Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the world. In the Italian city of Verona, two great families, the Montagues and the Capulets, are locked in an ancient feud. Romeo, a Montague, gatecrashes a Capulet ball and falls in love at first sight with Juliet, the Capulets’ only daughter, not yet fourteen. That night, at her balcony, they declare their love; the next day they are secretly married by Friar Laurence. Within hours Romeo, trying to stop a brawl, sees his friend Mercutio killed by Juliet’s cousin Tybalt, kills Tybalt in revenge, and is banished. Juliet’s parents, unaware of her marriage, insist that she marry the nobleman Paris. To escape, she takes a drug that makes her seem dead; but the message explaining the plan never reaches Romeo, who, believing her dead, poisons himself at her side in the family tomb. She wakes, finds him dead, and stabs herself. The families, over their children’s bodies, are reconciled.

William Shakespeare wrote the play early in his career, around 1595, in the same years as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his sonnets. It is a tragedy built on the materials of comedy — young lovers, obstructive parents, a bawdy nurse, witty friends — and its language is the most lyrical of his early plays, full of sonnets, puns and dazzling images of light in darkness.

At a glance

Written	c. 1594–96
First printed	Quarto 1597 (a short, “bad” text) and a fuller Quarto 1599
Setting	Verona and Mantua, in July, over four days
Source	Arthur Brooke’s long poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), based on Italian novellas by Masuccio, Luigi da Porto and Matteo Bandello
Juliet’s age	“Not fourteen” — in Brooke she is sixteen; Shakespeare made her younger

The story

A Chorus speaks a sonnet that tells the whole story in advance: two households “both alike in dignity, / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene”, whose “ancient grudge” breaks out anew; “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life”, whose deaths will bury their parents’ strife — “the two hours’ traffic of our stage.”

On a hot Sunday morning, servants of the two houses provoke each other in the street (“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”); a brawl breaks out, joined by the fiery Tybalt, a Capulet, the peacemaking Benvolio, a Montague, and finally the old heads of the houses themselves. Prince Escalus stops the fight and decrees that anyone who disturbs the peace again will pay with his life.

Romeo, Lord Montague’s son, has not been in the fight; he is moping, sleepless and melancholy, because he is in love with Rosaline, who has sworn to remain chaste. He speaks of his love in the clichés of Petrarchan poetry: “O brawling love! O loving hate!… Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!”

Count Paris, a young kinsman of the Prince, asks Lord Capulet for the hand of his daughter Juliet. Capulet says she is too young — “Let two more summers wither in their pride” — but invites Paris to woo her at a feast that night. An illiterate servant, sent out with the guest list, asks Romeo to read it for him; Rosaline is on it. Benvolio persuades Romeo to go in a mask, so he can compare her with other beauties.

At home, Lady Capulet tells Juliet of Paris’s suit. The Nurse, who suckled Juliet, rambles bawdily and lovingly about Juliet’s childhood. Juliet agrees dutifully to look at Paris.

On the way to the feast, Romeo’s friend Mercutio, a brilliant, mocking talker, delivers the fantastical Queen Mab speech about the fairy who brings dreams to sleepers — lovers dream of love, lawyers of fees, soldiers of cutting throats — until it spins into nightmare and Romeo stops him. Romeo has a foreboding that “some consequence yet hanging in the stars” will begin this night and end in “untimely death”.

At the ball, Romeo sees Juliet and forgets Rosaline in an instant: “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! / It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night / Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear… Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! / For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” Tybalt recognises his voice and wants to fight him, but old Capulet forbids it. Romeo approaches Juliet and their first fourteen lines together form a sonnet — about pilgrims, saints, palms and prayers — ending in a kiss; they begin a second and kiss again. “You kiss by th’ book.” Only afterwards does each learn who the other is. “My only love sprung from my only hate! / Too early seen unknown, and known too late!”

Romeo slips away from his friends and climbs into the Capulets’ orchard. Juliet appears at a window above:

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Not knowing he is there, Juliet speaks her thoughts aloud: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” — that is, why are you Romeo, a Montague? “Deny thy father and refuse thy name… What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.” Romeo answers, and they exchange vows. Juliet is direct and practical: she will not play the coy maiden, but she worries that their love is “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, / Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / Ere one can say ‘It lightens.’” “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, / My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite.” She says that if his love is honourable, she will send a messenger tomorrow to learn where and when they will marry. They part at dawn: “Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow / That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

At sunrise, Romeo goes to Friar Laurence, a Franciscan gathering herbs, who reflects that every plant contains both medicine and poison. The friar teases Romeo about his quick change from Rosaline (“Young men’s love then lies / Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes”) but agrees to marry them, hoping the match will reconcile the families. “Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.” Juliet sends the Nurse to Romeo, who sets the wedding for that afternoon at the friar’s cell. The Nurse teases Juliet by delaying the news. That afternoon, Romeo and Juliet are married in secret.

An hour later, in the heat of the day, Mercutio and Benvolio meet Tybalt, who has challenged Romeo to a duel for gatecrashing the ball. Romeo arrives, newly Tybalt’s kinsman by marriage, and refuses to fight, speaking of his love for the name of Capulet. Mercutio, disgusted by this “calm, dishonourable, vile submission”, fights Tybalt himself. Romeo steps between them; Tybalt stabs Mercutio under Romeo’s arm. Mercutio, dying, still jokes — “ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man” — and curses: “A plague o’ both your houses!” Romeo, crying “O sweet Juliet, / Thy beauty hath made me effeminate”, fights Tybalt and kills him. “O, I am fortune’s fool!” He flees. The Prince, hearing that Tybalt killed Mercutio first, spares Romeo’s life but banishes him from Verona.

