Romeo and Juliet Annotated Best Edition

By William Shakespeare

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud.

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In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers’ final union in death seems almost inevitable. And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: holabooks
• Release date: Nov 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9788835338017

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is arguably the most famous playwright to ever live. Born in England, he attended grammar school but did not study at a university. In the 1590s, Shakespeare worked as partner and performer at the London-based acting company, the King’s Men. His earliest plays were Henry VI and Richard III, both based on the historical figures. During his career, Shakespeare produced nearly 40 plays that reached multiple countries and cultures. Some of his most notable titles include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. His acclaimed catalog earned him the title of the world’s greatest dramatist.

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About Author

William Shakespeare was an English artist, dramatist, and on-screen character, generally viewed as the best author in the English language and the world's most noteworthy playwright. William was at the most called England's national writer. His surviving works, including coordinated efforts, comprise of somewhere in the range of 39 plays, 154 pieces, two long story ballads, and a couple of different refrains, a portion of the dubious origin. His plays have been converted into each significant living language and are performed more frequently than those of some other dramatists.

William was brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At 18 years old, he wedded Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three youngsters: Susanna and others. Shakespeare Hamnet and Judith. At some point somewhere in the range of 1585 and 1592, he started an effective vocation in London as a part-proprietor, entertainer, and author, of a playing organization, called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 around 1613, he seems to have resigned to Stratford, where he passed on three years after the fact. Scarcely any records of Shakespeare's private life endure; this has animated significant theory about such issues as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his strict convictions, and whether the works credited to him were composed by others.

Shakespeare created the greater part of his known works somewhere in the range of 1589 and 1613. His initial plays were Twins and chronicles and are viewed as probably the best work delivered in these sorts. Until around 1608, he composed for the most part disasters, among them Othello, Macbeth, King Lear and Hamlet, and all viewed as among the best works in the English language. In the last period of his life, he composed tragicomedies otherwise called sentiments and worked together with different dramatists.

A large number of Shakespeare's plays were distributed in releases of fluctuating quality and exactness in his lifetime. Nonetheless, in 1623, two individual on-screen characters and companions of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell, distributed a progressively complete book known as the First Folio, an after-death gathered release of Shakespeare's emotional works that incorporated everything except two of his plays. The volume was introduced with a ballad by Ben Jonson, where Jonson judiciously hails Shakespeare in a now-axiom as not of an age, yet forever.

All through the twentieth and 21st hundreds of years, Shakespeare's works have been constantly adjusted and rediscovered by new developments in grant and execution. His plays stay prominent and are contemplated, performed, and reinterpreted through different social and political settings around the globe.

INTRODUCTION

Romeo and Juliet is a catastrophe composed by William Shakespeare from the get-go in his profession around two youthful star-crossed sweethearts whose passings eventually accommodate their quarreling families. It was among Shakespeare's most prevalent plays during his lifetime and alongside Hamlet, is one of his most habitually performed plays. Today, the title characters are viewed as original youthful darlings.

Romeo and Juliet have a place with a convention of appalling sentiments extending back to the relic. The plot depends on an Italian story converted into the section as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in writing in the Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare builds up various supporting characters, especially Mercutio and Paris. Accepted to have been composed somewhere in the range of 1591 and 1595, the play was first distributed in a quarto form in 1597. The content of the principal quarto adaptation was of low quality, be that as it may, and later versions rectified the content to adjust all the more intimately with Shakespeare's unique.

Shakespeare's utilization of his lovely emotional structure (particularly impacts, for example, exchanging among parody and catastrophe to elevate strain, his development of minor characters, and his utilization of sub-plots to adorn the story) has been commended as an early indication of his sensational expertise. The play attributes diverse idyllic structures to various characters, now and then changing the structure as the character creates. Romeo, for instance, develops increasingly capable of the poem through the span of the play.

Dramatis Personæ

ESCALUS, Prince of Verona.

MERCUTIO, kinsman to the Prince, and friend to Romeo.

PARIS, a young Nobleman, kinsman to the Prince.

Page to Paris.

MONTAGUE, head of a Veronese family at feud with the Capulets.

LADY MONTAGUE, wife to Montague.

ROMEO, son to Montague.

BENVOLIO, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo.

ABRAM, servant to Montague.

BALTHASAR, servant to Romeo.

CAPULET, head of a Veronese family at feud with the Montagues.

LADY CAPULET, wife to Capulet.

JULIET, daughter to Capulet.

TYBALT, nephew to Lady Capulet.

CAPULET’S COUSIN, an old man.

NURSE to Juliet.

PETER, servant to Juliet’s Nurse.

SAMPSON, servant to Capulet.

GREGORY, servant to Capulet.

Servants.

FRIAR LAWRENCE, a Franciscan.

FRIAR JOHN, of the same Order.

An Apothecary.

CHORUS.

Three Musicians.

An Officer.

Citizens of Verona; several Men and Women, relations to both houses; Maskers, Guards, Watchmen and Attendants.

SCENE. During the greater part of the Play in Verona; once, in the Fifth Act, at Mantua.

THE PROLOGUE

Enter Chorus .

CHORUS.

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;

Whose misadventur’d piteous [¹] overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.

The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,

And the continuance of their parents’ rage,

Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,

Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;

The which, if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

[ Exit. ]

ACT I

SCENE I. A public place.

Enter Sampson and Gregory armed with swords and bucklers.

SAMPSON.

Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.

GREGORY.

No, for then we should be colliers.

SAMPSON.

I mean, if we be in choler, we’ll draw.

GREGORY.

Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o’ the collar.

SAMPSON.

I strike quickly, being moved.

GREGORY.

But thou art not quickly moved to strike.

SAMPSON.

A dog of the house of Montague moves me.

GREGORY.

To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand: therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn’st away.

SAMPSON.

A dog of that house shall move me to stand.

I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.

GREGORY.

That shows thee a weak slave, for the weakest goes to the wall.

SAMPSON.

True, and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall.

GREGORY.

The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.

SAMPSON.

’Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the men I will be civil with the maids, I will cut off their heads.

GREGORY.

The heads of the maids?

SAMPSON.

Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.

GREGORY.

They must take it in sense that feel it.

SAMPSON.

Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.

GREGORY.

’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor John. Draw thy tool; here comes of the house of Montagues.

Enter Abram and Balthasar .

SAMPSON.

My naked weapon is out: quarrel, I will back thee.

GREGORY.

How? Turn thy back and run?

SAMPSON.

Fear me not.

GREGORY.

No, marry; I fear thee!

SAMPSON.

Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.

GREGORY.

I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.

SAMPSON.

Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it.

ABRAM.

Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

SAMPSON.

I do bite