title: Romeo and Juliet

text: "Romeo and Juliet" is sometimes considered to have no unifying theme, save that of young love. Romeo and Juliet have become emblematic of young lovers and doomed love. Since it is such an obvious subject of the play, several scholars have explored the language and historical context behind the romance of the play.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: On their first meeting, Romeo and Juliet use a form of communication recommended by many etiquette authors in Shakespeare's day: metaphor. By using metaphors of saints and sins, Romeo was able to test Juliet's feelings for him in a non-threatening way. This method was recommended by Baldassare Castiglione (whose works had been translated into English by this time). He pointed out that if a man used a metaphor as an invitation, the woman could pretend she did not understand him, and he could retreat without losing honour. Juliet, however, participates in the metaphor and expands on it. The religious metaphors of "shrine", "pilgrim", and "saint" were fashionable in the poetry of the time and more likely to be understood as romantic rather than blasphemous, as the concept of sainthood was associated with the Catholicism of an earlier age. Later in the play, Shakespeare removes the more daring allusions to Christ's resurrection in the tomb he found in his source work: Brooke's "Romeus and Juliet".


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: In the later balcony scene, Shakespeare has Romeo overhear Juliet's soliloquy, but in Brooke's version of the story, her declaration is done alone. By bringing Romeo into the scene to eavesdrop, Shakespeare breaks from the normal sequence of courtship. Usually, a woman was required to be modest and shy to make sure that her suitor was sincere, but breaking this rule serves to speed along the plot. The lovers are able to skip courting and move on to plain talk about their relationship—agreeing to be married after knowing each other for only one night. In the final suicide scene, there is a contradiction in the message—in the Catholic religion, suicides were often thought to be condemned to Hell, whereas people who die to be with their loves under the "Religion of Love" are joined with their loves in Paradise. Romeo and Juliet's love seems to be expressing the "Religion of Love" view rather than the Catholic view. Another point is that, although their love is passionate, it is only consummated in marriage, which keeps them from losing the audience's sympathy.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The play arguably equates love and sex with death. Throughout the story, both Romeo and Juliet, along with the other characters, fantasise about it as a dark being, often equating it with a lover. Capulet, for example, when he first discovers Juliet's (faked) death, describes it as having deflowered his daughter. Juliet later erotically compares Romeo and death. Right before her suicide, she grabs Romeo's dagger, saying "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die."


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Scholars are divided on the role of fate in the play. No consensus exists on whether the characters are truly fated to die together or whether the events take place by a series of unlucky chances. Arguments in favour of fate often refer to the description of the lovers as "star-cross'd". This phrase seems to hint that the stars have predetermined the lovers' future. John W. Draper points out the parallels between the Elizabethan belief in the four humours and the main characters of the play (for example, Tybalt as a choleric). Interpreting the text in the light of humours reduces the amount of plot attributed to chance by modern audiences. Still, other scholars see the play as a series of unlucky chances—many to such a degree that they do not see it as a tragedy at all, but an emotional melodrama. Ruth Nevo believes the high degree to which chance is stressed in the narrative makes "Romeo and Juliet" a "lesser tragedy" of happenstance, not of character. For example, Romeo's challenging Tybalt is not impulsive; it is, after Mercutio's death, the expected action to take. In this scene, Nevo reads Romeo as being aware of the dangers of flouting social norms, identity, and commitments. He makes the choice to kill, not because of a tragic flaw, but because of circumstance.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Scholars have long noted Shakespeare's widespread use of light and dark imagery throughout the play. Caroline Spurgeon considers the theme of light as "symbolic of the natural beauty of young love" and later critics have expanded on this interpretation. For example, both Romeo and Juliet see the other as light in a surrounding darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun, brighter than a torch, a jewel sparkling in the night, and a bright angel among dark clouds. Even when she lies apparently dead in the tomb, he says her "beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light." Juliet describes Romeo as "day in night" and "Whiter than snow upon a raven's back." This contrast of light and dark can be expanded as symbols—contrasting love and hate, youth and age in a metaphoric way. Sometimes these intertwining metaphors create dramatic irony. For example, Romeo and Juliet's love is a light in the midst of the darkness of the hate around them, but all of their activity together is done in night and darkness while all of the feuding is done in broad daylight. This paradox of imagery adds atmosphere to the moral dilemma facing the two lovers: loyalty to family or loyalty to love. At the end of the story, when the morning is gloomy and the sun hiding its face for sorrow, light and dark have returned to their proper places, the outward darkness reflecting the true, inner darkness of the family feud out of sorrow for the lovers. All characters now recognise their folly in light of recent events, and things return to the natural order, thanks to the love and death of Romeo and Juliet. The "light" theme in the play is also heavily connected to the theme of time since light was a convenient way for Shakespeare to express the passage of time through descriptions of the sun, moon, and stars.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Time plays an important role in the language and plot of the play. Both Romeo and Juliet struggle to maintain an imaginary world void of time in the face of the harsh realities that surround them. For instance, when Romeo swears his love to Juliet by the moon, she protests "O swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon, / That monthly changes in her circled orb, / Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." From the very beginning, the lovers are designated as "star-cross'd" referring to an astrologic belief associated with time. Stars were thought to control the fates of humanity, and as time passed, stars would move along their course in the sky, also charting the course of human lives below. Romeo speaks of a foreboding he feels in the stars' movements early in the play, and when he learns of Juliet's death, he defies the stars' course for him.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Another central theme is haste: Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" spans a period of four to six days, in contrast to Brooke's poems spanning nine months. Scholars such as G. Thomas Tanselle believe that time was "especially important to Shakespeare" in this play, as he used references to "short-time" for the young lovers as opposed to references to "long-time" for the "older generation" to highlight "a headlong rush towards doom". Romeo and Juliet fight time to make their love last forever. In the end, the only way they seem to defeat time is through a death that makes them immortal through art.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Time is also connected to the theme of light and dark. In Shakespeare's day, plays were most often performed at noon or in the afternoon in broad daylight. This forced the playwright to use words to create the illusion of day and night in his plays. Shakespeare uses references to the night and day, the stars, the moon, and the sun to create this illusion. He also has characters frequently refer to days of the week and specific hours to help the audience understand that time has passed in the story. All in all, no fewer than 103 references to time are found in the play, adding to the illusion of its passage.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The earliest known critic of the play was diarist Samuel Pepys, who wrote in 1662: "it is a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life." Poet John Dryden wrote 10 years later in praise of the play and its comic character Mercutio: "Shakespear show'd the best of his skill in his "Mercutio", and he said himself, that he was forc'd to kill him in the third Act, to prevent being killed by him." Criticism of the play in the 18th century was less sparse but no less divided. Publisher Nicholas Rowe was the first critic to ponder the theme of the play, which he saw as the just punishment of the two feuding families. In mid-century, writer Charles Gildon and philosopher Lord Kames argued that the play was a failure in that it did not follow the classical rules of drama: the tragedy must occur because of some character flaw, not an accident of fate. Writer and critic Samuel Johnson, however, considered it one of Shakespeare's "most pleasing" plays.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: In the later part of the 18th and through the 19th century, criticism centred on debates over the moral message of the play. Actor and playwright David Garrick's 1748 adaptation excluded Rosaline: Romeo abandoning her for Juliet was seen as fickle and reckless. Critics such as Charles Dibdin argued that Rosaline had been included in the play in order to show how reckless the hero was and that this was the reason for his tragic end. Others argued that Friar Laurence might be Shakespeare's spokesman in his warnings against undue haste. At the beginning of the 20th century, these moral arguments were disputed by critics such as Richard Green Moulton: he argued that accident, and not some character flaw, led to the lovers' deaths.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: In "Romeo and Juliet", Shakespeare employs several dramatic techniques that have garnered praise from critics, most notably the abrupt shifts from comedy to tragedy (an example is the punning exchange between Benvolio and Mercutio just before Tybalt arrives). Before Mercutio's death in Act III, the play is largely a comedy. After his accidental demise, the play suddenly becomes serious and takes on a tragic tone. When Romeo is banished, rather than executed, and Friar Laurence offers Juliet a plan to reunite her with Romeo, the audience can still hope that all will end well. They are in a "breathless state of suspense" by the opening of the last scene in the tomb: If Romeo is delayed long enough for the Friar to arrive, he and Juliet may yet be saved. These shifts from hope to despair, reprieve, and new hope serve to emphasise the tragedy when the final hope fails and both the lovers die at the end.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Shakespeare also uses sub-plots to offer a clearer view of the actions of the main characters. For example, when the play begins, Romeo is in love with Rosaline, who has refused all of his advances. Romeo's infatuation with her stands in obvious contrast to his later love for Juliet. This provides a comparison through which the audience can see the seriousness of Romeo and Juliet's love and marriage. Paris' love for Juliet also sets up a contrast between Juliet's feelings for him and her feelings for Romeo. The formal language she uses around Paris, as well as the way she talks about him to her Nurse, show that her feelings clearly lie with Romeo. Beyond this, the sub-plot of the Montague–Capulet feud overarches the whole play, providing an atmosphere of hate that is the main contributor to the play's tragic end.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Shakespeare uses a variety of poetic forms throughout the play. He begins with a 14-line prologue in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, spoken by a Chorus. Most of "Romeo and Juliet" is, however, written in blank verse, and much of it in strict iambic pentameter, with less rhythmic variation than in most of Shakespeare's later plays. In choosing forms, Shakespeare matches the poetry to the character who uses it. Friar Laurence, for example, uses sermon and sententiae forms and the Nurse uses a unique blank verse form that closely matches colloquial speech. Each of these forms is also moulded and matched to the emotion of the scene the character occupies. For example, when Romeo talks about Rosaline earlier in the play, he attempts to use the Petrarchan sonnet form. Petrarchan sonnets were often used by men to exaggerate the beauty of women who were impossible for them to attain, as in Romeo's situation with Rosaline. This sonnet form is used by Lady Capulet to describe Count Paris to Juliet as a handsome man. When Romeo and Juliet meet, the poetic form changes from the Petrarchan (which was becoming archaic in Shakespeare's day) to a then more contemporary sonnet form, using "pilgrims" and "saints" as metaphors. Finally, when the two meet on the balcony, Romeo attempts to use the sonnet form to pledge his love, but Juliet breaks it by saying "Dost thou love me?" By doing this, she searches for true expression, rather than a poetic exaggeration of their love. Juliet uses monosyllabic words with Romeo but uses formal language with Paris. Other forms in the play include an epithalamium by Juliet, a rhapsody in Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, and an elegy by Paris. Shakespeare saves his prose style most often for the common people in the play, though at times he uses it for other characters, such as Mercutio. Humour, also, is important: scholar Molly Mahood identifies at least 175 puns and wordplays in the text. Many of these jokes are sexual in nature, especially those involving Mercutio and the Nurse.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Early psychoanalytic critics saw the problem of "Romeo and Juliet" in terms of Romeo's impulsiveness, deriving from "ill-controlled, partially disguised aggression", which leads both to Mercutio's death and to the double suicide. "Romeo and Juliet" is not considered to be exceedingly psychologically complex, and sympathetic psychoanalytic readings of the play make the tragic male experience equivalent with sicknesses. Norman Holland, writing in 1966, considers Romeo's dream as a realistic "wish fulfilling fantasy both in terms of Romeo's adult world and his hypothetical childhood at stages oral, phallic and oedipal" – while acknowledging that a dramatic character is not a human being with mental processes separate from those of the author. Critics such as Julia Kristeva focus on the hatred between the families, arguing that this hatred is the cause of Romeo and Juliet's passion for each other. That hatred manifests itself directly in the lovers' language: Juliet, for example, speaks of "my only love sprung from my only hate" and often expresses her passion through an anticipation of Romeo's death. This leads on to speculation as to the playwright's psychology, in particular to a consideration of Shakespeare's grief for the death of his son, Hamnet.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Feminist literary critics argue that the blame for the family feud lies in Verona's patriarchal society. For Coppélia Kahn, for example, the strict, masculine code of violence imposed on Romeo is the main force driving the tragedy to its end. When Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo shifts into a violent mode, regretting that Juliet has made him so "effeminate". In this view, the younger males "become men" by engaging in violence on behalf of their fathers, or in the case of the servants, their masters. The feud is also linked to male virility, as the numerous jokes about maidenheads aptly demonstrate. Juliet also submits to a female code of docility by allowing others, such as the Friar, to solve her problems for her. Other critics, such as Dympna Callaghan, look at the play's feminism from a historicist angle, stressing that when the play was written the feudal order was being challenged by increasingly centralised government and the advent of capitalism. At the same time, emerging Puritan ideas about marriage were less concerned with the "evils of female sexuality" than those of earlier eras and more sympathetic towards love-matches: when Juliet dodges her father's attempt to force her to marry a man she has no feeling for, she is challenging the patriarchal order in a way that would not have been possible at an earlier time.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: A number of critics have found the character of Mercutio to have unacknowledged homoerotic desire for Romeo. Jonathan Goldberg examined the sexuality of Mercutio and Romeo utilising queer theory in "Queering the Renaissance" (1994), comparing their friendship with sexual love. Mercutio, in friendly conversation, mentions Romeo's phallus, suggesting traces of homoeroticism. An example is his joking wish "To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle ... letting it there stand / Till she had laid it and conjured it down." Romeo's homoeroticism can also be found in his attitude to Rosaline, a woman who is distant and unavailable and brings no hope of offspring. As Benvolio argues, she is best replaced by someone who will reciprocate. Shakespeare's procreation sonnets describe another young man who, like Romeo, is having trouble creating offspring and who may be seen as being a homosexual. Goldberg believes that Shakespeare may have used Rosaline as a way to express homosexual problems of procreation in an acceptable way. In this view, when Juliet says "...that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet", she may be raising the question of whether there is any difference between the beauty of a man and the beauty of a woman.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The balcony scene was introduced by Da Porto in 1524. He had Romeo walk frequently by her house, "sometimes climbing to her chamber window", and wrote, "It happened one night, as love ordained, when the moon shone unusually bright, that whilst Romeo was climbing the balcony, the young lady ... opened the window, and looking out saw him". After this they have a conversation in which they declare eternal love to each other. A few decades later, Bandello greatly expanded this scene, diverging from the familiar one: Julia has her nurse deliver a letter asking Romeo to come to her window with a rope ladder, and he climbs the balcony with the help of his servant, Julia and the nurse (the servants discreetly withdraw after this).


