Romeo and Juliet Study Guide

Characters

• SSampsonA man of Capulet's household who makes sexual threats against Montague women and provokes Abraham by biting his thumb.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• GGregorySampson's fellow in Capulet's household, who mocks his courage but helps him provoke a quarrel with the Montague men.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• AAbrahamA man of Montague's household who challenges Sampson's insulting gesture and disputes his claim that Capulet is the better master.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• BalthasarRemains near the tomb despite Romeo's threats, then tells the Prince about their journey and produces Romeo's letter for his father.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• BenvolioTries to avoid a public quarrel, reports Mercutio's death to Romeo and gives the Prince an account of both fatal fights.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• TybaltFatally wounds Mercutio under Romeo's arm, flees and then returns to fight Romeo, who kills him.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• FCFirst CitizenEnters with armed citizens and calls for both the Capulets and the Montagues to be beaten down.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• CapuletSees Juliet bleeding in the tomb, offers Montague his hand as a brother and promises a memorial for Romeo beside Juliet's.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• Lady CapuletComes to the tomb with Capulet and feels that the sight of death warns her of her own approaching grave.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• MontagueReports his wife's death, discovers Romeo dead and promises a gold statue honouring Juliet after Capulet offers reconciliation.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• MLady MontagueHas died that night, according to Montague, from grief at Romeo's exile.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• The PrinceHears the witnesses and reads Romeo's letter, condemns both households' hatred and admits that tolerating their conflict has cost him two kinsmen.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• RomeoKills Paris after failing to persuade him to leave, lays him in the tomb and dies by poison beside Juliet before she wakes.First appears: Act 1, Scene 1
• ParisBrings flowers to Juliet's tomb, tries to arrest Romeo as a threat to the dead and is killed in their fight, asking to be laid beside Juliet.First appears: Act 1, Scene 2
• CSCapulet's servantCannot read the guest list his master gives him and asks Romeo for help before inviting him to the feast provided he is not a Montague.First appears: Act 1, Scene 2
• The Nurse (Angelica)Goes to wake Juliet with affectionate teasing, then raises the alarm and laments when she believes her dead.First appears: Act 1, Scene 3
• JulietWakes beside the dead Romeo, refuses to leave with the friar, kisses Romeo in search of poison and kills herself with his dagger.First appears: Act 1, Scene 3
• SWThe servant who announces the guestsInterrupts the discussion of marriage to tell Lady Capulet that the guests have arrived and supper is ready.First appears: Act 1, Scene 3
• MercutioFights Tybalt after condemning Romeo's refusal to fight, curses both households when fatally wounded under Romeo's arm and dies offstage.First appears: Act 1, Scene 4
• FSFirst ServingmanDirects the clearing of Capulet's hall and asks for a piece of marchpane to be saved for him.First appears: Act 1, Scene 5
• SSSecond ServingmanComplains about the demands on the servants and urges the others to work briskly.First appears: Act 1, Scene 5
• SCSecond CapuletAn older relative who sits with Capulet and disputes how long it has been since they took part in a masked entertainment.First appears: Act 1, Scene 5
• CChorusReports that Romeo and Juliet love one another but that their families' enmity restricts their chances to meet.First appears: Prologue
• Friar LaurenceLeaves the tomb when Juliet refuses to follow him and the watch approaches, then publicly explains the secret marriage and potion and offers his life if found at fault.First appears: Act 2, Scene 3
• PPeterAsks the musicians for comforting music, then threatens them and trades insults and musical puns when they refuse.First appears: Act 2, Scene 4
• MPMercutio's pageAccompanies Mercutio, who sends him to fetch a surgeon after Tybalt wounds him.First appears: Act 3, Scene 1
• FMFirst Musician (Simon Catling)Enters with Paris and Friar Laurence, refuses Peter's request for music and answers his insults and wordplay; Peter addresses him as Simon Catling.First appears: Act 4, Scene 5
• SMSecond Musician (Hugh Rebeck)Tells Peter to put away his dagger, jokes that musicians play for money and proposes staying for dinner; Peter addresses him as Hugh Rebeck.First appears: Act 4, Scene 5
• TMThird Musician (James Soundpost)A musician whom Peter addresses as James Soundpost and who cannot explain the phrase 'silver sound'.First appears: Act 4, Scene 5
• The ApothecaryA poor seller of drugs in Mantua who supplies Romeo with poison despite the death penalty, saying that poverty rather than willingness makes him consent.First appears: Act 5, Scene 1
• FJFriar JohnReturns Laurence's undelivered letter after officials confined him and another friar in a house suspected of infection, preventing his journey to Mantua.First appears: Act 5, Scene 2
• PPParis's pageKeeps watch for Paris, summons the watch when the fight begins and later tells the Prince why his master came to the tomb.First appears: Act 5, Scene 3
• FWFirst WatchmanDirects the search of the churchyard, sends for the Prince and both households and reports the bodies and detained witnesses.First appears: Act 5, Scene 3
• SWSecond WatchmanBrings Balthasar forward after finding him in the churchyard.First appears: Act 5, Scene 3
• TWThird WatchmanBrings in the trembling Friar Laurence and reports taking digging tools from him as he left the churchyard.First appears: Act 5, Scene 3

