Romeo

Who He Is

Romeo is Montague's son and arrives at the play far from the lover the title promises. His father says he spends his mornings in the woods, among tears and sighs, and that at daybreak he locks himself in his room, shuts the windows and makes a night of his own. The cause is Rosaline, a woman who has sworn chastity, whom no one sees on stage and about whom he speaks in a poet's paradoxes. He is the cousin of Benvolio, a friend of Mercutio and, after the scene in Friar Laurence's cell, the secret husband of Juliet.

Trajectory

In Scene 1 of Act I, Romeo appears after the street brawl and answers what he sees with stacked contradictions, "brawling love" and "loving hate." Benvolio gets the confession out of him: he loves a woman who will not have him and whom he cannot forget.

In Scene 2 of Act I, Benvolio proposes curing him with another face, and the guest list that Romeo reads aloud to a servant who cannot read carries Rosaline's name. He agrees to go to the ball, but only to see his lady outshine every other.

In Scene 4 of Act I, on the way to the ball, he refuses to dance and chooses to carry the torch. He cuts short Mercutio's long speech about Queen Mab, saying that he talks of nothing, and confesses that his spirit senses a consequence still hanging in the stars, one that will begin with the party that night.

In Scene 5 of Act I, he sees Juliet and forgets Rosaline. The two talk in the verses of pilgrim and saint, and she says he kisses by the book. Only later, through the Nurse, does he learn who she is and conclude that his life has become a debt to the enemy.

In Scene 1 of Act II, he jumps the wall of the Capulets' orchard and does not answer the calls of Benvolio and Mercutio, who look for him in the street. In Scene 2 of Act II, he hears Juliet lament from the window that he bears the name of a Montague, reveals himself and exchanges vows with her. Juliet finds everything too quick, and they agree that if he is thinking of marriage, he should reply the next day, by the messenger she will send at nine, with the place and the hour.

In Scene 3 of Act II, he seeks the friar at dawn, without having slept, and asks him to marry him to Juliet that same day. He says he has already forgotten Rosaline, and the friar is surprised by the change. He reminds him that young men's love lives in the eyes and not in the heart, but accepts, in the hope of reconciling the two houses, and tells him to go slowly.

In Scene 4 of Act II, in the street, Romeo pays Mercutio back pun for pun, when Mercutio greets him for having become himself again, and sends word to Juliet through the Nurse that she should be at Friar Laurence's cell in the afternoon; he promises a rope ladder for the night. In Scene 6 of Act II, before the friar, he says that no pain cancels the joy of a single minute with her.

In Scene 1 of Act III, Tybalt calls him a villain, and Romeo, already secretly a kinsman of the Capulets, refuses the duel and says he loves Tybalt more than Tybalt can imagine, until he learns the reason. Mercutio calls this dishonorable submission and takes up the duel himself; Romeo tries to part the two, and Mercutio is wounded under his arm. After Mercutio's wound, Romeo blames Juliet's beauty for having softened the steel of his courage. When Benvolio brings news of the death, he invokes a fury with eyes of fire, kills Tybalt when Tybalt returns, and says he is Fortune's fool. Prince Escalus banishes him instead of condemning him to death.

In Scene 3 of Act III, he receives from the friar the news of his banishment and calls it torture: there is no world outside the walls of Verona.

Romeo rejects the philosophy the friar offers and, when the Nurse tells him how Juliet weeps, draws his sword against himself. The friar rebukes him and sets out the plan: spend the night with Juliet, leave for Mantua before dawn and wait for pardon. In Scene 5 of Act III, he bids her farewell at daybreak, between the nightingale and the lark. Juliet sees him as a dead man at the bottom of a tomb, and he replies that he sees her pale too. He climbs down and leaves.

In Scene 1 of Act V, in Mantua, he wakes from a good dream and receives from Balthasar the news that Juliet has died. There is no letter from the friar. Romeo defies the stars, orders horses hired and goes after a miserable apothecary, to whom he pays forty ducats for poison, despite the Mantuan law that punishes such a sale with death.

In Scene 3 of Act V, he breaks into the Capulet tomb and sends Balthasar away with a letter for his father. Paris confronts him, and Romeo asks him to flee. The fight happens anyway, and Paris falls asking to be laid beside Juliet. Romeo recognizes him, grants the request, asks forgiveness of Tybalt's body, kisses Juliet and drinks the poison.

Themes Embodied

Romeo embodies the passion the play calls violent: he changes love in one night, marries in one day and, hours later, kills and is banished. The friar warns him twice, in Scene 3 of Act II (slowly, because those who run stumble) and in Scene 6 of Act II (violent pleasures have violent ends), and Romeo's speed does not change.

Each time something goes wrong, Romeo attributes it to the stars or to fortune: the foreboding before the ball, the "fool of fortune" after Mercutio's death, the challenge to the stars on learning of Juliet's death. And in each of these scenes there is a choice of his in plain sight: the blow at Tybalt when he returns, the decision to return to Verona the moment he hears the news, without the friar's letter and without waiting for one. Romeo speaks like someone to whom things happen, and the text shows him deciding quickly.

Relationships

• Juliet: the meeting at the ball becomes vows in the garden, marriage in the cell, one night and a parting; he finds her again dead, in the tomb, and dies beside her.
• Mercutio: the friend who wants him back in good graces and who dies in the duel that Romeo refused.
• Benvolio: the cousin who tries to cure him of Rosaline and who makes him flee after Tybalt.
• Tybalt: Juliet's cousin who wants to kill him at the ball and provokes him in the square, and whom he kills; at the end, Romeo asks his forgiveness.
• Friar Laurence: confessor, matchmaker and author of the Mantua plan; his letter never arrives.
• The Nurse: the go-between for the marriage, who warns him not to lead Juliet into a fool's paradise.
• Paris: the rival he does not know and whom he kills in the tomb, without wanting to fight.
• Capulet: Juliet's father, who at the ball defends Romeo's presence against Tybalt, without knowing who he is to his daughter.