50 Fun Facts About Romeo and Juliet

Which Shakespeare play, also set in the lovers' city, shares its setting with Romeo and Juliet?

The Taming of the Shrew is also set in Verona; it is unknown whether Shakespeare ever visited Italy.

Which two feuding families do the lovers belong to?

Romeo is a Montague and Juliet a Capulet.

Before he meets Juliet, Romeo is lovesick over which unseen Capulet niece?

He goes to the Capulet ball hoping to see her, and never mentions her again after meeting Juliet.

Who marries Romeo and Juliet in secret, hoping to reconcile the families?

He later gives Juliet the potion that mimics death for 'two and forty hours'.

Who kills Mercutio?

Mercutio is wounded as Romeo tries to break up the fight, and dies cursing both houses.

Complete Mercutio's dying curse: 'A plague o' both your...'

Friar Laurence recounts at the end that the curse has been fulfilled.

What punishment does the Prince impose on Romeo for slaying Juliet's cousin?

He is banished under penalty of death if he ever returns; he flees to Mantua.

Whom do Juliet's parents insist she marry, triggering the potion plot?

Capulet threatens to disown her when she refuses to be Paris's 'joyful bride'.

For how long is the friar's potion supposed to keep Juliet in a deathlike sleep?

He plans to send Friar John to tell Romeo, but plague quarantine stops the message.

Why does the messenger friar fail to deliver the crucial letter to Romeo in Mantua?

Romeo instead hears from his servant Balthasar that Juliet is dead.

From whom does Romeo buy his poison?

He then kills Paris at the tomb before drinking it.

How does Juliet die?

In da Porto's earlier version she simply held her breath until she died.

The play's final couplet begins 'For never was a story of more woe...'. How does it end?

The Prince speaks the elegy over the three bodies at the tomb.

The play's prologue, spoken by a Chorus, takes which poetic form?

It introduces the 'star-cross'd lovers'; most of the play is in blank verse.

Shakespeare's main direct source was a 1562 English narrative poem by whom?

Brooke translated a French version of Bandello's Italian tale.

Which Ovid myth of lovers kept apart by feuding parents, with a false death report, is an ancestor of Romeo and Juliet?

The mechanicals perform it in A Midsummer Night's Dream, written around the same time.

Which Italian writer's 1524 version first named Romeo and Juliet and introduced Mercutio?

He may have drawn on his own thwarted love for Lucina Savorgnan after a 1511 ball in Udine.

The names Montecchi and Cappelletti appear in canto six of Purgatorio by which poet?

Dante was scolding Italy's warring factions, not telling a love story.

Which character did Bandello add to the story in 1554?

Da Porto had already supplied Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris and the nurse.

The first printed edition of the play, Q1 of 1597, is known as what?

Its garbled text is thought to be a memorial reconstruction by one or two actors.

The Nurse's 'eleven years' earthquake reference dates the play to 1591 via which quake?

Stylistic links to A Midsummer Night's Dream suggest 1594-95 instead.

Roughly how many references to time does the play contain, sustaining its illusion of speed?

Characters constantly cite days of the week and hours of the day.

Which diarist called the play 'the worst that I ever heard in my life' in 1662?

Dryden, ten years later, praised Mercutio and claimed Shakespeare had to kill him off in Act 3 'to prevent being killed by him'.

Which 18th-century actor-manager's cleaned-up version of the play held the stage for nearly a century?

Shakespeare's original text did not return to the American stage until 1845.

In 1845, which actress played Romeo opposite her own sister as Juliet?

The Times called her Romeo genius, and she ran for eighty-four performances.

In Gielgud's 1935 production, Gielgud and which actor swapped Romeo and Mercutio six weeks into the run?

Peggy Ashcroft was Juliet, and the Elizabethan staging set a fashion for historical realism.

Which character has the third-largest number of lines in the play, after the two title roles?

She was Juliet's wet nurse and had a daughter of her own, Susan, who died in infancy.

Mercutio's famous fantastical speech in Act 1 is about which fairy?

He is a kinsman of the Prince, able to mingle with both feuding families.

Scholar Molly Mahood counted at least how many puns and wordplays in the text?

Many are sexual, especially those involving Mercutio.

What was the combined age of Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard, the teenage lovers in the 1936 MGM film?

Audiences found it too 'arty', and Hollywood abandoned Shakespeare for over a decade.

Who directed the 1968 film starring teenagers Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey?

It won Oscars for cinematography and costume design and was the last Shakespeare film nominated for Best Picture.

Who spoke the prologue and epilogue of the 1968 film, uncredited?

He also dubbed the voice of the actor playing Lord Montague.

Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet is set in a fictional place called what?

Swords become guns with brand names like 'Sword' and 'Rapier', and the Prince becomes police chief Captain Prince.

Where was most of Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet actually filmed?

The Capulet mansion was Chapultepec Castle; parts were shot in Miami and Veracruz.

Which award did Leonardo DiCaprio win at the 1997 Berlin Film Festival for Romeo + Juliet?

The film grossed over $147 million on a $14.5 million budget.

In West Side Story, which gang corresponds to the Capulets?

The Sharks are recent Puerto Rican migrants; the white Jets stand in for the Montagues.

Who wrote the lyrics for West Side Story, his Broadway debut, in 1957?

Leonard Bernstein wrote the music and Jerome Robbins directed and choreographed.

How many Oscars did the 1961 film of West Side Story win?

Steven Spielberg's 2021 remake was also nominated for Best Picture.

Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet was originally rejected partly because the composer had written what?

The full ballet finally premiered not in Russia but in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in December 1938.

Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet is a 20-minute symphonic poem best known for which melody?

Nino Rota's 1968 film theme and Des'ree's 'Kissing You' were later reused across scenes in the same way.

Which French composer's 1867 opera Roméo et Juliette features the waltz song 'Je veux vivre'?

Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi drew on Italian sources rather than Shakespeare.

Taylor Swift's 'Love Story', based on the play, changes the ending to what?

She wrote it on her bedroom floor in about 20 minutes and it sold over 18 million copies.

Dire Straits' song 'Romeo and Juliet' first appeared on which 1980 album?

Mark Knopfler wrote it and later played it live with Emmylou Harris.

With which fictional noblewoman does the playwright have an affair in Shakespeare in Love (1998)?

Gwyneth Paltrow won Best Actress and the film took Best Picture.

Which 2011 animated film retold the story with garden gnomes and songs by Elton John?

James McAvoy and Emily Blunt voiced the leads; a sequel, Sherlock Gnomes, followed in 2018.

Warm Bodies (2013) reworks the story with a zombie named R and a girl named Julie. Who plays R?

It is based on Isaac Marion's 2010 novel.

Romeo Must Die (2000), starring Jet Li, transplants the feud to which US city?

It was Aaliyah's only film released in her lifetime.

A 2017 English GCSE exam question on the play drew derision for what mistake?

Ofqual called the error, sat by about 14,000 students, unacceptable.

Which 2013 Bollywood hit starring Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone is a modern take on the play?

Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed it to commercial and critical success.

Which Restoration playwright reset Romeo and Juliet in ancient Rome as The History and Fall of Caius Marius?

The feud became patricians versus plebeians, and the balcony stayed.