Where did shakesphere get his idea for Romeo and Juliet?

Answer 1

Shakespeare actually got the idea from the greek myth, Pyramus and Thisbee.

Basically, Pyramus and Thisbee couldn't be together because their parents forbade it. They communicated through a chink in the wall dividing them, and arranged to meet near a mullberry tree whose berries were at first white. Thisbe arrives first, sees a lioness, drops her cloak in alarm and runs away. Pyramus finds Thisbees' cloak and thinks the lion ate her. He then kills himself in grief. When Thisbee returns, she sees Pyramus dead, so she kills herself, too. Their blood changes the tree's white berries to red.

Although Shakespeare was familiar with the Pyramus and Thisby story from school, his actual source for Romeo and Juliet was Arthur Brooke's poem Romeus and Juliet, which mirrors the plot of Shakespeare's play much more closely. Brooke's poem is derived from a series of Italian stories, themselves ultimately based on Pyramus and Thisby.