"For never has a story been more unhappy than that of Juliet and her Romeo." - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 5.3 'Romeo and Juliet' is a tragic play about two star-crossed lovers written by Shakespeare in 1595. The play is a timeless adolescent tragedy. “The play upholds the 16th-century belief that true love always strikes at first sight” (Lamb 1993: Introduction) and even in modern times, audiences still want to believe in love at first sight. Act II Scene II, the balcony scene perfectly illustrates this romantic notion. “The most filmed play of all, “Romeo and Juliet,” with its universal themes…remains particularly adaptable to any period” (Botnick, 2002). Directors Franco Zeffirelli (1968) and Baz Luhrman (1996) provide examples of adaptations of plays tailored to the adolescent generation of their time. Identifying the key elements of each version: the director's intentions, time/place, pacing, symbols, language and human context is one way to clearly show how each director clearly reaches their target audience. Overall, however, Luhrman's adaptation would be more effective in capturing teenage audiences. Zeffirelli's ultimate goal for his version of Romeo and Juliet was to capture Shakespeare's original intentions for the play while targeting the adolescent audience of his generation. Luhrmann's intentions were different, however; he changed the way audiences viewed Shakespeare's masterpiece by modernizing the props, costumes and sets. Obviously, to meet the film's time quotas, both Zefirelli and Luhrmann cut out many lines from the play. The different sets used by the two directors are another way of showing how different each version is. Zefirelli set his version in Italy, and based it in the 16th century...... middle of paper ......f the play, takes place in what appears to be the Capulets' backyard, which is different. Romeo and Juliet spend most of the scene in the swimming pool, which may symbolically reference some of the missed lines about water and waves in Shakespeare's original script. The scene was faster, or "spoken at a breakneck pace (as was common in Shakespeare's time, and to benefit passionate lovers who are afraid of getting caught.)" (Botnick 2002). Like Zeffirelli, Luhrmann used many symbols to get the message across. to the audience what was missing from his dialogue and what he wanted to communicate to the audience about each character. For example, Romeo's costume may be the first thing the audience notices; Romeo wears armor, symbolizing that he is the knight in shining armor. As for Juliet, her costume is a chaste white dress from her previous angel costume, signifying innocence and purity.