On 19 March 1563, Brooke died in the shipwreck that also killed Sir Thomas Finch, bound for Le Havre, besieged in the French Wars of Religion.[2] In 1567 George Turberville published a collection of poetry entitled, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets; it included “An Epitaph on the Death of Master Arthur Brooke Drownde in Passing to New Haven”.[3]
Bernard Garter published The Tragicall and True Historie which Happened betweene Two English Lovers (1565), which imitated Brooke's work in a ballad metre.[4] A prose version of Romeo and Juliet (1567) was printed in The Palace of Pleasure, a collection of tales edited by William Painter. Shakespeare stuck quite closely to the version by Brooke.[5]
Munro, J. J. (1908), Brooke's ’Romeus and Juliet,’ being the original of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", London, Chatto and Windus; New York, Duffield and Company.