Romeo and Juliet

The star-crossed lovers of Verona, whose feuding families destroy what their children try to build.

Specifications & Metrics

author

William Shakespeare

type

Tragedy

era

Elizabethan (c. 1594–1596)

language

Early Modern English

setting

Verona and Mantua, Italy

source text

Arthur Brooke's verse romance via Bandello and Boaistuau

acts

5 acts

Relative Scale in Plays

Core Principles & Analysis

• Written in the mid-1590s from Arthur Brooke's 1562 poem, itself a translation of an Italian novella.
• The play compresses its tragic action into four or five days.
• Its balcony scene is among the most staged moments in world drama.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Romeo and Juliet