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Nevertheless, in October 2014, Lois Leveen pointed out in "The Atlantic" that the original Shakespeare play did not contain a balcony; it just says that Juliet appears at a window. The word "balcone" is not known to have existed in the English language until two years after Shakespeare's death. The balcony was certainly used in Thomas Otway's 1679 play, "The History and Fall of Caius Marius", which had borrowed much of its story from "Romeo and Juliet" and placed the two lovers in a balcony reciting a speech similar to that between Romeo and Juliet. Leveen suggested that during the 18th century, David Garrick chose to use a balcony in his adaptation and revival of "Romeo and Juliet" and modern adaptations have continued this tradition.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: "Romeo and Juliet" ranks with "Hamlet" as one of Shakespeare's most performed plays. Its many adaptations have made it one of his most enduring and famous stories. Even in Shakespeare's lifetime, it was extremely popular. Scholar Gary Taylor measures it as the sixth most popular of Shakespeare's plays, in the period after the death of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd but before the ascendancy of Ben Jonson during which Shakespeare was London's dominant playwright. The date of the first performance is unknown. The First Quarto, printed in 1597, reads "it hath been often (and with great applause) plaid publiquely", setting the first performance before that date. The Lord Chamberlain's Men were certainly the first to perform it. Besides their strong connections with Shakespeare, the Second Quarto actually names one of its actors, Will Kemp, instead of Peter, in a line in Act V. Richard Burbage was probably the first Romeo, being the company's actor; and Master Robert Goffe (a boy), the first Juliet. The premiere is likely to have been at The Theatre, with other early productions at the Curtain. "Romeo and Juliet" is one of the first Shakespeare plays to have been performed outside England: a shortened and simplified version was performed in Nördlingen in 1604.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: All theatres were closed down by the puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire was divided between them.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Sir William Davenant of the Duke's Company staged a 1662 adaptation in which Henry Harris played Romeo, Thomas Betterton Mercutio, and Betterton's wife Mary Saunderson Juliet: she was probably the first woman to play the role professionally. Another version closely followed Davenant's adaptation and was also regularly performed by the Duke's Company. This was a tragicomedy by James Howard, in which the two lovers survive.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Thomas Otway's "The History and Fall of Caius Marius", one of the more extreme of the Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare, debuted in 1680. The scene is shifted from Renaissance Verona to ancient Rome; Romeo is Marius, Juliet is Lavinia, the feud is between patricians and plebeians; Juliet/Lavinia wakes from her potion before Romeo/Marius dies. Otway's version was a hit, and was acted for the next seventy years. His innovation in the closing scene was even more enduring, and was used in adaptations throughout the next 200 years: Theophilus Cibber's adaptation of 1744, and David Garrick's of 1748 both used variations on it. These versions also eliminated elements deemed inappropriate at the time. For example, Garrick's version transferred all language describing Rosaline to Juliet, to heighten the idea of faithfulness and downplay the love-at-first-sight theme. In 1750, a "Battle of the Romeos" began, with Spranger Barry and Susannah Maria Arne (Mrs. Theophilus Cibber) at Covent Garden versus David Garrick and George Anne Bellamy at Drury Lane.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The earliest known production in North America was an amateur one: on 23 March 1730, a physician named Joachimus Bertrand placed an advertisement in the "Gazette" newspaper in New York, promoting a production in which he would play the apothecary. The first professional performances of the play in North America were those of the Hallam Company.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Garrick's altered version of the play was very popular, and ran for nearly a century. Not until 1845 did Shakespeare's original return to the stage in the United States with the sisters Susan and Charlotte Cushman as Juliet and Romeo, respectively, and then in 1847 in Britain with Samuel Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre. Cushman adhered to Shakespeare's version, beginning a string of eighty-four performances. Her portrayal of Romeo was considered genius by many. "The Times" wrote: "For a long time Romeo has been a convention. Miss Cushman's Romeo is a creative, a living, breathing, animated, ardent human being." Queen Victoria wrote in her journal that "no-one would ever have imagined she was a woman". Cushman's success broke the Garrick tradition and paved the way for later performances to return to the original storyline.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Professional performances of Shakespeare in the mid-19th century had two particular features: firstly, they were generally star vehicles, with supporting roles cut or marginalised to give greater prominence to the central characters. Secondly, they were "pictorial", placing the action on spectacular and elaborate sets (requiring lengthy pauses for scene changes) and with the frequent use of tableaux. Henry Irving's 1882 production at the Lyceum Theatre (with himself as Romeo and Ellen Terry as Juliet) is considered an archetype of the pictorial style. In 1895, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson took over from Irving and laid the groundwork for a more natural portrayal of Shakespeare that remains popular today. Forbes-Robertson avoided the showiness of Irving and instead portrayed a down-to-earth Romeo, expressing the poetic dialogue as realistic prose and avoiding melodramatic flourish.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: American actors began to rival their British counterparts. Edwin Booth (brother to John Wilkes Booth) and Mary McVicker (soon to be Edwin's wife) opened as Romeo and Juliet at the sumptuous Booth's Theatre (with its European-style stage machinery, and an air conditioning system unique in New York) on 3 February 1869. Some reports said it was one of the most elaborate productions of "Romeo and Juliet" ever seen in America; it was certainly the most popular, running for over six weeks and earning over $60,000 (). The programme noted that: "The tragedy will be produced in strict accordance with historical propriety, in every respect, following closely the text of Shakespeare."


