Romeo and Juliet

The play proper begins with two boastful young men, Gregory and Sampson, exchanging a series of increasingly filthy puns. They’re from the house of Capulet, and they’re swaggering around the streets looking for trouble from the Montagues. They find it; a fight breaks out in the street. One Montague, a young man called Benvolio, tries to break up the fight, but Tybalt, the ferocious nephew of Lord Capulet, won’t allow this and attacks him. The heads of the families, Lord and Lady Montague and Lord and Lady Capulet, come upon the scene. The old lords want to get in on the fighting, but their wives hold them back.

The brawl at last breaks up when Verona’s ruler, the Prince, arrives. He tells the Montagues and the Capulets that he’s tired of their rivalry and that he’ll execute the next Montague or Capulet caught fighting in his streets. He orders Lord Montague and Lord Capulet to come speak with him, and the crowd sheepishly disperses.

Lady Montague asks Benvolio if he’s seen her son, Romeo, who doesn’t seem to have been present at the fight. Benvolio tells her that Romeo has been moping in the woods around the city. The Montagues aren’t surprised, as Romeo has been doing this a lot lately. None of them understands why.

Romeo appears, and Benvolio questions him. The miserable Romeo says he’s unhappy because he’s “Out of her favor where [he is] in love” (I.1.173): He’s pining after the lovely Rosaline, who wants nothing to do with him and who has in fact made a vow of chastity. Romeo reflects on the paradoxes of love: “A madness most discreet, / A choking gall, and a preserving sweet” (I.1.200-01). Benvolio suggests that the best cure is to go and look at other pretty girls until Romeo is distracted. Romeo says that this will never work, for the lesser beauty of others will only remind him of Rosaline’s supreme beauty. Benvolio assures him that it will work and that he’ll prove it.

Lord Capulet and the young Count Paris are discussing the Prince’s edict. The chastened Capulet thinks he and Montague should be able to keep some kind of peace. Paris has other things on his mind: He wants to marry Capulet’s young daughter, Juliet. Capulet is reluctant: Juliet is only 13 and is his last living child. Her young age doesn’t dissuade Paris, who comments, “Younger than she are happy mothers made” (I.2.12). Capulet evasively suggests that Paris should come to the feast he’s throwing tonight and look at the other girls in case he likes one of them better.

He sends a servant out with invitations, but the servant can’t read and asks Romeo and Benvolio for help. It turns out that Rosaline is invited to the ball, and Benvolio sees in this fortuitous party a perfect opportunity to distract Romeo: “Compare her face with some that I shall show, / And I will make thee think thy swan a crow” (I.3.93-94). Romeo, still absorbed in his misery, agrees to go so he can pine after Rosaline in person.

Lady Capulet has come to her daughter Juliet’s room to deliver important news. Juliet’s old nurse is there too, and the two older women go through some comical wrangling to establish Juliet’s age (13). The Nurse has many fond memories of Juliet as a baby. She delights in retelling an anecdote about her (now-deceased) husband making a joke at toddler Juliet’s expense, the gist of which is that falling face-first is what little girls do, while young women fall backward for sexual dalliances:

‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘Dost thou fall upon thy face?

Thou wilt fall backward when thou has more wit,

Wilt thou not, Jule?’ And, by my holdam,

The pretty wretch left crying and said ‘Ay’ (I.3.45-48).

Lady Capulet is not as amused by this as the Nurse is. She has come to ask Juliet if Juliet feels ready to be married. Juliet is taken aback: “It is an honor that I dream not of” (I.3.71). Lady Capulet notes that she was married at around Juliet’s age and sings Paris’s praises (with the Nurse’s help), comparing him to a beautiful book that needs only a beautiful cover to complete it. Juliet agrees to look at Paris at the feast tonight and obediently agrees to try to like Paris: “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move. / But no more deep will I endart mine eye / Than your consent gives strength to make it fly” (I.3.103-05). The Nurse is overjoyed at the prospect of her darling’s marriage.

Romeo and his Montague friends are making their way to the Capulets’ party. They’ve picked up their friend Mercutio on the way—not a Montague or a Capulet, and so officially invited where the others are not. Regardless, they’re all going in disguise. Mercutio, a charismatic and mischievous young man, is giving Romeo a hard time for his persistent moping, making dirty jokes at his expense: “If love be rough with you,” he counsels, “be rough with love. / Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down” (I.4.27-28).

Romeo replies that he had an ominous dream that evening. Mercutio launches into an elaborate and sinister monologue on his own dreams of Queen Mab, ruler of the fairies, as she travels by night distributing visions and making mischief. Romeo interrupts this reverie; Mercutio snaps out of it, saying that fantasy and dream come and go as quickly as the wind. Romeo reflects on his dream—a foreboding vision of “some vile forfeit of untimely death” that will be set on course tonight (I.4.118).

Lord Capulet, in an expansive mood, is greeting his guests. He welcomes the masked Montagues, not recognizing them, and reminisces about his youthful days of masking and dancing. Tybalt recognizes Romeo and tries to point him out to Lord Capulet. Lord Capulet holds Tybalt back. Romeo is behaving himself well and has a good reputation; Lord Capulet won’t have him come to harm in his house. Tybalt persists, and Lord Capulet scolds him for overstepping. Tybalt stands down but vows that this isn’t over. Meanwhile, Romeo sees Juliet and falls instantly in love with her: “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! [...] Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, / For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night” (I.5.51-60).

He approaches her to ask for a kiss. Romeo presents himself as a pilgrim to Juliet’s holy shrine, and Juliet points out that pilgrims use their lips for praying, not kissing. At last, Juliet agrees to kiss him, and the two only have eyes for each other until the Nurse interrupts to tell Juliet her mother wants a word with her. While Juliet obeys, Romeo asks the Nurse who Juliet is and learns the terrible news that she’s Lord Capulet’s only child. Juliet goes through the same process: She asks her Nurse the names of several different gentlemen, ending with Romeo. She has also fallen in love and despairs, “My only love sprung from my only hate!” (I.5.152).

