Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikovsky) a literary program. Thus, Balakirev had transformed "King Lear" into an instrumental drama and now offered it as a model to Tchaikovsky. While basing "Romeo and Juliet" on "King Lear" was Balakirev's suggestion, reducing the plot of the former to one central conflict and then combining it with the binary structure of sonata form was Tchaikovsky's idea. However, executing that plot in the music we know today came only after two radical revisions. The first version of "Romeo and Juliet" contained basically an opening fugato and a confrontation of the two themes—exactly what an academically trained composer might be expected
Romeo and Juliet Betterton Mercutio, and Betterton's wife Mary Saunderson Juliet: she was probably the first woman to play the role professionally. Another version closely followed Davenant's adaptation and was also regularly performed by the Duke's Company. This was a tragicomedy by James Howard, in which the two lovers survive. Thomas Otway's "The History and Fall of Caius Marius", one of the more extreme of the Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare, debuted in 1680. The scene is shifted from Renaissance Verona to ancient Rome; Romeo is Marius, Juliet is Lavinia, the feud is between patricians and plebeians; Juliet/Lavinia wakes from her potion before Romeo/Marius