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'Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona': the Montagues and the Capulets have been feuding for years. Young Romeo Montague slips into a…
'Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona': the Montagues and the Capulets have been feuding for years. Young Romeo Montague slips into a Capulet feast and falls in love at first sight with Juliet, the daughter of the house, who is not yet fourteen. That night, at her balcony, they pledge themselves, and the next day Friar Laurence marries them in secret. But in a street fight Juliet's cousin Tybalt kills Romeo's friend Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished, and Juliet's father orders her to marry the Count Paris, so that the friar devises a dangerous plan.
Context and significance
Shakespeare wrote the tragedy around 1595, from an English poem by Arthur Brooke based on Italian tales, and it has inspired operas, Prokofiev's ballet and the musical West Side Story. Its prologue is a sonnet, and the lovers' first conversation forms another. Its text comes from the First Folio. The comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, written about the same time, laughs at the same kind of story in its play of Pyramus and Thisbe.
About the author
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), born in Stratford-upon-Avon, actor, playwright and shareholder of a London company, wrote about thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets.