Romeo and
Juliet
House of Montague
House of Capulet
Prince
Lady
Montague
Montague
Friar
Lawrence
Romeo
Mercutio
Benvolio
Capulet
Rosaline
The Nurse
Lady Capulet
Juliet
Tybalt
Paris
PRINCE of
Verona
Act 5
Scene 3
Line 307
The Prince of Verona
wants peace, but he
can't restrain the
violence between the
Montagues and the
Capulets. If the Prince
can't do anything about
the feud, it means that
the law (which the
Prince embodies) is
powerless against the
passions of hate and of
love.
Act 5
Scene 3
Line 307
IMPORTANCE:
Go hence to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardoned, and some punished;
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
We're slightly hopeful that,
from now on, the rule of
law will be able to keep these
people in line—and that maybe
we'll move on from the
feuding, gang-type, familybased excuse for justice to an
actual system of law-and-order.
Capulet
Lord Capulet is Juliet's daddy. At
first, he seems like a pretty
good dad. When Paris comes
sniffing around for Juliet's hand
in marriage, Capulet puts him
off, citing Juliet's young age and
even suggesting that he'd like
his daughter to marry for
"love“. But Capulet doesn't play
the good father for long. Paris
eventually wears him down, but
Lord Capulet isn't too happy
when Juliet refuses to marry
him.
Lord Capulet's response to
Juliet's "disobedience" is so
violently harsh that we begin to
see him as a bit of a tyrant.
Lady
Capulet
Lady Capulet makes a small
effort to reach out to her
daughter, but it's obvious
that Juliet's closest bond is
with the Nurse; Lady
Capulet never even comes
close to challenging that.
When Juliet needs her
mom's support, Lady
Capulet ignores her
daughter's pleas to help
her avoid marrying Paris.
After Lord Capulet storms
out, Juliet turns to her
mother to soften her
father's punishment. Juliet
begs her to delay the
marriage!
Montague
Romeo’s father, the
patriarch of the
Montague clan and
bitter enemy of Capulet.
At the beginning of the
play, he is chiefly
concerned about
Romeo’s melancholy.
Lady
Montague
Romeo’s mother,
Montague’s wife. She
dies of grief after
Romeo is exiled from
Verona.
Friar
Lawrence
He does achieve his goal, even if
it wasn't quite in the way he
intended—unless, that is, you
think he somehow planned this
tragedy all along.
A mentor to both
Romeo and Juliet, Friar
Laurence constantly
advises them to act with
more caution and
moderation, even
though he doesn't wait
too long before agreeing
to marry off these two
crazy kids.
It does seem like the
Friar might be running a
little too fast in his haste
to use these teenagers
to patch up a hopeless
family feud.
ROMEO
He's emotional and angsty,
and it drives some people
crazy. His over-the-top
infatuation with Rosaline
at the beginning of the
play, immediately followed
by, um, completely
forgetting about Rosaline,
can make Romeo seem
shallow and foolish.
The pressure to be a "man" (which involves a lot
of sword fighting in this play) eventually gets to
Romeo. He caves in to the idea that masculinity
and violence go hand in hand. And, we all know
that when Romeo kills Tybalt his actions have
some major consequences—Romeo is banned
from Verona, which leads to him to seek out
some pretty bad advice and guidance from Friar
Laurence, which basically leads to the deaths of
both Romeo and Juliet.
Act 2
Scene 3
45-46
Act 5
Scene 1
36
With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No.
I have forgot that name, and that
name’s woe.
Act 2
Scene 3
45-46
Romeo was just saying how much he
loved Rosaline. Now that he’s seen
Juliet (all he did was SEE her), he has
completely forgotten about
Rosaline?! What gives?!
Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.
Act 5
Scene 1
36
This shows that Romeo is genuinely
in love with Juliet. He vows to kill
himself (“lie” with her) and he does
follow through with this promise.
JULIET
Juliet may be beautiful,
but she's also much more
than just a pretty face.
She's smart, witty, and
determined; it's Juliet,
after all, who proposes to
Romeo, not the other way
around.
Juliet undergoes the greatest evolution during
the course of the play and gets to speak some of
Shakespeare's most poetically beautiful lines.
Juliet starts out as a naïve girl who's dependent
on her family and ends up a woman willing to
desert that family to be with the man she
loves—over the course of five days.
Act 2
Scene 2
17
Act 3
Scene 2
109-11
If that thy bent of love be
honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word
tomorrow
Act 2
Scene 2
17
If you like it, then you should put a
ring on it (basically)…
Act 3
Scene 2
109-11
My husband lives, that Tybalt
would have slain;
And Tybalt's dead, that would
have slain my husband:
All this is comfort; wherefore
weep I then?
Nurse breaks the hopeful mood of the scene
with the news that Romeo has killed Tybalt.
Juliet's first reaction is to grieve over her
cousin and reject Romeo as just another
heartless Montague. But then she changes
her mind: in a single monologue, Juliet
decides to choose loyalty to her new
husband over love of her family.
What's cool about this is that Shakespeare
uses the very words she's speaking
to show the switch: in the first two lines,
"husband" and "Tybalt" actually switch
places. For a woman in Shakespeare's time,
this is exactly what marriage meant: your
priority was now your husband and your
husband's family. Married to Romeo, Juliet is
literally no longer a Capulet.