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The first professional performance of the play in Japan may have been George Crichton Miln's company's production, which toured to Yokohama in 1890. Throughout the 19th century, "Romeo and Juliet" had been Shakespeare's most popular play, measured by the number of professional performances. In the 20th century it would become the second most popular, behind "Hamlet".


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: In 1933, the play was revived by actress Katharine Cornell and her director husband Guthrie McClintic and was taken on a seven-month nationwide tour throughout the United States. It starred Orson Welles, Brian Aherne and Basil Rathbone. The production was a modest success, and so upon the return to New York, Cornell and McClintic revised it, and for the first time the play was presented with almost all the scenes intact, including the Prologue. The new production opened on Broadway in December 1934. Critics wrote that Cornell was "the greatest Juliet of her time", "endlessly haunting", and "the most lovely and enchanting Juliet our present-day theatre has seen".


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: John Gielgud's New Theatre production in 1935 featured Gielgud and Laurence Olivier as Romeo and Mercutio, exchanging roles six weeks into the run, with Peggy Ashcroft as Juliet. Gielgud used a scholarly combination of Q1 and Q2 texts and organised the set and costumes to match as closely as possible the Elizabethan period. His efforts were a huge success at the box office, and set the stage for increased historical realism in later productions. Olivier later compared his performance and Gielgud's: "John, all spiritual, all spirituality, all beauty, all abstract things; and myself as all earth, blood, humanity ... I've always felt that John missed the lower half and that made me go for the other ... But whatever it was, when I was playing Romeo I was carrying a torch, I was trying to sell realism in Shakespeare."


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Peter Brook's 1947 version was the beginning of a different style of "Romeo and Juliet" performances. Brook was less concerned with realism, and more concerned with translating the play into a form that could communicate with the modern world. He argued, "A production is only correct at the moment of its correctness, and only good at the moment of its success." Brook excluded the final reconciliation of the families from his performance text.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Throughout the century, audiences, influenced by the cinema, became less willing to accept actors distinctly older than the teenage characters they were playing. A significant example of more youthful casting was in Franco Zeffirelli's Old Vic production in 1960, with John Stride and Judi Dench, which would serve as the basis for his 1968 film. Zeffirelli borrowed from Brook's ideas, altogether removing around a third of the play's text to make it more accessible. In an interview with "The Times", he stated that the play's "twin themes of love and the total breakdown of understanding between two generations" had contemporary relevance.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Recent performances often set the play in the contemporary world. For example, in 1986, the Royal Shakespeare Company set the play in modern Verona. Switchblades replaced swords, feasts and balls became drug-laden rock parties, and Romeo committed suicide by hypodermic needle.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Neil Bartlett's production of Romeo and Juliet themed the play very contemporary with a cinematic look which started its life at the Lyric Hammersmith, London then went to West Yorkshire Playhouse for an exclusive run in 1995. The cast included Emily Woof as Juliet, Stuart Bunce as Romeo, Sebastian Harcombe as Mercutio, Ashley Artus as Tybalt, Souad Faress as Lady Capulet and Silas Carson as Paris. In 1997, the Folger Shakespeare Theatre produced a version set in a typical suburban world. Romeo sneaks into the Capulet barbecue to meet Juliet, and Juliet discovers Tybalt's death while in class at school.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The play is sometimes given a historical setting, enabling audiences to reflect on the underlying conflicts. For example, adaptations have been set in the midst of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, in the apartheid era in South Africa, and in the aftermath of the Pueblo Revolt. Similarly, Peter Ustinov's 1956 comic adaptation, "Romanoff and Juliet", is set in a fictional mid-European country in the depths of the Cold War. A mock-Victorian revisionist version of "Romeo and Juliet" final scene (with a happy ending, Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, and Paris restored to life, and Benvolio revealing that he is Paris's love, Benvolia, in disguise) forms part of the 1980 stage-play "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby". "Shakespeare's R&J", by Joe Calarco, spins the classic in a modern tale of gay teenage awakening. A recent comedic musical adaptation was "The Second City's Romeo and Juliet Musical: The People vs. Friar Laurence, the Man Who Killed Romeo and Juliet", set in modern times.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: In the 19th and 20th centuries, "Romeo and Juliet" has often been the choice of Shakespeare plays to open a classical theatre company, beginning with Edwin Booth's inaugural production of that play in his theatre in 1869, the newly re-formed company of the Old Vic in 1929 with John Gielgud, Martita Hunt, and Margaret Webster, as well as the Riverside Shakespeare Company in its founding production in New York City in 1977, which used the 1968 film of Franco Zeffirelli's production as its inspiration.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: In 2013, "Romeo and Juliet" ran on Broadway at Richard Rodgers Theatre from 19 September to 8 December for 93 regular performances after 27 previews starting on 24 August with Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad in the starring roles.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The best-known ballet version is Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet". Originally commissioned by the Kirov Ballet, it was rejected by them when Prokofiev attempted a happy ending and was rejected again for the experimental nature of its music. It has subsequently attained an "immense" reputation, and has been choreographed by John Cranko (1962) and Kenneth MacMillan (1965) among others.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: In 1977, Michael Smuin's production of one of the play's most dramatic and impassioned dance interpretations was debuted in its entirety by San Francisco Ballet. This production was the first full-length ballet to be broadcast by the PBS series "Great Performances: Dance in America"; it aired in 1978.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Dada Masilo, a South African dancer and choreographer, reinterpreted Romeo and Juliet in a new modern light. She introduced changes to the story, notably that of presenting the two families as multiracial.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: At least 24 operas have been based on Romeo and Juliet. The earliest, "Romeo und Julie" in 1776, a Singspiel by Georg Benda, omits much of the action of the play and most of its characters and has a happy ending. It is occasionally revived. The best-known is Gounod's 1867 "Roméo et Juliette" (libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré), a critical triumph when first performed and frequently revived today. Bellini's "I Capuleti e i Montecchi" is also revived from time to time, but has sometimes been judged unfavourably because of its perceived liberties with Shakespeare; however, Bellini and his librettist, Felice Romani, worked from Italian sources—principally Romani's libretto for "Giulietta e Romeo" by Nicola Vaccai—rather than directly adapting Shakespeare's play. Among later operas, there is Heinrich Sutermeister's 1940 work "Romeo und Julia".


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: "Roméo et Juliette" by Berlioz is a "symphonie dramatique", a large-scale work in three parts for mixed voices, chorus, and orchestra, which premiered in 1839. Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" Fantasy-Overture (1869, revised 1870 and 1880) is a 15-minute symphonic poem, containing the famous melody known as the "love theme". Tchaikovsky's device of repeating the same musical theme at the ball, in the balcony scene, in Juliet's bedroom and in the tomb has been used by subsequent directors: for example, Nino Rota's love theme is used in a similar way in the 1968 film of the play, as is Des'ree's "Kissing You" in the 1996 film. Other classical composers influenced by the play include Henry Hugh Pearson ("Romeo and Juliet, overture for orchestra", Op. 86), Svendsen ("Romeo og Julie", 1876), Delius ("A Village Romeo and Juliet", 1899–1901), Stenhammar ("Romeo och Julia", 1922), and Kabalevsky ("Incidental Music to Romeo and Juliet", Op. 56, 1956).


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The play influenced several jazz works, including Peggy Lee's "Fever". Duke Ellington's "Such Sweet Thunder" contains a piece entitled "The Star-Crossed Lovers" in which the pair are represented by tenor and alto saxophones: critics noted that Juliet's sax dominates the piece, rather than offering an image of equality. The play has frequently influenced popular music, including works by The Supremes, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, and Taylor Swift. The most famous such track is Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet".


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The most famous musical theatre adaptation is "West Side Story" with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It débuted on Broadway in 1957 and in the West End in 1958 and was twice adapted as popular films in 1961 and in 2021. This version updated the setting to mid-20th-century New York City and the warring families to ethnic gangs. Other musical adaptations include Terrence Mann's 1999 rock musical "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet", co-written with Jerome Korman; Gérard Presgurvic's 2001 "Roméo et Juliette, de la Haine à l'Amour"; Riccardo Cocciante's 2007 "Giulietta & Romeo" and Johan Christher Schütz; and Johan Petterssons's 2013 adaptation "Carnival Tale ()", which takes place at a travelling carnival.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: "Romeo and Juliet" had a profound influence on subsequent literature. Before then, romance had not even been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. In Harold Bloom's words, Shakespeare "invented the formula that the sexual becomes the erotic when crossed by the shadow of death". Of Shakespeare's works, "Romeo and Juliet" has generated the most—and the most varied—adaptations, including prose and verse narratives, drama, opera, orchestral and choral music, ballet, film, television, and painting. The word "Romeo" has even become synonymous with "male lover" in English.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: "Romeo and Juliet" was parodied in Shakespeare's own lifetime: Henry Porter's "Two Angry Women of Abingdon" (1598) and Thomas Dekker's "Blurt, Master Constable" (1607) both contain balcony scenes in which a virginal heroine engages in bawdy wordplay. The play directly influenced later literary works. For example, the preparations for a performance form a major plot in Charles Dickens' "Nicholas Nickleby".


