespeare, who himself is probably still Britain's best-known producer of literature, seem from a world point of view. It is one of what I suppose that I would call his Italian Plays. These are a group which are set, more or less, as far as I can see, in what we now call Italy, but which then I think was a group of little city-states or tiny little nations, each centred on a town or city - such as Venice (the Merchant of Venice is an example.)

It describes the climate of fear, custom and emotion surrounding a bitter battle or feud between two warring families in the City of Verona, about the time that Shakespeare would have been writing it - say in about the early 1590s. The play is centred on the sudden and eep love of one young member of one family for one of the other.

Shakespeare used a variety of scources for his dramas. The story of Romeo & Juliet was by all accounts taken from the poem, The trajical history