Romeo and Juliet. The story of Romeo and Juliet is a part of the romantic wealth which lay in vast heaps in the Italy of the fourteenth century. The facts which lay at the bottom of the drama are dated at 1303 of our period; the final form of the story was written by Shakespeare about 1590, thus granting the tale more than two hundred and eighty years for getting moulded into its final beautiful shape. Several of the forms assumed by the long line of story-tellers remain, of which assortment that by the English genius is by much the greatest in many details of the play. Verona, the scene, was a large and popular town when Virgil was farming and writing at Mantua. It was only twentyfive miles north of Virgil's home, and it is quite probable that he strolled along in its streets long in advance of the dramatic Romeo. The city was a favorite of both the Pagans and Christians. In the early part of our era the Pagans built there an amphitheatre nearly equal in size and grandeur to the Coliseum, the Christians came and added churches, a cathedral and many a marble palace. By the time the two Shakesperian lovers stood in need of any trees, blossoms, balconies and rope-ladders there was many a palace with highwalled gardens and many a shadowed walk in which a lover could escape the observation of an unsuspecting Capulet or Montague. If it took hundreds of years to rear the old walls and palaces of our world, so it consumed many years to adorn them with great gloomy forests and heavy masses of ivy. By the time Juliet had reached her fourteenth year and her father and mother and the nurse had conferred together about marrying her to a Paris as elegant as the one who had adorned many a page of Homer, the foliage on the parental estate had become dense enough to conceal the visits of an attractive rival. From the words made use of by this beautiful girl in her |