Romeo is the son of Montague, who falls in love with Juliet at the Capulet ball, marries her in secret, kills Tybalt, is banished from Verona, and dies in the tomb beside her. He is cousin to Benvolio and friend of Mercutio.
He comes to the play suffering for Rosaline, a woman who has sworn chastity and whom no one sees on stage; his father says he spends his mornings in the grove, among tears, and locks himself in his room by day. At the ball (Act I, scene 5), he sees Juliet and forgets Rosaline, and the next morning he asks Friar Laurence to marry them that same day (Act II, scene 3).
In Act III, scene 1, he refuses the duel that Tybalt offers him, tries to part Tybalt and Mercutio, and Mercutio, wounded under his arm, dies. Then Romeo kills Tybalt, and the Prince banishes him rather than condemning him to death. For Romeo exile is worse than death: "There is no world without Verona walls / But purgatory, torture, hell itself" (scene 3). He even draws his sword against himself, until the friar reproves him and arranges the plan to go to Mantua.
In Act V, scene 1, in Mantua, Balthasar tells him Juliet is dead, and Romeo, without a letter from the friar, answers: "Then I defy you, stars!" He pays forty ducats to an apothecary for poison, returns to Verona, kills Paris in the tomb, and drinks the poison beside Juliet (scene 3).