Adaptation of an Adaptation of an Adaptation

Hi blog!! As I did a bit of research for this post, I realized how little I know about Shakespeare as a person, but also how little the internet knows. I briefly discussed this in my past podcast episodes when my co-hosts brought up how people even question if Shakespeare was a real person. That’s not what this post is about though. As I was saying, I did some research trying to figure out what process Shakespeare went through to produce a play so that I could compare it to the process my class is currently going through to produce an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. As I was also saying, the internet doesn’t seem to know much about these things. I’m pretty sure it’s not even clear exactly when Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet and a lot of other information about the poet and playwright is unknown.

The information I did find was pretty interesting though, so instead of talking about the steps that were taken to create Romeo and Juliet (because there doesn’t seem to be that much information on it) I’m going to talk about the other interesting things I found in my research.

I learned that Shakespeare didn’t actually come up with the story of Romeo and Juliet. It was inspired by a poem by someone named Arthur Brooke. He called it The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. That is pretty interesting to think about since in school we have been looking at Romeo and Juliet as a Classic and different movies and our own class production as adaptations. While this is true, you could also say that the Shakespeare play itself is an adaptation. The Arthur Brooke version I think is also based off of someone else’s work so the adaptation that we are creating in class could be considered an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation? As I looked at even more sources it seemed like the story of Romeo and Juliet has been well known for a very long time, from as long ago as 1530s (maybe even before) when it was appreciated by French and Italian readers, to today in 2021 where I am adapting the classic story for zoom. I don’t think Shakespeare or any other Romeo and Juliet storytellers expected that.