Romeo and Juliet is a tragic play by William Shakespeare that tells the tragic story of two young lovers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. The couple’s marriage was secretly arranged by their father, Count Paris, and only four people knew about it, including Friar Laurence and the Nurse. The Nurse was Juliet’s close friend and Friar Lawrence, who performed the marriage.
Juliet first proposes the idea of marriage to Friar Lawrence, but she fears that Friar could poison her because he married them. However, she believes that he cannot do that because he is a holy man. Later, the Nurse visits Romeo and tells her to be shrived and married. She also wants Juliet to tell her parents that she will go to confession.
Romeo and Juliet’s love was forbidden due to family differences, but only four people knew about their relationship and the fact that they had gotten married. The only other people who knew about the marriage were Friar Lawrence and the Nurse. If Romeo and Juliet had managed to get married before their families found out about their relationship, several significant changes would have occurred.
The marriage between Romeo and Juliet was kept a secret because they couldn’t let their parents know about their love for each other. Friar Lawrence was to blame for all the changes in their lives. The play ends with Romeo and Juliet’s deaths, and the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet serves as a reminder of the importance of family relationships and the consequences of unchecked love.
📹 Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare – So You Haven’t Read
So you haven’t read Romeo and Juliet? William Shakespeare’s classic tale of two teens looking for romance only to find a feuding …
Who knows about the marriage between Romeo and Juliet?
Four people know about the marriage. They are Romeo, Juliet, Friar Lawrence, and the Nurse.
Does the nurse know about Romeo and Juliet’s marriage?
In act two, scene four, Juliet sends the Nurse to find Romeo after their first kiss. The Nurse finds Romeo and goes back to Juliet with news of Romeo’s love for her. Juliet decides to marry Romeo because the Nurse approves. The Nurse is sad when Tybalt dies. She falls to the ground and cries, “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead!” We’re ruined, lady! Alack the day, he’s gone, he’s killed, he’s dead! The Nurse tells Juliet that Romeo has been banished. Juliet asks the Nurse to find Romeo for her at Friar Laurence’s cell for one last night together before he leaves for Mantua. Juliet learns her parents want her to marry Paris. The Nurse says she should marry Paris. The Nurse thought Juliet would never see her husband again, even though Juliet was already married to Romeo. Juliet is betrayed and stops sharing secrets with the Nurse. The Nurse discovers Juliet under the spell of Friar Laurence’s potion in Act 4, Scene 5. She grieves for Juliet as much as she did for Tybalt. She is at Romeo, Juliet, and Paris’s deathbed, but can’t speak. She loses her dearest friends, including her husband, her sister, and her two children.
Why did the Nurse betray Juliet?
Despite the fight, she supports Juliet. She cares about her. However, after Romeo is banished and Juliet’s mother tells her that she will marry Paris the next day, the nurse finds that she can no longer help Juliet and Romeo be together.
Does Tybalt know about Romeo and Juliet marriage?
Tybalt goes to look for Romeo after the ball. He doesn’t know Romeo and Juliet have already married, making Romeo his cousin. He finds Benvolio and Mercutio. Tybalt and Mercutio fight until Romeo arrives.
How much was the age gap between Romeo and Juliet?
Did you know? Romeo doesn’t love Juliet the whole time. Before he meets Juliet, Romeo is interested in Rosaline. The most famous line of the play, “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?,” is often misinterpreted. The archaic word “wherefore” means “why,” not “where.” The modern English translation is “Why are you, Romeo?” The original title of the play was “The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.” In Shakespeare’s original story, Romeo is 16 and Juliet is 13. The Montague and Capulet families originated in Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy,” not Shakespeare.
How many people know about Romeo and Juliet’s marriage?
Only four people know about the marriage: Romeo, Juliet, the nurse, and Friar Lawrence.
2. How many know of the marriage? Who are they?
1. When do Romeo and Juliet first say they love each other? a. How does the setting affect what they say to each other?
Why did Rosaline reject Romeo?
