Romeo and Juliet Synopsis

After a brawl between the rival families of Montague and Capulet, the Prince threatens with death anyone who “disturbs our streets again.” Romeo, Montague’s heir, masked at a Capulet dance, becomes infatuated with Capulet’s daughter, Juliet. From the garden he overhears her avowal as she stands on her balcony and their love scene follows. Next afternoon Friar Lawrence marries them in secret.

When Romeo refuses to fight with Tybalt, a passionate Capulet (who is now his cousin by marriage), the gallant Mercutio takes the challenge himself. He is killed by mischance, and Romeo, enraged, kills Tybalt. In his absence the Prince banishes him; the Friar tells him to stay the night with Juliet and then wait in Mantua until recall is possible. When Juliet’s father insists that she shall marry a young nobleman, Paris, and she gets no aid from either her mother or her nurse, the Friar gives her an opiate (to take on the following night) that will put her in a death-like trance for “two-and-forty hours.” She will be laid in the Capulet vault; when she wakes, Romeo will be there.

Juliet is duly placed in the vault as dead, but the Friar’s messenger to Mantua miscarries; hearing only of Juliet’s “death”, Romeo hastens to the tomb at night and is surprised by Paris whom he kills; in the vault he drinks poison he has bought from a Mantuan apothecary, and dies by Juliet’s side. She wakes as the desperate Friar enters, and on seeing Romeo dead, stabs herself. The Prince and the heads of the families are roused; over the bodies of their children Capulet and Montague are reconciled.

-The Pocket Companion to Shakespeare’s Plays by J C Trewin