Romeo and Juliet

> "*Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.*"
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**The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet** is a 1597 tragedy play by William Shakespeare. It tells the story of two teenagers who fall in love despite their families' rivalry.

It is one of the first-known plays written by Shakespeare early in his writing career and is considered one of his most famous works.

The titular characters have since become one of the most iconic fictional couples of all time.

## Plot Summary

In Verona, Italy, an ongoing feud between two noble families, the Montagues and Capulets, disrupts the town's peace when a brawl breaks out among the families' servants. Verona's leader, Prince Escalus, breaks up the fights and threatens death to anyone if the violence happens again.

Montague's 16-year-old son, Romeo, is in love with another woman named Rosaline, which makes him depressed. His cousin, Benvolio, tries to console him, but Romeo remains despondent.

Meanwhile, the Capulets hold a masquerade party yearly, and everyone in Verona is invited except the Montagues. Their 13-year-old daughter, Juliet, is almost ready for marriage, and the Prince's kinsman, Count Paris, is interested in Juliet and wants to marry her. When the party starts, Romeo, Benvolio, and Romeo's friend Mercutio sneak into the party to find Rosaline and see if he is worthy of her. But the moment Romeo sees Juliet, he immediately forgets about Rosaline and falls in love with the Capulet girl. The two flirt and kiss but become distraught when they discover they are related to rival families. Romeo is so headstrong toward Juliet that when he hears her speak about her forbidden romance on her balcony, he comes out of his hiding spot, exchanging vows of love.

The next day, with the help of a Franciscan monk, Friar Lawrence and Juliet's nurse, Romeo secretly marries Juliet, hoping their marriage will end their family feud. On the same day, Mercutio and Benvolio encounter Juliet's cousin Tybalt, who is enraged that Romeo showed up at the Capulet party and challenges him to a duel. When Romeo appears, he avoids conflict until Mercutio fights Tybalt himself. Romeo tries to break up the fight, but Tybalt kills Mercutio. Romeo then kills Tybalt in a rage before he flees. The Prince finds out about the crime and declares Romeo to be exiled from Verona.

Juliet is heartbroken that her cousin is dead but is relieved that her husband is alive and must stay loyal to him. Friar Lawrence helps Romeo spend his wedding night with Juliet before he leaves for Mantua the next day. The death of Tybalt affects the Capulets, who decide that their daughter must marry Paris. Juliet didn't want the idea of marrying another man since she was already married. But after her father threatens to disown her and the Nurse tells her to marry Paris and forget Romeo, she goes to Friar Lawrence for some advice. He gives her a potion to drink that will put her into a deathlike sleep, and after she is placed in the family crypt, she will wake up there and is taken to Mantua, where she will be reunited with Romeo.

After learning that the wedding will take place the next day, Juliet drinks the potion the night before, and the Capulets awaken to find her dead. They grieve and place her in the Capulet tomb, while the friar tries to send a message to Romeo in Mantua about Juliet, but he only hears the news that she is dead. Grief-stricken, he buys a vial of poison, arrives at the Capulet tomb, where he kills Paris, and enters the crypt. He drinks the poison and dies next to Juliet. Shortly afterwards, Juliet awakens and finds Romeo's body; the friar appears to tell her what has happened just as the watch approaches. He begs Juliet to come with him, but she stays behind and kills herself with Romeo's dagger.

The Prince, the Montagues and the Capulets arrive, and Friar Lawrence tells them everything. The families are heartbroken but finally agree to end their feud and decide to place golden statues of their children in their honour.

## Characters

Romeo Montague- The son of the Montague family. He is a handsome 16-year-old who wants love since he desires another young woman named Rosaline. But as soon as he meets Juliet, he immediately falls in love with her instead. He hardly partakes in the feud with his lover's family and cannot bear to live without her.

Juliet Capulet- The daughter of the Capulet family. She is a beautiful 13-year-old who was initially a naïve girl, knowing very little about love and marriage. Once she meets Romeo, the son of her father's mortal enemy, she becomes a rebellious woman who would do anything to be with the man she loves, even if it means casting her strict family out of her life.

Friar Lawrence- A Franciscan monk who is a good friend and confessor to Romeo and Juliet. He assists in their plan to have their union bring peace to Verona and their families. He marries the lovers secretly and tries to help them reunite, but his ideas result in tragic consequences. He is kind and religious, yet some of his decisions are ineffective.

Mercutio- A kinsman to the Prince and Romeo's close friend. He tries to convince his friend to forget his lovesickness and enjoy life. He is a wild, brooding young man who wants to mention sexual jokes. He is also devoted and protective of Romeo, so when he sees Tybalt challenging Romeo to a fight, he impatiently intervenes and does the duel himself but is killed.