Juliet, waiting impatiently for her wedding night (“Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds… Come, night; come, Romeo… Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, / Take him and cut him out in little stars”), learns from the Nurse that Romeo has killed Tybalt and been banished. After an outburst against him, she defends her husband. Romeo, hiding in the friar’s cell, threatens to kill himself; the friar rebukes him and arranges for him to spend the night with Juliet before fleeing to Mantua.

Meanwhile old Capulet, wanting to cheer his grieving family, suddenly arranges for Juliet to marry Paris on Thursday — three days away.

At dawn, after their wedding night, the lovers part in the aubade scene: Juliet insists it is the nightingale, not the lark — “It was the nightingale, and not the lark, / That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear” — but Romeo must go. Looking down at him, she has a vision: “Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.”

Lady Capulet comes in to announce the marriage to Paris. Juliet refuses. Her father explodes in fury — “Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!… An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; / An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets” — and her mother turns away. The Nurse advises her to marry Paris: Romeo is “a dishclout to him”. Juliet, now utterly alone — “Ancient damnation!” — goes to Friar Laurence, threatening to kill herself.

The friar gives her a plan: she must consent to the marriage, and on the night before, drink a potion that will make her appear dead for forty-two hours. She will be laid in the Capulet vault; the friar will send word to Romeo in Mantua, and Romeo will come and carry her away. Juliet agrees. At home she submits to her father, who, delighted, moves the wedding forward to Wednesday. That night, alone, she imagines the horrors of waking in the tomb among the bones of her ancestors and Tybalt’s corpse, and drinks: “Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.”

In the morning the Nurse finds her “dead”. The wedding preparations turn into a funeral.

In Mantua, Romeo dreams that Juliet found him dead and revived him with kisses. His servant Balthasar arrives with the news that Juliet is dead. Friar Laurence’s letter has not reached him: the messenger, Friar John, was shut up in a house suspected of plague. Romeo cries “Then I defy you, stars!”, buys poison from a starving apothecary, and rides for Verona. Friar Laurence, learning that his letter was not delivered, hurries to the tomb.

At night in the churchyard, Paris is laying flowers at Juliet’s tomb when Romeo arrives and begins to break it open. Paris, thinking Romeo means to desecrate the Capulet dead, challenges him; they fight, and Romeo kills him, then recognises him and lays him in the tomb. He looks at Juliet: “Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, / Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty… Why art thou yet so fair?” He kisses her, drinks the poison, and dies: “Thus with a kiss I die.”

Friar Laurence arrives moments too late. Juliet wakes. Hearing the watch coming, the friar begs her to flee with him, but she refuses. She finds the cup in Romeo’s hand, kisses his lips hoping for poison, then takes his dagger — “O happy dagger! / This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die” — and stabs herself.

The watch, the Prince, the Capulets and Montague (whose wife has died of grief at Romeo’s exile) gather. The friar tells the whole story. The Prince rebukes the families: “See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, / That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.” Capulet and Montague take each other’s hands and promise to raise golden statues of each other’s children. The Prince ends: “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Themes

Love. The play contrasts different kinds of love: Romeo’s conventional, self-dramatising infatuation with Rosaline; Mercutio’s and the Nurse’s bawdy, physical idea of love; the Capulets’ arranged, dynastic marriage; and the absolute, transforming love of Romeo and Juliet, which overturns everything. Juliet in particular is clear-sighted, frank and courageous — she proposes marriage and sets its time — and many critics see her as the play’s moral centre.

Haste. Everything happens too fast: love at first sight, marriage the next day, death within four days. “These violent delights have violent ends,” warns the friar. The speed is both the glory of young passion and the cause of disaster.

Fate and chance. The Prologue calls them “star-crossed”, and the lovers repeatedly sense doom. Yet the tragedy depends on accident — a servant who can’t read, a letter delayed by plague, a few minutes’ difference at the tomb. Is it fate, chance, or the feud and the impatience of the young? The play keeps all three in view.

Hatred and the social order. The feud — whose cause is never explained — is an inherited, pointless violence that destroys the young of both houses and is ended only by their sacrifice. Shakespeare shows the patriarchal household (Capulet’s rage, Juliet’s helplessness) as another kind of tyranny.

Light and dark. The lovers are imaged as light in darkness: Juliet is the sun, a torch, a jewel in the night; they meet at night and part at dawn; their love is a lightning flash.

Love and death. From the beginning love is shadowed by death — Juliet: “If he be married, / My grave is like to be my wedding bed”; Capulet: “Death is my son-in-law”. The play has been called a Liebestod, a union of love and death.

Afterlife

Few works have been retold more often: Berlioz’s dramatic symphony (1839), Gounod’s opera (1867), Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture (1880), Prokofiev’s ballet (1935–38); the musical West Side Story (1957), which moves the feud to New York street gangs; Franco Zeffirelli’s film with teenage actors (1968); Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), set in a modern Verona Beach with guns called “swords”; Shakespeare in Love (1998). The balcony in Verona’s “Casa di Giulietta” — added in the twentieth century — receives thousands of tourists and letters addressed to Juliet each year.

In conversation

• “Star-crossed lovers” — lovers doomed by fate.
• “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” — “why are you Romeo?”, not “where are you?” — a common misunderstanding.
• “What’s in a name?” — names do not change what a thing is; “A plague o’ both your houses!” — a curse on both sides of a quarrel.