Romeo and Juliet: Quick Summary of Every Scene
From the Mr Salles Ultimate Guide to Romeo and Juliet, available on Amazon
Act 1 Scene 1
Sunday morning. A third brawl breaks out between the noble feuding families of Capulet and Montague. Benvolio, a Montague tries to keep the peace but fiery Tybalt, a Capulet, persist until Lords Capulet and Montague can’t resist fighting too. Prince Escalus who rules Verona threatens future fighters with execution.
Montague misses his miserable and secretive son Romeo. He asks Benvolio to find the cause of his misery. Romeo reveals he is in love with Rosaline, a Capulet. He wants what he can’t have, but she resists his sexual advances and his bribes of gold.
Act 1 Scene 2
Meanwhile, Paris, a rich relative of the Prince, wants to marry Capulet’s daughter, Juliet, making the Capulets much more powerful than the Montagues. Capulet tells Paris to wait two years, since Juliet is still thirteen. Capulet himself regrets having married Juliet’s mother when she was so young. Capulet organises a masquerade ball and invites Paris to compare Juliet to the other Capulets there.
Act 1 Scene 3
Juliet’s mother and the Nurse excitedly explain to her that handsome, rich, posh Paris has made a marriage proposal and is coming to the ball. Juliet agrees to consider him as a suitor.
Act 1 Scene 4
Meanwhile, Romeo and Benvolio intercept Capulet’s illiterate servant with invitations to the ball. Benvolio decides they should crash the party as Rosaline will be there, and won’t compare to the other beauties Romeo will meet at the masque.
Romeo tells Benvolio and their witty friend Mercutio that he has had a dream of death. The dream suggested attending the Capulet’s ball might lead to a terrible fate. But Mercutio mocks Romeo and persuades him to go anyway.
Act 1 Scene 5
Sunday night. Here, he sees Juliet dancing with Paris and instantly forgets about Rosaline. His is in love with Juliet at first sight. Tybalt recognises Romeo’s voice (as the party goers are masked) and tells Capulet, hoping he will order Romeo beaten, battered or killed. Capulet enrages Tybalt by telling him to chill. Meanwhile, Romeo and Juliet speak to each other in poetry, sharing the lines of a sonnet their love makes up on the spot. They kiss, not knowing each other’s names. The party ends and as Romeo leaves they both discover they are the children of their parents’ sworn enemies.
Act 2 Scene 1
Monday morning. Romeo dumps Benvolio and Mercutio.
Act 2 Scene 2
He sneaks back over the high garden walls and stands beneath Juliet’s balcony as she speaks to the night about her love for him. They tell each other they are in love. Romeo asks to be satisfied, so Juliet asks him to arrange a marriage. By tomorrow.
Act 2 Scene 3
Romeo rushes to Friar Lawrence, who is the priest both he and Juliet confess to. Romeo asks him to marry them in secret. The Friar thinks this marriage is madness, then flips his thinking, feeling that the lovers’ union will unite the feuding families and end the violence in Verona’s streets. He agrees to marry them that very afternoon so that they will still be virgins when they wed.
Act 2 Scene 4
Benvolio and Mercutio engage in sexual banter and Romeo suggests he has spent the night away from them because he was having sex. Romeo tells the Nurse of the marriage plans.
Act 2 Scene 5
The Nurse teases Juliet, then tells her to go to Friar Lawrence, to pretend to go to confession, but actually to be married.
Act 2 Scene 6
Friar Lawrence tells them their marriage is a holy plan, but won’t leave them alone till after the wedding in case they start having sex in the church.
Act 3 Scene 1
Meanwhile Tybalt looks to challenge Romeo to a duel following the provocation of his presence at the Capulet ball. He and his Capulet crew find Benvolio and Mercutio and the Montagues. He demands to know where Romeo is, and enrages Mercutio who wants to fight Tybalt himself. Just then, newly married Romeo arrives to hear Tybalt’s challenge. Tybalt is now Romeo’s cousin because of his secret marriage, so he declines to duel. He tells Tybalt to be satisfied that he loves him. Tybalt assumes this is a taunt, ridiculing his manliness, and demands a duel. Romeo refuses.
Mercutio can’t accept Romeo’s unmanly submission and makes it his mission to fight Tybalt himself. They duel, but Romeo leaps in, grabbing Mercutio to prevent bloodshed or death. Tybalt stabs Mercutio while he is restrained. Mercutio pretends the stabbing is a scratch, and tells a string of jokes laughing at the wound though he realises he is dying. He curses the Capulets and Montagues with a plague. Then Mercutio dies.
Tybalt returns and Romeo kills him in revenge. He begins to realise his dream of death and fate are coming true and in despair he flees to find the Friar. The Prince, finding Mercutio dead, demands that his killer must be executed. But then he hears Romeo has already terminated Tybalt, so the Prince decides Romeo will be exiled rather than executed. He must leave for Mantua by dawn, never to return to Verona.
Act 3 Scene 2
Juliet is longing for her wedding night and finally consummating the marriage. The Nurse tells her Romeo has killed Tybalt, and reduces her to tears. But she sides with her husband and longs for him to come to her side.
Act 3 Scene 3
Meanwhile, Romeo moans about his misery to the Friar, flinging himself to the floor and weeping because banishment is worse than death. The Friar tells him to grow a pair. He then arranges for Romeo to climb Juliet’s balcony to consummate the marriage. The Nurse arrives and she prepares to lead Romeo to his ladder of lovemaking.
