Evidence exists of feuding families in Verona around the period that Shakespeare wrote his play.
The story of Romeo and Juliet, as we have it, is a fiction insofar as it isn’t a historical account of people and events. Certainly, evidence exists of feuding families in Verona around the period that Shakespeare wrote his play. None of these sources can confirm the existence of the specific characters who go by the names Romeo and Juliet.
Perhaps,
But the very story of Romeo and Juliet itself depends upon a tradition of tragic love stories that precedes Shakespeare by centuries. Perhaps most evident is the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with its echoes of forbidden love and tragic aftermath.
Is here that Shakespeare took this extant story and developed it into an eternal work of genius with his inimitable poetic phrasing, sensible character development, and an explanation in the basic questions of life such as love, hate, and the human urges that clash with the limitations of culture.
But a strong and long-acting story
While Romeo and Juliet is not a historical truth, it is a strong and long-acting story that nowadays continues to make the viewers take action. It is a testimony of how Shakespeare as an author took an existent tale and gave it an artistic dimension in which the edges of human emotion and the complexity of the human condition are deeply explored.
