Romeo and Juliet is a
tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young
star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among
Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with
Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as
archetypal young lovers.
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic
romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as
The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by
Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in
Palace of Pleasure by
William Painter
in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both, but expanded the plot
by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly
Mercutio and
Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a
quarto
version in 1597. The text of the first quarto version was of poor
quality, however, and later editions corrected the text to conform more
closely with Shakespeare's original.
Shakespeare's use of his poetic
dramatic structure
(especially effects such as switching between comedy and tragedy to
heighten tension, his expansion of minor characters, and his use of
sub-plots to embellish the story) has been praised as an early sign of
his dramatic skill. The play ascribes different poetic forms to
different characters, sometimes changing the form as the character
develops. Romeo, for example, grows more adept at the
sonnet over the course of the play.
Romeo and Juliet has been adapted numerous times for stage, film, musical and opera venues. During the
English Restoration, it was revived and heavily revised by
William Davenant.
David Garrick's 18th-century version also modified several scenes, removing material then considered indecent, and
Georg Benda's
Romeo und Julie omitted much of the action, and added a happy ending. Performances in the 19th century, including
Charlotte Cushman's, restored the original text, and focused on greater
realism.
John Gielgud's
1935 version kept very close to Shakespeare's text, and used
Elizabethan costumes and staging to enhance the drama. In the 20th and
into the 21st century, the play has been adapted in versions as diverse
as
George Cukor's 1935 film
Romeo and Juliet,
Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version
Romeo and Juliet, and
Baz Luhrmann's 1996 MTV-inspired
Romeo + Juliet.
Characters
- Ruling house of Verona
- House of Capulet
- Capulet is the patriarch of the house of Capulet.
- Lady Capulet is the matriarch of the house of Capulet.
- Juliet is the 13-year-old daughter of Capulet, and the play's female protagonist.
- Tybalt is a cousin of Juliet, and the nephew of Lady Capulet.
- The Nurse is Juliet's personal attendant and confidante.
- Rosaline is Lord Capulet's niece, and Romeo's love in the beginning of the story.
- Peter, Sampson and Gregory are servants of the Capulet household.
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- House of Montague
- Montague is the patriarch of the house of Montague.
- Lady Montague is the matriarch of the house of Montague.
- Romeo is the son of Montague, and the play's male protagonist.
- Benvolio is Romeo's cousin and best friend.
- Abram and Balthasar are servants of the Montague household.
- Others
- Friar Laurence is a Franciscan friar, and is Romeo's confidant.
- Friar John is sent to deliver Friar Laurence's letter to Romeo.
- An Apothecary who reluctantly sells Romeo poison.
- A Chorus reads a prologue to each of the first two acts.
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Synopsis
The play, set in
Verona,
Italy, begins with a street brawl between
Montague and
Capulet servants who, like their masters, are sworn enemies.
Prince Escalus of Verona intervenes and declares that further breach of the peace will be punishable by death. Later,
Count Paris talks to Capulet about marrying his daughter
Juliet, but Capulet asks Paris to wait another two years and invites him to attend a planned Capulet
ball. Lady Capulet and Juliet's nurse try to persuade Juliet to accept Paris's courtship.
Meanwhile,
Benvolio talks with his cousin
Romeo,
Montague's son, about Romeo's recent depression. Benvolio discovers
that it stems from unrequited infatuation for a girl named
Rosaline, one of Capulet's nieces. Persuaded by Benvolio and
Mercutio,
Romeo attends the ball at the Capulet house in hopes of meeting
Rosaline. However, Romeo instead meets and falls in love with Juliet.
Juliet's cousin,
Tybalt,
is enraged at Romeo for sneaking into the ball, but is only stopped
from killing Romeo by Juliet's father, who doesn't wish to shed blood in
his house. After the ball, in what is now called the "balcony scene",
Romeo sneaks into the Capulet orchard and overhears Juliet at her window
vowing her love to him in spite of her family's hatred of the
Montagues. Romeo makes himself known to her and they agree to be
married. With the help of
Friar Laurence, who hopes to reconcile the two families through their children's union, they are secretly married the next day.
L’ultimo bacio dato a Giulietta da Romeo by
Francesco Hayez. Oil on canvas, 1823.
Tybalt, meanwhile, still incensed that Romeo had sneaked into the
Capulet ball, challenges him to a duel. Romeo, now considering Tybalt
his kinsman, refuses to fight. Mercutio is offended by Tybalt's
insolence, as well as Romeo's "vile submission",
and accepts the duel on Romeo's behalf. Mercutio is fatally wounded
when Romeo attempts to break up the fight. Grief-stricken and wracked
with guilt, Romeo confronts and slays Tybalt.
Montague argues that Romeo has justly executed Tybalt for the murder
of Mercutio. The Prince, now having lost a kinsman in the warring
families' feud, exiles Romeo from Verona, under penalty of death if he
ever returns. Romeo secretly spends the night in Juliet's chamber, where
they
consummate
their marriage. Capulet, misinterpreting Juliet's grief, agrees to
marry her to Count Paris and threatens to disown her when she refuses to
become Paris's "joyful bride". When she then pleads for the marriage to be delayed, her mother rejects her.
Juliet visits Friar Laurence for help, and he offers her a potion
that will put her into a deathlike coma for "two and forty hours".
The Friar promises to send a messenger to inform Romeo of the plan, so
that he can rejoin her when she awakens. On the night before the
wedding, she takes the drug and, when discovered apparently dead, she is
laid in the family crypt.
The messenger, however, does not reach Romeo and, instead, Romeo
learns of Juliet's apparent death from his servant Balthasar.
Heartbroken, Romeo buys poison from an
apothecary and goes to the Capulet
crypt.
He encounters Paris who has come to mourn Juliet privately. Believing
Romeo to be a vandal, Paris confronts him and, in the ensuing battle,
Romeo kills Paris. Still believing Juliet to be dead, he drinks the
poison. Juliet then awakens and, finding Romeo dead, stabs herself with
his dagger. The feuding families and the Prince meet at the tomb to find
all three dead. Friar Laurence recounts the story of the two
"star-cross'd lovers". The families are reconciled by their children's
deaths and agree to end their violent feud. The play ends with the
Prince's elegy for the lovers: "For never was a story of more woe/Than
this of Juliet and her Romeo."
