Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. 5
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, 10
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. 15

A fine example of a sonnet. The introduction to the play
which basically explains what will happen to the "star-cross'd
lovers".

ROMEO O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, 50
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night. 55
Act I sc. v

Romeo's thoughts, at the Capulet Ball, upon first seeing Juliet.
Note the images of light and fire and the holiness motif as also
continued in the next several quotes from the same scene.

ROMEO This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. 100

JULIET Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? 105
JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. 110
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
JULIET You kiss by the book. 115

NURSE Madam, your mother craves a word with you.
ROMEO What is her mother? Nurse Marry, bachelor,
Her mother is the lady of the house,
And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous 120
I nursed her daughter, that you talk'd withal;
I tell you, he that can lay hold of her
Shall have the chinks.
ROMEO Is she a Capulet? O dear account! my life is my foe's debt.

Note: chinks is a reference to wealth or money. It is at
this point that Romeo realises she is his enemy's daughter.

JULIET What's he that follows there, that would not dance?
NURSE I know not. 140
JULIET Go ask his name: if he be married.
My grave is like to be my wedding bed.
NURSE His name is Romeo, and a Montague;
The only son of your great enemy.
JULIET My only love sprung from my only hate! 145
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.

Julliet is about to make the discovery of Romeo's
true identity. Note the foreshadowing of her grave and
her wedding bed...

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, 5
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. 10
It is my lady, O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks: 15
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, 20
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand, 25
That I might touch that cheek!
Act II scii

The famous "balcony scene" (note: there is no
balcony - it is� really a window scene). Note also
the brightness, the stars, the heavens as symbols.
Romeo is talking aloud, to himself.

JULIET O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

Same scene, her turn to chat to herself. She's
asking why he has to be a Montague, not, as is
often thought, where he has gone.

JULIET 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; 40
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose 45
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee 50
Take all myself.

Juliet reveals the clarity and maturity of thought
that makes her the truly heroic character in the play.

ROMEO Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops�
JULIET O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. 115

ROMEO A thousand times the worse, to want thy light.
Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

A fine example of simile in use.

ROMEO It is my soul that calls upon my name:
How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears!

An excellent example of alliteration.

FRIAR LAWRENCE These violent delights have violent ends 10
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; 15
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Act II sc vi

Through the use of an excellent simile, Friar L.
foreshadows the tragic deaths of the lovers.

MERCUTIO No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you
shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I
warrant, for this world. A plague o' 100
both your houses! 'Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a
cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue,
a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!
Why the devil came you between us?
I was hurt under your arm. 105
Act III sc i

The Mercutio death scene, made famous by
the clever pun on the word "grave".

BENVOLIO O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio's dead!
That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds,
Which too untimely here did scorn the earth. 120

ROMEO This day's black fate on more days doth depend;
This but begins the woe, others must end.

Romeo recognises increasingly the hand of fate.

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 10
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Act III scv

An example of personification: Romeo tells his young
wife that he must leave or die.

JULIET O God, I have an ill-divining soul! 55
Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb:
Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale.

Foreshadowing dark days ahead...

Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent 90
To marry Paris: Wednesday is to-morrow:
To-morrow night look that thou lie alone;
Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber:
Take thou this vial, being then in bed,
And this distilled liquor drink thou off; 95
When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease:
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;
The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade 100
To paly ashes, thy eyes' windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;
Each part, deprived of supple government,
Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death:
And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death 105
Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,
And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes
To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead:
Then, as the manner of our country is, 110
In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.
In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,
Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift, 115
And hither shall he come: and he and
I Will watch thy waking, and that very night
Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.
And this shall free thee from this present shame;
Act IV sci

Friar Lawrence hatches his ill-fated plan. Note:
had Fate not intervened, it would have been a
huge success and the Friar would be a hero.

What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not, 30
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault, 35
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,-- 40
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say, 45
At some hours in the night spirits resort;--
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:-- 50
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefather's joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone, 55
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
Act IV sciii

Juliet, alone, expresses her fears before taking
the potion. What if the Friar is trying to kill her, to
cover his marriage mistake? What if she doesn't
wake? What if she awakes too soon in a crypt
with death and darkness?

Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
Act IV sc v

Lady Capulet describes her daughter�s "death" in
simile form. It is ironic that she doesn't look dead,
because, of course, she isn't dead.

Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor:
Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear 65
As will disperse itself through all the veins
That the life-weary taker may fall dead
And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
Act V sci

Romeo buys a dram (measure) of potent poison
from a poor apothecary (pharmacist) for forty
ducats.

Going to find a bare-foot brother out
One of our order, to associate me,
Here in this city visiting the sick,
And finding him, the searchers of the town,
Suspecting that we both were in a house 10
Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
Seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth;
So that my speed to Mantua there was stay'd.

Act V sc ii Friar John explains how Fate prevented
him from bringing Friar L.�s letter to Romeo.

Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth, 45
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food!
Act V sc iii

Romeo's description of the tomb is a personification.

Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife: 240
I married them; and their stol'n marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her, 245
Betroth'd and would have married her perforce
To County Paris: then comes she to me,
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself. 250
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night, 255
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
Return'd my letter back. Then all alone 260
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But when I came, some minute ere the time 265
Of her awaking, here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb; 270
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But, as it seems, did violence on herself.�

Friar Lawrence delivers the denouement.

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
he sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; 315
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Prince Escalus sums up the tragedy in the play's final lines.

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