Education Resources

An engaging synopsis for students and teachers, created by writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz.

How do we know when Romeo and Juliet was written? And what sources and stories influenced Shakespeare when he wrote it? Performance history expert Rebecca Brown presents the evidence.

A selection of articles published in RSC programmes for productions of Romeo and Juliet:

Sweet sorrow
Half way through rehearsals for the RSC's 2008 production of Romeo and Juliet, director Neil Bartlett pauses for thought.

Love and hatred
Psychologist Dorothy Rowe examines how our strongest emotions are intertwined.

Sealed in eternity
Writer Fay Weldon investigates our enduring fascination with Shakespeare's young lovers.

Civil blood
Why are the Capulets and Montagues at war? Written by Carol Chillington Rutter, Professor of English Literature at Warwick University.

Italian connection
Why was Shakespeare fascinated with Italy? Dr Alison Shell, a Reader in English Studies at Durham University investigates the 1600 equivalent of Hollywood.

Opposites
Jonathan Bate, Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the Univerity of Warwick describes how Shakespeare emphasises the convergence of opposites in Romeo and Juliet: youth and age, day and night, poison and medicine, and of course: love and hate.

Every director will choose their own key moments in Romeo and Juliet depending on how they are interpreting the play. Here, we've selected a number of important scenes.

Performance history expert Rebecca Brown guides us through the stage history of Romeo and Juliet from the time Shakespeare wrote it to the present day.

We've selected some famous quotes from Romeo and Juliet.