Sources
Romeo and Juliet borrows from a tradition of tragic love stories dating back to antiquity. One of these is
Pyramus and Thisbe, from
Ovid's
Metamorphoses,
which contains parallels to Shakespeare's story: the lovers' parents
despise each other, and Pyramus falsely believes his lover Thisbe is
dead. The
Ephesiaca of
Xenophon of Ephesus,
written in the 3rd century, also contains several similarities to the
play, including the separation of the lovers, and a potion that induces a
deathlike sleep.
One of the earliest references to the names
Montague and
Capulet is from
Dante's
Divine Comedy, who mentions the Montecchi (
Montagues) and the Cappelletti (
Capulets) in canto six of
Purgatorio:
Come and see, you who are negligent,
Montagues and Capulets, Monaldi and Filippeschi
One lot already grieving, the other in fear.
However, the reference is part of a polemic against the moral decay of
Florence,
Lombardy and the
Italian Peninsula as a whole;
Dante, through his characters, chastises
German King Albert I for neglecting his responsibilities towards Italy ("you who are negligent"), and successive
popes for their encroachment from purely spiritual affairs, thus leading to a climate of incessant bickering and warfare between
rival political parties in Lombardy. History records the name of the family
Montague as being lent to such a political party in
Verona, but that of the
Capulets as from a
Cremonese family, both of whom play out their conflict in
Lombardy as a whole rather than within the confines of
Verona.
Allied to rival political factions, the parties are grieving ("One lot
already grieving") because their endless warfare has led to the
destruction of both parties,
rather than a grief from the loss of their ill-fated offspring as the
play sets forth, which appears to be a solely poetic creation within
this context.
The earliest known version of the
Romeo and Juliet tale akin to Shakespeare's play is the story of
Mariotto and Gianozza by
Masuccio Salernitano, in the 33rd novel of his
Il Novellino published in 1476. Salernitano sets the story in
Siena
and insists its events took place in his own lifetime. His version of
the story includes the secret marriage, the colluding friar, the fray
where a prominent citizen is killed, Mariotto's exile, Gianozza's forced
marriage, the potion plot, and the crucial message that goes astray. In
this version, Mariotto is caught and beheaded and Gianozza dies of
grief.
Modern form
Luigi da Porto (1485–1529) adapted the story as
Giulietta e Romeo and included it in his
Historia novellamente ritrovata di due Nobili Amanti, written in 1524 and published posthumously in 1531 in Venice. Da Porto drew on
Pyramus and Thisbe,
Boccacio's
Decameron, and Salernitano's
Mariotto e Ganozza,
but it is likely that his story is also autobiographical: present as a
soldier at a ball on 26 February 1511 at a residence of the Savorgnan
clan in
Udine,
following a peace ceremony with the opposite Strumieri, Da Porta fell
in love with Lucina, the daughter of the house, but relationships of
their mentors prevented advances. The next morning,
the Savorgnans led an attack on the city, and many members of the Strumieri were murdered. When years later, half-paralyzed from a battle-wound, he wrote
Giulietta e Romeo in
Montorso Vicentino (from where he could see the "castles" of
Verona), he dedicated the
novella to
bellisima e leggiadra madonna Lucina Savorgnan.
Da Porto presented his tale as historically true and claimed it took
place a century earlier than Salernitano had it, in the days Verona was
ruled by
Bartolomeo II della Scala (anglicized as
Prince Escalus).
Da Porto gave Romeo and Juliet most of its modern form, including the
names of the lovers, the rival families of Montecchi and Capuleti, and
the location in Verona. He named the friar
Laurence (
frate Lorenzo) and introduced the characters
Mercutio (
Marcuccio Guertio),
Tybalt (
Tebaldo Cappelleti),
Count Paris (
conti (Paride) di Lodrone), the faithful servant, and
Giulietta's nurse.
Da Porto originated the remaining basic elements of the story: the
feuding families, Romeo -left by his mistress- meeting Giulietta at a
dance at her house, the love scenes (including the balcony scene), the
periods of despair, Romeo killing Giulietta's cousin (Tebaldo), and the
families' reconciliation after the lovers' suicides. In da Porto's version Romeo takes poison and Giulietta stabs herself with his dagger.
In 1554,
Matteo Bandello published the second volume of his
Novelle, which included his version of
Giuletta e Romeo,
probably written between 1531 and 1545. Bandello lengthened and weighed
down the plot, while leaving the storyline basically unchanged (though
he did introduce
Benvolio). Bandello's story was translated into French by
Pierre Boaistuau in 1559 in the first volume of his
Histories Tragiques. Boaistuau adds much moralising and sentiment, and the characters indulge in rhetorical outbursts.
In his 1562
narrative poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, Arthur Brooke translated Boaistuau faithfully, but adjusted it to reflect parts of Chaucer's
Troilus and Criseyde. There was a trend among writers and playwrights to publish works based on Italian
novelles—Italian tales were very popular among theatre-goers—and Shakespeare may well have been familiar with
William Painter's 1567 collection of Italian tales titled
Palace of Pleasure. This collection included a version in prose of the
Romeo and Juliet story named
"The goodly History of the true and constant love of Romeo and Juliett". Shakespeare took advantage of this popularity:
The Merchant of Venice,
Much Ado About Nothing,
All's Well That Ends Well,
Measure for Measure, and
Romeo and Juliet are all from Italian
novelle.
Romeo and Juliet
is a dramatisation of Brooke's translation, and Shakespeare follows the
poem closely, but adds extra detail to both major and minor characters
(in particular the Nurse and Mercutio).
Christopher Marlowe's
Hero and Leander and
Dido, Queen of Carthage,
both similar stories written in Shakespeare's day, are thought to be
less of a direct influence, although they may have helped create an
atmosphere in which tragic love stories could thrive.
Date and text
Title page of the first edition
It is unknown when exactly Shakespeare wrote
Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's nurse refers to an earthquake she says occurred 11 years ago. This may refer to the
Dover Straits earthquake of 1580,
which would date that particular line to 1591. Other earthquakes—both
in England and in Verona—have been proposed in support of the different
dates. But the play's stylistic similarities with
A Midsummer Night's Dream and other plays conventionally dated around 1594–95, place its composition sometime between 1591 and 1595. One conjecture is that Shakespeare may have begun a draft in 1591, which he completed in 1595.
Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet was published in two
quarto editions prior to the publication of the
First Folio
of 1623. These are referred to as Q1 and Q2. The first printed edition,
Q1, appeared in early 1597, printed by John Danter. Because its text
contains numerous differences from the later editions, it is labelled a '
bad quarto';
the 20th-century editor T. J. B. Spencer described it as "a detestable
text, probably a reconstruction of the play from the imperfect memories
of one or two of the actors", suggesting that it had been pirated for
publication.
