Shakespeare Didn't Invent Romeo and Juliet's Story

What Happened: Shakespeare’s Literary Borrowing Shakespeare’s most famous love story has a complex literary genealogy that spans multiple countries and languages. The playwright’s primary source was Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet,” published in 1562—about 33 years before Shakespeare wrote his play around 1595. Brooke’s English poem was itself a translation of a French story by Pierre Boaistuau (1559), which was based on an Italian novella by Matteo Bandello titled “La sfortunata morte di due infelicissimi amanti” (“The Unfortunate Death of Two Unhappy Lovers”), published in 1554.