 Romeo and Juliet ranks with Hamlet as one of Shakespeare 's most performed plays . Its many adaptations have made it one of his most enduring and famous stories . Even in Shakespeare 's lifetime it was extremely popular . Scholar Gary Taylor measures it as the sixth most popular of Shakespeare 's plays , in the period after the death of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd but before the ascendancy of Ben Jonson during which Shakespeare was London 's dominant playwright . The date of the first performance is unknown . The First Quarto , printed in 1597 , says that " it hath been often ( and with great applause ) plaid publiquely " , setting the first performance before that date . The Lord Chamberlain 's Men were certainly the first to perform it . Besides their strong connections with Shakespeare , the Second Quarto actually names one of its actors , Will Kemp , instead of Peter in a line in Act five . Richard Burbage was probably the first Romeo , being the company 's actor , and Master Robert Goffe ( a boy ) the first Juliet . The premiere is likely to have been at " The Theatre " , with other early productions at " The Curtain " . Romeo and Juliet is one of the first Shakespearean plays to have been performed outside England : a shortened and simplified version was performed in Nördlingen in 1604 . 
