William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

In Shakespeare's plays he very rarely used original ideas. Most of the

plays he wrote, such as "Romeo and Juliet," were adapted from other

people's stories. Shakespeare used these ideas as basic outlines for

his plays. The story of "Romeo and Juliet" had been around for

hundreds of years before Shakespeare created his own version. The most

recent was a poem by Arthur Brooke. His version was called Romeo and

Julietta; this play was over 3000 lines long and written in rhyming

couplets.

There are lots of parts of Brooke's poem that Shakespeare has used in

his play such as the characters Mercutio, Tybalt and Paris. Although

Shakespeare's play has a lot of similarities to Arthur Brooke's poem,

Shakespeare's version also has a lot of differences. Tybalt, who is

only mentioned once in Arthur Brooke's poem, plays a very important

part in Shakespeare's where he helps keep the feud going between the

two households. Also Brooke's version takes place over months whereas

Shakespeare's only takes place over a few days, this adds greater

interest to the play because so much happens so fast. Arthur Brooke's

poem is also less interesting compared to Shakespeare's because

Shakespeare exploits the use of unusual contrasts such as action and

comedy, intimate romance and public spectacle.

In addition, Shakespeare adds a large number of new features to the

story of "Romeo and Juliet." In Brooke's poem he doesn't use must

detail or emotion in his characters whereas Shakespeare makes his

characters a good deal more entertaining, giving them interesting and

intriguing personalities.

Shakespeare also adds the fight scene in "Romeo and Juliet," which is

a very important scene in the play because Romeo loses his best

friend, Mercutio, and also kills Tybalt, his wife's cousin. This scene

is entertaining to the audience due to the large amount of action, and

the fact that it draws upon the audience's empathy towards the

characters, particularly Romeo.

Shakespeare's version uses a lot more complex ideas, such as Brooke's