Chapter summaries

1. Prologue

   The opening speaker addresses the audience directly and sets the scene in Verona. Two households of equal standing have renewed an old quarrel, making citizens shed one another's blood. Their children are described as lovers whose lives are governed by hostile stars. The speech announces their deaths and says that only this loss can end the parents' rage. Its fourteen lines form a sonnet, giving a tightly ordered shape to an account of violence and suffering. By revealing the outcome before the action begins, the speech directs attention towards how the conflict produces it and asks the audience to listen patiently.

2. Act 1, Scene 1

   Sampson and Gregory turn jokes about courage and sexual domination into a challenge to the Montague men. Sampson wants to provoke a fight while keeping the law on his side, and his aside to Gregory exposes that calculation. Benvolio draws his sword to separate the fighters, but Tybalt treats his drawn weapon as a reason to attack. The quarrel spreads through the households and draws in citizens before the Prince condemns both family heads and threatens death for another disturbance. Once the others have gone, Montague and Lady Montague discuss Romeo's isolation and sadness with Benvolio. Romeo then explains his unreturned love through contradictory images such as love mixed with hate and fire mixed with cold. Benvolio offers the practical remedy of looking at other women, which Romeo rejects.

3. Act 1, Scene 2

   Capulet says that he and Montague should be able to obey the Prince's demand for peace. Paris raises his marriage proposal, and Capulet argues that his daughter, not yet fourteen, should wait another two years. He nevertheless invites Paris to win her affection and says that his own consent depends on her agreement. The servant sent to invite the guests cannot read their names, so the action brings Romeo into contact with the list. Benvolio identifies Rosaline as the woman Romeo loves and uses her invitation to argue that he should compare her with other beauties. Romeo's language treats loyalty to Rosaline as a religion, resisting Benvolio's attempt to make attraction a matter of fair comparison. He agrees to attend for the opposite reason to Benvolio's: to admire the woman he already loves.

4. Act 1, Scene 3

   Lady Capulet first asks the Nurse to leave so she can speak privately to Juliet, then immediately calls her back. The Nurse's long recollection of breastfeeding and weaning Juliet shows an intimacy grounded in daily care, while her repeated sexual joke prompts Juliet to ask her to stop. Juliet is not yet fourteen, but Lady Capulet argues that women younger than Juliet are already mothers and says she herself became a mother at about Juliet's age. Juliet describes marriage as an honour she has not been thinking about. Her mother praises Paris through an extended image of a handsome book which needs Juliet as its cover, and points to the possessions she would share. The Nurse answers with a joke about pregnancy, giving a bodily meaning to the promised benefits. Juliet agrees to consider Paris without promising love, and a servant's announcement brings the discussion to an end as the feast begins.

