William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet stands as perhaps the most iconic love tragedy in the English language. Its devastating conclusion, where the young lovers meet their untimely deaths in a tomb, is etched into the minds of audiences and readers worldwide. However, what many contemporary readers might not realize is that the play’s ending, and indeed its very text, has not always been treated as sacrosanct. A fascinating journey through historical editions reveals surprising alternative endings to Romeo and Juliet that gained popularity for over a century, challenging our modern reverence for fixed literary works and offering different emotional landscapes for the play’s climax.
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Today, theatrical productions might update the setting or costumes, or even trim lines for pacing, but the foundational text of Shakespeare is generally considered untouchable. We expect Hamlet to speak in Elizabethan English, not modern slang. Yet, this rigid adherence to the “original” text wasn’t always the prevailing attitude among theatre practitioners and publishers. Examining historical editions of Romeo and Juliet shows a surprising willingness to alter, add to, and adapt Shakespeare’s writing, culminating in a widely accepted version that featured a dramatically different final scene.
The earliest authoritative version of Romeo and Juliet is the 1599 quarto, published as the fourth of Shakespeare’s plays to appear in print. This edition, which superseded the less reliable 1597 printing, became the source text for the monumental 1623 First Folio – the collection that forms the basis of the Shakespearean texts we largely use today. In this widely accepted version, Romeo arrives at the Capulet tomb, finds Juliet seemingly dead, drinks poison, and dies. Juliet then awakens to find Romeo dead beside her, learns the tragic truth from Friar Laurence (briefly), and then, unable to bear the loss, stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger. It is a sequence of rapid, tragic events, with Juliet’s waking happening moments after Romeo’s death, leaving no opportunity for a final exchange between the lovers.
Title page of the 1599 quarto, the first authorized printing of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, a key source for the original ending.
David Garrick’s Influential Alterations
By the mid-18th century, a new version of Romeo and Juliet, adapted by the renowned actor and theatre manager David Garrick, rose to prominence. This version, first performed and later published in 1769, became the standard for many years in London theatres, most notably at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane. Garrick, a titan of the 18th-century stage, made several changes to Shakespeare’s play, including streamlining some characters and removing mentions of Romeo’s initial love interest, Rosaline. However, his most significant and enduring alteration was the addition of a substantial scene at the very end of the play.
Garrick’s version presented one of the most notable alternative endings to Romeo and Juliet by changing the timing of Juliet’s awakening. Instead of waking moments after Romeo has died, Garrick’s Juliet stirs and awakens before the poison has completely taken effect on Romeo. This allows for a poignant, albeit dramatically heightened, deathbed conversation between the two lovers. The added scene comprised 67 lines, giving Romeo and Juliet a final, heart-wrenching exchange where they acknowledge their love, their fate, and their despair before Romeo finally succumbs to the poison in Juliet’s arms. Juliet then kills herself as in the original, but the preceding moments are entirely different.
Title page from the 1769 edition of Romeo and Juliet featuring David Garrick's famous alternative ending with the added deathbed scene.
Garrick himself justified these changes in the edition’s “Advertisement,” explaining his rationale for altering Shakespeare’s text. This openness about adapting the play reflects a different era of theatrical production and textual fidelity compared to today. The primary goal was often effective performance and audience reception, sometimes even prioritized over preserving the original author’s exact words.
The Popularity of the Alternative Ending
Garrick’s version, with its extended death scene, proved incredibly popular. Subsequent editions of Romeo and Juliet published throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, including those from 1794, 1814, 1819, and 1874, continued to print Garrick’s altered text, often presenting it as the standard version performed on stage. Some of these editions included introductions that explicitly defended or explained the choice to retain Garrick’s changes, highlighting their perceived improvements to the original.
Interestingly, some proponents of Garrick’s version argued that his alterations brought the play closer to its source materials, such as the narratives by Luigi da Porto and Bandello, or the poems by Arthur Brooke and Pierre Boisteau, which Shakespeare himself drew upon. This argument suggested that the “improvement” was not just for theatrical effect but also a potential return to the story’s roots, implying that Shakespeare’s original ending might have strayed too far from the source material’s potential for dramatic pathos.
For over a hundred years, this version, featuring the poignant final conversation between Romeo and Juliet, was the one most widely read and seen by audiences. It highlights how fluid literary texts, even those by celebrated authors like Shakespeare, could be in different historical periods.
The Return to the Original Text
The late 19th century marked a significant shift in attitudes towards Shakespeare’s texts. A growing movement towards textual scholarship and a burgeoning reverence for the authorial intent of Shakespeare led to a desire to return to the earliest, most authoritative versions of his plays. This shift led to editions that eschewed Garrick’s additions and alterations, instead focusing on the 1599 quarto and the 1623 First Folio.
By the 1880s, editions began to reappear that restored elements Garrick had removed, such as the character of Rosaline. Crucially, they reverted to Shakespeare’s original ending, where Romeo dies before Juliet fully awakens, eliminating Garrick’s added conversation. The 1886 publication of a facsimile of the 1599 quarto as part of a multi-volume series of Shakespeare’s plays solidified this return to the original text. The introduction to this edition, written by an Oxford scholar, focused on textual variants and highlighted differences between the quarto and the folio, reflecting a new emphasis on academic rigor and the pursuit of the “true” original.
This scholarly approach to Shakespearean texts, prioritizing the earliest authoritative versions and meticulously noting textual variations, is the one that prevails today. We now see the 1599 quarto and the 1623 First Folio as the essential basis for studying and performing Romeo and Juliet, and Garrick’s version, once standard, is now primarily of interest to literary and theatre historians studying the play’s reception and performance history.
Why Exploring Alternative Endings Matters
The history of Garrick’s alternative endings to Romeo and Juliet is more than just a curious footnote in literary history. It offers valuable insights into how texts are perceived, adapted, and valued across different eras.
- Textual Authority: It reminds us that the concept of a single, fixed, authoritative text is a relatively modern one. For centuries, plays were dynamic scripts subject to alteration by actors, directors, and publishers.
- Performance vs. Print: It highlights the tension between a play as a literary text meant for reading and analysis, and a play as a script meant for live performance, where practical or dramatic considerations might necessitate changes.
- Reception History: Studying these altered editions reveals how audiences and critics in different periods reacted to Shakespeare’s original work and what elements they felt could be “improved” or enhanced. Garrick’s ending was popular because it provided a different kind of emotional payoff – a final exchange rather than the bleak isolation of the original deaths.
- The Nature of Adaptation: It provides a historical example of adaptation, a practice that continues today in film, television, and new stage productions. It prompts questions about who “owns” a story and the boundaries of creative interpretation.
While modern productions overwhelmingly adhere to Shakespeare’s original ending, exploring the history of alternative endings to Romeo and Juliet, particularly Garrick’s influential version, enriches our understanding of the play’s complex legacy and the ever-evolving relationship between text, performance, and audience. It serves as a reminder that even the most famous literary works have lived dynamic lives beyond their author’s initial creation.