How Does Romeo and Juliet End? Summary, Characters and Legacy
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet ranks number 13 on the list of the 100 stories that shaped the world, published by BBC Culture in 2018. The play gives away its ending from the very start, yet it still holds audiences captive.
A Tragedy That Reveals Its Ending
The first printed edition of Romeo and Juliet was published in England in 1597. The play treated the love of two teenagers with the seriousness that tragedy usually reserved for kings and warlords.
Spoiler warning: the ending is revealed from here on. But Shakespeare reveals it too. A chorus opens the play with a sonnet: two star-crossed lovers will die, and only their deaths will bury their parents' hatred. From that moment, the question is not whether it will happen, but how.
Act-by-Act Summary
Act One. In Verona, servants of the Montagues and the Capulets clash in the street. Prince Escalus decrees death for anyone who breaks the peace again. Romeo, a Montague, is pining for Rosaline, who does not return his love. That night he slips, masked, into the Capulets' ball and meets Juliet, the daughter of the house. They talk, they kiss, and only afterwards do they discover which family the other belongs to. Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, recognizes the voice of a Montague and swears revenge.
Act Two. Romeo climbs the orchard wall and overhears Juliet at her window. She reasons that a name is neither a hand nor a face, and that a rose would smell just as sweet under another name. It is Juliet who proposes marriage. The next day, Friar Laurence marries them in secret.
Act Three. Tybalt challenges Romeo, who refuses to fight someone who is now his kinsman. Mercutio draws his sword in his place. Romeo steps between them, and Tybalt wounds Mercutio under Romeo's arm. Before he dies, Mercutio wishes a plague on both houses. Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished to Mantua. The newlyweds spend a single night together. Meanwhile, Juliet's father arranges her marriage to Count Paris.
Act Four. Friar Laurence gives Juliet a potion that will make her appear dead until she wakes in the family crypt. Romeo, alerted by letter, will be waiting for her there. She drinks it on the eve of the wedding.
Act Five. Mercutio's curse comes true almost to the letter. Friar John, who is carrying the letter, is shut inside a house sealed off on suspicion of plague. The only one who reaches Mantua is Balthasar, Romeo's servant, with news that Juliet is dead. Romeo buys poison from a poor apothecary, returns to Verona, kills Paris outside the tomb and drinks the poison beside Juliet. She wakes, sees his body and stabs herself with Romeo's dagger. Over the bodies, Montague and Capulet shake hands.
The Main Characters
Romeo goes from sighing over Rosaline to killing and dying within a matter of days. Juliet, who is not yet fourteen, is the most clear-sighted of the two and the one who takes the final risk.
Mercutio, a kinsman of the prince and neither a Montague nor a Capulet, dies in a war that is not his own. Tybalt embodies honor understood as a duty to kill. Friar Laurence marries the lovers in the hope of reconciling the families and stakes everything on a letter. The Nurse covers up the wedding, but after the banishment she advises Juliet to marry Paris, and Juliet stops trusting her.
The Context of the Play
Shakespeare wrote for London's public theater, where female roles were played by boys. Only a few years earlier, plague had forced the city's theaters to close. For that audience, a house sealed off because of contagion was no invented plot device.
The story was not new. It came from Italian novellas and from a long English poem by Arthur Brooke. What changed was the timescale: events that took months in the sources unfold here in four or five days. In addition, the lovers' first exchange forms a complete sonnet shared between the two of them.
The Legacy of Romeo and Juliet
Prokofiev turned it into a ballet, Gounod into an opera, Berlioz into a dramatic symphony and Tchaikovsky into a fantasy-overture. West Side Story moved the two families to two rival gangs in New York.
In Verona, a medieval house is presented as Juliet's. Its balcony was added in the 20th century, and the word balcony does not appear in Shakespeare's text. Letters addressed to Juliet still arrive in the city, and a group of women volunteers answers them. In English, a romeo is simply a lover.
Frequently asked questions
How does Romeo and Juliet end?
Romeo believes Juliet is dead and drinks poison beside her. Juliet wakes, sees his body and stabs herself with his dagger; afterwards, Montague and Capulet shake hands.
Why doesn't the letter reach Romeo?
Friar John, the messenger, is shut inside a house sealed off on suspicion of plague. The only one who reaches Mantua is Balthasar, with news of Juliet's death.
How old is Juliet in the play?
Juliet is not yet fourteen.
Does the balcony appear in Shakespeare's text?
No. The word balcony does not appear in the play, and the balcony of Juliet's house in Verona was added in the 20th century.
Informative article written with the help of AI tools from the verified script of the video. The video is in Spanish.