r and stage picture afforded by the setting in old Verona, it is no
wonder that to-day no mouthing of the words, no {144} tawdriness of
setting, and no wretchedness of acting can hinder the supreme appeal of
this play to audiences all over the world. The chief characters are
well contrasted by the dramatist. Romeo, affecting sadness, but in
reality merry by nature, becomes grave when the realization of love
comes upon him. Juliet, when love comes, rises gladly to meet its full
claim. She is the one who plans and dares, and Romeo the one who
listens. Contrasted with Romeo is his friend, Mercutio, gay and
daring, loving and light-hearted; contrasted with Juliet is her old
nurse, devoted, like the family cat, but unscrupulous, vain, and
worldly,--a great comic figure.

+Date+.--There is throughout the play, but chiefly in the rimed
passages in the earlier parts, a great deal of verbal conceit and
playing upon words, which mark immaturity. The use of sonnets in two
places, and the abundance of rime, point also to early work; but the
dramatic technique and the development of character equal the work of
later periods.

The First Quarto is a garbled copy taken down in the theater. It was
printed in 1597. Its title claims that "it hath been often (with great
applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon
his servants." The company in which Shakespeare acted was so called
from July, 1596, to April, 1597. The Second Quarto, "newly corrected,
augmented, and amended," appeared in 1599, and is the basis of all
later texts. Three others followed--1609, one undated, and 1637.

It is generally held that Shakespeare wrote much, perhaps all, of the
play in the early nineties, and that he revised it for production about
1597. The play is therefore a stepping-stone between the first and
second periods of his work.

+Source+.--The development of the story has been traced from Luigi da
Porto's history of _Romeo and Giulietta_ (pr. 1530 at Venice) through
Bandello, Boisteau, and Painter's _Palace of {145} Pleasure_, to Arthur
Brooke's poem _Romeus and Juliet_ (1562), and to a lost English play
which Brooke says in his address "To the Reader" he had seen on the
stage, but is now known only through a Dutch play of 1630 based upon it.

The part in which Shakespeare altered the action most notably is the
first scene, one of the most masterly expositions of a dramatic
situation ever written. The nurse is