Arthur Brooke

• Name — Arthur Brooke • Died — 19 March 1563 • Occupation — poet • Notable Works — The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography suggests that Brooke may have been a son of Thomas Broke.[1] Brooke was admitted to the Inner Temple, at the request of Gorboducs authors, Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. He may have written the masque that accompanied the play.[2] On 19 March 1563, Brooke died in the shipwreck that also killed Sir Thomas Finch, bound for Le Havre, besieged in the French Wars of Religion. In 1567 George Turberville published a collection of poetry entitled, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets; it included “An Epitaph on the Death of Master Arthur Brooke Drownde in Passing to New Haven”.[3]

Though ostensibly a translation from the Italian of Bandello, Brooke's poem is derived from a French version by Pierre Boaistuau. The work was published by Richard Tottell. Bernard Garter published The Tragicall and True Historie which Happened betweene Two English Lovers (1565), which imitated Brooke's work in a ballad metre.[4] A prose version of Romeo and Juliet (1567) was printed in The Palace of Pleasure, a collection of tales edited by William Painter. Shakespeare stuck quite closely to the version by Brooke.[5]