Romeo and Juliet is one of a group of lyrical plays usually dated at 1594-95. The earliest date that has been proposed for first performance of Romeo and Juliet is 1591. The play might have begun in about 1591, then laid aside, and only completed a year or two later. The allusions to Daniel and Eliot indicate 1953 as the earliest possible date for Romeo and Juliet, the Bad Quatro makes 1596 the latest. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was almost certainly first performed by Shakespeare's company - the Chamberlain's Men - in or around 1596, most likely in the Burbage's Theatre (it may be then on stage in the Curtain theatre where the company performed in 1597). It has been suggested that Richard Burbage (1568-1619), the company's leading man, took the role of Romeo (he would then have been about 28) and that Juliet was taken by Master Robert Gough, or Goffe (d. 1624), who seems to have been allocated leading female roles in Shakespeare's earlier plays. The famous clown William Kemp (d. 1603) probably played the part of Peter. The text of the play is complex. It first appeared in print in the short (Bad) Quatro of 1597 with the following title-page: " AN EXCELLENT conceited Tragedie of Romeo anf Juliet, As it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely , by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his Seruants. LONDON, Printed by Iohn Danter. 1597." This text, though traditionally maligned as an "unauthoritative" memorial reconstruction of the play by actors in the company, derived from a version adapted for acting - stage directions probably record details of the first staging of the play. The text contains anticipations, recollections, transpositions, paraphrases, summaries, repetitions and omissions of words, phrases or lines correctly presented in the next edition. The First Quatro (Q1), piratical and dependent on an especially unreliable means of transmission for the text, was succeeded by a second (Good) version. This Second Quatro (Q2) appeared two years later, evidently intended to supplant the Bad Quatro. Its title page reads: " THE MOST EXCELLENT AND LAMENTABLE Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. Newly corrected, augmented, and amended: As it hath bene sundry times publiquely acted, by the right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. LONDON. Printed by Thomas Creede, for Cuthbert Burby, and are to be sold at his shop neare the Exchange. 1599." This statement means that Q2 is a replacement of the first edition, not a revision of an earlier version of the play. Q2 is one-third as long again as the first, and traditionally assumed to have been derived in large part from Shakespeare's "foul papers"or original draft of the play. All subsequent early editions - including the version that appares in the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare's plays - derive more or less directly from Q2, which is also the basis of all modern editions of the play.
