Romeo and juliet is one of e shakespeare's most adapted plays. There have been so many adaptations, i'm going to be rather unoriginal with my favourite. The 96 film directed by bas lorman has the sort of complete sensory overload for the t v Shakespeare generation. And it's really Odysseus in a garish way - we've got skyscrapers representing the montague capulet families. They're now corporate brands with their names on these skyscrapers whirring overhead. Em elen haggart says that there are some moments where were encouraged, i thinkto back from their own experience. Some productions are able to do that.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, written in the early 1590s after a series of histories and comedies. His audience already knew the story of the feuding Capulets and Montagues in Verona and the fate of the young lovers from their rival houses, but not how Shakespeare would tell it and, with his poetry and plotting, he created a work so powerful and timeless that his play has shaped the way we talk of love, especially young love, ever since.
The image above is of Mrs Patrick Campbell ('Mrs Pat') as Juliet and Johnson Forbes-Robinson as Romeo in a scene from the 1895 production at the Lyceum Theatre, London
With
Helen Hackett
Professor of English Literature at University College London
Paul Prescott
Professor of English and Theatre at the University of California Merced
And
Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson