Plot Analysis

Romeo and Juliet is a play about the conflict between the main characters’ love,
with its transformative power, and the darkness, hatred, and selfishness
represented by their families’ feud. The two teenaged lovers, Romeo and
Juliet, fall in love the first time they see each other, but their families’ feud
requires they remain enemies. Over the course of the play the lovers’ powerful
desires directly clash with their families’ equally powerful hatred of each other.
Initially, we may expect that the lovers will prove the unifying force that unites
the families. Were the play a comedy, the families would see the light of
reason and resolve their feud, Romeo and Juliet would have a public wedding,
and everyone would live happily ever after. But the Montague-Capulet feud is
too powerful for the lovers to overcome. The world of the play is an imperfect
place, where freedom from everything except pure love is an unrealistic goal.
Ultimately, the characters love does resolve the feud, but at the price of their
lives.
Romeo and Juliet begin the play trapped by their social roles. Romeo is a
young man who is expected to chase women, but he has chosen Rosaline,
who has sworn to remain a virgin. The way Romeo speaks about Rosaline
suggests he is playing a role rather than feeling true, overpowering emotion.
He expresses his frustration in clichés that make his cousin Benvolio laugh at
him. Romeo is also expected to be excited by the feud with the Capulets, but
Romeo finds the feud as miserable as his love: “O brawling love, O loving
hate” (1.1.). When we meet Juliet she is in her bedroom, physically trapped
between her Nurse and her mother. As a young woman her role is to
obediently wait for her parents to marry her to someone. When her mother
announces that Paris will be Juliet’s future husband, Juliet’s response is
obedient, but unenthusiastic: “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move.” (1.3).
These early scenes reveal Romeo and Juliet’s characters, and introduce the
themes of love, sex, and marriage that dominate the remainder of the play.
The incident which sets the plot in motion is Romeo’s decision to attend the
Capulets’ party. This decision is Romeo’s first attempt to free himself from the
role that confines him. Benvolio has advised him to get over Rosaline by
checking out other women. By going to the Capulets’ home, Romeo is also
temporarily ignoring his social role as a Montague who must feud with the
Capulets. Unfortunately, Tybalt sees Romeo’s presence as an “intrusion” and
swears revenge: “this intrusion shall, / Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest
gall” (1.5.). Tybalt’s anger raises the stakes for Romeo’s presence at the
party, and foreshadows their eventual duel. In the very next line after Tybalt’s
exit, Romeo and Juliet meet. Now Romeo has equally high stakes for staying
at the party as for leaving. If he stays he risks Tybalt’s further wrath, but if he
leaves, he won’t get to spend more time with Juliet. He risks his life for love,
establishing the high stakes of the lovers’ relationship. When Romeo and
Juliet talk, they reinforce the extraordinariness of their new love by using the
religious language of “pilgrims,” “saints,” and “prayers,” suggesting their love
will escapes earthly limitations.
After the party, Romeo returns to find Juliet. Their love gives both lovers a
sense of freedom. Romeo feels like he is flying with “love’s light wings” (2.2).
Juliet feels that her love is “as boundless as the sea” (2.2). She believes that
love can liberate them both from their families: “be but sworn my love / And I’ll
no longer be a Capulet” (2.2.). In the next scene we meet Friar Lawrence, who
reminds us that however good something seems, it can never be entirely
untainted by evil: “Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied” (2.3). By the end
of the scene, however, even Friar Lawrence is swept up in the lovers’
excitement. He believes their love can end the Montague-Capulet feud, and
he agrees to marry them. The next few scenes are more like a
Shakespearean comedy than a tragedy. Mercutio and the Nurse make bawdy
jokes. Romeo and Juliet come up with a cunning plan to get married under
their parents’ noses. It seems as if the feud between their families really might
end. At the end of Act Two, the lovers marry.
No sooner are the lovers happily married than the play shifts from comedy to
tragedy. Tybalt still seeks revenge for Romeo’s decision to attend the
Capulets’ ball. Romeo, believing himself freed from the feud by his secret
marriage to Juliet, refuses to fight Tybalt. But Romeo’s freedom is an illusion.
Tybalt provokes Mercutio and Mercutio challenges him. They fight, and
Mercutio dies. Now Romeo’s duty to his new in-laws, the Capulets, comes in
conflict with his duty to avenge his friend’s death. Romeo kills Tybalt. Although
he was provoked into the murder, and would have been killed had he not
killed first, he is no longer an innocent, blameless character. It now seems
unlikely that Romeo and Juliet will be able to live happily together. Romeo is
banished from Verona. Before he leaves, he and Juliet spend their first—and
last—night together. The scene is bittersweet and moving because they know
they will soon be parted, and the audience understands this may be the last
moment the lovers see each other alive. At dawn, both Romeo and Juliet try
to believe that morning hasn’t come, since the new day brings nothing but
grief: “More light and light, more dark and dark our woes” (3.5).
In the final scenes, Romeo and Juliet are more trapped than ever. Neither
character can go back to who they were before they met, but the possibility of
them being together is very slim. The situation feels impossible, and reality
intrudes on all sides. For Romeo, reality takes the form of his banishment to
Mantua. For Juliet, reality is her impending marriage Paris. The two lovers’
separate fates close in on them. In a desperate attempt to escape her
marriage to Paris, Juliet fakes her own death, using a sleeping potion given to
her by Friar Lawrence. Reality intrudes once more in an outbreak of plague in
Mantua, which prevents Romeo from getting the news that Juliet’s only
asleep. Romeo rushes to Juliet’s tomb, where he finds Paris. Romeo,
surrendering to the circumstances that have trapped him in his tragic role, kills
Paris, then enters Juliet’s tomb and kills himself moments before she wakes.
When Juliet finds Romeo dead, she stabs herself with his dagger. By killing
themselves, the lovers accept that they are trapped by their fate. At the same
time, they escape from the world that has kept them apart.