Psychoanalysts believe Romeo’s love for Rosaline is a sign of repressed childhood trauma. She’s from another family and is supposed to be a virgin. This makes it hard for him to stop loving her. He knows it’s ridiculous, but he still loves her. Psychoanalysts say this is like his failed relationship with his mother. Rosaline’s absence shows his mother’s absence and lack of love for him. Romeo loves Juliet, but she is a Capulet and he is a Montague. Juliet loves him back. Rosaline has been portrayed in different ways over time. Theophilus Cibbers’ 1748 version of Romeo and Juliet replaced references to Rosaline with references to Juliet. This took out the love at first sight moment at the Capulet feast. In the 1750s, David Garrick also eliminated references to Rosaline from his performances. However, in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo sees Rosaline first at the Capulet feast and then Juliet. This scene shows love is shallow. Rosaline also appears in the 1954 film version. In a short scene, Rosaline (Dagmar Josipovitch) gives Romeo a mask at Capulets’ party and tells him to leave before he gets hurt. Other filmmakers keep Rosaline off-camera. She also appears in the 2013 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Robert Nathan’s 1966 romantic comedy, Juliet in Mantua, shows Rosaline as a fully developed character. In this sequel, Romeo and Juliet live ten years later in exile in Mantua. After they are forgiven and return to Verona, they learn that Rosaline is married to Count Paris. Both couples must face their disillusionment with their marriages. Another play, After Juliet, written by Scottish playwright Sharman Macdonald, is about Rosaline after Romeo dies. She is a main character in this play. She is sad about Romeo and turns away Benvolio, who loves her. Macdonald’s daughter, Keira Knightley, played Rosaline in the play’s 1999 premiere.
Was Romeo and Juliet’s marriage secret?
Another fight breaks out in Verona, and Tybalt kills Mercutio. Romeo tried to stop the fight, but after Mercutio died, he killed Tybalt. The Prince banishes Romeo from Verona. Juliet is sad about Tybalt’s death and Romeo’s banishment. Lord Capulet tells Juliet she must marry Paris. Friar Laurence gives Juliet a potion to make her look dead so she doesn’t have to marry again. He sends Romeo a note and Juliet drinks the potion. Her body is moved to the family tomb.
Does the Nurse know Romeo is a Montague?
The nurse goes off and comes back with the news that the man’s name is Romeo and he’s a Montague. Juliet follows her nurse from the hall, overwhelmed by her love for a Montague.
📹 Family and Relationships in Romeo and Juliet
Welcome to the twelfth video in my “‘Romeo and Juliet’ GCSE English Literature Revision” series! In this video, I discuss how the …
One of the things that not often brought up about Romeo and Juliet is that they barely know each other and rush into a very quick very intense romance. It’s puppy love, maybe it would have survived, maybe it would have crashed and burned. But because their families hatred pushed them apart, it forced them to take more and more extreme measures to stay together. That’s the tragedy, not only are they dead, but the y never got to figure out themselves if what they have is love.
I’ve never understood why Romeo and Juliet has been considered a love story. It’s about two teens “falling in love” over the course of a night, possibly just because Romeo is the kind of person who falls deeply in love for a week and then ditches them for someone else and then gets caught up in the family drama that gets them killed. The most functional member of the play is actually probably Paris. He follows what was considered proper courtship at the time, he doesn’t even fight anyone until Romeo tries to break into Juliet’s tomb (understandable because due to the feud and Romeo killing Tybalt he was under the impression he was there to break shit and cause chaos.) and he seems to actually care about Juliet’s wellbeing. For better or worse Romeo puts Juliet on the spot with a hidden marriage and then gets banished for killing a member of her family while Juliet concocts a convoluted plan to go along with her boy toy even though it means leaving her family behind to someone she’s known for Two Days at the most. Honestly, the play can be considered a deconstruction of rash impulsive decisions, and how needless feuds lead to pointless deaths
One of the things that always makes me mad is that even the adults who are on Romeo and Juliet’s side, who know they’re in love, don’t actually help them. Because Friar Lawrence was afraid of the consequences of telling one of the most powerful families in the city that he’d gone against their wishes, he concocts an elaborate fake death scheme instead of just saying “no can do, she’s already married.”
I think it kinda adds to the tragedy and pointlessness of the feud that it’s never even said why their mortal enemies, no one asks, and no one besides the 2 seem to care, it’s just the way things are, and best not interfere with your families tradition of long-standing blood feud, even if the reason for it has been lost to time.
