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Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeareearly in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whosedeaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was amongShakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, alongwith 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 romancesstretching back to antiquity. Its plot is based on an Italian tale,translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Julietby Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasureby William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from bothbut, to expand the plot, developed supporting characters,particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been writtenbetween 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quartoversion in 1597. This text was of poor quality, and later editionscorrected it, bringing it more in line with Shakespeare'soriginal.
Published: 1597
Categorie(s): Fiction, Drama, Romance

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About Shakespeare:
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616)was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatestwriter in the English language and the world's pre-eminentdramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bardof Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several otherpoems. His plays have been translated into every major livinglanguage, and are performed more often than those of any otherplaywright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon.At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him threechildren: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer,and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men,later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired toStratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few recordsof Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has beenconsiderable speculation about such matters as his sexuality,religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him werewritten by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known workbetween 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies andhistories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication andartistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainlytragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, andMacbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the Englishlanguage. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known asromances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of hisplays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracyduring his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former theatricalcolleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of hisdramatic works that included all but two of the plays nowrecognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet andplaywright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to itspresent heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, inparticular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorianshero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George BernardShaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work wasrepeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarshipand performance. His plays remain highly popular today and areconsistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural andpolitical contexts throughout the world.