Was 'Romeo and Juliet' the first?

[cap'n spanky]

Was it the first story to be based on warring families and 'forbidden love'? There's been thousands of copies and VERY similar storylines featured in things from books to TV and movies... or is Romeo and Juliet a copy of something else?

[Lotus]

Actually, a poet named Arthur Brooks first brought the story of Romeus and Juliet to an English-speaking audience in a long and plodding poem that was itself not original, but rather an adaptation of adaptations that stretched across nearly a hundred years and two languages. Many of the details of Shakespeare's plot are lifted directly from Brooks's poem, including the meeting of Romeo and Juliet at the ball, their secret marriage, Romeo's fight with Tybalt, the sleeping potion, and the timing of the lover's eventual suicides. This is characteristic of Shakespeare, who often wrote plays based on earlier works. Romeo and Juliet also has references to the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is a part of Ovid's Metamorphoses, so you can see that the roots go back as long as ancient Greece. Hope this is of some help - but if theres anything else, just ask :)) Its good practice for me :)

[incitatus]

also this was nothing new. Tristan and isolde is way before this and remarkably similar. There are similar motifs in Monkey by wu cheng-en, the bible (david and abishag) and all sorts of legend cycles (persephone and hades for a start). This kind of story is as old as the hills