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: "Romeo and Juliet" is one of Shakespeare's most-illustrated works. The first known illustration was a woodcut of the tomb scene, thought to be created by Elisha Kirkall, which appeared in Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition of Shakespeare's plays. Five paintings of the play were commissioned for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in the late 18th century, one representing each of the five acts of the play. Early in the 19th century, Henry Thomson painted "Juliet after the Masquerade", an of which was published in The Literary Souvenir, 1828, with an accompanying poem by Letitia Elizabeth Landon. The 19th-century fashion for "pictorial" performances led to directors' drawing on paintings for their inspiration, which, in turn, influenced painters to depict actors and scenes from the theatre. In the 20th century, the play's most iconic visual images have derived from its popular film versions.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: David Blixt's 2007 novel "The Master Of Verona" imagines the origins of the famous Capulet-Montague feud, combining the characters from Shakespeare's Italian plays with the historical figures of Dante's time. Blixt's subsequent novels "Voice Of The Falconer" (2010), "Fortune's Fool" (2012), and "The Prince's Doom" (2014) continue to explore the world, following the life of Mercutio as he comes of age. More tales from Blixt's "Star-Cross'd" series appear in "Varnished Faces: Star-Cross'd Short Stories" (2015) and the plague anthology, "We All Fall Down" (2020). Blixt also authored "Shakespeare's Secrets: Romeo & Juliet" (2018), a collection of essays on the history of Shakespeare's play in performance, in which Blixt asserts the play is structurally not a Tragedy, but a Comedy-Gone-Wrong. In 2014 Blixt and his wife, stage director Janice L Blixt, were guests of the city of Verona, Italy for the launch of the Italian language edition of "The Master Of Verona", staying with Dante's descendants and filmmaker Anna Lerario, with whom Blixt collaborated on a film about the life of Veronese prince Cangrande della Scala.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Lois Leveen's 2014 novel "Juliet's Nurse" imagined the fourteen years leading up to the events in the play from the point of view of the nurse. The nurse has the third largest number of lines in the original play; only the eponymous characters have more lines.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The play was the subject of a 2017 General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) question by the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations board that was administered to students. The board attracted widespread media criticism and derision after the question appeared to confuse the Capulets and the Montagues, with exams regulator Ofqual describing the error as unacceptable.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: "Romeo and Juliet" was adapted into manga format by publisher UDON Entertainment's Manga Classics imprint and was released in May 2018.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: "Romeo and Juliet" may be the most-filmed play of all time. The most notable theatrical releases were George Cukor's multi-Oscar-nominated 1936 production, Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version, and Baz Luhrmann's 1996 MTV-inspired "Romeo + Juliet". The latter two were both, in their time, the highest-grossing Shakespeare film ever. "Romeo and Juliet" was first filmed in the silent era, by Georges Méliès, although his film is now lost. The play was first heard on film in "The Hollywood Revue of 1929", in which John Gilbert recited the balcony scene opposite Norma Shearer.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Shearer and Leslie Howard, with a combined age over 75, played the teenage lovers in George Cukor's MGM 1936 film version. Neither critics nor the public responded enthusiastically. Cinema-goers considered the film too "arty", staying away as they had from Warner's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" a year before: leading to Hollywood abandoning the Bard for over a decade. Renato Castellani won the "Grand Prix" at the Venice Film Festival for his 1954 film of "Romeo and Juliet". His Romeo, Laurence Harvey, was already an experienced screen actor. By contrast, Susan Shentall, as Juliet, was a secretarial student who was discovered by the director in a London pub and was cast for her "pale sweet skin and honey-blonde hair".


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Stephen Orgel describes Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 "Romeo and Juliet" as being "full of beautiful young people, and the camera and the lush technicolour make the most of their sexual energy and good looks". Zeffirelli's teenage leads, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, had virtually no previous acting experience but performed capably and with great maturity. Zeffirelli has been particularly praised, for his presentation of the duel scene as bravado getting out-of-control. The film courted controversy by including a nude wedding-night scene while Olivia Hussey was only fifteen.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: Baz Luhrmann's 1996 "Romeo + Juliet" and its accompanying soundtrack successfully targeted the "MTV Generation": a young audience of similar age to the story's characters. Far darker than Zeffirelli's version, the film is set in the "crass, violent and superficial society" of Verona Beach and Sycamore Grove. Leonardo DiCaprio was Romeo and Claire Danes was Juliet.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: The play has been widely adapted for TV and film. In 1960, Peter Ustinov's cold-war stage parody, "Romanoff and Juliet" was filmed. The 1961 film "West Side Story"—set among New York gangs—featured the Jets as white youths, equivalent to Shakespeare's Montagues, while the Sharks, equivalent to the Capulets, are Puerto Rican. In 2006, Disney's "High School Musical" made use of "Romeo and Juliet" plot, placing the two young lovers in different high-school cliques instead of feuding families. Film-makers have frequently featured characters performing scenes from "Romeo and Juliet". The conceit of dramatising Shakespeare writing "Romeo and Juliet" has been used several times, including John Madden's 1998 "Shakespeare in Love", in which Shakespeare writes the play against the backdrop of his own doomed love affair. An anime series produced by Gonzo and SKY Perfect Well Think, called "Romeo x Juliet", was made in 2007 and the 2013 version is the latest English-language film based on the play. In 2013, Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed the Bollywood film "Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela", a contemporary version of the play which starred Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone in leading roles. The film was a commercial and critical success. In February 2014, BroadwayHD released a filmed version of the 2013 Broadway Revival of "Romeo and Juliet". The production starred Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: In April and May 2010, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Mudlark Production Company presented a version of the play, entitled "Such Tweet Sorrow", as an improvised, real-time series of tweets on Twitter. The production used RSC actors who engaged with the audience as well each other, performing not from a traditional script but a "Grid" developed by the Mudlark production team and writers Tim Wright and Bethan Marlow. The performers also make use of other media sites such as YouTube for pictures and video.


title: Romeo and Juliet

text: All references to "Romeo and Juliet", unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Arden Shakespeare second edition (Gibbons, 1980) based on the Q2 text of 1599, with elements from Q1 of 1597. Under its referencing system, which uses Roman numerals, II.ii.33 means act 2, scene 2, line 33, and a 0 in place of a scene number refers to the prologue to the act.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Star Trek: Picard is an American television series created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access (later rebranded as Paramount+). It is the eighth "Star Trek" series and was launched in 2020 as part of Kurtzman's expanded "Star Trek" Universe. The series features the retired Starfleet admiral Jean-Luc Picard, with each season exploring different aspects of the character in his old age.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Patrick Stewart stars as Picard, reprising his role from the series "" as well as other "Star Trek" media. Alison Pill, Isa Briones, Harry Treadaway, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, and Evan Evagora also star in the , with Jeri Ryan, Orla Brady, and Brent Spiner joining for the . The stars Stewart, Hurd, Ryan, Spiner, and other returning "Next Generation" cast members LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, and Marina Sirtis.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: The series was first rumored in June 2018, and was officially announced that August. It is produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout, Weed Road Pictures, and Roddenberry Entertainment, and was designed to be slower and more character-focused than previous series in the franchise. Filming took place in California, which granted the series large tax credits. Chabon served as showrunner for the first season, with Goldsman and Terry Matalas taking over for the second which was filmed back-to-back with the third. Matalas was sole showrunner for the third season, which was designed to be a conclusion to the stories of Picard and the other "Next Generation" cast members.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: "Star Trek: Picard" premiered on CBS All Access on January 23, 2020, and its first season ran for 10 episodes until March 26. The second season was released on Paramount+ from March 3 to May 5, 2022. It has received awards including a Primetime Emmy Award for its prosthetic makeup. Several tie-in projects have been created based on the series, including an episode of the companion series "".


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: "" is set to premiere on February 16, 2023. It consists of ten episodes and is the final season of the series.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: The series begins in 2399, 20 years after Jean-Luc Picard's last appearance in "" (2002), and finds the character deeply affected by the death of Data in that film as well as the destruction of the planet Romulus in the film "Star Trek" (2009). Retired from Starfleet and living on his family's vineyard, Picard is drawn into a new adventure when he is visited by the apparent daughter of Data, one of several new synthetic beings, or "synths". Picard fights for their right to exist and gives his life to save them in the first-season finale. His consciousness is then transferred into a synthetic body. During the second season, in 2401, Picard and his companions are living new lives when they are faced by Picard's old adversary Q in the ultimate trial. With Q trapping them in an alternate reality, they must travel back in time to the 21st century to save the future of the galaxy. In the third season, Picard reunites with the former crew of the USS "Enterprise".


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: In June 2018, after becoming sole showrunner of the series "", Alex Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the "Star Trek" franchise beyond "Discovery" to several new series, miniseries, and animated series. One of these new series was reported to star Patrick Stewart, reprising his role of Jean-Luc Picard from the series "". Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman (who worked on the first season of "Discovery") were attached to the project. When CBS had first approached him about making more "Star Trek" series, Kurtzman included a series featuring Picard on his wish list as he believed the character was the greatest "Star Trek" captain. This was despite Stewart having previously said that he did not want to return to the franchise.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: While developing ideas for the short form companion series "", Kurtzman and his team developed a story that would have featured Nichelle Nichols reprising her role from "" as Uhura. The short would have seen a young Picard visit Uhura in hospital and receive a mission related to the Borg. The short did not move forward, but it led to discussions of a short starring Stewart as an older version of Picard. The team soon decided that they had enough material to pitch a full series focused on the character to Stewart. Kurtzman and Goldsman contacted the actor before January 2018 to discuss this idea, and met with him along with "Discovery" writer Kirsten Beyer at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Stewart took the meeting with the intention of turning the project down, but after Beyer convinced him to reconsider he agreed to read a four-page document outlining their ideas. At that time, Goldsman invited novelist Michael Chabon, a friend, to work on the project as well and the four ultimately produced a 35-page document that they sent to Stewart. Stewart asked to meet with the group again in March 2018, where he expressed his approval of their pitch. Stewart said the pitch felt like "something very unusual, and I was intrigued". While deciding whether to join the project, Stewart asked Kurtzman that the series be "so different" from previous "Star Trek" stories, "both what people remember but also not what they're expecting at all, otherwise why do it?"


