Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy by the English playwright William Shakespeare. It is among Shakespeare’s best-known plays and, like its author, has been highly influential in shaping the course of English-language literature. First performed before 1597 (the date of its earliest known printing), it has been popular ever since. Like most of Shakespeare’s plays, it employs a combination of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) and prose, with occasional deviations in form; for example, Shakespeare often punctuates scenes or long speeches with a rhyming couplet for dramatic effect. The classic play explores themes of The Beauty and Danger of Love, The Power of Dreams and Illusions, and Empty Rivalry and Feud.

This summary refers to the 2011 Folger Shakespeare Library edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide refer to suicide and violence, including discussions of sexual assault.

Plot Summary

A feud between two noble families, the Montagues and the Capulets, is tearing apart the city of Verona. Young men allied with these households fight each other in the streets. At last, the violence gets so bad that the city’s Prince declares that any member of these clans caught fighting will be exiled from the city.

Meanwhile, Romeo, the romantic young son of the Montagues, is suffering: He’s lovelorn over a girl named Rosaline, who doesn’t return his affections. His friends Benvolio and Mercutio persuade him to attend the Capulets’ masked ball in the hopes that he’ll spot another girl to fall in love with there. This plan works all too well: The disguised Romeo falls instantly in love with Juliet, the Capulets’ daughter, whose parents hope to marry her to the eligible young Count Paris. However, Romeo and Juliet’s love overwhelms all such considerations, and when Romeo comes in secret to Juliet’s garden in the night, they vow to marry.

Romeo’s friends take a dim view of this plan. Benvolio points out that Romeo was desperately in love with another girl before seeing Juliet, Mercutio makes sex jokes, and Friar Lawrence, Romeo’s priestly friend and mentor, warns him that the relationship is likely to end in disaster. However, Friar Lawrence also sees the young lovers as an opportunity to heal the rift between Montagues and Capulets, so he agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet in secret.

Before any good can come of this clandestine marriage, Mercutio gets into a street fight with Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt. Mercutio is killed, and a grief-stricken Romeo murders Tybalt in revenge. Though it means leaving behind his new bride, Romeo must flee Verona to avoid punishment at the hands of the Prince.

Juliet is horrified when she learns that her new husband has killed her cousin, but she soon forgives him, and the couple spend a clandestine night together before Romeo departs for Mantua. Juliet then learns that her parents plan to marry her to Count Paris imminently. She goes to Friar Lawrence for help, and he concocts an elaborate plan to reunite the newlyweds: He’ll give Juliet a drug that makes her seem as if she’s dead, when in fact she’ll just be in a brief, deathlike coma. While her family entombs her, Friar Lawrence will send a message to Romeo to come and find her.

Juliet goes through with this plan, but Friar Lawrence’s part in the proceedings doesn’t go so well. News of Juliet’s “death” reaches Romeo in Mantua before Friar Lawrence’s explanatory message makes it there. Romeo rushes to Verona, where he finds and kills the mourning Paris outside the Capulet tomb. He descends into the dark and, finding what seems to be Juliet’s corpse, poisons himself.

Friar Lawrence arrives at the tomb to care for Juliet as she awakes only to find her discovering Romeo’s still-warm body lying next to her. The priest tries to convince Juliet to come away, but she refuses, and he flees at the sound of approaching footsteps. Left alone, Juliet stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger. In the wake of these horrors, the Montagues and Capulets are forced to make a tragic peace.