The Chorus recapitulates the action so far and describes the young lovers’ precarious situation: Despite their desperate passion, there’s nowhere safe for them to meet. However, the Chorus observes, “passion lends them power” (II.1.13), so they will find a solution.

Benvolio and Mercutio are out in the street looking for Romeo. Mercutio tries to conjure him up with a “spell” that’s mostly dirty jokes about Rosaline:

The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.—

I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes,

By her high forehead, and her scarlet lip,

By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh,

And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,

That in thy likeness thou appear to us (II.1.19-25).

Benvolio observes that this is only going to make Romeo mad, and Mercutio replies with more dirty jokes. At last, they give up and retire to bed.

Romeo, hiding in the Capulets’ garden, has heard all of his friend’s sexual innuendo and scoffs, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound” (II.2.1). Soon, Juliet appears on her balcony. Hidden below, Romeo looks up at her with longing and awe: “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the East, and Juliet is the sun” (II.2.2-3).

As he watches, Juliet begins to speak—and, to Romeo’s joy, she’s speaking about him. Musing to herself, she wishes that Romeo might “Deny [his] father and refuse [his] name, / Or, if [he] wilt not, be but sworn [her] love, / And [she’ll] no longer be a Capulet” (II.2.36-39). Names, she goes on, are just words: Roses would still smell sweet if we called them by a different word. If Romeo could just give up his family name, she would be his.

At this, Romeo leaps out of the shrubbery and swears his love to her. Juliet is startled but also delighted. She questions how he got over the wall into the garden, to which Romeo replies by rhapsodizing about love’s power.

Juliet goes on: She knows she should hold back and deny what he’s overheard her say, but she can’t. She’s aware that her eagerness may seem overly forward but vows she’ll be a truer lover than women who play games. She asks Romeo to swear love to her as she has to him, but when he tries to swear by the moon, she stops him: The moon is too changeable to swear on. Instead, she tells him to swear on himself—and then stops him altogether. This is all too sudden: “Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / Ere one can say ‘it lightens’” (II.2.126-27).

The Nurse calls Juliet to come inside. As Juliet stalls her Nurse and speaks to Romeo, her worries about the speed of their attachment melt away. By the end of the conversation, she has made Romeo vow to send word to her tomorrow if he wants to marry her. The two have a hard time parting; they can’t stand to be out of each other’s sight. At last, Romeo leaves the garden, promising to send Juliet word of his intentions the next day.

Friar Lawrence, a monk, is collecting herbs in his garden at daybreak. He muses on the qualities of nature: There’s nothing in the world that doesn’t have some good purpose. Poisonous plants can have good applications, but healthful plants, misused, can become poisonous: “Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, / And vice sometime by action dignified” (II.3.21-22).

An elated Romeo breaks in on these musings. He and Friar Lawrence have an affectionate, familial relationship. Noting that Romeo seems to have been up all night, Friar Lawrence worries that he’s been with Rosaline. His pleasure in learning that Romeo has forgotten her quickly dampens when he hears that Romeo is in love with a new girl and wants Friar Lawrence to marry them right away. Friar Lawrence scolds his young charge: “And art thou changed? Pronounce this sentence then: / Women may fall when there’s no strength in men” (II.3.84-85). Despite his frustration with Romeo, Friar Lawrence agrees to perform the marriage as an opportunity to heal the rift between the Montagues and Capulets.

Mercutio and Benvolio are again wondering where on earth Romeo has gone. They’ve heard that Tybalt sent Romeo a challenge, and Mercutio compares Tybalt’s skill in fighting to that of the folkloric Tybalt (an archetypal cat in a series of popular stories about Reynard, the prince of foxes). Romeo appears, and Mercutio mocks him for his love and gives him a hard time for ditching them last night. The two exchange sexual puns, and Mercutio remarks, “Why, is this not better than groaning / for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo, now art thou / what thou art, by art as well as by nature” (II.4.90-93).

The Nurse appears with her servant, Peter, in tow. The young men all mock her pomposity and her malaprops until she reveals that she’s here to speak to Romeo. Romeo chases the other boys off and apologizes to the Nurse for their rudeness. The Nurse, somewhat mollified, tells Romeo that she’s come from Juliet—and warns him that he’d better not be playing with her heart. Romeo’s assurance quickly wins her over. Romeo tells the Nurse to ask Juliet to come meet him at Friar Lawrence’s monastic cell that afternoon to be married. He also asks her to be ready to receive a rope ladder he’s made; this will give him access to Juliet’s room that night. The joyful Nurse begins reminiscing about Juliet’s childhood again but at last departs to give Juliet the good news.

Juliet, meanwhile, is waiting impatiently at home for the Nurse to return. Love should be able to communicate as quickly as it acts, she thinks: “Love’s heralds should be thoughts, / Which ten times faster glides than the sun’s beams” (II.5.4-5). If only the Nurse were young, like Juliet, and remembered what this felt like, she’d be faster. The Nurse turns up and spends a comically longwinded time getting herself settled and comfortable before delivering any news to the increasingly frustrated Juliet. At last, she tells Juliet that Romeo will meet her at Friar Lawrence’s cell this afternoon.

In Friar Lawrence’s cell, Romeo is anxious to be married. Friar Lawrence tries to counsel him to be moderate:

The sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness

And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so.

Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow (II.6.11-15).

Juliet arrives, and Friar Lawrence can see that neither of the young lovers has any intention of taking his advice on temperance. Regardless, he leads them away to their marriage ceremony.