How To Chat Up a Girl - 16th Century. ( Archived) (5)

The Elizabethan period
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to Ancient Greece. Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Brooke and Painter were Shakespeare's chief sources of inspiration for Romeo and Juliet. He borrowed heavily from both, but developed minor characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris, in order to expand the plot. The play was believed written between 1591–1595, and was first published in a quarto version in 1597. This text was of poor quality, and later editions corrected it, bringing it more in line with Shakespeare's original text. - (Frosty/Yahoo Answers).

"It's all made up, so it can be set in any time you want it to be. It's loosely based on the Greek myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. It's more closely based on the Italian story of Romeus and Juliet, but Shakespeare was the one who set it in Verona, came up with the Capulets and the Montagues and most of the other minor characters.

The Capulets and the Montagues lived in different time periods in Italian history (1200s and 1400s I think), neither lived in Verona. Dante puts their names together in a verse of his Divine Comedy (There are people who think this is just a mistake on Dante's part) and that's where scholars think Shakespeare got the names from.

Soooo... like much of Shakespeare's work, it could be intended to have an intentional feeling of "timelessness." The actors would probably have been wearing modern (late 16th century) costumes."
(Mitsy-Yahoo Answers).

All great love affairs have a seed of R&J about them . My personal favourite was Cleopatra and Antony , and in reference to your first post, so they too had that 'spark' . Same with Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby . They can all be modernised with little or no change , and that is the lesson I take from that , love is never changing , it just is ......