An alternative explanation for Q1's shortcomings is that the play (like
many others of the time) may have been heavily edited before
performance by the playing company. In any event, its appearance in early 1597 makes 1596 the latest possible date for the play's composition.
The superior Q2 called the play
The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. It was printed in 1599 by
Thomas Creede and published by
Cuthbert Burby. Q2 is about 800 lines longer than Q1.
Its title page describes it as "Newly corrected, augmented and
amended". Scholars believe that Q2 was based on Shakespeare's
pre-performance draft (called his
foul papers),
since there are textual oddities such as variable tags for characters
and "false starts" for speeches that were presumably struck through by
the author but erroneously preserved by the typesetter. It is a much
more complete and reliable text, and was reprinted in 1609 (Q3), 1622
(Q4) and 1637 (Q5). In effect, all later Quartos and Folios of
Romeo and Juliet
are based on Q2, as are all modern editions since editors believe that
any deviations from Q2 in the later editions (whether good or bad) are
likely to arise from editors or compositors, not from Shakespeare.
The First Folio text of 1623 was based primarily on Q3, with
clarifications and corrections possibly coming from a theatrical
promptbook or Q1. Other Folio editions of the play were printed in 1632 (F2), 1664 (F3), and 1685 (F4). Modern versions—that take into account several of the Folios and Quartos—first appeared with
Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition, followed by
Alexander Pope's
1723 version. Pope began a tradition of editing the play to add
information such as stage directions missing in Q2 by locating them in
Q1. This tradition continued late into the
Romantic period. Fully annotated editions first appeared in the
Victorian period
and continue to be produced today, printing the text of the play with
footnotes describing the sources and culture behind the play.
Themes and motifs
Scholars have found it extremely difficult to assign one specific, overarching
theme
to the play. Proposals for a main theme include a discovery by the
characters that human beings are neither wholly good nor wholly evil,
but instead are more or less alike,
awaking out of a dream and into reality, the danger of hasty action, or
the power of tragic fate. None of these have widespread support.
However, even if an overall theme cannot be found it is clear that the
play is full of several small, thematic elements that intertwine in
complex ways. Several of those most often debated by scholars are
discussed below.
Love
"Romeo
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss."
—Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene V
Romeo and Juliet is sometimes considered to have no unifying theme, save that of young love.
Romeo and Juliet have become emblematic of young lovers and doomed
love. Since it is such an obvious subject of the play, several scholars
have explored the language and historical context behind the romance of
the play.
On their first meeting, Romeo and Juliet use a form of communication
recommended by many etiquette authors in Shakespeare's day: metaphor. By
using metaphors of saints and sins, Romeo was able to test Juliet's
feelings for him in a non-threatening way. This method was recommended
by
Baldassare Castiglione
(whose works had been translated into English by this time). He pointed
out that if a man used a metaphor as an invitation, the woman could
pretend she did not understand him, and he could retreat without losing
honour. Juliet, however, participates in the metaphor and expands on it.
The religious metaphors of "shrine", "pilgrim" and "saint" were
fashionable in the poetry of the time and more likely to be understood
as romantic rather than blasphemous, as the concept of sainthood was
associated with the Catholicism of an earlier age.
Later in the play, Shakespeare removes the more daring allusions to
Christ's resurrection in the tomb he found in his source work: Brooke's
Romeus and Juliet.
In the later balcony scene, Shakespeare has Romeo overhear Juliet's
soliloquy, but in Brooke's version of the story her declaration is done
alone. By bringing Romeo into the scene to eavesdrop, Shakespeare breaks
from the normal sequence of courtship. Usually a woman was required to
be modest and shy to make sure that her suitor was sincere, but breaking
this rule serves to speed along the plot. The lovers are able to skip
courting, and move on to plain talk about their relationship— agreeing
to be married after knowing each other for only one night.
In the final suicide scene, there is a contradiction in the message—in
the Catholic religion, suicides were often thought to be condemned to
hell, whereas people who die to be with their loves under the "
Religion of Love"
are joined with their loves in paradise. Romeo and Juliet's love seems
to be expressing the "Religion of Love" view rather than the Catholic
view. Another point is that although their love is passionate, it is
only consummated in marriage, which keeps them from losing the
audience's sympathy.
The play arguably equates love and sex with death. Throughout the
story, both Romeo and Juliet, along with the other characters, fantasise
about
it as a dark being, often equating it with a lover. Capulet, for example, when he first discovers Juliet's (faked) death, describes it as having
deflowered his daughter.
Juliet later erotically compares Romeo and death. Right before her
suicide she grabs Romeo's dagger, saying "O happy dagger! This is thy
sheath. There rust, and let me die."
Fate and chance
"O, I am fortune's fool!"
—Romeo, Act III Scene I
Scholars are divided on the role of fate in the play. No consensus
exists on whether the characters are truly fated to die together or
whether the events take place by a series of unlucky chances. Arguments
in favour of fate often refer to the description of the lovers as "
star-cross'd". This phrase seems to hint that the stars have predetermined the lovers' future.
John W. Draper points out the parallels between the Elizabethan belief in
the four humours
and the main characters of the play (for example, Tybalt as a
choleric). Interpreting the text in the light of humours reduces the
amount of plot attributed to chance by modern audiences.
Still, other scholars see the play as a series of unlucky chances—many
to such a degree that they do not see it as a tragedy at all, but an
emotional
melodrama. Ruth Nevo believes the high degree to which chance is stressed in the narrative makes
Romeo and Juliet
a "lesser tragedy" of happenstance, not of character. For example,
Romeo's challenging Tybalt is not impulsive; it is, after Mercutio's
death, the expected action to take. In this scene, Nevo reads Romeo as
being aware of the dangers of flouting
social norms, identity and commitments. He makes the choice to kill, not because of a
tragic flaw, but because of circumstance.
Duality (light and dark)
"O brawling love, O loving hate,
O any thing of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!"
—Romeo, Act I Scene I
Scholars have long noted Shakespeare's widespread use of light and dark
imagery throughout the play.
Caroline Spurgeon
considers the theme of light as "symbolic of the natural beauty of
young love" and later critics have expanded on this interpretation. For example, both Romeo and Juliet see the other as light in a
surrounding darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun, brighter than a torch, a jewel sparkling in the night, and a bright angel among dark clouds. Even when she lies apparently dead in the tomb, he says her "beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light." Juliet describes Romeo as "day in night" and "Whiter than snow upon a raven's back." This contrast of light and dark can be expanded as symbols—contrasting love and hate, youth and age in a metaphoric way. Sometimes these intertwining metaphors create
dramatic irony.
For example, Romeo and Juliet's love is a light in the midst of the
darkness of the hate around them, but all of their activity together is
done in night and darkness, while all of the feuding is done in broad
daylight. This paradox of imagery adds atmosphere to the
moral dilemma
facing the two lovers: loyalty to family or loyalty to love. At the end
of the story, when the morning is gloomy and the sun hiding its face
for sorrow, light and dark have returned to their proper places, the
outward darkness reflecting the true, inner darkness of the family feud
out of sorrow for the lovers. All characters now recognise their folly
in light of recent events, and things return to the natural order,
thanks to the love and death of Romeo and Juliet.
The "light" theme in the play is also heavily connected to the theme of
time, since light was a convenient way for Shakespeare to express the
passage of time through descriptions of the sun, moon, and stars.
Time
"These times of woe afford no time to woo."
—Paris, Act III Scene IV
Time plays an important role in the language and plot of the play.
Both Romeo and Juliet struggle to maintain an imaginary world void of
time in the face of the harsh realities that surround them. For
instance, when Romeo swears his love to Juliet by the moon, she protests
"O swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon, / That monthly changes in
her circled orb, / Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." From the very beginning, the lovers are designated as "star-cross'd" referring to an
astrologic
belief associated with time. Stars were thought to control the fates of
humanity, and as time passed, stars would move along their course in
the sky, also charting the course of human lives below. Romeo speaks of a
foreboding he feels in the stars' movements early in the play, and when
he learns of Juliet's death, he defies the stars' course for him.
Another central theme is haste: Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet spans a period of four to six days, in contrast to Brooke's poem's spanning nine months.
Scholars such as G. Thomas Tanselle believe that time was "especially
important to Shakespeare" in this play, as he used references to
"short-time" for the young lovers as opposed to references to
"long-time" for the "older generation" to highlight "a headlong rush
towards doom".
Romeo and Juliet fight time to make their love last forever. In the
end, the only way they seem to defeat time is through a death that makes
them immortal through art.
Time is also connected to the theme of light and dark. In
Shakespeare's day, plays were most often performed at noon or in the
afternoon in broad daylight.
This forced the playwright to use words to create the illusion of day
and night in his plays. Shakespeare uses references to the night and
day, the stars, the moon, and the sun to create this illusion. He also
has characters frequently refer to days of the week and specific hours
to help the audience understand that time has passed in the story. All
in all, no fewer than 103 references to time are found in the play,
adding to the illusion of its passage.
Criticism and interpretation
Critical history
The earliest known critic of the play was diarist
Samuel Pepys, who wrote in 1662: "it is a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life." Poet
John Dryden wrote 10 years later in praise of the play and its comic character Mercutio: "Shakespear show'd the best of his skill in his
Mercutio, and he said himself, that he was forc'd to kill him in the third Act, to prevent being killed by him." Criticism of the play in the 18th century was less sparse, but no less divided. Publisher
Nicholas Rowe
was the first critic to ponder the theme of the play, which he saw as
the just punishment of the two feuding families. In mid-century, writer
Charles Gildon and philosopher
Lord Kames
argued that the play was a failure in that it did not follow the
classical rules of drama: the tragedy must occur because of some
character flaw, not an accident of fate. Writer and critic
Samuel Johnson, however, considered it one of Shakespeare's "most pleasing" plays.
In the later part of the 18th and through the 19th century, criticism
centred on debates over the moral message of the play. Actor and
playwright
David Garrick's 1748 adaptation excluded Rosaline: Romeo abandoning her for Juliet was seen as fickle and reckless. Critics such as
Charles Dibdin
argued that Rosaline had been purposely included in the play to show
how reckless the hero was, and that this was the reason for his tragic
end. Others argued that Friar Laurence might be Shakespeare's spokesman
in his warnings against undue haste. With the advent of the 20th
century, these moral arguments were disputed by critics such as
Richard Green Moulton: he argued that accident, and not some character flaw, led to the lovers' deaths.
Dramatic structure
In
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare employs several dramatic
techniques that have garnered praise from critics; most notably the
abrupt shifts from comedy to tragedy (an example is the
punning
exchange between Benvolio and Mercutio just before Tybalt arrives).
Before Mercutio's death in Act three, the play is largely a comedy.
After his accidental demise, the play suddenly becomes serious and
takes on a tragic tone. When Romeo is banished, rather than executed,
and Friar Laurence offers Juliet a plan to reunite her with Romeo, the
audience can still hope that all will end well. They are in a
"breathless state of suspense" by the opening of the last scene in the
tomb: If Romeo is delayed long enough for the Friar to arrive, he and
Juliet may yet be saved.
These shifts from hope to despair, reprieve, and new hope, serve to
emphasise the tragedy when the final hope fails and both the lovers die
at the end.
Shakespeare also uses sub-plots to offer a clearer view of the
actions of the main characters. For example, when the play begins, Romeo
is in love with Rosaline, who has refused all of his advances. Romeo's
infatuation with her stands in obvious contrast to his later love for
Juliet. This provides a comparison through which the audience can see
the seriousness of Romeo and Juliet's love and marriage. Paris' love for
Juliet also sets up a contrast between Juliet's feelings for him and
her feelings for Romeo. The formal language she uses around Paris, as
well as the way she talks about him to her Nurse, show that her feelings
clearly lie with Romeo. Beyond this, the
sub-plot
of the Montague–Capulet feud overarches the whole play, providing an
atmosphere of hate that is the main contributor to the play's tragic
end.
Language
Shakespeare uses a variety of poetic forms throughout the play. He begins with a 14-line
prologue in the form of a
Shakespearean sonnet, spoken by a Chorus. Most of
Romeo and Juliet is, however, written in
blank verse, and much of it in strict
iambic pentameter, with less rhythmic variation than in most of Shakespeare's later plays. In choosing forms, Shakespeare matches the poetry to the character who uses it. Friar Laurence, for example, uses
sermon and
sententiae forms, and the Nurse uses a unique
blank verse form that closely matches
colloquial speech.