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: On August 4, 2018, Stewart made a surprise appearance at the annual Las Vegas "Star Trek" Convention to officially announce the series and confirm that he would star in it. He explained that after last portraying the character in the 2002 film "", he felt his role in the franchise "had run its natural course", but in the years since he was humbled by stories of the impact the character had on the lives of fans. He was now happy to bring back Picard's "comforting and reforming light [to] shine on these often very dark times". In addition to starring, Stewart was also set to executive produce the series alongside Kurtzman, Goldsman, Chabon, "Discovery"s James Duff, Heather Kadin of Kurtzman's production company Secret Hideout, and Rod Roddenberry (the son of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry) and Trevor Roth of Roddenberry Entertainment, with Beyer as supervising producer.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: The series was initially expected to premiere in 2019. Kadin revealed in October that it was intended to be ongoing rather than a limited miniseries and said that its release dates would not overlap with "Discovery" or any other new "Star Trek" series. Kurtzman added that the Picard series would be "its own thing", later elaborating that where "Discovery" is "a bullet", the Picard series is "a very contemplative show" with its own rhythm and more of a real-world feeling. CBS CCO David Nevins confirmed in December 2018 that the series was intended to debut on CBS All Access at the end of 2019, after the full release of "Discovery"s second season and several "Star Trek: Short Treks" shorts. Stewart revealed a month later that the series would consist of 10 episodes, and reiterated that the intention was for it to continue for multiple seasons, adding in February that "we are set up for possibly three years of this show". A production listing in March gave the series' title as "Star Trek: Destiny", which CBS had trademarked in 2018. However, the official title was announced to be "Star Trek: Picard" at CBS's upfront presentation that May. At that time, Kurtzman said the series was being "shepherded" by a larger creative team rather than having a traditional showrunner.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Chabon was named sole showrunner in June, working on the day-to-day production with Kurtzman and Goldsman. A month later, the series was scheduled to premiere in January 2020. It was reported to have a budget of $8–9 million per episode. In October, Kurtzman said a second season was "already in the works". Chabon signed an overall deal with CBS Television Studios in early December to create several new series for the studio, which meant he would be exiting as showrunner of "Picard" in 2020. He remained an executive producer and writer for the series. CBS officially announced the second season a month later and revealed that Terry Matalas had joined the series as an executive producer to fill the void that would be created by Chabon's departure. Goldsman and Matalas took over as co-showrunners once Chabon left. The series was also reported to have an informal green-light for a third season that would be developed at the same time as, and filmed back-to-back with, the second. This was to save costs and simplify scheduling, and was officially confirmed in September 2021. By then, CBS All Access had been expanded and rebranded as Paramount+. Goldsman said the producers had discussed a three-season plan and a five-season plan for the series, but would ultimately keep making it as long as Stewart was happy to do so. In February 2022, Goldsman confirmed that the third season would be the last. Matalas served as sole showrunner for the third season.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Kurtzman's mandate for the series was that it be a psychological character study about Picard in his "emeritus years". He noted that it was rare for a television series to star an actor of Stewart's age. Goldsman said the series would not be a direct sequel to "The Next Generation" and would be more character-focused than that series, describing "Picard" as "slower, more gentle, more lyrical" than previous "Star Trek" stories. He contrasted "Picard" with "Discovery" by describing the latter as a sci-fi action-adventure series while "Picard" is a sci-fi drama series that tells dramatic stories within an otherworldly setting. Stewart was assured by the creative team that the series would not be "jokey", and compared "Picard" to when he reprised his "X-Men" role of Professor X in the film "Logan" (2017), where he was the same character but the franchise's world and tone was "blown apart".


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Goldsman said each season tells a separate story, but he saw the three seasons as being "of a piece". Matalas elaborated that the series was a three-part story about Picard, with each season exploring different aspects of the character. In addition to having different stories and themes, each season also has a different tone and visual approach, making the series "a kind of an anthology" with each season following the respective visions of Chabon, Goldsman, and Matalas. The first season finds Picard deeply affected by the death of his android colleague Data in "Nemesis", and Kurtzman saw it as a redemption story for the character, who must face the consequences of his choice to abandon Starfleet and the Romulans following the destruction of the planet Romulus in the film "Star Trek" (2009). The second season continues to explore issues that come up in the last stage of a person's life, especially Picard's past relationships, and other elements of his life that have been preventing him from moving forward. Goldsman felt that the first season was about resurrection and the second season was about redemption, while Matalas said the third season was designed to be a "send off" for Picard and the rest of "Next Generation" main cast.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: With the series announcement in August 2018 came confirmation that Stewart would star as Picard. At the start of March 2019, Santiago Cabrera and Michelle Hurd were both set to co-star in the series, with Cabrera being one of the most sought-after actors during the 2019 television pilot season and choosing this series over other offers. Later that month, newcomer Evan Evagora was cast in another series regular role. In April, Alison Pill, Harry Treadaway, and Isa Briones joined the cast. Characters for the new cast members were announced in July, with Pill as Agnes Jurati, Cabrera as Cristobal "Chris" Rios, Hurd as Raffi Musiker, Treadaway as Narek, and Evagora as Elnor. Briones portrays several androids, including Dahj and Soji Asha.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: While developing the series, the creative team discussed not bringing back any other characters from "The Next Generation" to allow "Picard" to stand alone and not become reliant on nostalgia. Part of this was to allow newcomers who had not seen the previous series to enjoy "Picard". However, the writers wanted to be respectful to longtime fans of "Star Trek" and felt they were missing opportunities by not including certain characters, so they decided to add some returning guests who organically served the new story. Several actors from previous "Star Trek" series were announced as guest stars for "Picard" in July 2019, including "The Next Generation"s Brent Spiner as Data, Jonathan Del Arco as Hugh, Jonathan Frakes as William Riker, and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi, as well as "" Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine. In January 2020, Stewart said it was his hope that all of the main cast of "The Next Generation" would appear on "Picard" before the end of the series, while Kurtzman said if Michael Dorn reprised his Klingon role Worf in "Picard" he would appear as he did in "The Next Generation" and not be changed to match the new Klingon designs in "Discovery". At that time, Whoopi Goldberg agreed to appear in the second season of the series as her "The Next Generation" character Guinan.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: In June 2020, the entire main cast of the series was confirmed to be returning for the second season, except for Treadaway. In April 2021, Ryan, Spiner, and first season guest star Orla Brady were revealed to also be main cast members for the second season, with John de Lancie appearing in the season as his "Star Trek" character Q. That July, "Voyager" Robert Duncan McNeill revealed that he had been in discussions to reprise his role as Tom Paris in both seasons of the series, but scheduling conflicts had prevented this. In April 2022, the main cast of "The Next Generation" were confirmed to be starring in the third season with Stewart: LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge, Dorn, Frakes, Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher, Sirtis, and Spiner. Another "Next Generation" cast member, Wil Wheaton, appeared in the second-season finale, reprising his role as Wesley Crusher, but did not return for the third season. After the second-season finale's release in May 2022, Ryan and Hurd confirmed that they had returned for the third season, but Cabrera, Pill, Evagora, and Briones did not.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Several members of the design team from "Star Trek: Discovery" returned for "Picard", including production designer Todd Cherniawsky and creature designer Neville Page of Alchemy Studios. Christine Clark served as costume designer. Acknowledging that the series would be set further in the future than any previous "Star Trek" film or series, Kurtzman explained that the production was aiming for a "grounded" approach rather than having things like "crazy floating skyscrapers and all the cliches of science fiction". The opening title sequence was created by Prologue, the company that created the "Discovery" opening sequence.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: The series was filmed at Santa Clarita Studios, California, under the working title "Drawing Room". It received large tax credits from the California Film Commission for the production to take place in California, rather than in Toronto, Canada, where "Star Trek: Discovery" is filmed. Filming for the first season took place from April to September 2019, with location shooting around California, including at Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez Valley to depict Picard's French vineyard, at long-time "Star Trek" filming location Vasquez Rocks in the Sierra Pelona Mountains in Los Angeles County for Raffi's home, and in the Malibu area for the planet Coppelius.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Despite reports that the second and third seasons were intended to be filmed back-to-back, the producers were just planning to film the second season on its own when the COVID-19 pandemic began to impact film and television productions in early 2020. Due to the scheduling requirements for the series, the subsequent pandemic-induced delays meant the second and third seasons did need to be filmed back-to-back. Filming for the second season began in February 2021, with some third-season scenes being filmed at the same time. Location filming took place around Los Angeles for the second season, which is mostly set in that city during the year 2024. Filming for the season ended in September, with the production then segueing fully into filming the third. The two seasons had one of the largest television series crews at the time with more than 450 crewmembers. Filming for the series wrapped in March 2022; Stewart stated that continually filming the series for nearly 14 months was "thrilling and exciting much of the time", but also difficult for the actor who was in his 80s.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Visual effects for the series are provided by Pixomondo, DNEG, Crafty Apes, Ghost VFX, Gentle Giant Studios, Technicolor VFX, and Filmworks/FX. with Jason Zimmerman returning from "Discovery" as visual effects supervisor. Pixomondo worked with the series' production design department to help flesh out their designs into 3D assets, and then shared those assets with the other vendors. For the first season, these digital models included the Borg Cube, "La Sirena", and the Romulan ships.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: "Star Trek: Discovery" composer Jeff Russo was revealed to be composing the score for "Picard" in July 2019. Russo's relationship with "Star Trek" began as a fan of "The Next Generation", and he asked Kurtzman if he could work on "Picard" after seeing Stewart's announcement of the series at the Las Vegas "Star Trek" Convention. Russo wanted his music to remain truthful to previous "Star Trek" scores without repeating them, and especially wanted to avoid his music for "Discovery". Russo felt that "Picard" was a more intimate story and wanted to take a more personalized approach by featuring more solo instrument performances than he did for "Discovery".


