"Romeo and Juliet" and "West Side Story" are both timeless dramas that will live forever, but "Romeo and Juliet" is a classic that has a much more powerful and tragic impact on the reader than "West Side Story". Although both of these stories have many similarities, there are also many differences. These differences include the differences in soliloquy, the fact that Maria doesn't die, the fact that we never see Tony or Maria's parents, the …showed first 75 words of 707 total…

…showed last 75 words of 707 total…Romeo and Juliet, and they are not, as many people presume them to be, identical. If Arthur Laurents made West Side Story identical to Romeo and Juliet, it would not have been a success as it was. Authors build on other people's ideas and rewrite them to tell the story that they need to portray -not copy them. Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story truly are the two greatest love tragedies in the world.