Each of these forms is also moulded and matched to the emotion of the
scene the character occupies. For example, when Romeo talks about
Rosaline earlier in the play, he attempts to use the
Petrarchan sonnet
form. Petrarchan sonnets were often used by men to exaggerate the
beauty of women who were impossible for them to attain, as in Romeo's
situation with Rosaline. This sonnet form is used by Lady Capulet to
describe Count Paris to Juliet as a handsome man.
When Romeo and Juliet meet, the poetic form changes from the Petrarchan
(which was becoming archaic in Shakespeare's day) to a then more
contemporary sonnet form, using "pilgrims" and "saints" as metaphors.
Finally, when the two meet on the balcony, Romeo attempts to use the
sonnet form to pledge his love, but Juliet breaks it by saying "Dost
thou love me?" By doing this, she searches for true expression, rather than a poetic exaggeration of their love. Juliet uses monosyllabic words with Romeo, but uses formal language with Paris. Other forms in the play include an
epithalamium by Juliet, a
rhapsody in Mercutio's
Queen Mab speech, and an
elegy by Paris.
Shakespeare saves his prose style most often for the common people in
the play, though at times he uses it for other characters, such as
Mercutio. Humour, also, is important: scholar Molly Mahood identifies at least 175 puns and wordplays in the text. Many of these jokes are sexual in nature, especially those involving Mercutio and the Nurse.
Psychoanalytic criticism
Early
psychoanalytic critics saw the problem of
Romeo and Juliet
in terms of Romeo's impulsiveness, deriving from "ill-controlled,
partially disguised aggression", which leads both to Mercutio's death
and to the double suicide.
Romeo and Juliet
is not considered to be exceedingly psychologically complex, and
sympathetic psychoanalytic readings of the play make the tragic male
experience equivalent with sicknesses. Norman Holland, writing in 1966, considers Romeo's dream
as a realistic "wish fulfilling fantasy both in terms of Romeo's adult
world and his hypothetical childhood at stages oral, phallic and
oedipal" – while acknowledging that a dramatic character is not a human
being with mental processes separate from those of the author. Critics such as
Julia Kristeva
focus on the hatred between the families, arguing that this hatred is
the cause of Romeo and Juliet's passion for each other. That hatred
manifests itself directly in the lovers' language: Juliet, for example,
speaks of "my only love sprung from my only hate" and often expresses her passion through an anticipation of Romeo's death.
This leads on to speculation as to the playwright's psychology, in
particular to a consideration of Shakespeare's grief for the death of
his son,
Hamnet.
Feminist criticism
Feminist literary critics argue that the blame for the family feud lies in Verona's
patriarchal society.
For Coppélia Kahn, for example, the strict, masculine code of violence
imposed on Romeo is the main force driving the tragedy to its end. When
Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo shifts into this violent mode, regretting
that Juliet has made him so "effeminate".
In this view, the younger males "become men" by engaging in violence on
behalf of their fathers, or in the case of the servants, their masters.
The feud is also linked to male virility, as the numerous jokes about
maidenheads aptly demonstrate.
Juliet also submits to a female code of docility by allowing others,
such as the Friar, to solve her problems for her. Other critics, such as
Dympna Callaghan, look at the play's feminism from a
historicist
angle, stressing that when the play was written the feudal order was
being challenged by increasingly centralised government and the advent
of capitalism. At the same time, emerging
Puritan
ideas about marriage were less concerned with the "evils of female
sexuality" than those of earlier eras, and more sympathetic towards
love-matches: when Juliet dodges her father's attempt to force her to
marry a man she has no feeling for, she is challenging the patriarchal
order in a way that would not have been possible at an earlier time.
Queer theory
A number of critics have found the character of Mercutio to have unacknowledged homoerotic desire for Romeo. Jonathan Goldberg examined the sexuality of Mercutio and Romeo utilising "
queer theory" in
Queering the Renaissance, comparing their friendship with sexual love. Mercutio, in friendly conversation, mentions Romeo's
phallus, suggesting traces of
homoeroticism.
An example is his joking wish "To raise a spirit in his mistress'
circle ... letting it there stand / Till she had laid it and conjured it
down."
Romeo's homoeroticism can also be found in his attitude to Rosaline, a
woman who is distant and unavailable and brings no hope of offspring. As
Benvolio argues, she is best replaced by someone who will reciprocate.
Shakespeare's
procreation sonnets
describe another young man who, like Romeo, is having trouble creating
offspring and who may be seen as being a homosexual. Goldberg believes
that Shakespeare may have used Rosaline as a way to express homosexual
problems of procreation in an acceptable way. In this view, when Juliet
says "...that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as
sweet", she may be raising the question of whether there is any difference between the beauty of a man and the beauty of a woman.
The Balcony Scene
The balcony scene was introduced by Da Porto in 1524. He had Romeo
walk frequently by her house, "sometimes climbing to her chamber window"
and wrote "It happened one night, as love ordained, when the moon shone
unusually bright, that whilst Romeo was climbing the balcony, the young
lady ... opened the window, and looking out saw him".
After this they have a conversation in which they declare eternal love
to each other. A few decades later, Bandello greatly expanded this
scene, diverging from the familiar one: Julia has her nurse deliver a
letter asking Romeo to come to her window with a rope ladder, and he
climbs the balcony with the help of his servant, Julia and the nurse
(the servants discreetly withdraw after this).
Nevertheless, in October 2014, Lois Leveen speculated in
The Atlantic that the original Shakespeare play did not contain a balcony. The word,
balcone, did not exist in the English language until two years after Shakespeare's death.
The balcony was certainly used in
Thomas Otway's 1679 play,
The History and Fall of Caius Marius, which had borrowed much of its story from
Romeo and Juliet
and placed the two lovers in a balcony reciting a speech similar to
that between Romeo and Juliet. Leveen suggested that during the 18th
century,
David Garrick chose to use a balcony in his adaptation and revival of
Romeo and Juliet and modern adaptations have continued this tradition.
Legacy
Shakespeare's day
Romeo and Juliet ranks with
Hamlet as one of Shakespeare's most performed plays. Its many adaptations have made it one of his most enduring and famous stories.
Even in Shakespeare's lifetime it was extremely popular. Scholar Gary
Taylor measures it as the sixth most popular of Shakespeare's plays, in
the period after the death of
Christopher Marlowe and
Thomas Kyd but before the ascendancy of
Ben Jonson during which Shakespeare was London's dominant playwright.
