On the eve of her marriage to Count Paris, Juliet takes the drug and is declared dead. ![]() Romeo was to be informed of the plan via a messenger, who doesn't reach him in time. The plan they come up with is that Juliet would consume a drug that would take her into a coma for nearly two days. Juliet's grief is worsened when Lord Capulet makes plans for her wedding with Count Paris. When Mercutio is wounded in the duel, Romeo shoots Tybalt dead and is exiled for the latter's death. However, because of Juliet, Romeo refuses to fight him and calls on the ire of Mercutio, who accepts the duel instead of Romeo. Tybalt, Juliet's cousin challenges Romeo to a duel on discovering that he had sneaked into the ball. They seek the support of Friar Laurence, who longs for a reconciliation between the two families and are secretly married. Romeo discloses his identity to her on being 'encouraged in love'. Romeo meets and falls head-over-heels in love with Juliet. The estranged meeting between Romeo and Juliet takes place at the ball arranged for Count Paris to meet Juliet. Meanwhile, after the brawl, Benvolio learns about Romeo's lost-love Rosaline, one of Lord Capulet's nieces. When the Prince of Verona announces that any further feud would result in punishment, Count Paris of the ruling house expresses his desire to marry Juliet, from the House of Capulet, who is only thirteen. The story commences with a street brawl fired by the feud between the Montague and Capulet families. The Ruling House, the House of Capulet from where Juliet hails and that of Montague, the male protagonist's family. West Side Story may not be written in iambic pentameter, but its passion and sincerity get to the heart of Romeo and Juliet better than any other adaptation.The story revolves around three families from Verona. And while the young lovers are both sufficiently charming, it's George Chakiris' Bernardo (the Tybalt character) and Rita Moreno's Anita (the Nurse) who steal the show in Oscar-winning performances buoyed by some killer dancing. While nobody speaks a word of Shakespeare, the movie has got the next best thing in Stephen Sondheim, who got one of his first major gigs writing the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's songs. Fair Verona becomes Manhattan in the 1950s, where rival gangs-the Jets and the Sharks-are embroiled in a bitter turf war, and former Jet Tony (Richard Beymer) romances the Sharks' leader's sister Maria ( Natalie Wood) from the bottom of a fire escape. ![]() ![]() It speaks to the brilliance of Shakespeare that when we reimagine his plays in strange new places, they work all the better-and it speaks to the perfection of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' West Side Story that it beat out all these lush Renaissance retellings for the top spot among Romeo and Juliet movies. It's not straight Shakespeare, but it's probably the most affectionate movie on this list-with a perfectly sad, sweet, and non-double-suicide ending. The script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, the latter of whom had previously reimagined Shakespeare with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, cleverly works in countless references to and devices from Shakespeare's plays, and incorporates much of the original text of Romeo and Juliet through the actors' rehearsals, which is performed as well as it is in any full-blown adaptation. When William Shakespeare ( Joseph Fiennes) has terrible writer's block and owes his theater a play, he finds his muse in the beautiful Viola de Lesseps ( Gwyneth Paltrow), a noblewoman who dreams of being onstage. John Madden's swoonily romantic Shakespeare in Love dramatizes the writing of Romeo and Juliet, rather than adapting the play itself, but intertwines the two narratives so deftly that we consider it an adaptation in its own right-and a wonderfully witty and original one at that.
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