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Russo wrote several iterations of the main theme for the series before settling on a more emotional and stirring version. It is bookended with a piccolo, which Russo felt sounded similar to the fictional Ressikan flute that Picard played in the "Next Generation" episode "". The second season features an "up-tempo rearrangement" of the main theme. Additionally, Russo used Jerry Goldsmith's theme from "" (1979) to connect to "The Next Generation", as that series used Goldsmith's theme for its main title, and he also referenced Alexander Courage's original "Star Trek" theme to "evoke the idea of "Star Trek" in general". A soundtrack album for the first half of was released on February 7, 2020, followed by an album for the full season on April 3. An album for was released on April 29, 2022.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Stephen Barton replaced Russo as composer for the third season, after working with Matalas on the series "12 Monkeys". They took inspiration from the work of Goldsmith and James Horner for the "Star Trek" films. Craig Huxley contributed performances on the blaster beam, an instrument that he invented and previously played on the soundtrack of "The Motion Picture".


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: The first season of "Star Trek: Picard" was released on the streaming service CBS All Access in the United States. Like "Discovery" before it, each episode of the series is broadcast in Canada by Bell Media on the same day as the All Access release, on the specialty channels CTV Sci-Fi Channel (English) and Z (French) before streaming on Crave. Amazon Prime Video streams the episodes within 24 hours of their U.S. release in over 200 other countries and territories around the world; this is separate from "Discovery", which was released internationally by Netflix. The deals with Amazon and Bell were made by international distributor arm CBS Studios International. The first season remained on the rebranded Paramount+, where future seasons are being released.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: A week after the series premiere, CBS said that "Picard" had set a new record for the total streams of a CBS All Access original series by its subscribers, with 115 percent more total streams than the previous record set by "Star Trek: Discovery". CBS also partly attributed the premiere of the series for the month of January 2020 breaking the service's record for the most new subscribers in a month, helped by the week of "Picard"s premiere being the second-most new subscribers in a single week for the service.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: "Star Trek: Picard" has an 86% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, while Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, has assigned a score of 75 out of 100 based on reviews from 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: For the first season, Rotten Tomatoes reported an 87% approval score with an average rating of 7.6/10 based on 253 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Anchored by the incomparable Patrick Stewart, "Picard" departs from standard Starfleet protocol with a slower, serialized story, but like all great "Star Trek" it tackles timely themes with grace and makes for an exciting push further into the final frontier." Metacritic assigned a score of 76 out of 100 based on reviews from 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Rotten Tomatoes reported a 85% approval score for the second season, with an average rating of 7.95/10 based on 94 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Picard" gets some backup from franchise fan favorites in a sophomore season that charts a course towards recapturing more of the classical "Star Trek" spirit and makes it so." Metacritic assigned a score of 69 out of 100 based on reviews from 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: In September 2019, CBS announced a novel written by frequent "Star Trek" author Una McCormack to be published by Simon & Schuster in February 2020. Titled "The Last Best Hope", the novel introduces several characters from the first season and leads directly into its events. A three-issue comic book titled "Star Trek: Picard – Countdown" was also set to be released beginning that November by IDW Publishing. Written by Mike Johnson and "Picard" supervising producer Kirsten Beyer, the comic is set in 2385, and depicts Admiral Picard's actions during the evacuation of Romulus. A second novel, "Dark Veil" by James Swallow, was published in January 2021 and follows Riker and Troi aboard the USS "Titan" a year after Picard retires from Starfleet. "Rogue Elements" by John Jackson Miller was released in August 2021 and tells the backstory of Cristóbal Rios.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Another three-issue comic by Johnson and Beyer, "Star Trek: Picard – Stargazer", is set between the second and third seasons. Published by IDW beginning in August 2022, it features art by Angel Hernandez and tells a story in which Picard returns to helm the USS "Stargazer". McCormack's second "Picard" novel, "Second Self", centers on Raffi Musiker between the first and second seasons. It is set to be released in September 2022.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: In January 2020, CBS All Access announced that "The Next Generation" actor Wil Wheaton would host a new season of the "Star Trek" aftershow "The Ready Room", to stream after the release of each "Picard" episode. Wheaton replaced Naomi Kyle, who hosted the series for after episodes of "Discovery"s second season.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: After the series premiere on January 23, 2020, "Deadline Hollywood" released the first episode of the "Star Trek: Picard Podcast", a weekly podcast sponsored by CBS All Access and hosted by "Deadline"s senior editor Dominic Patten and genre editor Geoff Boucher. Each episode of the podcast features interviews with the series' cast and creative team.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: Simon & Schuster announced an audio-exclusive story, titled "No Man's Land", in January 2022. Written by Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson, the story is set after the series' first-season finale and follows the characters Raffi and Seven of Nine, with Michelle Hurd and Jeri Ryan reprising their respective roles from the series. Fred Tatasciore, John Kassir, and John Cutmore-Scott also star in the drama, which was released on February 22, 2022.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: When the first season of the "Discovery" companion series "Star Trek: Short Treks" was being released in December 2018, CBS CCO David Nevins said there would be more shorts released before the premiere of "Picard". In February 2019, Kurtzman said future shorts could tie directly into series other than "Discovery". At San Diego Comic-Con 2019, Kurtzman announced that the second season of "Short Treks" would include a "teaser" for "Picard" set 15 years before the start of the series. Titled "", the short was released on January 9, 2020, and depicts the synthetic attack on Mars from "Picard"s backstory from the perspective of two school children.


title: Star Trek: Picard

text: In January 2022, Goldsman said there were elements of "Picard" that could be explored more in a spin-off series, and Matalas expressed interest in continuing to explore the time period of the series beyond its three seasons. He added that, in his opinion, ""Star Trek: Picard" is the present day of "Star Trek". And what's going on in that particular world is very important to me." In May, Matalas said he was "spearheading" the idea of a spin-off series starring Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine and Michelle Hurd as Raffi, with both actresses also expressing interest in the idea.


title: Uganda

text: Uganda ("Yuganda" in Ugandan languages), officially the Republic of Uganda (), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda is in the African Great Lakes region. Uganda also lies within the Nile basin and has a varied but generally a modified equatorial climate. It has a population of around 49 million, of which 8.5 million live in the capital and largest city of Kampala.


title: Uganda

text: Uganda is named after the Buganda kingdom, which encompasses a large portion of the south of the country, including the capital Kampala and whose language Luganda is widely spoken throughout the country. From 1894, the area was ruled as a protectorate by the United Kingdom, which established administrative law across the territory. Uganda gained independence from the UK on 9 October 1962. The period since then has been marked by violent conflicts, including an eight-year-long military dictatorship led by Idi Amin.


title: Uganda

text: The official language is English, although the Constitution states that "any other language may be used as a medium of instruction in schools or other educational institutions or for legislative, administrative or judicial purposes as may be prescribed by law." Luganda, a central region-based language, is widely spoken across the Central and South Eastern regions of the country, and several other languages are also spoken, including Ateso, Lango, Acholi, Runyoro, Runyankole, Rukiga, Luo, Rutooro, Samia, Jopadhola, and Lusoga. In 2005 Swahili, which is foreign and so viewed as being neutral, was proposed as the Uganda's second official language. But this has yet to be ratified by parliament. In 2022 Uganda has decided to make Swahili a mandatory subject in the school curriculum.


title: Uganda

text: Uganda's current president is Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who took power in January 1986 after a protracted six-year guerrilla war. Following constitutional amendments that removed term limits for the president, he was able to stand and was elected president in the 2011, 2016 and 2021 general elections.


title: Uganda

text: Much of Uganda was inhabited by Central sudanic and Kuliak speaking of farmers and herders before Bantu speakers arrived in the south and Nilotic speakers in the northeast 3,000 years ago in 1,000 BC. By 1500 AD, they were assimilated into Bantu speaking cultures south of Mount Elgon, the Nile river, and Lake Kyoga.


title: Uganda

text: According to oral tradition and archeological studies, the Empire of Kitara covered an important part of the great lakes area, from the northern lakes Albert and Kyoga to the southern lakes Victoria and Tanganyika. Bunyoro-Kitara is claimed as the antecedent of the Toro, Ankole, and Busoga kingdoms.


title: Uganda

text: Some Luo invaded the area of Bunyoro and assimilated with the Bantu society there, establishing the Babiito dynasty of the current Omukama (ruler) of Bunyoro-Kitara.


title: Uganda

text: Arab traders moved into the land from the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa in the 1830s for trade and commerce. In the late 1860s, Bunyoro in Mid-Western Uganda found itself threatened from the north by Egyptian-sponsored agents. Unlike the Arab traders from the East African coast who sought trade, these agents were promoting foreign conquest. In 1869, Khedive Ismail Pasha of Egypt, seeking to annex the territories north of the borders of Lake Victoria and east of Lake Albert and "south of Gondokoro," sent a British explorer, Samuel Baker, on a military expedition to the frontiers of Northern Uganda, with the objective of suppressing the slave-trade there and opening the way to commerce and "civilization." The Banyoro resisted Baker, who had to fight a desperate battle to secure his retreat. Baker regarded the resistance as an act of treachery, and he denounced the Banyoro in a book ("Ismailia – A Narrative Of The Expedition To Central Africa For The Suppression Of Slave Trade, Organised By Ismail, Khadive Of Egypt" (1874)) that was widely read in Britain. Later, the British arrived in Uganda with a predisposition against the kingdom of Bunyoro and sided with the kingdom of Buganda. This would eventually cost Bunyoro half of its territory, which was given to Buganda as a reward from the British. Two of the numerous "lost counties" were restored to Bunyoro after independence.


