As the storyline of Romeo and Juliet goes it seems that the inspiration may well have come from that period when he was trying to persuade Henry Wriothesley the earl of Southampton to marry.

There had it seems been a long standing feud between two aristocratic families the Danvers and the Longs. Sir Charles and Sir Henry Danvers were both friends of the Earl of Southampton. Sir Walter and Sir Henry Long his neighbours. Having simmered for as long as anyone could remember the feud boiled over in 1594 when Sir Henry Long sent a letter to Sir Charles Danvers in which he called him a fool a puppy dog and a liar and told him in no uncertain terms that he would whip his bare arse with a rod.

Outraged the Danvers brothers marched into an Inn where Sir Henry Long was dining and Sir Charles struck his adversary who responded by leaping to his feet and drawing his sword. There came a sound of a pistol firing and within moments Sir Henry Long lay dying in a pool of blood, he had been shot by Sir Henry Danvers. The two Danvers brothers escaped and sought refuge with the Earl of Southampton who arranged for them to be smuggled out of the country to a safe haven in France.

The idea of such a long standing feud between two eminent families ending in such sudden violence and unnecessary loss of life was the stuff that Elizabethan audiences would love. And Shakespeare perhaps realising its potential as a crowd puller wove that story into his own feelings of disprized love, and his Monatgues and his Capulets began the feud that would have such tragic, dramatic consequences and which would move the hearts and emotions of generations of theatre goers the world over.