5. Act 1, Scene 4

   The companions discuss how to enter the masked entertainment, and Benvolio rejects the need for a lengthy introductory speech. Romeo wants to carry a torch rather than dance, describing love as a weight that holds him down. Mercutio answers his sadness with puns and sexual mockery, urging him to fight back against love. When Romeo mentions a dream, Mercutio imagines Queen Mab travelling through sleepers' lives and producing dreams that reflect their desires. The speech moves from tiny, delicate details to money, violence and sexual pressure before Romeo stops him. Mercutio then dismisses dreams as the products of an idle brain, while Benvolio worries about arriving too late. Romeo instead fears arriving too early at an event that may set him on a course towards an early death, yet entrusts his course to a higher guide and chooses to proceed.

6. Act 1, Scene 5

   The scene opens with servingmen clearing the hall before Capulet welcomes the guests and encourages dancing. Romeo sees Juliet and describes her through images of brightness against darkness, questioning whether he has loved before. Tybalt recognises his voice and wants to kill him because he treats Romeo's presence as an insult to the family, but Capulet praises Romeo's reputation and insists on obedience in his own house. Tybalt leaves angrily, treating his enforced restraint as an injury. Romeo and Juliet build a shared sonnet out of a playful exchange about saints, pilgrims, hands and lips, moving towards kisses through an image they both help create. The Nurse's interruption separates them, and her answers reveal Juliet's family to Romeo and Romeo's family to Juliet. Their attraction has preceded knowledge of their names, leaving Juliet to describe love and inherited hatred as joined together.

7. Prologue

   Chorus enters to describe the change from Romeo's old desire to his new affection for Juliet. The former love is personified as someone dying, with the new affection waiting to inherit. Both lovers are drawn by beauty, but their mutual attraction meets the obstacle of their families' enmity. Romeo cannot openly visit as a suitor, and Juliet has even fewer opportunities to meet him. The fourteen-line sonnet closes by setting the sweetness of their meetings against these difficulties, crediting passion and time with making meetings possible.

8. Act 2, Scene 1

   Romeo turns back towards Capulet's house because he feels that his heart remains there, then climbs the orchard wall. Benvolio sees where he has gone and asks Mercutio to call him. Mercutio turns the search into a mock attempt to summon a spirit, using exaggerated lovers' language and sexual descriptions of Rosaline. His assumption creates dramatic irony because the audience already knows that Romeo now loves Juliet. Benvolio warns that the mockery may anger Romeo, but Mercutio continues until he decides that the orchard is too cold for sleeping. The two leave because Romeo clearly does not want to be found.

9. Act 2, Scene 2

   Romeo watches Juliet at an upstairs window and describes her as a source of light while she does not know he is listening. Her speech questions why his family name should make him an enemy, and his aside lets the audience hear him deciding whether to reveal himself. When he speaks, Juliet recognises his voice and warns that her relatives will kill him if they find him. She admits her love openly but asks him to trust her sincerity rather than expect a performance of reluctance. She stops him from swearing by the changing moon because she wants constant love, then compares their sudden agreement to a brief flash of lightning. The Nurse calls from within, interrupting a conversation in which Juliet makes marriage the condition of Romeo's continued courtship and arranges to send a messenger at nine. Their repeated attempts to part combine pleasure with reluctance, and Romeo finally leaves to ask his spiritual adviser for help.

10. Act 2, Scene 3

    Alone at dawn, Friar Laurence gathers plants and describes how the same flower can provide medicine or poison. He argues that good things can become harmful through misuse and that grace and uncontrolled desire struggle within people as opposing powers do within plants. Romeo arrives without having been to bed and explains that he and Capulet's daughter love one another and want to marry that day. The friar rebukes the speed with which Romeo has abandoned Rosaline, questioning whether young men's love rests in their eyes rather than their hearts. Romeo answers that Juliet returns his love, which Rosaline did not. Laurence agrees to assist because the marriage may turn the households' hatred into love, but closes by warning Romeo against haste.

