Romeo and Juliet summary

“Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona, where we lay our scene.” With these iconic lines, a chorus welcomes us into the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. 

Unfortunately, the fairness of Verona is not matched by the happenings within its walls. Two families –⁠ the Montagues and Capulets –⁠ are locked in an ancient grudge that is breaking out into “new mutiny.” 

Against this backdrop, the chorus tells us there is a “pair of star-crossed lovers” –⁠ one from each side of the conflict. We learn from the outset that the deaths of these two lovers are what will bury their “parents’ strife.”

But how does it all transpire? That’s what you’ll experience in this Blink to Romeo and Juliet. Join us as we meet these two feuding families and follow their journey through love and hate.

That night, Romeo wanders just outside the Capulet grounds, hoping to see Juliet again. Mercutio and Benvolio come searching for him, but Romeo stays hidden. 

Then, above him, Juliet appears at the window of her chamber. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” Romeo cries longingly. “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.” He compares Juliet’s eyes and cheeks to stars. In fact, they are even brighter than stars –⁠ if they were in the sky, they would make “birds … sing and think it were not night.” 

Juliet, not realizing that Romeo is below, speaks: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” She bemoans the fact that Romeo is a Montague and she a Capulet. It seems ridiculous to her that names are the only things keeping them apart. “What’s in a name?” she asks. “That which we call a rose/By any other word would smell as sweet.” If Romeo were not called Romeo, he would be just as wonderful –⁠ and they would be able to be together.

Romeo hears all of this and responds, “Call me but love.” Juliet is shocked to see him and worries that he will be caught and punished. Romeo assures her he would rather be put to death than keep away from her. Juliet is more tempered in her passions –⁠ their meeting is “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden/Too like the lightning.” 

While the two lovers speak, Juliet’s nurse calls from inside, and Juliet bids Romeo goodbye. She tells him to send word of his marriage proposal tomorrow. If he does this, they’ll marry as soon as possible. “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Juliet sighs before turning inside.

In the following scene, Romeo visits a local friar named Lawrence, seeking help. His heart is set on Capulet’s daughter, and hers on him. Can Lawrence marry them today? 

Friar Lawrence is shocked. So soon has Romeo forsaken Rosaline, whom Romeo had loved so dearly! Yet he tells Romeo that he will help him, for this alliance may be the key to turning the two households’ hatred into love.

In the final scene of the act, Friar Lawrence is with Romeo outside the church. The heavens, Lawrence says, “smile … upon this holy act” –⁠ but he still cautions Romeo about the hastiness of his decision. “These violent delights have violent ends,” he warns –⁠ Romeo should try to love moderately instead. But Romeo dismisses the friar’s concerns. At last, Juliet arrives, and the three walk into the church.

As act 3 begins, Benvolio begs Mercutio to head home. The day is hot, and the “mad blood” is stirring –⁠ Benvolio fears that if they run into the Capulets, they’ll come to blows. 

He’s correct. Tybalt soon crosses their path, looking for a fight. He tries to provoke Mercutio, and then Romeo once he arrives on the scene. Though Romeo resists Tybalt’s bait, Mercutio is offended by Romeo’s submission. He and Tybalt draw their swords and begin to fight. 

Romeo jumps in between the two men, attempting to stop them. This, however, has an unintended effect, creating an opening for Tybalt to strike Mercutio. Having injured his enemy, Tybalt leaves. “A plague o’ both your houses!” Mercutio cries after falling to the ground, mortally wounded. 

Romeo despairs over Mercutio's death and the role he played in it. He fears that this is merely the first link in a long chain of terrible events. 

Soon, Tybalt returns. This time, it’s Romeo who’s out for blood. In his rage, he challenges Tybalt to a fight and ultimately slays him. Knowing he’ll be put to death by the prince if he stays, Romeo flees. However, when the prince learns what happened, he decides not to kill Romeo –⁠ instead, he’s banished from Verona.

Meanwhile, alone in her room, Juliet impatiently waits for night to fall so she and Romeo can finally consummate their marriage. But before that, her nurse rushes in and delivers Juliet the awful news –⁠ that Romeo killed Tybalt and has been banished from the city.

