The best information regarding the date of Romeo and Juliet comes from the title page of the first Quarto, which tells us that the play "hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his servants."

This reference would indicate that the play was composed no later than 1596, because Hunsdon's acting troupe went by a different name after this date. Moreover, "[m]any critics have placed it as early as 1591, on account of the Nurse's reference in I.iii.22 to the earthquake of eleven years before, identifying this with an earthquake felt in England in 1580" (Neilson, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 36). But the earliest performance ofRomeo and Juliet actually documented was in 1662, staged by William Davenant, the poet and playwright who insisted that he was Shakespeare's illegitimate son.