The date of the first performance is unknown. The First Quarto, printed
in 1597, says that "it hath been often (and with great applause) plaid
publiquely", setting the first performance before that date. The
Lord Chamberlain's Men were certainly the first to perform it. Besides their strong connections with Shakespeare, the
Second Quarto actually names one of its actors,
Will Kemp, instead of Peter in a line in Act five.
Richard Burbage was probably the first Romeo, being the company's actor, and Master Robert Goffe (a boy) the first Juliet. The premiere is likely to have been at "
The Theatre", with other early productions at "
The Curtain".
Romeo and Juliet
is one of the first Shakespearean plays to have been performed outside
England: a shortened and simplified version was performed in
Nördlingen in 1604.
Restoration and 18th-century theatre
All theatres were closed down by the
puritan government on September 6, 1642. Upon the
restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the
King's Company and the
Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them.
Sir
William Davenant of the Duke's Company staged a 1662 adaptation in which
Henry Harris played Romeo,
Thomas Betterton Mercutio, and Betterton's wife
Mary Saunderson Juliet: she was probably the first woman to play the role professionally.
Another version closely followed Davenant's adaptation and was also
regularly performed by the Duke's Company. This was a tragicomedy by
James Howard, in which the two lovers survive.
Thomas Otway's
The History and Fall of Caius Marius,
one of the more extreme of the Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare,
debuted in 1680. The scene is shifted from Renaissance Verona to
ancient Rome;
Romeo is Marius, Juliet is Lavinia, the feud is between patricians and
plebeians; Juliet/Lavinia wakes from her potion before Romeo/Marius
dies. Otway's version was a hit, and was acted for the next seventy
years. His innovation in the closing scene was even more enduring, and was used in adaptations throughout the next 200 years:
Theophilus Cibber's adaptation of 1744, and
David Garrick's of 1748 both used variations on it. These versions also eliminated elements deemed inappropriate at the
time. For example, Garrick's version transferred all language describing
Rosaline to Juliet, to heighten the idea of faithfulness and downplay
the love-at-first-sight theme. In 1750 a "Battle of the Romeos" began, with
Spranger Barry and
Susannah Maria Arne (Mrs. Theophilus Cibber) at
Covent Garden versus
David Garrick and
George Anne Bellamy at
Drury Lane.
The earliest known production in North America was an amateur one: on
23 March 1730, a physician named Joachimus Bertrand placed an
advertisement in the
Gazette newspaper in New York, promoting a production in which he would play the apothecary. The first professional performances of the play in North America were those of the
Hallam Company.
19th-century theatre
The American Cushman sisters,
Charlotte and
Susan, as Romeo and Juliet in 1846
Garrick's altered version of the play was very popular, and ran for nearly a century. Not until 1845 did Shakespeare's original return to the stage in the United States with the sisters
Susan and
Charlotte Cushman as Juliet and Romeo, respectively, and then in 1847 in Britain with
Samuel Phelps at
Sadler's Wells Theatre.
Cushman adhered to Shakespeare's version, beginning a string of
eighty-four performances. Her portrayal of Romeo was considered genius
by many.
The Times
wrote: "For a long time Romeo has been a convention. Miss Cushman's
Romeo is a creative, a living, breathing, animated, ardent human being."
Queen Victoria wrote in her journal that "no-one would ever have imagined she was a woman".
Cushman's success broke the Garrick tradition and paved the way for later performances to return to the original storyline.
Professional performances of Shakespeare in the mid-19th century had two particular features: firstly, they were generally
star vehicles,
with supporting roles cut or marginalised to give greater prominence to
the central characters. Secondly, they were "pictorial", placing the
action on spectacular and elaborate sets (requiring lengthy pauses for
scene changes) and with the frequent use of
tableaux.
Henry Irving's 1882 production at the
Lyceum Theatre (with himself as Romeo and
Ellen Terry as Juliet) is considered an archetype of the pictorial style. In 1895, Sir
Johnston Forbes-Robertson
took over from Irving, and laid the groundwork for a more natural
portrayal of Shakespeare that remains popular today. Forbes-Robertson
avoided the showiness of Irving and instead portrayed a down-to-earth
Romeo, expressing the poetic dialogue as realistic prose and avoiding
melodramatic flourish.
American actors began to rival their British counterparts.
Edwin Booth (brother to
John Wilkes Booth) and Mary McVicker (soon to be Edwin's wife) opened as Romeo and Juliet at the sumptuous
Booth's Theatre (with its European-style
stage machinery,
and an air conditioning system unique in New York) on 3 February 1869.
Some reports said it was one of the most elaborate productions of
Romeo and Juliet ever seen in America; it was certainly the most popular, running for over six weeks and earning over $60,000 (equal to about $1,067,000 today).
The programme noted that: "The tragedy will be produced in strict
accordance with historical propriety, in every respect, following
closely the text of Shakespeare."
The first professional performance of the play in Japan may have been
George Crichton Miln's company's production, which toured to
Yokohama in 1890. Throughout the 19th century,
Romeo and Juliet
had been Shakespeare's most popular play, measured by the number of
professional performances. In the 20th century it would become the
second most popular, behind
Hamlet.
20th-century theatre
In 1933, the play was revived by actress
Katharine Cornell and her director husband
Guthrie McClintic and was taken on a seven-month nationwide tour throughout the United States. It starred
Orson Welles,
Brian Aherne and
Basil Rathbone.
The production was a modest success, and so upon the return to New
York, Cornell and McClintic revised it and for the first time, the play
was presented with almost all the scenes intact, including the Prologue.
The new production opened in December 1934 with
Ralph Richardson as Mercutio and
Maurice Evans
as Romeo. Critics wrote that Cornell was "the finest Juliet of her
time", "endlessly haunting", and "the most lovely and enchanting Juliet
our present-day theatre has seen".
John Gielgud, who was among the more famous 20th-century actors to play Romeo, Friar Laurence and Mercutio on stage
John Gielgud's
New Theatre production in 1935 featured Gielgud and
Laurence Olivier as Romeo and Mercutio, exchanging roles six weeks into the run, with
Peggy Ashcroft as Juliet.
Gielgud used a scholarly combination of Q1 and Q2 texts, and organised
the set and costumes to match as closely as possible to the
Elizabethan period. His efforts were a huge success at the box office, and set the stage for increased
historical realism in later productions.
Olivier later compared his performance and Gielgud's: "John, all
spiritual, all spirituality, all beauty, all abstract things; and myself
as all earth, blood, humanity ... I've always felt that John missed the
lower half and that made me go for the other ... But whatever it was,
when I was playing Romeo I was carrying a torch, I was trying to sell
realism in Shakespeare."
