Romeo and Juliet

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Romeo and Juliet By William
Shakespeare
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Summary
Romeo and Juliet is a story about two teenagers
who fall in love but are forbidden to see each
other by their parents. They meet one night at a
party (Romeo is actually there to check out
another girl, Rosaline) and quickly fall in love.
Unfortunately, Juliets parents already have a
husband picked out for her. So, the two decide
to get married and enlist the help of Juliets
nurse to act as a messenger between the two and
Friar Laurence who agrees to marry them.
However, plans go awry after Romeo is banished
from Verona and doesnt get filled in on the
plans that Juliet has for them to live happily
ever after
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Setting
The story is set in the late 1500s mostly in the
town of Verona, Italy. However, there are a few
acts set in Mantua, Italy a smaller town just a
few miles away.
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Timeline
Sunday Act One Monday Act Two Tuesday Act
Three Wednesday Act Four Thursday Act Five
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The Feud
Romeos family, the Montagues, have a long
standing feud with Juliets family, the Capulets.
While the audience never learns about the source
of the ancient quarrel, we do learn that it has
recently grown stronger.
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Comedy and Tragedy
Romeo and Juliet begins as a comedy but ends as a
tragedy

• Elements of a tragedy
• Must have a tragic hero/heroine
• Ends in the death of many of the main characters

Elements of a comedy

• A struggle of young lovers to overcome difficulty
  that is often presented by elders
• Separation and unification
• Heightened tensions, often within a family

The shift from comedy to tragedy is what sets
Romeo and Juliet apart from the rest of
Shakespeares plays
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Themes

• Love
• The power of love
• Love as a cause for violence
• Fate
• The inevitability of fate

• Hate
• Hate as a forced emotion

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Writing Style
Much of Romeo and Juliet is written as a sonnet,
a poem of 14 lines written and rhymed in iambic
pentamenter. Each sonnet ends with a couplet. A
couplet is two consecutive lines that
rhyme. Iambic pentamenter refers to the rhyme
scheme of a sonnet A B A B C D C
D E F E F G - G
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Plagiarism!?
Shakespeare did not invent the story of Romeo and
Juliet. A poet named Arthur Brooks wrote the
story of Romeus and Juliet as a long poem that
was itself not original, but rather an adaptation
of adaptations that stretched across nearly a
hundred years and two languages. Many of the
details of Shakespeares plot are taken directly
from Brooks poem, including the meeting of Romeo
and Juliet at the ball, their secret marriage,
Romeos fight with Tybalt, the sleeping potion,
and the timing of their suicides.
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Interesting
The Italian city of Verona, where Romeo and
Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters
addressed to Juliet every Valentine's Day.
Star-crossed lovers refers to two people who
are in love but have conflicting astrological
signs. In Shakespeares times, people believed
the course of their lives was determined by the
exact second they were born.
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Verona Today
Today, Verona has an incredible amount of
graffiti, which is legal, provided that you are
writing about your love for someone.