SOURCE: Wells, Stanley. “The Challenges of Romeo and Juliet.” In Shakespeare Survey 49 (1996): 1-14.

In the following essay, Wells details the legacy of Romeo and Juliet, which includes productions in a variety of media as well as parodies and comic sketches.

The story of Romeo and Juliet—one of the great myths of the Western world—first appeared fully formed in an Italian version of 1530, and since then has had a vigorous afterlife, not all of it deriving from Shakespeare. It has been frequently reincarnated and recollected in a multitude of forms and media—prose narratives, verse narratives, drama, opera, orchestral and choral music, ballet, film, television and painting among them. Besides being presented seriously it has been parodied and burlesqued; there are several full-scale nineteenth-century travesties of Shakespeare's play,¹ and its balcony scene in particular has often formed the basis for comic sketches. Romeo is a type name...