<b>Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare</b>&nbsp;is a&nbsp;tragedy&nbsp;written by&nbsp;William Shakespeare&nbsp;early in his career about two young Italian&nbsp;star-crossed&nbsp;lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare&#39;s most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with&nbsp;<i>Hamlet</i>, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the&nbsp;title characters&nbsp;are regarded as&nbsp;archetypal&nbsp;young lovers.<br /><br /><i>Romeo and Juliet</i>&nbsp;belongs to a tradition of tragic&nbsp;romances&nbsp;stretching back to&nbsp;antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as&nbsp;<i>The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet</i>&nbsp;by&nbsp;Arthur Brooke&nbsp;in 1562 and retold in prose in&nbsp;<i>Palace of Pleasure</i>&nbsp;by&nbsp;William Painter&nbsp;in 1567.<br /><br />Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly&nbsp;Mercutio&nbsp;and&nbsp;Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a&nbsp;quarto&nbsp;version in 1597. The text of the first quarto version was of poor quality, however, later editions corrected the text to conform more closely with Shakespeare&#39;s original.<br /><br />Shakespeare&#39;s use of poetic&nbsp;dramatic structure&nbsp;(including effects such as switching between comedy and tragedy to heighten tension, the expansion of minor characters, and numerous sub-plots to embellish the story) has been praised as an early sign of his dramatic skill.<br /><br />The play ascribes different poetic forms to different characters, sometimes changing the form as the character develops. Romeo, for example, grows more adept at the&nbsp;sonnet&nbsp;over the course of the play.