Romeo and Juliet
What's covered
Key facts
Characters
Benvolio, kinsman of the Montagues, tries to stop the brawl in 1.1: "I do but keep the peace."
Context
Arthur Brooke's poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), a translation of a French version by Boaistuau, is the immediate source for Shakespeare's play, which also draws on earlier Italian versions by da Porta and Bandello.
Key quotations: Family, feud and fate
Capulet, when Juliet refuses to marry Paris in 3.5: "Hang thee, young baggage, disobedient wretch!"
Key quotations: Romeo and Juliet
Juliet in 4.3, before drinking the Friar's potion: "I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins / That almost freezes up the heat of life."
Language and form
Antithesis puts two opposites together; in his banishment speech in 3.3 Romeo says "'Tis torture and not mercy", and opposites such as light and dark and heaven and hell recur through the play.
Plot and structure
In 2.2 Romeo climbs into the Capulet orchard, overhears Juliet on her balcony, and they agree to marry; Juliet will send a messenger, the Nurse, to learn the arrangements.
Themes
In 1.2 Capulet tells Paris "But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart; / My will to her consent is but a part", and says that if Juliet agrees, "within her scope of choice / Lies my consent and fair according voice"; the RSC quotes his "get her heart" line in its Theme of Love.
Characters
Friar Lawrence marries Romeo and Juliet in secret and later gives Juliet the potion that makes her seem dead.
Context
Shakespeare changes Brooke's leisurely period of several months into a story crammed into a few days.
Key quotations: Family, feud and fate
Capulet in 4.5, finding Juliet apparently dead: "Death is my son-in-law; Death is my heir."
Practice questions with answers
A taste of the 68 questions in this topic, answers marked. Sign up to practise the full set with spaced repetition.
Whom does Romeo say he loves at the start of the play, before he meets Juliet?
- •Lady Capulet
- •Livia
- ✓Rosaline
- •Susan
Who wrote the 1562 English poem that was Shakespeare's immediate source for the story?
- ✓Arthur Brooke
- •Arthur Golding
- •Edmund Spenser
- •Geoffrey Chaucer
Which word does Tybalt say he hates "as I hate hell" in 1.1?
- •Duty
- •Honour
- •Mercy
- ✓Peace
Romeo's first words to Juliet, "If I profane with my unworthiest hand / This holy shrine", begin which poetic form?
- •A letter
- •A rhyming prologue
- ✓A shared sonnet
- •A soliloquy
Which rhythm does "But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks" illustrate?
- •Anapaestic trimeter
- •Dactylic hexameter
- ✓Iambic pentameter
- •Trochaic tetrameter
How does the feud first break into open violence in 1.1?
- •Mercutio insults Capulet at a feast
- •Paris attacks Benvolio in the market
- ✓Servants of both houses fight in the street
- •Tybalt challenges Romeo to a duel
Three minutes a day. Knowledge that sticks.
Practise all 68 Romeo and Juliet questions with spaced repetition, so what you revise today is still there in the exam. Free to use, no card needed.