Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare likely wrote Romeo and Juliet sometime around 1595; of the plays traditionally classed as tragedies, it was only Shakespeare’s second (the first being Titus Andronicus, which dates to roughly 1591-1592). In many ways, the play marks a pivotal point in Shakespeare’s career. Although he never entirely abandoned the comedic genre, he turned increasingly to tragedy (Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, etc.) and romance (The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, etc.) after 1600. The narrative structure of Romeo and Juliet itself anticipates this shift, as the play’s early scenes suggest a comedic denouement—i.e., one ending in marriage rather than death.

That Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet relatively early in his career makes its influence all the more notable. However, though it is undoubtedly the most famous example of “star-crossed lovers” (at least in Western literature), it was not the first. In fact, it was not even the first of its name. As he did in many other plays, Shakespeare drew on preexisting literature for Romeo and Juliet’s basic plot—specifically, a work by the poet Arthur Brooke called The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which itself ultimately derived from an Italian story.