However, unbeknownst to Lord Capulet, Peter can not read, so he stops Romeo and asks for help with the list. He then invites Paris to a feast and masquerade party that is happening that night and sends his servant (Peter) off with an invitation list. Her father thinks she is too young to marry yet, but if Paris waits two years and takes the time to obtain Juliet’s heart, then he will be pleased with the arrangement.

Switching to the Capulet household, Juliet, Lord Capulet’s daughter is a mere thirteen year old girl when Paris, a suitor in his late twenties, asks her father for her hand in marriage. When Romeo appears, Benvolio tells the youth that he needs to at least try and pursue his other options and Romeo agrees only so he doesn’t have to keep discussing his heartache.

He is heartbroken and claims that he will never love again. Romeo, as is his passionate nature, fell in love with Rosaline, a girl he loves that has vowed to remain chaste. Lady Montague wonders where her son is after the speech ends and Benvolio, Lord Montague’s nephew and Romeo’s cousin, tells her that he saw Romeo weeping earlier in the day. As he remarks “Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.” He remarks that if he hears of another fight between the two families there will be death. Act I Scene I is kicked off with an argument between the servants of the Capulet and the Montague families (rivals in Verona, Italy.) The prince enters after the servants have just drawn their swords and bellows through the streets that he is sick of the feud that has torn the city apart.

The play then switches to Iambic Pentameter, a style of poetry used throughout most of Shakespeare’s plays. “…From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife…” The opening scene is a prologue told by the chorus in a sonnet in which the ending is revealed mid reading.

It is regarded as the most famous of it’s kind- but was this the first of its kind? Was there a real story to the fictional characters? Is the tale more complicated than it seems? Shakespeare’s Version of Romeo and Juliet: A SynopsisĪlthough it is unclear when Shakespeare wrote his play, Romeo and Juliet was first performed in 1597 at the Elizabethan stage in London. It’s a tragic tale known throughout most of the world: Two lovers forced apart by family, fate, and death. Juliet lying on her deathbed after ingesting a poison that allows a person to mimic death.

William shakespeare's romeo juliet