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 of Romeus & Juliet written by Aurther Brooke (1562).  The story has earlier origins.  Brooke drew on the novella Rhomeo & Julietta by Boesteau, who, in turn had borrowed the main incidents from a story by Luigi da Porto, of vicenza (1535), called 'La Guillietta'.

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The main diffrences beetween Shakespeare's version of the story and that Brooke is in their purposes.  Brooke's poem warns young people of the dangers of physical attraction, whilst, I thinkn that Shakespeare was more interested in considering the nature of true love.  Since the basic story was doubtless familiar to his audience, Shakespeare's achievement lay in producing an interesting variation on the theme with fresh characters and a new slant which promoted the legitimy of forbidden love.  The play was published from Quarto in 1597 so it is safe to assume it may have been written a couple of years ...

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