Romeo and Juliet

A love story inside a feud

Romeo and Juliet is William Shakespeare's early tragedy about two teenagers from enemy families in Verona who fall in love, marry in secret and die within a week. Shakespeare wrote it around 1595. It was first printed in 1597 in a short quarto, and a longer, better text followed in 1599. His main source is a long English poem, Arthur Brooke's The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which itself retold an Italian story.

Shakespeare makes two big changes to the source. He shrinks the action from months to about four days, from a Sunday to the following Thursday. He also makes Juliet younger: she is not yet fourteen. The speed and the youth drive the whole play. Everything happens too fast for anyone to think.

The play opens with a Prologue, a sonnet spoken by the Chorus. It tells the audience at once that two "star-crossed" lovers from feuding houses will die and that their deaths will end their parents' strife. So the question is never whether the lovers fail. It is how, and who is to blame.

The main characters:

• Romeo, the only son of the Montagues, moody and quick to fall in love.
• Juliet, the only daughter of the Capulets, younger and more practical than Romeo.
• Mercutio, Romeo's witty friend and the Prince's kinsman, who belongs to neither house.
• Tybalt, Juliet's hot-tempered cousin, who lives for the feud.
• The Nurse, Juliet's bawdy, loving servant and go-between.
• Friar Laurence, a Franciscan priest who marries the lovers and plans their escape.
• Paris, a young nobleman who wants to marry Juliet.
• Prince Escalus, the ruler of Verona, who tries to stop the feud by law.

Four themes run through the play: love against hate, haste, fate against chance, and the gap between the young and their parents.

Act 1: the brawl and the feast

The play begins with servants of the two houses picking a fight in the street. Benvolio, Romeo's cousin, tries to stop it. Tybalt joins in, then the heads of both families. Prince Escalus breaks it up and declares that anyone who fights again will pay with his life.

Romeo was not there. He is lovesick for a woman named Rosaline, who has sworn to stay chaste. He speaks in clichés about love's pain, and Benvolio tells him to look at other women.

Paris asks Lord Capulet for Juliet's hand. Capulet says she is too young and asks him to wait two years, but invites him to a feast that night to win her. A Capulet servant who cannot read asks Romeo to read the guest list. Rosaline is on it, so Romeo and his friends decide to go masked.

Lady Capulet tells Juliet that Paris wants her. The Nurse chatters about Juliet's childhood. Juliet agrees only to look at him.

On the way, Mercutio mocks Romeo's gloom with a long, wild speech about Queen Mab, the fairy who brings dreams. Romeo says he has a feeling that the night will start something that ends in his own death.

At the feast, Romeo sees Juliet and forgets Rosaline at once. Tybalt recognizes Romeo's voice and wants to kill him. Capulet orders him to leave the guest alone, and Tybalt goes, vowing revenge. Romeo and Juliet meet. Their first fourteen lines together form a shared sonnet that ends in a kiss. Only after they part does each learn that the other belongs to the enemy house.

Act 2: the balcony and the wedding

Romeo climbs into the Capulet orchard. Juliet appears at her window above. Thinking she is alone, she asks why he must be a Montague and says a name is only a word. Romeo answers her. They trade vows. Juliet is the one who worries that it is "too rash, too unadvised, too sudden," and she is also the one who proposes a practical plan: if his love is honest and he means marriage, he should send word tomorrow.

At dawn Romeo goes to Friar Laurence, who is gathering herbs and reflecting that every plant can heal or poison. The friar teases Romeo about how fast he dropped Rosaline. Still, he agrees to marry the lovers because he hopes the match will end the feud.

Tybalt has sent a challenge to Romeo's house. Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio joke in the street, and Mercutio mocks the Nurse when she arrives as Juliet's messenger. Romeo tells her to bring Juliet to the friar's cell that afternoon. The Nurse returns home and teases Juliet by delaying the news. That afternoon the friar marries them, warning that "violent delights have violent ends."

Act 3: two deaths and a banishment

Act 3 is the turning point. It is hot, and the young men are restless. Tybalt finds Romeo and calls him a villain. Romeo, now secretly Tybalt's kinsman by marriage, refuses to fight and speaks of love. Mercutio is disgusted by what he sees as surrender and draws on Tybalt himself. Romeo steps between them to stop the fight, and Tybalt stabs Mercutio under Romeo's arm. Dying, Mercutio curses both families: "A plague o' both your houses!"

Romeo blames himself and his love for making him soft. When Tybalt returns, Romeo kills him. He cries that he is "fortune's fool" and runs. The Prince, who has lost a kinsman in Mercutio, spares Romeo's life but banishes him from Verona.

Juliet waits for her wedding night. The Nurse arrives with the news that Tybalt is dead and Romeo is banished. Juliet first curses Romeo, then defends him: her husband is alive, and banishment is worse than ten thousand Tybalts dead.

At the friar's cell, Romeo hears the sentence and says banishment is death by another name. He throws himself on the floor and draws a knife to kill himself. The friar scolds him and makes a plan: spend the night with Juliet, leave for Mantua at dawn, and wait while the friar finds a time to announce the marriage and win a pardon.

Meanwhile, Capulet decides that Juliet's grief for Tybalt needs a cure and promises her to Paris. The wedding will be on Thursday. Romeo and Juliet spend their one night together. At dawn they argue over whether the bird they hear is the nightingale or the lark, because the lark means he must go. He leaves through the window.

Lady Capulet brings the news of the wedding. Juliet refuses. Her father arrives, calls her names, and threatens to throw her into the street if she does not obey. Her mother turns away. Juliet asks the Nurse for help, and the Nurse advises her to marry Paris, since Romeo is as good as dead. Juliet feels betrayed. She says nothing to the Nurse and goes to the friar, ready to die if there is no other way.

Act 4: the sleeping potion

At the cell Juliet meets Paris, who speaks as if she is already his. When he leaves, she threatens to kill herself with a knife. Friar Laurence offers a desperate plan. She will agree to the wedding, and on the night before it she will drink a potion that makes her seem dead for forty-two hours. Her family will lay her in the Capulet tomb. The friar will send a letter to Romeo in Mantua, and Romeo will come to take her away when she wakes.

Juliet goes home and apologizes to her father. Delighted, Capulet moves the wedding forward a day, to Wednesday. This leaves the friar less time.

That night Juliet sends the Nurse away. Alone with the vial, she imagines every way the plan can fail: the potion might not work, the friar might mean to poison her, she might wake early among the bones and Tybalt's corpse and go mad. She drinks it anyway.

In the morning the house is busy with wedding preparations. The Nurse goes to wake Juliet and finds her apparently dead. The family's grief is loud and formal. Capulet turns the wedding music into funeral music, and Juliet is carried to the tomb.