Peter Brook's 1947 version was the beginning of a different style of
Romeo and Juliet
performances. Brook was less concerned with realism, and more concerned
with translating the play into a form that could communicate with the
modern world. He argued, "A production is only correct at the moment of
its correctness, and only good at the moment of its success." Brook excluded the final reconciliation of the families from his performance text.
Throughout the century, audiences, influenced by the cinema, became
less willing to accept actors distinctly older than the teenage
characters they were playing. A significant example of more youthful casting was in
Franco Zeffirelli's
Old Vic production in 1960, with
John Stride and
Judi Dench, which would serve as the basis for his
1968 film.
Zeffirelli borrowed from Brook's ideas, altogether removing around a
third of the play's text to make it more accessible. In an interview
with
The Times, he stated that the play's "twin themes of love
and the total breakdown of understanding between two generations" had
contemporary relevance.
Recent performances often set the play in the contemporary world. For example, in 1986 the
Royal Shakespeare Company set the play in modern
Verona. Switchblades replaced swords, feasts and balls became drug-laden rock parties, and Romeo committed suicide by
hypodermic needle. In 1997, the
Folger Shakespeare Theatre
produced a version set in a typical suburban world. Romeo sneaks into
the Capulet barbecue to meet Juliet, and Juliet discovers Tybalt's death
while in class at school.
The play is sometimes given a historical setting, enabling audiences
to reflect on the underlying conflicts. For example, adaptations have
been set in the midst of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the
apartheid era in South Africa, and in the aftermath of the
Pueblo Revolt. Similarly,
Peter Ustinov's 1956 comic adaptation,
Romanoff and Juliet, is set in a fictional mid-European country in the depths of the
Cold War. A mock-Victorian revisionist version of
Romeo and Juliet's
final scene (with a happy ending, Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio and Paris
restored to life, and Benvolio revealing that he is Paris's love,
Benvolia, in disguise) forms part of the 1980 stage-play
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
Shakespeare’s R&J, by Joe Calarco, spins the classic in a modern tale of gay teenage awakening. A recent comedic musical adaptation was
The Second City's
The Second City's Romeo and Juliet Musical: The People vs. Friar Laurence, the Man Who Killed Romeo and Juliet, set in modern times.
In the 19th and 20th century,
Romeo and Juliet has often been the choice of Shakespeare plays to open a classical theatre company, beginning with
Edwin Booth's inaugural production of that play in his theatre in 1869, the newly reformed company of the
Old Vic in 1929 with
John Gielgud,
Martita Hunt and
Margaret Webster, as well as the
Riverside Shakespeare Company in its founding production in New York City in 1977, which used the 1968 film of
Franco Zeffirelli's production as its inspiration.
In 2013,
Romeo and Juliet ran on Broadway at
Richard Rodgers Theatre from September 19 to December 8 for 93 regular performances after 27 previews starting on August 24 with
Orlando Bloom and
Condola Rashad in the starring roles.
Ballet
The best-known ballet version is
Prokofiev's
Romeo and Juliet. Originally commissioned by the
Kirov Ballet,
it was rejected by them when Prokofiev attempted a happy ending, and
was rejected again for the experimental nature of its music. It has
subsequently attained an "immense" reputation, and has been
choreographed by
John Cranko (1962) and
Kenneth MacMillan (1965) among others.
In 1977,
Michael Smuin's production of one of the play's most dramatic and impassioned dance interpretations was debuted in its entirety by
San Francisco Ballet. This production was the first full-length ballet to be broadcast by the
PBS series "
Great Performances: Dance in America"; it aired in 1978.
Music
"Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet, she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said Julie, baby, you're my flame
Thou givest fever ..."
—Peggy Lee's rendition of "Fever".
At least 27 operas have been based on Romeo and Juliet. The earliest,
Romeo und Julie in 1776, a
Singspiel by
Georg Benda,
omits much of the action of the play and most of its characters, and
has a happy ending. It is occasionally revived. The best-known is
Gounod's 1867
Roméo et Juliette (libretto by
Jules Barbier and
Michel Carré), a critical triumph when first performed and frequently revived today.
Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi
is also revived from time to time, but has sometimes been judged
unfavourably because of its perceived liberties with Shakespeare;
however, Bellini and his librettist,
Felice Romani, worked from Italian sources—principally Romani's libretto for
Giulietta e Romeo by
Nicola Vaccai—rather than directly adapting Shakespeare's play. Among later operas there is
Heinrich Sutermeister's 1940 work
Romeo und Julia.
Roméo et Juliette by
Berlioz is a "symphonie dramatique", a large-scale work in three parts for mixed voices, chorus and orchestra, which premiered in 1839.
Tchaikovsky's
Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture (1869, revised 1870 and 1880) is a 15-minute
symphonic poem, containing the famous melody known as the "love theme". Tchaikovsky's device of repeating the same musical theme at the ball, in the balcony scene, in Juliet's bedroom and in the tomb has been used by subsequent directors: for example
Nino Rota's love theme is used in a similar way in the 1968 film of the play, as is
Des'ree's
Kissing You in the 1996 film. Other classical composers influenced by the play include
Henry Hugh Pearson (
Romeo and Juliet, overture for orchestra, Op. 86),
Svendsen (
Romeo og Julie, 1876),
Delius (
A Village Romeo and Juliet, 1899–1901),
Stenhammar (
Romeo och Julia, 1922), and
Kabalevsky (
Incidental Music to Romeo and Juliet, Op. 56, 1956).
The play influenced several
jazz works, including
Peggy Lee's "
Fever".
Duke Ellington's
Such Sweet Thunder contains a piece entitled "The Star-Crossed Lovers"
in which the pair are represented by tenor and alto saxophones: critics
noted that Juliet's sax dominates the piece, rather than offering an
image of equality. The play has frequently influenced
popular music, including works by
The Supremes,
Bruce Springsteen,
Tom Waits,
Lou Reed, and
Taylor Swift. The most famous such track is
Dire Straits' "
Romeo and Juliet".
The most famous musical theatre adaptation is
West Side Story with music by
Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by
Stephen Sondheim.
It débuted on Broadway in 1957 and in the West End in 1958, and became a
popular film in 1961. This version updated the setting to
mid-20th-century New York City, and the warring families to ethnic
gangs. Other musical adaptations include
Terrence Mann's 1999 rock musical
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, co-written with Jerome Korman,
[163] Gérard Presgurvic's 2001
Roméo et Juliette, de la Haine à l'Amour and
Riccardo Cocciante's 2007
Giulietta & Romeo.
