Note 55a — V.—EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS

The story, which has been traced back to the Greek romance Anthia and Abrocomas by Xenophon Ephesius, a writer of the second century, seems to have been first told in modern Europe about 1470 by Masuccio in his Novellino (No. xxxiii.: cf. Mr. Waters’s translation, ii. 155-65). It was adapted from Masuccio by Luigi da Porto in his novel, La Giulietta, 1535, and by Bandello in his Novelle, 1554, pt. ii., No. ix. Bandello’s version became classical; it was translated in the Histoires Tragiques of Françoisde Belleforest (Paris, 1559) by Pierre Boaistuau de Launay, an occasional collaborator with Belleforest. At the same time as Shakespeare was writing Romeo and Juliet, Lope de Vega was dramatising the tale in his Spanish play called Castelvines y Monteses (i.e. Capulets and Montagus). For an analysis of Lope’s play, which ends happily, see Variorum Shakespeare, 1821, xxi. 451-60.