Though William Shakespeare is the most famous author of the "Romeo and Juliet" story, he was not the first. He most likely based his play on an earlier work by the name of The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, though French and Italian iterations predate even this English version. These earlier versions were poems or lyrical tales, though the earliest form of this story may have been a simple folk-tale or even a rumor!
A number of Shakespeare's works were based on earlier novellas, poems, or folklore. Hamlet was based on a Saxon legend called Amleth, though his favorite choice for source material seems to have been an Italian writer called Matteo Bandello. In addition to the novella which inspired Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare adapted Bandello's work into Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing.
In short, Shakespeare didn't actually come up with the story of Romeo and Juliet, but he did write the most famous and fleshed-out version.
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