Abstract
When he wrote Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare mainly made use of Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet(1562). Romeus and Juliet is a religious and didactic poem full of Brooke's lengthy comments on the characters while Romeo and Juliet seems more romantic and tragic. The love between the young couple appeals to the audience more and their fate gains more sympathy than the hero and the heroine in Brooke's poem do. This essay is on how Shakespeare changed Brooke's poem and what he added and omitted. The hero and the heroine and other major characters in each work will be compared in the essay. In doing so, some important differences will be mentioned between Shakespeare and Brooke.