Literature and art
Romeo and Juliet had a profound influence on subsequent literature. Before then, romance had not even been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.
In Harold Bloom's words, Shakespeare "invented the formula that the
sexual becomes the erotic when crossed by the shadow of death".
Of Shakespeare's works,
Romeo and Juliet
has generated the most—and the most varied—adaptations, including prose
and verse narratives, drama, opera, orchestral and choral music,
ballet, film, television and painting. The word "Romeo" has even become synonymous with "male lover" in English.
Romeo and Juliet was parodied in Shakespeare's own lifetime:
Henry Porter's
Two Angry Women of Abingdon (1598) and
Thomas Dekker's
Blurt, Master Constable (1607) both contain balcony scenes in which a virginal heroine engages in bawdy wordplay. The play directly influenced later
literary works. For example, the preparations for a performance form a major plot arc in
Charles Dickens'
Nicholas Nickleby.
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare's most-illustrated works. The first known illustration was a woodcut of the tomb scene,thought to be by Elisha Kirkall, which appeared in
Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition of Shakespeare's plays. Five paintings of the play were commissioned for the
Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in the late 18th century, one representing each of the five acts of the play.
The 19th century fashion for "pictorial" performances led to directors
drawing on paintings for their inspiration, which in turn influenced
painters to depict actors and scenes from the theatre. In the 20th century, the play's most iconic visual images have derived from its popular film versions.
In 2014, Simon & Schuster will publish
Juliet's Nurse, a novel by historian and former college professor
Lois M. Leveen
imagining the fourteen years leading up to the events in the play from
the point of view of the nurse. The nurse has the third largest number
of lines in the original play; only the eponymous characters have more
lines.
Screen
Romeo and Juliet may be the most-filmed play of all time. The most notable theatrical releases were
George Cukor's multi-
Oscar-nominated
1936 production,
Franco Zeffirelli's
1968 version, and
Baz Luhrmann's 1996 MTV-inspired
Romeo + Juliet. The latter two were both, in their time, the highest-grossing Shakespeare film ever.
Romeo and Juliet was first filmed in the silent era, by
Georges Méliès, although his film is now lost. The play was first heard on film in
The Hollywood Revue of 1929, in which
John Gilbert recited the balcony scene opposite
Norma Shearer.
Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet, in the 1936 MGM film directed by
George Cukor.
Shearer and
Leslie Howard, with a combined age over 75, played the teenage lovers in
George Cukor's
MGM 1936 film version.
Neither critics nor the public responded enthusiastically. Cinemagoers
considered the film too "arty", staying away as they had from Warner's
A Midsummer Night Dream a year before: leading to Hollywood abandoning the Bard for over a decade.
Renato Castellani won the
Grand Prix at the
Venice Film Festival for his
1954 film of Romeo and Juliet. His Romeo,
Laurence Harvey, was already an experienced screen actor.
By contrast, Susan Shentall, as Juliet, was a secretarial student who
was discovered by the director in a London pub, and was cast for her
"pale sweet skin and honey-blonde hair".
Stephen Orgel describes
Franco Zeffirelli's
1968 Romeo and Juliet
as being "full of beautiful young people, and the camera, and the lush
technicolour, make the most of their sexual energy and good looks".
Zeffirelli's teenage leads,
Leonard Whiting and
Olivia Hussey, had virtually no previous acting experience, but performed capably and with great maturity. Zeffirelli has been particularly praised, for his presentation of the duel scene as bravado getting out-of-control. The film courted controversy by including a nude wedding-night scene while Olivia Hussey was only fifteen.
Baz Luhrmann's 1996
Romeo + Juliet and its
accompanying soundtrack successfully targeted the "
MTV Generation": a young audience of similar age to the story's characters.
Far darker than Zeffirelli's version, the film is set in the "crass,
violent and superficial society" of Verona Beach and Sycamore Grove.
Leonardo DiCaprio was Romeo and
Claire Danes was Juliet.
The play has been widely adapted for TV and film. In 1960,
Peter Ustinov's
cold-war stage parody,
Romanoff and Juliet was filmed.
The 1961 film of
West Side Story—set
among New York gangs–featured the Jets as white youths, equivalent to
Shakespeare's Montagues, while the Sharks, equivalent to the Capulets,
are Puerto Rican. The 1994 film
The Punk uses both the rough plot outline of
Romeo and Juliet and names many of the characters in ways that reflect the characters in the play. In 2006, Disney's
High School Musical made use of
Romeo and Juliet's plot, placing the two young lovers in rival high school cliques instead of feuding families. Film-makers have frequently featured characters performing scenes from
Romeo and Juliet. The
conceit of dramatising Shakespeare writing
Romeo and Juliet has been used several times, including
John Madden's 1998
Shakespeare in Love, in which Shakespeare writes the play against the backdrop of his own doomed love affair. An
anime series produced by
Gonzo and
SKY Perfect Well Think, called
Romeo x Juliet, was made in 2007 and the
2013 version is the latest English-language film based on the play. In 2013,
Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed the Bollywood film
Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela, a contemporary version of the play which starred
Ranveer Singh and
Deepika Padukone in leading roles. The film was a commercial and critical success. In February 2014,
BroadwayHD released a filmed version of the
2013 Broadway Revival of
Romeo and Juliet. The production starred
Orlando Bloom and
Condola Rashad.
[201] The film was released internationally in April 2014.
Modern social media and virtual world productions
In April and May 2010 the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Mudlark
Production Company presented a version of the play, entitled
Such Tweet Sorrow,
as an improvised, real-time series of tweets on Twitter. The production
used RSC actors who engaged with the audience as well each other,
performing not from a traditional script but a "Grid" developed by the
Mudlark production team and writers Tim Wright and Bethan Marlow. The
performers also make use of other media sites such as YouTube for
pictures and video.
Scene by scene
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Title page of the
Second Quarto of
Romeo and Juliet published in 1599
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Act I scene 1: Quarrel between Capulets and Montagues
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Act I scene 5: Romeo's first interview with Juliet
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Act II scene 5: Juliet intreats her nurse
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Act III scene 5: Romeo takes leave of Juliet
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Act IV scene 5: Juliet's fake death
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Act IV scene 5: Another depiction
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Act V scene 3: Juliet awakes to find Romeo dead
