IN WEEKLY VOLUMES, price 3d.; or in Cloth, 6d. Edited by HENRY MORLEY, LL.D. 111. The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Oct., 1667, 112. An Apology of the Church of England 113. London in 1781 .. HESTHER LYNCH PIOZZI. WM. SHAKESPEARE. CHARLES JAMES FOX. DON MANOEL GONZALES SIR JOHN MALCOLM. 114. Much Ado about Nothing WM. SHAKESPEARE. 120. The Diary of Samuel Pepys (March to Nov., 1668). 121. Areopagitica, &c. .. JOHN MILTON. 122. The Victories of Love, and other Poems COVENTRY PATMORE. 123. Essays on Goethe.. 124. Richard II. 125. Crito and Phædo.. 126. The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Nov. 1668, to end). 127. The Old English Baron 146. Lives of Nicias, Crassus, Aratus, &c... PLUTARCH. **For List of the First and Second Years' Volumes of CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY see advertisement pages in this Book. INTRODUCTION. Romeo and Juliet was, before Shakespeare's time, one of the most popular of love stories. In 1562-two years before the birth of Shakespeare-Arthur Brooke published a poem on the "Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, containing a rare example of love constancie; with the subtill counsels and practices of an old Fryer, and their ill-event." In the preface to his poem, Arthur Brooke spoke of a previously existing play. "Though," he says, "I saw the same argument lately set forth on the stage with more commendation than I can look for (being there much better set forth than I have, or can do), yet the same matter, penned as it is, may serve the like good effect." Neither of the play so referred to, nor of any other play upon Romeo and Juliet, before Shakespeare's, has any copy been preserved. The tale of Juliet was first told by an Italian, Luigi da Porto, of Vicenza, who died in 1529, six years before the printing of it—at Venice, in 1535-as "The Story of Two Noble Lovers, with their piteous death, which happened in the city of Verona in the time of the Signor Bartolomeo Scala." Luigi da Porto said that he had it at the baths of Caldera from a talkative archer of Verona, Captain Alexander Peregrino, a man fifty years old. But he might havo got the suggestion from a tale of Sienna, clearly the same, the thirty-third of the "Novellino" of Masuccio di Salerno, published in 1476. In 1554 the story was printed again at Lucca, as re-told by Bandello. It was soon afterwards told again in French, with variations, by Boisteau, from whose novel it was shaped into English verse, with further |