Act 3 Scene 4
Monday night. Parish pushes Capulet to let him wed Juliet while she is young. Capulet, distraught at Juliet’s tears over Tybalt, thinks a marriage to the perfect partner Paris will soothe her grief. Trying to be the perfect Elizabethan parent, he rushes the wedding for three days’ time.
Act 3 Scene 5
Romeo and Juliet consummate the marriage. Romeo leaves for Mantua just after dawn, risking death for a few more stolen minutes with Juliet. They romantically picture each other as corpses as they part.
Tuesday Morning. Lady Capulet tells Juliet of the joyful marriage to Paris. Juliet bursts into tears and refuses. Capulet is astonished at Juliet’s refusal. He resorts to threats and tells her he will drag her to the church or chuck her on to the streets to starve if she won’t wed on Thursday. Her mother calls her a fool, wishes Juliet were dead and refuses to speak to her.
Juliet turns for advice from the Nurse, who realises her own role in this will jeopardise her job. She cunningly suggests that Juliet should keep Romeo a secret and marry Paris too, pointing out he is both a better man than Romeo and also present.
Act 4 Scene 1
Unfortunately, this bigamous marriage would condemn Juliet’s soul to hell, so she seeks solace and advice from the Friar. Paris arrives and tells her that she must love him, because he is the vainest man in Verona. She shoos him away without revealing her marriage to Romeo. She tells the Friar she will kill herself unless he intervenes. Coincidentally, the Friar is a herbalist, and has perfected a poison which perfectly mimics death for forty-two hours. He tells Juliet to drink it tomorrow tonight. She will be found apparently dead and then laid out in the family tomb, rather than buried. In two days’ time, the potion will be purged and she will wake ready to be reunited with Romeo, in Mantua. He tells her to apologise to her father and not to be too girly to drink the potion.
Act 4 Scene 2
Juliet apologises and Capulet sends a messenger to tell Paris that the wedding is on for Thursday. Her parents are ecstatic.
Act 4 Scene 3
Tuesday night. Juliet says goodbye to her mother, who suspects nothing. She faces her fears that the Friar might try to poison her with the potion, or she might wake next to her ancestors’ corpses and beat out her own brains with their bones. She drinks!
Act 4 Scene 4
Her parents and the Nurse celebrate as they prepare the feast. Lady Capulet tells her husband that he won’t be able to have any more affairs, and he is delighted that she still cares.
Act 4 Scene 5
Wednesday morning. The Friar’s plan is perfect, and the poison works without killing Juliet. The family are filled with grief. The Friar criticises the Capulets for trying to advance their status through marriage and tell them to be happy that her soul has advanced to heaven, with God.
Paris arrives with musicians playing for the wedding procession. Awkward. Capulet tells Paris that death has taken Juliet’s virginity away. Paris is gutted. Peter persuades the poor musicians to sing at the funeral instead.
Friar Lawrence writes to Romeo, outlining his incredible intervention and promising Juliet will soon join him to continue their blissful union.
Act 5 Scene 1
Thursday Morning. The letter never reaches Romeo. Instead, his buddy Balthasar bears the news of Juliet’s death to Romeo.
Romeo pays a poor apothecary to sell him a poison powerful enough to kill with a tiny dose.
Act 5 Scene 2
Thursday night. The messenger, Friar John, tells Friar Lawrence that he has been quarantined in a house of plague so the letter to Romeo was not delivered. So Fate, and Mercutio’s curse did bring that plague. The Friar sets off to Juliet’s tomb.
Act 5 Scene 3
Romeo returns to Verona determined to die at Juliet’s side. Poor Paris is strewing flowers outside Juliet’s tomb when Romeo and Balthasar arrive with tools to tear open the doors. Romeo gives Balthasar some money and a suicide letter for Montague, his father, to read when Romeo is dead. Paris prevents Romeo breaking in, believing Tybalt’s killer wants to desecrate the tomb and interfere with the body of his fiancé. Romeo has had enough of killing, but Paris will not be put off so, reluctantly, Romeo kills him. Paris’s dying wish is to be placed near Juliet, so Romeo drags his corpse to her. He finds Juliet, lies down next to her, marvels at her beauty and imagines death must want to be her lover. He drinks his poison, and dies.
Meanwhile the Friar has heard that Romeo did not receive his message and he rushes to the tomb to meet the waking Juliet before Romeo arrives. Unfortunately, he finds Paris dead, and inside, Romeo’s dead body next to the waking Juliet. He tells her the bad news, that her husband and future husband are both dead. He hurries her, and tells her of his cunning plan, that she can become a nun. Juliet is having none of this, and refuses to leave. The Friar fears the consequences of his secret part in the tragedy being discovered. He flees, leaving Juliet on her own with Romeo. She decides to die, tries to drink Romeo’s poison, but finds none left. She kills herself with Romeo’s dagger.
The Watch arrives and Balthasar and the Friar fill in the grieving parents and the Prince. Romeo’s mother has already died from grief over Romeo’s exile. The Prince pronounces everyone punished, including himself for being too lenient, and losing two kinsmen in Mercutio and Paris.
Capulet and Montague end the feud and promise to commission gold statues of each other’s dead children, to celebrate their lives and the ending of the feud.
The Prince turns teacher and tells everyone to talk about what they’ve learned.
The End
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