title: Uganda

text: In the 1860s, while Arabs sought influence from the north, British explorers searching for the source of the Nile arrived in Uganda. They were followed by British Anglican missionaries who arrived in the kingdom of Buganda in 1877 and French Catholic missionaries in 1879. This situation gave rise to the death of the Uganda Martyrs in 1885—after the conversion of Muteesa I and much of his court, and the succession of his anti-Christian son Mwanga.


title: Uganda

text: The British government chartered the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) to negotiate trade agreements in the region beginning in 1888.


title: Uganda

text: From 1886, there was a series of religious wars in Buganda, initially between Muslims and Christians and then, from 1890, between ba-Ingleza Protestants and ba-Fransa Catholics. Because of civil unrest and financial burdens, IBEAC claimed that it was unable to "maintain their occupation" in the region. British commercial interests were ardent to protect the trade route of the Nile, which prompted the British government to annex Buganda and adjoining territories to create the Uganda Protectorate in 1894.


title: Uganda

text: The Protectorate of Uganda was a protectorate of the British Empire from 1894 to 1962. In 1893, the Imperial British East Africa Company transferred its administration rights of territory consisting mainly of the Kingdom of Buganda to the British government. The IBEAC relinquished its control over Uganda after Ugandan internal religious wars had driven it into bankruptcy.


title: Uganda

text: In 1894, the Uganda Protectorate was established, and the territory was extended beyond the borders of Buganda by signing more treaties with the other kingdoms (Toro in 1900, Ankole in 1901, and Bunyoro in 1933) to an area that roughly corresponds to that of present-day Uganda.


title: Uganda

text: The status of Protectorate had significantly different consequences for Uganda than had the region been made a colony like neighboring Kenya, insofar as Uganda retained a degree of self-government that would have otherwise been limited under a full colonial administration.


title: Uganda

text: In the 1890s, 32,000 labourers from British India were recruited to East Africa under indentured labour contracts to construct the Uganda Railway. Most of the surviving Indians returned home, but 6,724 decided to remain in East Africa after the line's completion. Subsequently, some became traders and took control of cotton ginning and sartorial retail.


title: Uganda

text: From 1900 to 1920, a sleeping sickness epidemic in the southern part of Uganda, along the north shores of Lake Victoria, killed more than 250,000 people.


title: Uganda

text: World War II encouraged the colonial administration of Uganda to recruit 77,143 soldiers to serve in the King's African Rifles. They were seen in action in the Western Desert campaign, the Abyssinian campaign, the Battle of Madagascar and the Burma campaign.


title: Uganda

text: Uganda gained independence from the UK on 9 October 1962 with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state and Queen of Uganda. In October 1963, Uganda became a republic but maintained its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations.


title: Uganda

text: The first post-independence election, held in 1962, was won by an alliance between the Uganda People's Congress (UPC) and Kabaka Yekka (KY). UPC and KY formed the first post-independence government with Milton Obote as executive prime minister, with the Buganda Kabaka (King) Edward Muteesa II holding the largely ceremonial position of president.


title: Uganda

text: Uganda's immediate post-independence years were dominated by the relationship between the central government and the largest regional kingdom – Buganda.


title: Uganda

text: From the moment the British created the Uganda protectorate, the issue of how to manage the largest monarchy within the framework of a unitary state had always been a problem. Colonial governors had failed to come up with a formula that worked. This was further complicated by Buganda's nonchalant attitude to its relationship with the central government. Buganda never sought independence but rather appeared to be comfortable with a loose arrangement that guaranteed them privileges above the other subjects within the protectorate or a special status when the British left. This was evidenced in part by hostilities between the British colonial authorities and Buganda prior to independence.


title: Uganda

text: Within Buganda, there were divisions – between those who wanted the Kabaka to remain a dominant monarch and those who wanted to join with the rest of Uganda to create a modern secular state. The split resulted in the creation of two dominant Buganda based parties – the Kabaka Yekka (Kabaka Only) KY, and the Democratic Party (DP) that had roots in the Catholic Church. The bitterness between these two parties was extremely intense especially as the first elections for the post-Colonial parliament approached. The Kabaka particularly disliked the DP leader, Benedicto Kiwanuka.


title: Uganda

text: Outside Buganda, a soft-spoken politician from Northern Uganda, Milton Obote, had forged an alliance of non-Buganda politicians to form the Uganda People's Congress (UPC). The UPC at its heart was dominated by politicians who wanted to rectify what they saw as the regional inequality that favoured Buganda's special status. This drew in substantial support from outside Buganda. The party however remained a loose alliance of interests, but Obote showed great skill at negotiating them into a common ground based on a federal formula.


title: Uganda

text: At Independence, the Buganda question remained unresolved. Uganda was one of the few colonial territories that achieved independence without a dominant political party with a clear majority in parliament. In the pre-Independence elections, the UPC ran no candidates in Buganda and won 37 of the 61 directly elected seats (outside Buganda). The DP won 24 seats outside Buganda. The "special status" granted to Buganda meant that the 21 Buganda seats were elected by proportional representation reflecting the elections to the Buganda parliament – the Lukikko. KY won a resounding victory over DP, winning all 21 seats.


title: Uganda

text: The UPC reached a high at the end of 1964 when the leader of the DP in parliament, Basil Kiiza Bataringaya, crossed the parliamentary floor with five other MPs, leaving DP with only nine seats. The DP MPs were not particularly happy that the hostility of their leader, Benedicto Kiwanuka, towards the Kabaka was hindering their chances of compromise with KY. The trickle of defections turned into a flood when 10 KY members crossed the floor when they realised the formal coalition with the UPC was no longer viable. Obote's charismatic speeches across the country were sweeping all before him, and the UPC was winning almost every local election held and increasing its control over all district councils and legislatures outside Buganda. The response from the Kabaka was mute – probably content in his ceremonial role and symbolism in his part of the country. However, there were also major divisions within his palace that made it difficult for him to act effectively against Obote. By the time Uganda had become independent, Buganda "was a divided house with contending social and political forces" There were however problems brewing inside the UPC. As its ranks swelled, the ethnic, religious, regional, and personal interests began to shake the party. The party's apparent strength was eroded in a complex sequence of factional conflicts in its central and regional structures. And by 1966, the UPC was tearing itself apart. The conflicts were further intensified by the newcomers who had crossed the parliamentary floor from DP and KY.


title: Uganda

text: The UPC delegates arrived in Gulu in 1964 for their delegates conference. Here was the first demonstration as to how Obote was losing control of his party. The battle over the Secretary-General of the party was a bitter contest between the new moderate's candidate – Grace Ibingira and the radical John Kakonge. Ibingira subsequently became the symbol of the opposition to Obote within the UPC. This is an important factor when looking at the subsequent events that led to the crisis between Buganda and the Central government. For those outside the UPC (including KY supporters), this was a sign that Obote was vulnerable. Keen observers realised the UPC was not a cohesive unit.


title: Uganda

text: The collapse of the UPC-KY alliance openly revealed the dissatisfaction Obote and others had about Buganda's "special status". In 1964, the government responded to demands from some parts of the vast Buganda Kingdom that they were not the Kabaka's subjects. Prior to colonial rule, Buganda had been rivalled by the neighbouring Bunyoro kingdom. Buganda had conquered parts of Bunyoro and the British colonialists had formalised this in the Buganda Agreements. Known as the "lost counties", the people in these areas wished to revert to being part of Bunyoro. Obote decided to allow a referendum, which angered the Kabaka and most of the rest of Buganda. The residents of the counties voted to return to Bunyoro despite the Kabaka's attempts to influence the vote. Having lost the referendum, KY opposed the bill to pass the counties to Bunyoro, thus ending the alliance with the UPC.


title: Uganda

text: The tribal nature of Ugandan politics was also manifesting itself in government. The UPC which had previously been a national party began to break along tribal lines when Ibingira challenged Obote in the UPC. The "North/South" ethnic divide that had been evident in economic and social spheres now entrenched itself in politics. Obote surrounded himself with mainly northern politicians – A. A. Neykon, Felix Onama, Alex Ojera – while Ibingira's supporters who were subsequently arrested and jailed with him, were mainly from the South – George Magezi, B. Kirya, Matthias Ngobi. In time, the two factions acquired ethnic labels – "Bantu" (the mainly Southern Ibingira faction) and "Nilotic" (the mainly Northern Obote faction). The perception that the government was at war with the Bantu was further enhanced when Obote arrested and imprisoned the mainly Bantu ministers who backed Ibingira.


title: Uganda

text: These labels brought into the mix two very powerful influences. First Buganda – the people of Buganda are Bantu and therefore naturally aligned to the Ibingira faction. The Ibingira faction further advanced this alliance by accusing Obote of wanting to overthrow the Kabaka. They were now aligned to opposing Obote. Second – the security forces – the British colonialists had recruited the army and police almost exclusively from Northern Uganda due to their perceived suitability for these roles. At independence, the army and police was dominated by northern tribes – mainly Nilotic. They would now feel more affiliated to Obote, and he took full advantage of this to consolidate his power. In April 1966, Obote passed out eight hundred new army recruits at Moroto, of whom seventy percent came from the Northern Region.


title: Uganda

text: At the time there was a tendency to perceive central government and security forces as dominated by "northerners" – particularly the Acholi who through the UPC had significant access to government positions at national level. In northern Uganda there were also varied degrees of anti-Buganda feelings, particularly over the kingdom's "special status" before and after independence, and all the economic and social benefits that came with this status. "Obote brought significant numbers of northerners into the central state, both through the civil service and military, and created a patronage machine in Northern Uganda". However, both "Bantu" and "Nilotic" labels represent significant ambiguities. The Bantu category for example includes both Buganda and Bunyoro – historically bitter rivals. The Nilotic label includes the Lugbara, Acholi, and Langi, all of whom have bitter rivalries that were to define Uganda's military politics later. Despite these ambiguities, these events unwittingly brought to fore the northerner/southerner political divide which to some extent still influences Ugandan politics.


