The Romeo and Juliet play is set in Renaissance Verona in Italy. In the Elizabethan imagination that would have presented a picture of heat, quick tempers and violence. See more on Romeo and Juliet settings
Date written: 1597
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Genre classification: Romeo & Juliet is regarded as one of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Romeo and Juliet Characters: Romeo Montague is the son of Lady Montague and Montague, the patriarch of a rich merchant family engaged in an ancient feud with another wealthy family, the Capulets. He gatecrashes a party at the Capulet mansion where he falls in love with Capulet’s daughter, Juliet. Juliet’s mother, Lady Capulet and her Nurse are other members of the Capulet household.
Friar Lawrence is a monk, who helps Romeo and Juliet to marry. Mercutio is Romeo’s friend, accidentally killed by Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, whom Romeo kills and is banished to Mantua for his crime. Paris is the young nobleman Juliet is to marry, and whom Romeo kills. Benvolio is Romeo’s cousin and friend. Balthazar, Samson, Gregory, Peter and Balthazar are servants of the two families. Friar John is the associate of Friar Lawrence who is unable to deliver a critical message which is the immediate cause of the deaths of Romeo and Juliet.
Escalus is the Prince of Verona who threatens death for anyone who breaks the peace.
Themes in Romeo and Juliet: Romeo and Juliet is the deepest, most penetrating, exploration of love that can be found in Shakespeare or, indeed, in any other writers’ plays. The play also explores the consequences of futile quarreling and social division. Read more about Romeo and Juliet themes.
A Performance History of Romeo and Juliet
Together with Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet is almost certainly the most performed of Shakespeare’s plays. The date of the first performance is unknown but it was first performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men: the Second Quarto inadvertently gives the name of one of its actors, Will Kemp. The first Romeo was probably the company’s leading actor of the time, Richard Burbage, with Master Robert Goffe as the first Juliet. It was probably the first Shakespeare play to be performed outside England, at Nordlingen in Bavaria, Germany, in 1604.
The earliest performance of the play in 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, an English group led by the Hallam Company, the first American professional theatre company. It later became the America Company.
The text was altered and performed with the alterations many times in the nineteenth century. The most famous of those productions was David Garrick’s, which ran for almost a century. The most notable actors performing the title roles were Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in 1882 and Johnson Forbes-Robertson in 1895. The American actors, Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin) and his wife, Mary McVicker, popularised the play at their Booth’s Theatre in New York. The twentieth century saw such big names as Ralph Richardson, John Geilgud, Lawrence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft and Judi Dench in the roles.
No Shakespeare play has been more regularly filmed than Romeo and Juliet. The three most notable are George Cukor’s 1936 film, which attracted an array of Oscars, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film and Baz Luhrman’s dark violent film in 1996, featuring Leonardo di Caprio and Claire Danes, which brought a mass audience of young people to the play. Notable, too, is Leonard Bernstein’s musical adaptation, West Side Story of 1961. There have been countless television productions.
Other Manifestations of Romeo and Juliet
There have been at least 25 operas based on Romeo and Juliet. The most famous of these is Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, 1867. There are several ballets, most notably, Prokofiev’s. The play has inspired jazz and pop musicians like Duke Ellington with his Such Sweet Thunder. The Supremes, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Lou Reed and Tom Waits have all been influenced by the play. Dire Straits’ ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is one of the most well known of such works in the popular music field.
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Read all of Shakespeare’s plays translated into simple, modern English
tybalt, the reason i have to love thee, doth much excuse the appertaining rage to such a greeting. Villian am i none! Therefore farewell, i see thou knowst me not.