- William Shakespeare wasn’t the first person to write about the Montagues and the Capulets. They can be found in Dante's classic poem Divine Comedy(1320).
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Romeo and Juliet is based on an Arthur Brooke poem The Tragic History of Romeo and Juliet(1562)
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The couple’s courtship was indeed a whirlwind. The whole story takes place in 24 hours
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It wasn’t until 1662 that a woman played the role of Juliet. The play was first performed in 1597. The first woman to play Juliet is thought to have been Mary Saunderson 65 years after it first opened.
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There is no balcony in Romeo and Juliet’s “balcony scene. ”The word balcony is never mentioned in Shakespeare’s play. There’s a good reason for that, too: according to Merriam-Webster, the earliest known usage of the term originally spelled balcone, didn’t occur until 1618—more than 20 years after Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. According to the play, the scene takes place at Capulet’s Orchard when “Juliet appears above at a window.”
