Is Romeo and Juliet the first book written by Shakespeare?

Answer 1

Not at all. A novel is a long story, told by a narrator who is sometimes first person ("I walked down the street thinking of that night in Sacramento") and sometimes third person ("He walked down the street looking thoughtful") and sometimes by a third person narrator who knows things about others an ordinary person would not know, sometimes called an omniscient third person narrator ("He walked down the street thinking of that night in Sacramento"). Novels generally involve multiple plot lines and a series of incidents, unlike short stories which have only one plot line and incident. When published, novels usually run to more than 150 pages, and can sometimes be six times that length.

Plays are a series of instructions to actors in what to do and say in order to act out a story. Instead of being read, as a novel is, the story is meant to be seen and heard. Plays are much more difficult than novels to understand when you read them because you have to imagine what they would look like on a stage in order to visualize them.

Playwrights do not spend as much time on physical descriptions of things as novel-writers do. To a great extent, what things and people in a play are going to look like will depend on the director more than the playwright. Playwrights do not also spend a lot of time telling you what people are thinking unless it has an effect on what they are doing or saying. That is because the audience cannot see actors think, just what they say and do.

Romeo and Juliet is a play, not a novel. It is comprised almost entirely of things for actors to say while they are acting out the story, with just enough stage directions to make clear what is going on. For example, in a novel, the lovers' first kiss would be an occasion for purple prose describing how Juliet's heart beat in anticipation of the touch of Romeo's lips, and how the torchlight brought out the highlights in her auburn hair, and so on. In a play like Romeo and Juliet, this is what you get:

Romeo: Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.

(Kissing her.)

The rest is up to your imagination, unless you are watching it.

Answer 2

No, "Romeo and Juliet" is not the first book written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written around 1595-1597, well into his career as a playwright and poet. Shakespeare's earlier works include plays like "The Taming of the Shrew" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Answer 3

Technically, Romeo and Juliet is a romantic tragedy written by William Shakespeare.

It''s a great play, and the plot line is terrific. It may be a bit hard to follow, however, since it was written in the late 1500's and in play form, and in poetry, so the wording can be a bit strange. Most copies of the play have footnotes to explain the difficult bits, but it is easy enough to follow even if you ignore the difficult lines.

There is also a book called Scribbler of Dreams, which is like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet!

Answer 4

Since there have been a huge number of movies called Romeo and Juliet, some of which use Shakespeare's words and some of which make up their own, some of which follow Shakespeare's plot closely and others which change it completely, talking about "the movie" of Romeo and Juliet makes no sense at all. Are you perhaps talking about the 1968 movie directed by Zeffirelli? or the 1996 movie directed by Luhrmann? or the 1936 movie starring Norma Shearer or the 2014 one with Orlando Bloom or the 1954 one with Lawrence Harvey or the very pretty 2013 movie or the all-black 2015 one? And those are just feature films and do not include Made-for-TV Movies. And then, are you comparing the screenplay of one of these films to the one of the published versions of the script written by Shakespeare? (If so, I am impressed that you have the screenplay of any feature film!) Or are you trying to compare the performance and production values of one of these films to the performance and production of a stage play you have seen? In which case, how is Answers supposed to guess which stage performance you may have seen? Or then again, perhaps you are supposed to compare the advantages and disadvantages of stage plays and films when compare with each other. Well, every performance of a stage play is different from the last one, and the actors can react to and interact with the audience in real life and in real time. This can be good or bad, but is always interesting and forces you as an audience member to behave yourself and to pay attention. A film on the other hand can give you interesting views of things with different camera angles, crosscutting, closeups and so on, and the actors can have multiple takes on the same scene, so their mistakes or less effective performances get edited out. But the result is highly artificial and clearly distanced from the viewer, no matter how big his TV screen may be. The film cannot react to the viewer. It is exactly the same every time.

Answer 5

NO! It is a play written by William Shakespeare.

Answer 6

No, Romeo and Juliet is not the first book written by Shakespeare. And Romeo and Juliet is not a book, it is a play, by the way.

Answer 7

yes its a parody of shakesphere's romeo and juliet, it takes place in modern day nyc.

Answer 8

Is the Pope Catholic? Romeo and Juliet is the quintessential love story.

Answer 9

Yes, "The Romeo and Juliet " a fun mystery/ love story chapter book full of surprises.

Answer 10

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