Juliet, in shock, cries that Romeo is a “serpent heart hid with a flow’ring face” and a “beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical.” Her feelings for him stand in direct conflict with her affection for her late cousin, Tybalt. Mirroring Romeo’s descriptions of love in act 1, Juliet uses oxymorons to describe Romeo’s dual nature. 

Despite her mixed feelings, however, his banishment feels worse than anything –⁠ worse than a death sentence. She cries that death will take her maidenhead this night, not Romeo. 

Meanwhile, at Friar Lawrence’s cell, Romeo is fretting over his fate when Juliet’s nurse arrives to tell him that Juliet is in a terrible mental state. Romeo draws his dagger, threatening to stab himself as penance for hurting Juliet. Friar Lawrence stops him, questioning his manhood. Instead of acting like a beast, Romeo should go and comfort Juliet. Afterward, he should sneak off to a town called Mantua and remain there until they come up with a solution. 

That night, Romeo goes to Juliet’s chamber. When they awake, they are in denial that it is dawn –⁠ is it not the nightingale they hear singing instead of the lark? Regretfully, they give each other a final kiss, and Romeo descends the wall with a rope. As he leaves, Juliet asks if Romeo thinks they shall ever see each other again. Romeo says he doesn’t doubt it, but Juliet still worries. She looks at him and envisions him as a dead man at the bottom of a tomb. 

Lady Capulet then enters Juliet’s chamber to deliver some news: it has been decided that Juliet will marry the noble Paris in a few days. Juliet, in shock, rejects the proposal. This marriage is far too hasty! 

Capulet enters, and Lady Capulet tells him Juliet isn’t happy with the idea of marrying Paris. Capulet is offended, given that Paris is such a suitable match. He angrily insults Juliet, calling her a “green-sickness carrion,” “baggage,” and “tallow face,” and threatens to disown her if she isn’t at the church on Thursday.

After her parents leave her chamber, Juliet cries to her nurse. She doesn’t know how she will escape from this terrible predicament and decides to go to Friar Lawrence for advice. If he can’t help her, she hopes she’ll have the strength to kill herself.

The next day, Juliet visits Friar Lawrence as planned. She breaks down in grief, begging for his advice. If he can’t help her, she’ll kill herself –⁠ she’s even brought the knife with her.

Friar Lawrence tells her to hold steady, for he has a plan. Juliet should return home, acting as if she’s happy, and tell her parents she consents to marry Paris. Tomorrow night, Wednesday, Juliet should ensure she’s alone in her room, then drink a vial of liquid which Lawrence hands her. The concoction will put her into a very deep sleep –⁠ so deep that neither her pulse nor breathing will be felt. This state will last 42 hours, and then she will awake.

In her state of presumed death, Juliet will be brought to the ancient Capulet mausoleum. Meanwhile, Friar Lawrence will send Romeo letters updating him on their plan. Romeo will be instructed to take Juliet from the tomb and to Mantua, freeing her from her predicament. 

Juliet enthusiastically accepts the friar’s plan. When she returns to the Capulet house, the wedding preparations are already well underway. She acts merry, and her parents wonder where she’s been. She tells them she’s repented for her disobedience and begs their pardon. Capulet is so pleased, he says that Juliet should marry Paris tomorrow, Wednesday, instead of Thursday. Juliet acquiesces, even seeming a tinge excited. 

That night, after bidding the nurse to leave her alone, Juliet is struck by a cold fear. What if the potion the friar gave her doesn’t work? Or what if there is actually a deadly poison inside? Should she just kill herself with the knife after all? 

She places the dagger by her bedside, imagining the horrors that will result if the plan doesn’t work. She begins to hallucinate, imagining that she sees Tybalt’s ghost, rapier in hand, searching for Romeo. She begs this illusion to stay back, cries out “Romeo! Romeo! Romeo!,” and drinks the potion.

In the morning, Juliet’s body is discovered. “Death hath lain with thy wife,” Capulet moans to Paris – echoing Juliet’s speech in act 3, where she proclaimed that death would take her maidenhead instead of Romeo. Capulet mourns that all of the celebratory trappings that had been intended for Juliet’s wedding will now be used for her funeral. 

Romeo awakes in a state of joy, his heart light and his spirits high. He had a happy dream in which Juliet found him dead but brought him back to life with her kiss.

