Romeo and Juliet

Teacher's Notes: This task is about exploring the sources of a Shakespearean play. It builds on student knowledge of the concept of appropriation and is a useful task to begin a close study of Romeo and Juliet or to enhance a study of Shakespeare in general. The task works well as a team task where each student is allocated one link to research and then joins other students to answer the questions.

Most teenagers are familiar with Shakespeare's play The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet through Baz Lurhmann's highly entertaining film. The plot and characters of the play are not the sole creation of Shakespeare. In this task you will read about the original story and the changes he made to create his play. Answer the questions that follow which guide you to find important information about the sources of Romeo and Juliet.

The main source is a 1562 poem by Arthur Brooke, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet,

Other sources include:

the popular tale of Romeo and Juliet from a collection by William Painter, entitled The Palace of Pleasure, which was written sometime before 1580.
the three sources on which Brooke's poem and Painter's story were based

Giulietta e Romeo, a novella by the Italian author Matteo Bandello, written in 1554

a story in a collection called Il Novellio, by the widely-popular fifteenth-century writer Masuccio Salernitano

Historia Novellamente Ritrovata di Due Nobili Amanti or A Story Newly Found of two Noble Lovers, written by Luigi Da Porto and published in 1530.

Use the links below to answer the following questions.

How does Shakespeare change the time schedule of the lover's story for his play?
Why does Shakespeare change Juliet's age to 13?
Where does the idea of the sleeping potion that mimics death, used by Juliet to avoid marrying Paris, come from?
Which version of the old story of two doomed lovers most closely parallels the action of Shakespeare's play?
List three events from the original story that Shakespeare includes in his play.
List three things he doesn't include.
Which of the main characters is mostly an original invention by Shakespeare? Can you suggest any reasons, from your knowledge of the play, why Shakespeare needed to create this character?
In what ways did Shakespeare adapt the well known speech by Romeo where he says that 'O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!' (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 51-60) from Gough's poem "Ecomiums on the Beauty of his Mistress"?

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