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1500s: Was the greatest ever love story a lie?
1500s: Was the greatest ever love story a lie?
The first time Romeo Montague sees young Rosaline Capulet he falls instantly in love.
Rosaline, headstrong and independent, is unsure of Romeo’s attentions but with her father determined that she join a convent, this handsome and charming stranger offers her the chance of a different life.
Soon though, Rosaline begins to doubt all that Romeo has told her. She breaks off the match, only for Romeo’s gaze to turn towards her cousin, thirteen-year-old Juliet. Gradually Rosaline realises that it is not only Juliet’s reputation at stake, but her life.
With only hours remaining before she will be banished behind the nunnery walls, will Rosaline save Juliet from her Romeo? Or can this story only ever end one way?
Verona and Elizabethan England
Before Romeo loved Juliet he loved Rosaline, but in the play she never gets to speak.
Shakespeare loved the idea of Italy and set 13 plays there but it is not thought that he actually visited the country himself. Even though Romeo and Juliet is the most famous play of his, and is set in Verona, it is recgonised as being actually being representative of Elizabethan England.
TheBookTrail’s bookreview of Fair Rosaline Natasha Solomons
Destination: Verona Author/guide: Natasha Solomons Departure Time: 1500s
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