11. Act 2, Scene 4

    Benvolio reports Tybalt's letter, and Mercutio interprets it as a challenge while describing Tybalt's precise, showy fencing. Romeo joins them and matches Mercutio's wordplay, which his friend welcomes as a return to sociability. The Nurse arrives with Peter, endures Mercutio's insults, and asks to speak privately with Romeo before Mercutio and Benvolio leave. She warns Romeo that deceiving a young woman would be wrong, making her concern for Juliet part of the comic encounter. Romeo tells her that Juliet should come to confession at Friar Laurence's cell that afternoon and be married there. He also arranges for his man to bring the Nurse a rope ladder for a secret visit that night, reassuring her that the man can keep their confidence. The Nurse blesses Romeo and reports Juliet's dislike of Paris before departing with Peter.

12. Act 2, Scene 5

    Alone in the orchard, Juliet measures the Nurse's absence from nine until noon and imagines that youthful feeling should make a messenger travel faster. The Nurse arrives with Peter and sends him to the gate before answering Juliet. Her complaints about tiredness and aching bones, praise of Romeo's body and question about Juliet's mother repeatedly postpone the message. Juliet points out that the Nurse has breath enough to explain her breathlessness and that the explanation takes longer than the message would. At last the Nurse asks whether Juliet has permission to go to confession, then directs her to the friar's cell, where a husband is waiting. The Nurse describes her own labour and makes a sexual joke about Juliet's coming night before Juliet hurries away towards the marriage.

13. Act 2, Scene 6

    Friar Laurence hopes that heaven will bless the marriage, while Romeo says that no sorrow can outweigh the joy of seeing Juliet and that, once married to her, he would defy even death. Laurence answers with images of fire meeting gunpowder and sweetness becoming sickening, urging moderation rather than intensity. Juliet enters, and Romeo asks her to describe the happiness they share. She replies that her feeling has more substance than words can express and compares it to wealth beyond counting. Laurence ends their exchange by leading them away to be married and insisting that they cannot remain alone before the church joins them, so the ceremony itself is not shown in this scene.

14. Act 3, Scene 1

    Benvolio urges Mercutio to leave the hot streets, but Mercutio mocks his caution and provokes Tybalt when he arrives. Romeo refuses Tybalt's challenge because he now regards him as a kinsman, though he does not reveal the marriage. Mercutio treats this restraint as dishonour and fights Tybalt, who wounds him under Romeo's arm as Romeo tries to separate them. Mercutio curses both households before leaving with Benvolio, who returns to report his death. Romeo blames his love for Juliet for weakening his courage, chooses revenge and kills Tybalt when he returns. Before the Prince, Lady Capulet demands Romeo's death and disputes Benvolio's account, while Montague argues that Romeo has punished Mercutio's killer. The Prince, himself related to Mercutio, imposes banishment and a fine, making the feud's public cost part of his judgement.

15. Act 3, Scene 2

    Alone in the orchard, Juliet calls for night to conceal Romeo's arrival and imagines their first sexual union as both a victory and a surrender. The Nurse enters with the cords but interrupts this anticipation with cries of death that leave Juliet uncertain whether Romeo, Tybalt or both have died. Once the Nurse explains that Romeo killed Tybalt and is banished, Juliet describes him through contradictory images of beauty and evil. Yet she immediately rejects the Nurse's wish for shame upon Romeo and insists on her loyalty to her husband. She reasons that Tybalt would have killed him, then finds the word 'banished' more painful than Tybalt's death. The cords seem useless to her until the Nurse promises to fetch Romeo from Laurence's cell, and Juliet sends her ring as a message of continued love.

16. Act 3, Scene 3

    Friar Laurence presents banishment as mercy, but Romeo insists that life outside Verona has no value because Juliet is there. He rejects philosophy as useless unless it can restore her to him or reverse the sentence, and falls to the ground. The Nurse's repeated knocking interrupts the argument and makes the danger of discovery immediate. When she reports Juliet's grief, Romeo imagines his name as a weapon against her and draws his sword to attack the body that bears it. Laurence stops him, condemns his behaviour through insulting comparisons with women and beasts, and argues that killing himself would also injure Juliet. He then turns to practical arrangements: Romeo should visit his wife and leave for Mantua while Laurence seeks an opportunity to reveal the marriage, reconcile their families and obtain a pardon. The Nurse gives Romeo Juliet's ring, restoring his comfort, and the friar promises to use Romeo's man to send news.

