William Shakespeare & SBP Editors 
Romeo and Juliet 

Romeo and Juliet is the world’s most famous drama of tragic young love, ending with their suicides, against the backdrop of a vicious family feud. It has been praised for its language and dramatic effect.
Shakespeare set the scene of the play in Verona, Italy. Juliet, a Capulet, and Romeo, a Montague, fall in love at a masked ball. Because the two noble families are enemies, the couple is married secretly by Friar Laurence. After Tybalt, a Capulet, kills Romeo’s friend Mercutio in a quarrel, Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished to Mantua. Juliet’s father then demands that she marry Count Paris. When Juliet goes to Friar Laurence for advice, he gives her a potion that makes a person appear to be dead. He suggests that she take it and that Romeo rescue her; she agrees. Not knowing about the Friar’s scheme, Romeo hears of Juliet’s apparent death and returns to Verona. After killing Count Paris, he finds Juliet in a burial vault. He gives her a last kiss and kills himself with poison. Juliet awakens, sees the dead Romeo, and kills herself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the 'Bard of Avon’ (or simply 'The Bard’). His surviving works consist of 37 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. Scholars believe that he died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St George’s Day. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 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 to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608. He was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare’s genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare. In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.