The Nurse- Juliet's nursemaid, who breastfed her when she was an infant and was a caregiver her whole life. She habitually makes sexual puns on relationships and marriage and is a source of comic relief. She assists Juliet in marrying Romeo and having him climb up to her bedroom to consummate the marriage. Later on, however, after Romeo is exiled, the Nurse stops supporting Juliet and convinces her to marry someone else.

Paris- A count who is a kinsman to Prince Escalus. He is a chosen suitor to Juliet by the Capulets, and he takes an interest in her, especially when he is to marry her. He is determined to have her be his wife and even acts like they are now married.

Tybalt- A Capulet relative and cousin to Juliet. Ill-tempered, violent and devoted to his household, Tybalt hates the Montagues so much that he wishes he could kill them all, especially when he suspects Romeo is secretly attending their feast. He later confronts and wants to duel him, but after he kills Romeo's friend Mercutio, Romeo murders Tybalt, and his family grieves his death.

Benvolio- A Montague relative and cousin to Romeo. He is loyal and friendly and comforts Romeo whenever he is depressed from being lovesick. Benvolio is usually calm as he tends to avoid the conflict on the streets of Verona and uphold the law of his kinsmen.

Lord Capulet- The patriarch of the Capulet family and father to Juliet. While he is loving and devoted to his only daughter, he can sometimes be stern with her, mostly when she has different thoughts after he arranges for her to marry Paris. His longtime feud with the Montagues is responsible for Verona's constant unrest.

Lady Capulet- The matriarch of the Capulet family and mother to Juliet. She supports her husband's actions in improving their daughter's sociality. She is eager for Juliet to be married to Paris and urges her to accept their plans with confidence. However, she is powerless to be a proper parent and has the Nurse be more of a moral mother figure to Juliet.

Lord Montague- The Montague family's patriarch and Romeo's father. He has a longtime feud with Lord Capulet and is concerned about his son's despondence at the play's beginning.

Lady Montague- The matriarch of the Montague family and the mother of Romeo. She died of a broken heart shortly after her son was exiled from Verona.

Prince Escalus- The leader of Verona and kinsman to Mercutio and Paris. He is bothered by the violent brawls and constantly warns the Montagues and Capulets of the consequences if their feud goes unpunished. He also struggles to maintain peace in his town.

## Writing History/Reception

It is unknown exactly when Shakespeare began writing Romeo and Juliet. It was estimated he might have the play published shortly before its first performance between 1594 and 1595 after the first quarto was completed and published. There have been no surviving records of any early versions before the Restoration of 1660, and the play had appeared in seven editions before 1642. The first bad quarto was likely printed around 1597.

Romeo and Juliet received primarily positive reviews from some of the earliest critics and has since earned a reputation as the most iconic love story. After the Restoration, thousands of performances were held throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. It has been adapted numerous times into film, television, musicals, etc. Some of the most famous adaptations of Romeo and Juliet are Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film and Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film.

Despite being one of his most famous works, Romeo and Juliet wasn't Shakespeare's actual creation. The play's source was the narrative poem *The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet* by poet Arthur Brooke in 1562. It was based on a French translation by Italian writer Matteo Bandello.

## Themes

### Love vs Hate

Love vs. hatred is mostly a major conflict that divides the relations between the characters, supposedly caused by one or both. The Montagues and Capulets had an intense feud full of hatred for many years, and it was their children, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, who used their romantic bond to break the hate between their families. When Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time, they don't know each other's names or who they are related to. They are distraught afterwards at the fact that they are meant to be enemies, but they are so much in love that they can't return now.

Aside from their love, some members despise their enemies with intense cruelty, most famously Tybalt of the Capulets. He hates the Montagues so much that he often boasts about killing them all himself, and he attempts to do this himself when he challenges Romeo to a duel as a kind of revenge for sneaking into the Capulet feast. But he ends up fighting and killing Mercutio, and his opponent's final words are, "*A plague on both your houses!*" since he curses the families for their feud, causing death and chaos. Even Mercutio's relative Prince Escalus is so irritated by the bloodshed that he threatens the Montagues and Capulets that they will be executed the more they continue their feud. Meanwhile, Romeo and Juliet are still headstrong toward each other, and they can't bear to live without each other and think about suicide, despite Friar Lawrence trying everything he can to keep them together. In the end, Romeo and Juliet kill themselves, and their bodies are discovered in the Capulet's tomb. After Friar Lawrence reveals how he secretly married them, the Prince declares that both the parents are punished. Thanks to their pointless, unnecessary feud, the Montagues and Capulets will mourn their children forever. They know that hate can bring death and suffering, and their reconciliation can perhaps bring more love to them for once.

