Though the exact date is unknown, Romeo and Juliet is thought to have been written between 1594 and 1596 Most critics and scholars believe the true date to be 1596. Do you realize Shakespeare would have only been 31 years-old when he wrote it? I have enough trouble writing emails, forget a tragedy.
The new film was released in 1996 for the 400th anniversary of the play. Shakespeare's principal source for the plot of the play was "The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet" (1562), a long narrative poem by English poet Arthur Broke. Broke based his poem on the French translation of a tale by the Italian Matteo Bandello (1485-1561).
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