Romeo and Juliet Flashcards
What is the plot?
Montagues and Capulets fight Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love They get married Tybalt kills Mercutio Romeo kills Tybalt Romeo is banished Juliet is told to marry Paris Juliet fakes her death Romeo and Juliet kill themselves Montagues and Capulets end the feud
What are the key themes?
Love Hate Death Violence Individuals VS society Isolation Family honour
What are the main characters?
Romeo Juliet Lord and Lady Montague Lord and Lady Capulet Mercutio Tybalt Benvilio Friar Lawrence Paris Nurse
What is the context?
William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two.
What are key quotes?
‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’
‘Then I defy you, stars.’
‘A plague a’both houses.’
‘O my love, my wife! Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,
hath had no power on thy beauty.’
‘A pair of star crossed lovers take their life.’
Romeo
Romeo experiences a love of such passion that he kills himself when he believes that his love, Juliet, has died.
At the beginning of the play, Romeo loves Rosaline.
Anger makes him kill his wife’s cousin, Tybalt, in a reckless duel to avenge the death of his friend.
Despair forces him to commit suicide when hearing about Juliet’s death. Such extreme behavior dominates Romeo’s character throughout the play and contributes to the ultimate tragedy that happens to the lovers. Had Romeo restrained himself from killing Tybalt, or waited even one day before killing himself after hearing the news of Juliet’s death, matters might have ended happily.
Juliet
Though many girls her age—including her mother—get married, Juliet has not given the subject any thought. Juliet promises to consider Paris as a possible husband to the precise degree her mother desires.
Though profoundly in love with him, Juliet is able to see and criticize Romeo’s rash decisions and his tendency to romanticize things. After Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished, Juliet does not follow him blindly. She makes a logical and heartfelt decision that her loyalty and love for Romeo must be her guiding priorities. Essentially, Juliet cuts herself loose from her prior social moorings—her nurse, her parents, and her social position in Verona—in order to try to reunite with Romeo. When she wakes in the tomb to find Romeo dead, she does not kill herself out of feminine weakness, but rather out of an intensity of love, just as Romeo did. Juliet’s suicide actually requires more nerve than Romeo’s: while he swallows poison, she stabs herself through the heart with a dagger.
Friar Lawrence
He is a kindhearted cleric who helps Romeo and Juliet throughout the play. He performs their marriage and gives generally good advice, especially in regard to the need for moderation.
Friar Lawrence is also the most scheming and political of characters in the play: he marries Romeo and Juliet as part of a plan to end the civil strife in Verona; he spirits Romeo into Juliet’s room and then out of Verona; he devises the plan to reunite Romeo and Juliet through the deceptive ruse of a sleeping potion that seems to arise from almost mystic knowledge.
