Arthur Brooke (died 19 March 1563) was an English poet who wrote and created various works including The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), considered to be William Shakespeare's chief source for his tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1597).

Contents

• 1 Life
• 2 The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet
• 3 References
• 4 Further reading
• 5 External links

Life

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography suggests that Brooke may have been a son of Thomas Broke.

Brooke was admitted to the Inner Temple, at the request of Gorboduc's authors, Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. He may have written the masque that accompanied the play.

On 19 March 1563, Brooke died in the shipwreck that also killed Sir Thomas Finch, bound for Le Havre, besieged in the French Wars of Religion. In 1567 George Turberville published a collection of poetry en*led, Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs and Sonnets; it included An Epitaph on the Death of Master Arthur Brooke Drownde in P*ing to New Haven.

The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet

Main article: The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet

Though ostensibly a translation from the Italian of Bandello, Brooke's poem is derived from a French version by Pierre Boaistuau. The work was published by Richard Tottell.

Bernard Garter published The Tragicall and True Historie which Happened betweene Two English Lovers (1565), which imitated Brooke's work in a ballad metre. A prose version of Romeo and Juliet (1567) was printed in The Palace of Pleasure, a collection of tales edited by William Painter. Shakespeare stuck quite closely to the version by Brooke.

References

Further reading

• Munro, J. J. (1908), Brooke's ’Romeus and Juliet,’ being the original of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", London, Chatto and Windus; New York, Duffield and Company.

Attribution

:This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain::Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.

External links

• Works by or about Arthur Brooke in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Zakharov N. V. Brooke Arthur // The World of Shakespeare:: An Electronic Encyclopaedia .