Juliet's path to suicide is different than Romeo's.
Romeo has been banished from his home city,
but still has contact with his family & friends.
Juliet has been stripped of the support of
everyone around her. She has to undergo a
series of events that take her from saying goodbye to Romeo after their wedding night, to the
news that she is supposed to marry Paris, to her
father's rage when she refuses, to a meeting
with Paris himself.
Her father threatens to throw her out of the house onto the streets
if she doesn't marry Paris. Her mother nearly disowns her. Even the
Nurse turns against her. As far as we can tell, she hasn't really been
anywhere besides her home and Friar Laurence's. She has no idea
how to survive in the outside world, especially in the Elizabethan
world where women couldn't really function without husbands and
fathers, unless they were prostitutes. AND, in case you forgot, she's
thirteen years old.
Mercutio
He's dirty, funny, out of control, and—we'll
say it—compared to him, Romeo and Juliet
can seem whiny and repetitive. Mercutio is
technically a minor character, but his
personality has such a disproportionate
impact that maybe he has to die or he
would take over the play.
Romeo's sword-fight loving
BFF who never backs down
from a duel and, although
he's neither a Montague nor
a Capulet, he gets involved in
the long-standing family feud
on the side of the
Montagues.
Act 2
Scene 1
1
Act 1
Scene 1
4
Act 1
Scene 1
4
If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
It's not surprising that, with this attitude toward
love and sex, Mercutio comes across as opposed to
the whole idea of love between a man and a
woman.
When Romeo complains about the heartache of his
unrequited love for Rosaline, Mercutio tells him to
get over it already!
Act 2
Scene 1
1
I must conjure him.
I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,
By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,
By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh
And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,
That in thy likeness thou appear to us!
It's not just "love" that Mercutio has a problem with. He's also pretty hostile
toward women and female sexuality in general. The clearest example of this
is when he lists Rosaline's body parts in a crude monologue that makes fun
of Romeo and a popular poetic convention.
So, is Mercutio's hostility toward women and heterosexual love an
indication that he's more interested in the guys? Maybe.
Benvolio
Benvolio, whose name literally
means "good will," is a classic
nice guy: stuck playing the
straight man to Mercutio and
the non-romantic-idiot to
Romeo, constantly telling
everyone else to chill and stop
fighting and "keep the peace",
and being asked to spy on his
friends.
What? That's right: Romeo's
parents (his aunt and uncle) turn
to him when their son is acting
weird, and the Prince always
asks him to explain what went
down in the most recent street
fight.
Rosaline
Rosaline is the gorgeous and
aloof woman Romeo crushes on
until he meets the love of his
life, Juliet. But, um, don't get
excited, because we never see
her, she has no speaking part,
and she isn't even listed in the
dramatis personae (the cast list).
According to Romeo, Rosaline is
beautiful and completely
unavailable—Romeo tells us
she's sworn off boys by taking a
vow of chastity.
Nurse
Act 3
Scene 5
5
Even a tragedy needs some comic
relief, and who better than Juliet's
bawdy, lower-class nurse? It's comic
gold: she's a lower-class women, so
that's already funny.
The Nurse and Juliet may have a
loving, teasing sort of relationship at
the beginning of the play, but when
Juliet needs her most—after her
parents order her to marry Paris—
the Nurse betrays her. Romeo is as
good as dead, the Nurse tells Juliet,
and she had better forget him and
marry Paris.
Act 3
Scene 5
5
Romeo is banish'd; and all the world to
nothing,
That he dares ne'er come back to challenge
you;
Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,
I think it best you married with the county.
O, he's a lovely gentleman!
Romeo's a dishclout to him: an eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first: or if it did not,
Your first is dead; or 'twere as good he were,
As living here and you no use of him.
Maybe the Nurse simply doesn't
understand that Juliet's love for
Romeo is the real thing, and not some
childish infatuation.
There's also the possibility that the
Nurse doesn't want to lose Juliet to an
uncertain future with Romeo in
Mantua. Selfishness might play a role
in wanting her beloved Juliet to stay in
Verona and marry Paris—and
doubtlessly bring the Nurse with her
when she moves to Paris's house.
Either way, this is a pretty cruel move.
On the other hand, maybe the
Nurse does understandJuliet's love for
Romeo—she's just woman of the
world and knows how limited Juliet's
options are, in a way that an idealistic
little teenager doesn't.
Tybalt
You don't have to look far for
Tybalt's motivation: testosterone.
He's not deep, but he sure is handy
with a sword.
Mercutio, who hates Tybalt, gives
him the "catty" nickname the
"Prince of Cats," and it totally fits.
While Romeo can sometimes
remind you of a bouncy and
overeager puppy, Tybalt tends to
stalk around proudly attacking
anyone who strokes his fur wrong.
We get just a hint of that when his
uncle Capulet prevents him from
beating up Romeo for crashing the
Capulet's masked ball, and he
promises to bash in Romeo's skull
at a later date
Paris
A kinsman of the Prince,
and the suitor of Juliet
most preferred by
Capulet. Once Capulet
has promised him he
can marry Juliet, he
behaves very
presumptuous toward
her, acting as if they are
already married.