The story
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, written around 1595 and first printed in 1597. It is set in Verona, where the Montague and Capulet families are locked in a feud. Romeo, a Montague, falls in love with Juliet, a Capulet, at a masked ball and marries her in secret the next day with the help of Friar Laurence. A street fight, a banishment, a plan with a sleeping potion and a fatal misunderstanding end with both lovers dead and the families reconciled.
Shakespeare took the story from Arthur Brooke's English poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), itself drawn from Italian novelle, and he compressed the action into about five days. The play was written in the Elizabethan theater of the 1590s, when Shakespeare was working with the Lord Chamberlain's Men. It opens with a sonnet, uses sonnet-like love scenes, and mixes comedy with tragedy in a way that was unusual at the time. The first quarto of 1597 is a shorter, less reliable text, and a fuller one followed in 1599.
The play has stayed in the repertory ever since. It inspired operas by Gounod and Bellini, Tchaikovsky's overture, Prokofiev's ballet, West Side Story (1957), and many films, and the names of its lovers have become shorthand for young romantic love in nearly every language.
Why it mattered
- The play became the world's best-known love story, adapted in ballet, opera, musical theater and film.
- It helped establish Shakespeare's reputation as a tragedian after his earlier comedies and histories.
- Its balcony scene and final tomb scene are reference points for how love and death are staged in later drama.
Sources
- Romeo and Juliet Britannica
- Romeo and Juliet Folger Shakespeare Library
- Romeo and Juliet, first edition Folger Shakespeare Library
Community notes
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