17. Act 3, Scene 4

    Capulet tells Paris that Tybalt's death has left no time to discuss the proposed marriage with Juliet, who remains offstage. Paris acknowledges that grief prevents courtship, while Lady Capulet offers to learn Juliet's wishes the next morning. Capulet instead promises his daughter's love on the assumption that she will obey him completely. This reverses his earlier insistence that Paris must win her heart and obtain her agreement. After asking what day it is, he fixes the wedding for Thursday, and Paris wishes it could be sooner. Capulet limits the celebration because a large feast might make the family appear careless of Tybalt's death. The audience knows that Juliet is already married, giving dramatic irony to a conversation in which her father treats her agreement as certain.

18. Act 3, Scene 5

    At the upstairs window, Juliet initially denies the signs of dawn to keep Romeo with her, then urges him away when he accepts the risk of staying. The Nurse warns of Lady Capulet's approach, and Romeo descends and leaves after promising messages and expressing confidence that they will meet again. Lady Capulet mistakes Juliet's tears for grief over Tybalt, proposes poisoning Romeo in Mantua and hears apparent agreement in replies that conceal Juliet's love. She then announces the Thursday wedding to Paris, which Juliet refuses. Capulet answers her refusal with insults and threats of forced attendance, homelessness and disinheritance, while Lady Capulet declines to help her obtain a delay. The Nurse first defends Juliet against his abuse but then urges her to marry Paris, praising his looks and treating Romeo's banishment as grounds for abandoning the first marriage. Juliet pretends to accept this comfort and sends the Nurse away before declaring that she will no longer confide in her and will seek the friar's help, retaining the power to die if no remedy exists.

19. Act 4, Scene 1

    Paris tells Friar Laurence that Capulet is hurrying the marriage to relieve Juliet's grief for Tybalt, though Paris has had little opportunity to speak to her of love. When Juliet arrives, Paris calls her his wife, but her evasive answers withhold the agreement he assumes. Alone with the friar, she invokes her existing marriage to Romeo and threatens to use her knife if no other remedy is available. Laurence proposes that she consent outwardly to Paris and drink a potion which, he says, will make her appear dead for forty-two hours. He expects the family to place her in their vault and promises to send letters so that Romeo can join him there and take Juliet to Mantua when she wakes. Juliet's willingness to face graves and dead bodies expresses how strongly she rejects the second marriage, while the friar's detailed instructions make the escape depend on several people carrying out a secret plan.

20. Act 4, Scene 2

    Capulet directs two servingmen to invite guests and hire cooks, with a joke about cooks licking their fingers interrupting the preparations. Juliet arrives looking cheerful and presents her opposition to her father as a sin which Friar Laurence has taught her to repent. Her promise of complete obedience follows the friar's secret instructions, so the audience understands it differently from Capulet. He praises the friar and brings the marriage forward to the next morning, overruling Lady Capulet's reminder that the wedding was set for Thursday and her warning that supplies will be short. Juliet leaves with the Nurse to choose ornaments, while Capulet's relief makes him willing to stay awake and organise the household himself.

21. Act 4, Scene 3

    After choosing her clothes with the Nurse, Juliet asks for privacy, saying that she needs to pray, and sends both the Nurse and her mother away. Her soliloquy exposes the fear concealed by her practical arrangements and her outward obedience. She lays down a dagger as an alternative if the potion fails to prevent the wedding. She wonders whether the friar has given her poison to avoid disgrace for marrying her to Paris after already marrying her to Romeo, but counters this suspicion by recalling his established holiness. Her questions then imagine waking before Romeo arrives, suffocating in the vault or losing her reason among her ancestors' bones and Tybalt's decaying body. She thinks she sees Tybalt's ghost seeking Romeo, then addresses Romeo as she drinks and falls upon the bed.

