• The well-known fact that the show started out as East Side Story, a story of a romance attempting to survive amid two battling gangs, one Jewish and one Catholic. In the earliest drafts, Tony is an Italian-American called “Tonio.”



• Anita’s pivotal role in the climax apparently came later in the writing, as the earlier drafts have the Jets directing their drugstore taunts at Maria, not at Anita.



• Most critics of the Shakespeare connection, while generally respectful of Arthur Laurents' libretto, are quick to note the most significant departure from Romeo and Juliet, namely that, unlike the heroine of the tragedy, the heroine of the musical does not die. The earliest drafts confirm the creators' attempts to follow the example of the Bard. In a reversal of what became the finished product (and a reversal of Shakespeare, for that matter), it is Maria who is told (falsely) that Tony has been killed. Her anguish takes her back to the bridal shop, where, during her tragic aria, she uses Anita’s scissors to stab herself. Tony/Tonio discovers her and she dies in his arms. At this point the boy runs into the street looking for Chino and begging to be killed, a modern take on the time-honored suicide of Romeo.
  
  According to an interview with Jerome Robbins, it was Richard Rodgers who persuaded the collaborators to discard this melodramatic scenario and allow the heroine to survive the tragedies.