William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' and Its Manga Version

'Manga Shakespeare' is a series of books where Shakespeare’s original text is transposed into manga illustrations and given different settings from the Elizabethan original ones. 'Romeo and Juliet', illustrated by Sonia Leong, a well known and award winning manga artist, is set in 21st-century Tokyo – the setting being Shibuya, a suburb of the Japanese capital town known for its nightlife and for being an area of Yakuza’s, the Japanese mafia, activity. Shakespeare’s young lovers are typical 21st-century teenagers whose language, Shakespeare’s English, clashes against the setting surrounding them. As it happens with manga style, images and drawings take the place of the words of the text, which is transformed into icons speaking for themselves, and suggest a further level of the text itself. The meaning of the text is conveyed through symbols, metaphors and the characters’ features and traits. The paper also deals with the young lovers’ suffering and shows how they are trapped by the rules of the society they belong to - after fighting unsuccessfully against their hostile fate, Romeo and Juliet can’t come to terms with their world and feel forced to end their lives tragically.