### Loyalty

The theme of loyalty is used as another main conflict in the play. Several of the characters' allies are devoted to one another and defend them from their enemies, who also have a feud. At such times, however, their allies may stop supporting them, or the main characters themselves would turn them away. For example, Juliet always looked up to her nurse, caregiver guardian, and someone she could ask for advice. The Nurse initially helps Juliet marry Romeo, but after his banishment, she betrays Juliet by telling her to get over Romeo and marry Paris instead; in addition, Juliet is crossed by both of the parents of her disobedience not to marry Count Paris. However, others always maintain loyalty to their allies throughout the play. Friar Lawrence holds his wisdom as he agrees to marry them to bring peace to Verona and offer advice in their situations. Mercutio is a devoted friend to Romeo; aside from cracking sexual jokes around him, Mercutio is protective of him and offers to fight Romeo in his place. After Tybalt kills him, Mercutio keeps his devotion by saving his friend from a brutal death.

Both Romeo and Juliet are loyal to each other with their love. They decide that the only way for them to be together is to betray their parents and cast them out of their lives; if they ever reveal their secret relationship to them, they may face the worst consequences of betrayal. Juliet is shocked when she finds out Romeo killed Tybalt, and she may sound like she will turn her back on him as well, but she ends up having to stay by his side as her marriage to him would not be reversed now. The more decisions are made, the more complex the characters try to keep their loyalty to one another.

### Violence

In Verona, the feud between the Lords Montague and Capulet causes violence, eventually escalating into tragedy. Based on the opening lines in the prologue, Shakespeare provided readers and audiences with how violence will play a key role as one of the main conflicts. The first act begins with the street brawl between the servants of the rival Montagues and Capulets, to which Benvolio tries to put a stop to it but is confronted by Tybalt. The Prince eventually broke up the fights and threatened death to anyone if it ever happened again. In a rather foreshadowing case, the Prince may have revealed a hint of the consequences of violence.

Act III, Scene 1, is the pivotal moment of the violent events in Verona. Tybalt demands Romeo to duel with him, but he avoids conflict as he is now married to Tybalt's cousin Juliet and hopes that now that he is his relative, he will be more understanding and loving. It then takes a tragic turn when Tybalt kills Mercutio, and after Romeo witnesses him dying, he is filled with rage, and when Tybalt returns, he kills him on the spot before fleeing. A couple of characters symbolize the difference between consolation and confrontation. Benvolio is a peaceful young man whose presence would bring comfort and console to others during a fight. At the same time, Tybalt is an angry, aggressive younger man who would always stick to violence instead of making peace, as he will do anything to bring honour to his family. After Prince Escalus discovers the crime, he decides this is the final straw, but rather than sentence Romeo to death, he orders him to be exiled from Verona. Mercutio's last words before his death reveal how irritated and frustrated he is with the violent nature of Verona's two respected families.

### Fate

The prologue's opening lines reveal the fates of Romeo and Juliet as they predict their deaths at the end. They also sense that they were to meet their demises from the moment they were born and are destined to be forbidden, star-crossed lovers. In addition, the young teens can even see their fates; for example, when Romeo is about to go to the Capulet feast with his friends, he thinks he is about to be doomed and if he should attend his parents' enemies' party anyway. Mercutio's last words are a warning of the couple's tragic downfall, and after Romeo hears of Juliet's death, he plans his fate by killing himself at her side in the tomb. Throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet constantly see omens that are visions of how they will meet their destiny and how it will play out. Some claim that their deaths were a prediction, but in actuality, it was a series of tragic events that led to the young couple's deaths, and if some of these events had been successfully planned out, they might not have died or probably have not even met. If Romeo and Benvolio talked about love the day after the ball, Romeo would not have met Juliet, and if Juliet had awakened just before Romeo arrived, then they would have still been together and well.

Romeo would sometimes go as far as to curse fate and the "stars" for the events that would be his end. He calls himself a "fortune's fool." He criticizes Fortune for making a fool out of him into killing the man who killed his friend. When he is informed that Juliet is dead, he laments that he will "deny the stars," and he is willing to reverse his and Juliet's fortunes since he believes the stars had made his and Juliet's fates, and he wishes that he could change it back so that he could still be with the woman he loves. Shakespeare argues that humans are driven by forces that control their actions and words, a reasonable explanation of fate during his time.

## Symbols

### Poison

Romeo kills himself by ingesting a vial of poison inside the Capulet's tomb by Juliet's body. However, besides being a deadly weapon, poison symbolizes society bringing misery by poisoning good things with more fatal consequences. Since the Montagues and Capulets were poisoned by hatred, it would eventually cause their children's love to be poisoned. But poison may also be a good thing, as Friar Lawrence notes how nothing in nature can't be put to good and bad uses. Even if he carefully explains the vial he gives Juliet on how she would cheat death, the plan ends up being poisoned by Romeo's suicide.