22. Act 4, Scene 4

    In Capulet's hall, Lady Capulet and the Nurse organise food while Capulet urges everyone to work faster despite the early hour. The Nurse mocks his concern with domestic work, and Lady Capulet teases him about his past pursuit of women when he claims he can stay awake all night without becoming ill. Servingmen carry cooking supplies and fuel, and one answers Capulet's order with a joke about finding logs without Peter's help. Capulet hears the music announcing Paris's approach and sends the Nurse to wake and dress Juliet, creating dramatic irony because the audience has just seen her drink the potion.

23. Act 4, Scene 5

    The Nurse begins by teasing Juliet about sleep and her wedding night, but turns to cries for help when she cannot wake her. Lady Capulet begs her child to revive, and Capulet takes Juliet's coldness and stiffness as proof that she is dead. Paris arrives with Friar Laurence and musicians for the wedding, only to join the family's lamentations. Capulet personifies Death as a rival bridegroom who has become his son-in-law and heir, making the expected marriage a language for his loss. The friar, whose plan depends on Juliet appearing dead, offers religious consolation and tells the household to dress her for church and prepare to follow her to the grave. Capulet turns wedding food, music and flowers into a catalogue of funeral arrangements, using repeated contrasts to express the collapse of his expectations. Once the family and friar have gone, Peter's request for music becomes a comic exchange of insults, threats and musical puns, ending with the musicians' practical decision to wait for dinner.

24. Act 5, Scene 1

    Alone in Mantua, Romeo takes comfort from a dream in which Juliet finds him dead and revives him with kisses. Balthasar arrives and reports seeing Juliet placed in her family's vault, mistaking her apparent death for a real one. Romeo immediately declares defiance of the stars and orders ink, paper and horses, dismissing Balthasar's warning about his pale and wild appearance. With no letter from the friar, he resolves to lie with Juliet that night and recalls an apothecary whose poverty he believes he can exploit to obtain poison. The Apothecary first invokes Mantua's death penalty, but Romeo argues that a society which leaves him starving has no claim on his obedience. After securing the poison, Romeo calls gold the greater poison and treats the drug as a medicine because he intends it to end his separation from Juliet.

25. Act 5, Scene 2

    Friar John returns to Laurence's cell without having reached Mantua. He explains that he sought another friar to accompany him, but town officials confined them in a house suspected of infection. Fear of infection also prevented him from finding anyone to carry the letter onwards or return it to Laurence. Laurence recognises the danger of the failed message, calls on John to fetch an iron crowbar and prepares to enter the monument himself. Left alone, he says Juliet will wake within three hours and plans to keep her in his cell until Romeo can come. The scene explains a practical interruption to the secret plan, while Laurence's appeal to unhappy fortune presents the failure as something beyond his control.

26. Act 5, Scene 3

    Paris brings flowers to Juliet's tomb, mistakes Romeo's arrival for an attempt to desecrate the bodies and tries to arrest him, leading to a fight in which Romeo kills him. Romeo places Paris in the tomb and observes the colour in Juliet's lips and cheeks without understanding that she lives, then drinks poison and dies with a kiss. Laurence arrives shortly before Juliet wakes, but fear of the approaching watch makes him leave when she refuses his offer of refuge among nuns; she kisses Romeo for any remaining poison and then stabs herself with his dagger. Paris's page brings the watch, who discover the bodies, detain Balthasar and Laurence and summon the Prince and the households. Laurence explains the marriage, potion and undelivered letter, while Balthasar's testimony, the page's account and Romeo's letter supply further evidence of how the deaths occurred. Montague reports that his wife has died from grief at Romeo's exile, adding another loss to the discovery of his son's death. The Prince blames the households' hatred and his own tolerance of their quarrels, while Capulet offers reconciliation and the fathers promise costly memorials to each other's children, ending the scene with peace purchased through loss.

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