But Balthasar, Romeo’s servant, interrupts these happy musings with bad news. Juliet is dead –⁠ her body lies in the Capulet tomb! Pale and wild, Romeo resolves to ride there now. Before departing, however, he stops at a nearby apothecary, where he buys a potent, fast-acting poison. 

Elsewhere, Friar John of Mantua meets Friar Lawrence. Lawrence asks John for Romeo’s reply to his letter, but John doesn’t have it. John was forced to quarantine in Verona due to a plague outbreak –⁠ and, as a result, he never gave Romeo the letter outlining Lawrence and Juliet’s plan. Friar Lawrence begins to panic and hurries to the Capulet tomb, as Juliet will wake in three hours.

Meanwhile, Romeo arrives at⁠ the “womb of death” –⁠ Juliet’s tomb – and begins forcing its “rotten jaws” open. Paris, however, is already there. When he sees Romeo, he’s enraged, believing Romeo is there to defile Juliet’s grave. The two come to blows, and Romeo fatally wounds Paris. With his final breath, Paris asks Romeo to open the tomb and lay him beside Juliet.

Romeo opens the tomb and sees Juliet’s seemingly dead body. He remarks that this is hardly a grave, as Juliet’s beauty fills the vault with light. He lies Paris’s body inside and then regards his love. Her lips and cheeks remain crimson; the honey hasn’t left her breath. He wonders why she is still so fair. Is death keeping her here in the dark to be his paramour? 

Romeo declares to Juliet that he will now remain there “with worms that are thy chambermaids.” He tells his eyes to look their last, his arms to take their last embrace, and finally, his lips to seal the couple’s death with one last kiss. He kisses Juliet and then calls out for death to come and take him, raising the vial of poison and drinking it all. 

The strength of the poison kills Romeo instantly. Friar Lawrence arrives at the tomb shortly after –⁠ just as Juliet is beginning to stir.

She sees the friar and asks him where her Romeo is. The friar bids her come away from “that nest/Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep.” A greater power has thwarted their intentions; Romeo and Paris both lie dead. Frantically, he tells her he will bring her to a sisterhood of holy nuns, but they must leave now, for the watch is coming.

Juliet tells him to go, for she won’t leave, and Lawrence flees. Juliet sees a cup closed in Romeo’s hand –⁠ poison. But he left nothing for her! She kisses his lips, hoping there are still a few drops remaining. She then hears men approaching from the graveyard. On Romeo’s body she finds a “happy dagger” –⁠ then stabs herself and dies.

The watch quickly finds the three dead bodies in the tomb, and Friar Lawrence returns. Soon, the prince of Verona, the Capulets, and the Montagues all learn of the news. Montague informs them that his wife is dead too –⁠ grief over her son’s exile has killed her. 

When Friar Lawrence reveals everything that has happened, the prince is disgusted. “Where be these enemies?” he asks. “Capulet, Montague/See what a scourge is laid upon your hate.”⁠ Everyone is being punished for this pointless, hateful feud.

As a gesture of peace, Capulet asks Montague for his hand. Montague says he’ll make a statue of Juliet which will be admired throughout Verona. In return, Capulet says he’ll make one of Romeo. Together, they will stand as reminders of the price of their families’ enmity.

The prince wearily remarks on this gloomy peace, which is mirrored by the gloomy morning. They will continue to talk; there will be both pardon and punishment, “For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Romeo and Juliet are the archetypical star-crossed lovers. They’re a couple that, due to age and circumstance, shouldn’t be together –⁠ but they fall in love anyway. 

Is there a lesson to their story? Scholars have been debating this for a long time, and there’s no one correct answer. Perhaps the story is a warning against overly hasty, youthful unions. Or perhaps it is a condemnation of hate, which in the play is all-consuming and can only lead to tragedy. Could that be the case for all-consuming love as well?

Finally, there’s the theme of fate –⁠ throughout the play, characters frequently mention portents they see in the stars and visions they have of the future. It sometimes seems that, despite the help of characters like Friar Lawrence, a greater power has doomed Romeo and Juliet. Were their deaths a necessary sacrifice to end their families’ feud? Or are Romeo’s and Juliet’s premonitions self-fulfilling prophecies?

Whatever the answers to these questions may be, Romeo and Juliet’s passionate, poetically tragic love story is one that will live on for centuries –⁠ even if the lovers themselves did not.