CAPIILETS AND MONTAGUES, the English spelling of the names of the Cappelletti and Montecchi, two noble families of northern Italy, chiefly memorable from their connec tion with the legend on which Shakespeare has founded his play of Romeo and Juliet. According to tradition, both families belonged to Verona; but this does not appear to have been the case. The Cappelletti were of Cremona, and the fact that their burying ground and the tomb of Juliet are shown at Verona, only proves how easy it is, in a country of ruins like Italy, to connect fact with fable. It has also been asserted that one family was Guelph and the other Ghibelline; but this is disproved by a reference to them in the Purgatorio of Dante (canto vi. 1. 106). The poet is blaming the emperor Albert for neglecting Italy, the very garden of his domain. " Reckless man," he says, " come see how the Montecchi and the Cappelletti are oppressed ;" and the context shows that the Guelphs were the oppressors in both cases of these great Ghibelline families. The emperor Albert was murdered in 1308. and this event has supplied the Veronese with a date for their legend. The first publication in which we recognize the essential inci dents of Shakspeare's play is the novel La Giulietta. by Luigi da Porto, printed in 1535, after the death of the author. He states, in an epistle prefixed to the work, that the story was told him "by one Perigrino, a man fifty years of age, much experienced in the art of war, a pleasant companion, and, like almost all the Veronese, a great talker." In 1554, Bandello published in his collection of tales another Italian version of the legend. It was entitled The unfortunate Death of two unhappy Lovers, one by Poison and the other of Grief. Both writers fix the date of the event by saying it took place when
Bartholomew dalla Scala or Scaliger ruled Verona. A French version of the tale was published by Pierre Borsteau in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques. It was translated into English in 1567, and published in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. About the same time, Arthur Brooke published an English poem on the same subject, entitled The Tragical History of 1?omeus and Juliet, written first in Italian by Bantlell, and now in English. There is evidence that an English play had appeared previously, and that before Shake speare's time the story was so well known in England that it had supplied subjects for tapestries. Shakespeare's play seems to have been principally based on the English poem. It was Brooke who first called the Montecchi Montagues, and the prince of Verona Escalus, instead of Scala. Wright and Cary, in Dante, have followed the example of Shakespeare, and render the Italian names of the Dirina Commedia into the familiar " Capulets and Montagues" of Borneo and Juliet. The historical date of the tragedy has not, however, been adopted by modern stage managers and Shakespearian critics, who very properly bring down the action from the beginnino. to the close of the 14th c., when commercial opulence, and the revival of arts and letters, supply acces sories'more in keeping with the drama than the ruder age to which history must assign the "civil broils" and the fall of the Capulets and the Montagues.—See notes to Dante in Classici Italiani, and Knight's and Dyce's Shakespeare.