With the romance and all, I always felt that most of the characters in the play were really selfish, from the Montagues and the Capulets with their fights about nothing, to Romeo and Juliet willing to give up everything and abandon their families for someone they barely knew, the whole play feels just like a lesson on selfishness to me sometimes
If you listen to the prologue, it’s laid out there: “the perilous passage of their death marked love, and the continuance of their parents’ rage, which, but their children’s deaths, naught could remove, is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage.” It’s a story about both the children’s love (which appears to have been truer, at least, than Romeo’s previous crush) and the family feud that turned it to tragedy.
Sliding in here to explain Tybalt’s name and why he’s called “The prince of cats” in the play. Tybalt is the name commonly given to the cat character in the Tales of Reynard the Fox, which is the set of storues that established a lot of common animal tropes including the fox as a trickster, the wolf as his enemy (Named “Eisengrim” in the story) the Lion as King, and much more. So many stories from The Fantastic Mister Fox to Disney’s interpretation of Robin Hood can trace their origins back to Reynard.
Love me! Love me! Say that you love me! R&J is a primer of a tragedy and how often it is oversimplified. Most people see the label tragedy and assume the sad outcome is what makes it a tragedy. But what makes a tragedy is how preventable the outcome is. But for this or that, our principles would have lived to see another day. For a better example check out Extra History’s Seminal Tragedy about the start of WW1. It is a trail littered with ‘If only’s. And that is the heart of tragedy. The bad outcome is obviously bad, but what makes a death a tragedy is how it didn’t have to come to this.
Romeo and Juliet more accurately represents the unhealthy obsession in a relationship based on lust. Shakespeare himself might say that what lead to their deaths is they loved each other more than they loved God, but we could transpose that to a more modern interpretation like a toxic relationship. Whose to say if they had any children? Would they continue to obsess over each other more than they care for their own children? There’s an AU fanfiction for ya
The Montagues and Capulets were at war because they were on opposite sides of the rivalry between the Pope-supporting Guelphs and the Holy Roman Emperor-supporting Ghibellines. The story also has a lot to say about how politics affects societal relationships and the extent of religion’s influence over earthly matters.
‘…have been at war for years. What do you mean why? Reasons that’s why!’ Uhm, cause they were guelph and ghibelline factions? Not so hard to understand. Maybe an Investiture conflict extra history serries is due? Btw I never understood how this three day long, deadly fling of two teenage kids came to represent ideal love for our society. That’s like comming away from Hamlet like, “yeah, overcomplicated revenge ploys are totally the way to treat family issues!”
I studied R&J in high school and the reality is that without their families tearing strips off each other they would’ve explored their romance in a much more natural way. In the normal run of things they’d be able to explore their being young people infatuated with one another for the first time – rather than so-called ‘true love’ – and find out if they’re soulmates or if their romance would eventually burn out. Of course, because their families are too busy tearing strips off one another this is not the normal run of things and they both end up dead because they don’t want to live without one another, which wouldn’t have happened if their families weren’t fighting.
@1:36 The “reasons,” according to Shakespeare’s sources, were that the Capulets (Cappelletti, Capelletti, Capelleti, etc.) were Guelphs and supported the power of the Papacy and the Italian communes, while the Montagues (Montecchi, Montìcoli, etc.) were Ghibellines and supported the power of the Holy Roman Emperor and the great nobles who owed their positions to him. Dante mentions the two families in Book 6 of his “Purgatory.” Prince Escalus represents the original story’s Bartolomeo della Scala (or Scaliger), ruler of Verona from 1301-1304.
Folks, please, it is both a love story and also other things. A story can be more than one thing! I get that declaring “x well known work isn’t a love story” is a popular fad right now, and you gotta get people to click on articles somehow, but this idea is actually making it harder to do my job of teaching new authors harder. I’m getting authors who are genuinely confused about what a love story is because they read some hot twitter take about Pride and Prejudice not being one. I really hope we move past this phase soon.
For me, the craziest part is how the entire story spans exactly ‘ONE WEEK’. They literally die in each other’s arms a mere SEVEN DAYS after they meet! They say they love each other? They don’t even ‘KNOW’ each other. For me, Romeo & Juliet was always a cautionary tale about the importance of slowing the heck down and not being so fatally impulsive.