### Thumb biting

In the 16th and 17th centuries, possibly around the period of Romeo and Juliet, thumb-biting was considered a rude gesture. It symbolizes insult and disgrace to others, mainly your enemies, as in the play, where the servants offend their opponents by placing their thumb behind their front teeth and flicking it out. It even symbolizes cowardice, as it was also commonly used in Sicily, and the gesture there means "*to hell with you*."

### Light and Darkness

Lightness symbolizes purity, hope and good fortune. Innocent characters such as Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio and Benvolio display their virtuousness in the daylight. Light also describes someone with goodness and beauty, such as when Romeo calls Juliet "the sun" as she offers light with her beauty and innocence, a sign of their strength and love.

Darkness symbolizes doom and mystery. Romeo and Juliet often were together in the evening as the darkness covered their secret from their families and how destruction can bring death since the young couple committed suicide inside the tomb in the middle of the night. The night, however, can be relaxing, giving the lovers their private life away from the light and feeling safe in the shrouded dark.

### Queen Mab

A mystical fairy whom Mercutio delivers a monologue about before going to the Capulet feast, who is believed to ride on her carriage in the night and brings dreams to sleepers. Queen Mab symbolizes the power of fantasies, daydreaming and desire. Mercutio thinks these dreams and desires can be easily corrupted and nonsensical since Romeo and Juliet find their love more accurate.

## Foreshadowing

* The chorus predicts Romeo and Juliet will die; Romeo senses the consequences at the Capulet ball would be his “untimely death”; Juliet sees Romeo “dead at the bottom of the tomb,” and the couple constantly want to kill themselves if they can’t be together. Foreshadows their tragic deaths inside the Capulet tomb.

## Adaptations

A film adaptation was released in 1936. Directed by George Cukor, it features Leslie Howard as Romeo Montague, Norma Shearer as Juliet Capulet, Henry Kolker as Friar Lawrence, John Barrymore as Mercutio, Basil Rathbone as Tybalt, and Edna May Oliver as the Nurse. The film received mix reviews, mainly that Cukor has cut half of the Shakespearian text in the film, and had a lack of imagination. Additionally, critics and viewers also agreed that Howard and Shearer were too old for the titular roles, and it was the most expensive Shakespearian film adaptation at the time. The film was nominated for Four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Shearer.

A film adaptation was released in 1954. Directed by Renato Castellatini, it features Laurence Harvey as Romeo, Susan Shethall as Juliet Capulet, Mervyn Jones as Friar Lawrence, Sebastian Cabot as Capulet, and Flora Robson as the Nurse. The film won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

A film adaptation was released in 1968. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, it features Leonard Whitling as Romeo Montague, Olivia Hussey as Juliet Capulet, Milo O’Shea as Friar Lawrence, John McEnery as Mercutio, Michael York as Tybalt, and Pat Heywood as the Nurse. The film was hugely successful commercially and critically, being praised for being the first *Romeo and Juliet* film adaptation to feature teenage actors as the titular characters. It was nominated for Four Oscars, winning two for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it is also highly regarded as the best adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.

A TV miniseries was released by BBC in 1978. Directed by Alvin Rakoff, it features Patrick Ryecart as Romeo Montague, Rebecca Saire as Juliet Capulet, Joseph O’Conor as Friar Lawrence, Alan Rickman as Tybalt, Celia Johnson as the Nurse, and Anthony Andrews as Mercutio.

A film adaptation, titled Romeo + Juliet, was released in 1996. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, it features Leonard DiCaprio as Romeo Montague, Claire Danes as Juliet Capulet, Pete Postelthwaite as Father Lawrence, Miriam Margoyles as the Nurse, John Leguizamo as Tybalt, and Paul Rudd as Paris. Unlike the other *Romeo and Juliet* adaptations, this is a modern adaptation set in Verona Beach in California. With the Shakespearian text still intact in the film, it was critically acclaimed and regarded as one of the best adaptations, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction.

A film adaptation was released in 2013. Directed by Carlo Cartei, it features Souglas Booth as Romeo Montague, Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet Capulet, Paul Giamatti as Friar Lawrence, Ed Westwick as Tybalt, Damien Lewis as Lord Capulet, and Stellan Skarsgård as the Prince. The film was criticized for lack of Shakespearian dialogue and lack of chemistry between the leading actors.

A Broadway adaptation was filmed in 2013 and released in 2014. Directed by Don Roy King, it features Orlando Bloom as Romeo Montague, Condola Rashād as Juliet Capulet, Brent Carver as Friar Lawrence, Corey Hawkins as Tybalt, Jayne Houdyshell as the Nurse, and Christian Carmargo as Mercutio.

A ballet production whose music was composed by Sergei Prokofiev, was first performed in 1938. Initially released in Russia, it was then revived and performed in several countries around the world, and is a hugely successful ballet production of Shakespeare’s play.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/romeojuliet/movie-adaptations/