Romeo & Juliet By Michael Curtotti

By the time William Shakespeare penned the first words of the most famous romantic tragedy of our time, another storyteller had already written Romeo and Juliet. In fact, Matteo Bandello’s stories had been translated into multiple languages across Europe before the doomed lovers inspired Shakespeare to create his world-famous play.

In this edition, Bandello’s original tale has been translated and formatted for the modern reader. In contrast to Shakespearean English, Bandello's beautiful writing has a clarity and directness through which we hear, as never before, the words a real Romeo and Juliet might have said to each other. The star-crossed lovers we know are there, just as in the play, but their troubles are set in a real Verona, that Bandello knew personally.

As the tragedy unfolds to its bitter end, Bandello's heartrending story offers readers a more intimate experience of the anguish and joys that captured Shakespeare and an entire continent. Hidden for years in the ivory towers of scholarly study, Bandello’s influential tale finds new life in Michael Curtotti’s translation for students and lovers of literature alike.

In praise of the author:

“ … the most celebrated novelist of the Italian Renaissance period …” John Payne

“Matteo Bandello … deserves to rank as the most important of the Italian novellieri … [By none] … of his contemporaries has the sheer craft of storytelling been shown more convincingly than by [Bandello] …” Percy Pinkerton

“… a true writer, prolific, polished, refined, and precise …” Leandro Alberti

Paperback, 217 pages, 6x9 in, published 2023, includes parallel language English-Italian Romeo and Juliet, Introduction, Afterword, Table of characters and Table of Scenes.