title: Uganda

text: The UPC fragmentation continued as opponents sensed Obote's vulnerability. At local level where the UPC dominated most councils discontent began to challenge incumbent council leaders. Even in Obote's home district, attempts were made to oust the head of the local district council in 1966. A more worrying fact for the UPC was that the next national elections loomed in 1967 – and without the support of KY (who were now likely to back the DP), and the growing factionalism in the UPC, there was the real possibility that the UPC would be out of power in months.


title: Uganda

text: Obote went after KY with a new act of parliament in early 1966 that blocked any attempt by KY to expand outside Buganda. KY appeared to respond in parliament through one of their few remaining MPs, the terminally ill Daudi Ochieng. Ochieng was an irony – although from Northern Uganda, he had risen high in the ranks of KY and become a close confidant to the Kabaka who had gifted him with large land titles in Buganda. In Obote's absence from Parliament, Ochieng laid bare the illegal plundering of ivory and gold from the Congo that had been orchestrated by Obote's army chief of staff, Colonel Idi Amin. He further alleged that Obote, Onama and Neykon had all benefited from the scheme. Parliament overwhelmingly voted in favour of a motion to censure Amin and investigate Obote's involvement. This shook the government and raised tensions in the country.


title: Uganda

text: KY further demonstrated its ability to challenge Obote from within his party at the UPC Buganda conference where Godfrey Binaisa (the Attorney General) was ousted by a faction believed to have the backing of KY, Ibingira and other anti-Obote elements in Buganda. Obote's response was to arrest Ibingira and other ministers at a cabinet meeting and to assume special powers in February 1966. In March 1966, Obote also announced that the offices of President and vice-president would cease to exist – effectively dismissing the Kabaka. Obote also gave Amin more power – giving him the Army Commander position over the previous holder (Opolot) who had relations to Buganda through marriage (possibly believing Opolot would be reluctant to take military action against the Kabaka if it came to that). Obote abolished the constitution and effectively suspended elections due in a few months. Obote went on television and radio to accuse the Kabaka of various offences including requesting foreign troops which appears to have been explored by the Kabaka following the rumours of Amin plotting a coup. Obote further dismantled the authority of the Kabaka by announcing among other measures:


title: Uganda

text: The lines were now drawn for a show down between Buganda and the Central government. Historians may argue about whether this could have been avoided through compromise. This was unlikely as Obote now felt emboldened and saw the Kabaka as weak. Indeed, by accepting the presidency four years earlier and siding with the UPC, the Kabaka had divided his people and taken the side of one against the other. Within Buganda's political institutions, rivalries driven by religion and personal ambition made the institutions ineffective and unable to respond to the central government moves. The Kabaka was often regarded as aloof and unresponsive to advice from the younger Buganda politicians who better understood the new post-Independence politics, unlike the traditionalists who were ambivalent to what was going on as long as their traditional benefits were maintained. The Kabaka favoured the neo-traditionalists.


title: Uganda

text: In May 1966, the Kabaka made his move. He asked for foreign help, and the Buganda parliament demanded that the Uganda government leave Buganda (including the capital, Kampala). In response Obote ordered Idi Amin to attack the Kabaka's palace. The battle for the Kabaka's palace was fierce – the Kabaka's guards putting up more resistance than had been expected. The British trained Captain – the Kabaka with about 120 armed men kept Idi Amin at bay for twelve hours. It is estimated that up to 2,000 people died in the battle which ended when the army called in heavier guns and overran the palace. The anticipated countryside uprising in Buganda did not materialise and a few hours later a beaming Obote met the press to relish his victory. The Kabaka escaped over the palace walls and was transported into exile in London by supporters. He died there three years later.


title: Uganda

text: In 1966, following a power struggle between the Obote-led government and King Muteesa, Obote suspended the constitution and removed the ceremonial president and vice-president. In 1967, a new constitution proclaimed Uganda a republic and abolished the traditional kingdoms. Obote was declared the president.


title: Uganda

text: After a military coup on 25 January 1971, Obote was deposed from power and General Idi Amin seized control of the country. Amin ruled Uganda as dictator with the support of the military for the next eight years. He carried out mass killings within the country to maintain his rule. An estimated 80,000–500,000 Ugandans died during his regime. Aside from his brutalities, he forcibly removed the entrepreneurial Indian minority from Uganda. In June 1976, Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France flight and forced it to land at Entebbe airport. One hundred of the 250 passengers originally on board were held hostage until an Israeli commando raid rescued them ten days later. Amin's reign was ended after the Uganda-Tanzania War in 1979, in which Tanzanian forces aided by Ugandan exiles invaded Uganda.


title: Uganda

text: Political parties in Uganda were restricted in their activities beginning that year, in a measure ostensibly designed to reduce sectarian violence. In the non-party "Movement" system instituted by Museveni, political parties continued to exist, but they could operate only a headquarters office. They could not open branches, hold rallies, or field candidates directly (although electoral candidates could belong to political parties). A constitutional referendum cancelled this nineteen-year ban on multi-party politics in July 2005.


title: Uganda

text: In 1993, Pope John Paul II visited Uganda during his 6-day pastoral trip to urge Ugandans to seek reconciliation. During mass celebrations, he paid homage to the slain Christian martyrs.


title: Uganda

text: In the mid-to-late 1990s, Museveni was lauded by western countries as part of a new generation of African leaders.


title: Uganda

text: His presidency has been marred, however, by invading and occupying the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the Second Congo War, resulting in an estimated 5.4 million deaths since 1998, and by participating in other conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa. He has struggled for years in the civil war against the Lord's Resistance Army, which has been guilty of numerous crimes against humanity, including child slavery, the Atiak massacre, and other mass murders. Conflict in northern Uganda has killed thousands and displaced millions.


title: Uganda

text: Parliament abolished presidential term limits in 2005, allegedly because Museveni used public funds to pay US$2,000 to each member of parliament who supported the measure. Presidential elections were held in February 2006. Museveni ran against several candidates, the most prominent of them being Kizza Besigye.


title: Uganda

text: On 20 February 2011, the Uganda Electoral Commission declared the incumbent president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni the winning candidate of the 2011 elections that were held on 18 February 2011. The opposition however, were not satisfied with the results, condemning them as full of sham and rigging. According to the official results, Museveni won with 68 percent of the votes. This easily topped his nearest challenger, Besigye, who had been Museveni's physician and told reporters that he and his supporters "downrightly snub" the outcome as well as the unremitting rule of Museveni or any person he may appoint. Besigye added that the rigged elections would definitely lead to an illegitimate leadership and that it is up to Ugandans to critically analyse this. The European Union's Election Observation Mission reported on improvements and flaws of the Ugandan electoral process: "The electoral campaign and polling day were conducted in a peaceful manner. However, the electoral process was marred by avoidable administrative and logistical failures that led to an unacceptable number of Ugandan citizens being disfranchised."


title: Uganda

text: Since August 2012, hacktivist group Anonymous has threatened Ugandan officials and hacked official government websites over its anti-gay bills. Some international donors have threatened to cut financial aid to the country if anti-gay bills continue.


title: Uganda

text: Indicators of a plan for succession by the president's son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, have increased tensions.


title: Uganda

text: President Yoweri Museveni has ruled the country since 1986 and he was latest re-elected in January 2021 presidential elections. According to official results Museveni won the elections with 58% of the vote while popstar-turned-politician Bobi Wine had 35%. The opposition challenged the result because of allegations of widespread fraud and irregularities. Another opposition candidate was 24 year old John Katumba.


title: Uganda

text: Uganda is located in southeast Africa between 1º S and 4º N latitude, and between 30º E and 35º E longitude. Its geography is very diverse consisting of volcanic hills, mountains, and lakes. The country sits at an average of 900 meters above sea level. Both the eastern and western borders of Uganda have mountains. The Ruwenzori mountain range contains the highest peak in Uganda, which is named Alexandra and measures 5,094 meters.


title: Uganda

text: Much of the south of the country is heavily influenced by one of the world's biggest lakes, Lake Victoria, which contains many islands. The most important cities are located in the south, near this lake, including the capital Kampala and the nearby city of Entebbe. Lake Kyoga is in the centre of the country and is surrounded by extensive marshy areas.


title: Uganda

text: Although landlocked, Uganda contains many large lakes. Besides Lakes Victoria and Kyoga, there are Lake Albert, Lake Edward, and the smaller Lake George. It lies almost completely within the Nile basin. The Victoria Nile drains from Lake Victoria into Lake Kyoga and thence into Lake Albert on the Congolese border. It then runs northwards into South Sudan. An area in eastern Uganda is drained by the Suam River, part of the internal drainage basin of Lake Turkana. The extreme north-eastern part of Uganda drains into the Lotikipi Basin, which is primarily in Kenya.


title: Uganda

text: Uganda has 60 protected areas, including ten national parks: Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and Rwenzori Mountains National Park (both UNESCO World Heritage Sites), Kibale National Park, Kidepo Valley National Park, Lake Mburo National Park, Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, Mount Elgon National Park, Murchison Falls National Park, Queen Elizabeth National Park, and Semuliki National Park.


title: Uganda

text: Uganda is home to a vast number of species, including a population of mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, gorillas and golden monkeys in the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, and hippos in the Murchison Falls National Park.


title: Uganda

text: The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 4.36/10, ranking it 128th globally out of 172 countries.


title: Uganda

text: The President of Uganda is both head of state and head of government. The president appoints a vice-president and a prime minister to aid him in governing.