It’s not about love. It’s about two teenagers in “love,” who make stupid decisions because of it. Taken as a cautionary tale, one might learn that you shouldn’t let “love” or even love make all your decisions for you. After all, had Romeo decided to live on for his own sake, and keep Juliet in remembrance… the story would have a happy ending.
To this day, I maintain that the story of Romeo and Juliet is not about Romeo nor Juliet, nor is it about their love. As far as the story is concerned, they are just horny, impulsive teenagers who saw eachother at a party, hooked up, and then killed themselves without a second though. They are ultimately a glorified plot devices to tell the real story of House Capulet and House Montague, the cost of their pride, arrogance, and hate, and how when given the chance to amicably end their fued and grow stronger united as a single house (as both Romeo and Juliet were the scions of their respective houses), their doubled down on their arrogance and hate. Despite being the titular characters, the story is as much about Romeo and Juliet as it is about the poison the friar pulls out of his ass. Romeo and Juliet are glorified walking plot devices.
From what I understand 13 was rather young at that for a regular person to be married, and for an aristocrat to consummate a marriage. Aristocratic marriage ceremonies were often done while the participants were young because they were political in nature, but they were only sometimes consummated. There were exceptions,, Queen Elizabeth I’s great grandmother was married at twelve and gave birth to her grandfather Henry Tudor at thirteen.
Thanks for this. It’s one of my pet peeves. Over the years, I’ve worked on six productions of R&J as the Fight Director (all school or community theater productions). R&J is NOT a love story, it’s a hate story. It’s a story where neither side even seems to remember why they’re fighting. Nowhere in the script is a reason given beyond “Two houses old in enmity”. The easiest way for a director to ruin a production is to give the families an obvious reasn to fight, yet directors keep doing it. I can also go on for days about the secondary plot played out through Mercutio and Tybalt, but I win’t inflict that on you. Probably only interests a history/fight geek like me anyway.
Ugh, i have read and examined with my proffessor in the Shakespeare course, sure Romeo and Juliet were in a rush but were they the only ones to blame in this whole story? What about the families who kept fighting for NOTHING! Or what about the prince of Verona who couldn’t keep a long term peace? He could just threaten both families to put each males into prison until they restore a long term peace, both families would maybe considering a peace and maybe Juliet and Romeo could have more time for their relationship. Don’t defend Rosalind because Rosalind was a proud, spoiled, mockingjay who would never believe Romeo even if he would catch a bird with his mouth to prove his love🙄
I always viewed the story as a satirical story, making fun of the foolish notions of “true love” and “young love” among other foolish notions of the time. Cause let’s be honest what on earth do teenagers know about love, they think everything will work out and be easy. I once had a discussion about what would have happened if they succeeded in their plan to escape and it boiled down to they would have been left destitute with Juliet leaving Romeo to try and get back into the good graces of her family and Paris.
Of course it’s a meditation on the price of hate. Quoting the Prince in the final scene: See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love; And I, for winking at your discords too, Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished. The Bard literally puts the moral of the story in the text like it’s the end of an episode of a bad children’s educational show.
Gonna be honest, this is a bad article. You just summarized the plot and then said, “doesn’t seem like a love story to me.” But you didn’t explain why that is. Production quality and animations are top notch as always, but I feel like I’ve got to express my discontent somehow with a click-baity article like this since the dislike button is gone. Also, the last 1/3 of this article is an ad for wine. lol
I’ve never cared for Romeo. When you get down to it, he’s an impulsive narcissistic emo teen who when you get down to it was more in love with the idea of romance, stringing along Juliet who has been groomed all her life to just go with what men tells her and when she has the tiniest teen crush, Romeo takes advantage and ruins their lives. Cause while tybalt was indeed not a good person, the duel between him and mercutio was legal and likely wouldn’t lead to anywhere but him getting in the way cost the homie mercutio the man who treated Romeo like a brother to die in pain and then after what can be seen as a just judicial duel of revenge or murder, he proceed to run and hide crying about himself about how Juliet is gonna hate him and not mourning the friend he avenged, who wouldn’t have died if he didn’t get involved. He makes everything about himself and he’s honestly a creeper.