Were Romeo and Juliet Real?
William Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy Romeo and Juliet first appeared in print in 1597. The play’s famous prologue presents a compelling tale about “a pair of star-crossed lovers [who] take their life” because of an “ancient grudge” between their households. It’s a captivating story of forbidden love that endures as one of the Bard’s most popular plays, inspiring countless iterations in theater and film. The story centers around the lovestruck Romeo and beautiful Juliet — two of the most famous characters in popular culture to this day. But were these young lovers based on real people?
The Capulets and Montagues May Be Based on Real Families
Though historians generally agree that Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague were fictional characters, it’s possible that their feuding houses were based on real families in Verona, Italy, where Shakespeare set his famous tragedy. Today, travelers to Verona can visit landmarks around the city that may have inspired the playwright and his predecessors, including two residences billed as the Montague and Capulet homes, as well as Juliet’s tomb at the Franciscan monastery outside Verona. The veracity of these claims varies, however: While the monastery has been identified as the setting referenced in the final act of Shakespeare’s play, the tomb is a symbolic representation of the fictional Juliet’s burial place. The site now known as La Casa di Giulietta (Juliet’s House), meanwhile, is a 13th-century home that belonged to the Dal Cappello (commonly known as Cappelletti) family, who some historians believe may have inspired Shakespeare’s Capulets. In fact, the Bard borrowed the names of his “two households” from Dante’s Divine Comedy, an Italian narrative poem composed in the early 14th century. Dante’s poem is one of the earliest texts to reference the Montecchi and Cappelletti families (Italian equivalents for the names “Montagues” and “Capulets”), who were real-life rival political factions in the 13th century.
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Where Did the Characters Romeo and Juliet Come From?
Understanding Shakespeare starts with understanding that the playwright was adept at taking existing stories and spinning them into his own work for the theater. Sometimes, the Bard even borrowed character names. The titular names in Romeo and Juliet also have Italian roots, first appearing in Italian writer Luigi Da Porto’s tale Giulietta e Romeo, in his novel Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti (A Newly Discovered History of Two Noble Lovers). Published in 1531, Da Porto’s work enjoyed widespread popularity in Europe long before Shakespeare penned his play. Da Porto himself took inspiration from 15th-century Italian poet Masuccio Salernitano, who included a similar tragic love story in his 50-story collection Il Novellino, published in 1476. His story of Mariotto and Gianozza of Siena (a city around 200 miles from Verona) is considered the earliest known version of the Romeo and Juliet tale, and the source material for Da Porto’s Giulietta e Romeo. Salernitano’s version includes a secret marriage and a sleeping potion, but many other details differ from the familiar Shakespearean tale, and the lovers die by different means.
Shakespeare Didn’t Create the Star-Crossed Lovers Trope
The framework for Romeo and Juliet also didn’t originate with Shakespeare — it’s a plot that is almost certainly as old as storytelling itself. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published in 8 CE, contains the oldest surviving version of the familiar plot, but even the Roman poet was inspired by other myths. In Ovid’s tale, Pyramus and Thisbe are a pair of Babylonian lovers whose parents forbid them to marry. When the couple sneaks off to meet near a mulberry tree, Thisbe is frightened by a lion and flees, leaving her cloak behind. Pyramus finds the cloak and, believing his love has been killed, falls on his sword. When Thisbe finds his body, she then takes her own life with the same sword.
Ovid’s timeless tale of doomed lovers may have inspired other writers to take a metaphorical stab at their own tragic love stories. Shakespeare was certainly aware of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe: His play A Midsummer Night’s Dream — written around the same time as Romeo and Juliet — includes a play-within-a-play involving a group of amateur actors known as the “rude mechanicals” who perform a version of Ovid’s tale. But despite this homage, tracing the connection between Ovid and Romeo and Juliet is not a straight line. Shakespeare’s inspiration likely came from a variety of sources and motifs used by other writers, including English poet Arthur Brooke’s 1562 narrative poem “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.” That poem was itself based on the French translation of a story in Italian writer Matteo Bandello’s Novelle (Stories) and influenced by Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th-century epic poem “Troilus and Criseyde.” Shakespeare’s play incorporates changes Brooke made to Bandello’s version of the lovers’ tale, leading scholars to believe that Brooke’s poem was Shakespeare’s main source of inspiration.
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