Hello, my name is Dr Aidan Elliott and this is the Complete Guide to Shakespeare. Welcome to this visual summary of Romeo and Juliet. It's designed to help you memorise and easily recall the key events of the play.
This will be helpful in exams when you are asked to make links between themes or to discuss how the characters are presented throughout the play. I have given each act a name to summarise the most important aspect. of each act, namely the road to true love, the road to marriage, the road to banishment, the road to fake death and finally the road to death.
Starting with the prologue it simply tells us that Romeo and Juliet's fate is predetermined and only their deaths can reconcile their warring families. Scene one shows us how the two families hate each other. They only stop fighting when the prince intervenes. and threatens them with death.
Now in this scene we also discover that Romeo thinks that he's in love with a girl named Rosaline but that she doesn't love him. The important thing to note here is that Romeo wants to fall in love. The point of the next scene is to contrast Paris with Romeo.
So where Romeo wants to fall in love Paris seems to want to marry Juliet to improve his social status. But old Capulet doesn't want Juliet to marry yet. He thinks she's too young. So he invites Paris to a family party, hoping that he might see another girl he could marry.
Now, in contrast to Capulet, Juliet's nurse and mother immediately seem keen for her to marry Paris. She's not immediately interested. But this does put the thought of love and marriage in Juliet's mind.
Until this point, she hasn't considered either. Scene four is the most memorable for the Queen Mab speech delivered by Mercutio. It's the one beginning with she's the fairy's midwife. The purpose of this speech, and in fact this scene, is to persuade Romeo to disregard his dream and go to the ball. He finally agrees to go.
And at the ball, Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love. But this is also where Tybalt has to be restrained from violence. And at the end of the scene, Romeo and Juliet come to realise that they have fallen in love with someone they should really be hating.
So Romeo now faces a choice. Does he remain safe with Benvolio and Mercutio or face the danger of going back into the Capulet house? And because he's now in love, he must go back to see Juliet. Romeo and Juliet now meet for the second time in the so-called balcony scene, Act 2, Scene 2. And at the end of this scene, Juliet says that she will send a messenger tomorrow to see if Romeo still wants to marry her. Romeo goes immediately to Friar Lawrence and gets him to agree to marry them the next day, underlining his commitment to love.
Juliet then sends her messenger, the nurse, to check that Romeo is still serious. He is. And in fact, he asked the nurse to tell Juliet to come to Friar Lawrence's cell that afternoon to be married. The nurse returns to tell Juliet the news, but she pretends to be out of breath and unable to tell her. She eventually gives her the good news and she's told to go to Friar Lawrence's cell.
And so in the final scene of Act 2, Romeo and Juliet meet for the third time just before Friar Lawrence performs the marriage ceremony. And he hopes that this love will bring peace between the feuding Capulets and Montagues. But this secret hope for peace will lead to problems because neither the friar nor Romeo or Juliet have a plan for what happens next.
The beginning of Act 3 is often when a major reversal of fortune occurs in a Shakespeare play and that is true here. Tybalt returns and kills Mercutio. Romeo then kills Tybalt in revenge.
Romeo flees the scene of the crime and in his absence is banished from Verona. Juliet meanwhile... He is unaware of these events and is waiting for her new husband to arrive. She compares him to the pure white snow on a black raven's back.
But when she discovers he's killed Tybalt, she compares him to a black raven disguised in the white feathers of a peaceful dove. These images show she's conflicted. And the nurse then leaves to meet Romeo at Friar Lawrence's cell, which is where we now find Romeo, emotional and... crying about his predicament. This is his lowest point, and he's on the brink of suicide.
The nurse arrives, and he's taken in... secret to be with Juliet on their wedding night. But the complications now increase.
Juliet is also miserable. So Capulet, somewhat oddly, decides that the best way to make her happy is for Paris to marry her. Capulet and Paris agree the marriage will happen in three days time. So when Romeo and Juliet meet for the fourth time at the end of Act 3, their first night together will also be their last. And after Romeo leaves for Mantua, the threat level increases.
When Juliet refuses to marry Paris, a furious Capulet orders her to marry him or be thrown out onto the street. Now at her lowest point, and now also on the brink of suicide, she goes to see Friar Lawrence, who concocts a plan. She'll take a potion that will make her appear to be dead. And when she wakes, after 42 hours, Romeo and the Friar will be there.
and she can escape with Romeo to Mantua. The friar will send a letter with the plan to Romeo. Now against this background Juliet then pretends to agree with her father and says she will get married to Paris thus relieving the immediate pressure and despite some reservations after all what if the friar is lying and just wants to cover up the marriage to Romeo she takes the potion on Wednesday night. So on Thursday morning a happy Capulet. sends the nurse to wake Juliet so she can marry.
The nurse then discovers Juliet, thinks that she's dead, and so the family sends her body to the family tomb. She's not buried, so when she wakes up she can escape. The plan seems to be working, but fate now intervenes. Romeo's friend Balthazar also believes that Juliet's dead, so he goes to Mantua to tell Romeo Romeo is distraught and suicidal, just as he was in Acts 3, scene 3, so he buys poison and sets out for Verona. And now we discover why Romeo never got the letter.
Fate has intervened again. An outbreak of plague prevented the messenger taking the letter to Romeo. Can the friar now get to Juliet before she wakes up in the tomb alone?
And in the final tragic scene, when Romeo arrives at the Capulet tomb, He finds Paris in mourning for Juliet outside. They fight and Paris dies. Romeo goes in and finds Juliet's body and believes that she's dead. He takes the poison and kills himself.
And although the friar now arrives, he cannot persuade Juliet to go with him and she then stabs herself to death. Now, as predicted in the prologue, the deaths of Romeo and Juliet finally convince their families to abandon hate and embrace love. and they are reconciled.
Lastly, I would recommend that you go back over this video again at least once before you sit your exam because the more you see the map the better you will be at recalling it and visualising the events during your examinations. So I hope this brief video has given you a way of memorising the main moments in Romeo and Juliet and it will be useful for you when revising for exams or when reading or watching the play. Give a thumbs up if you enjoyed this video and subscribe now so that you never miss any of my future posts.