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Romeo and Juliet: the story, act by act
Two teenagers from families at war fall in love at a party, marry in secret and are dead within a few days. Read what happens in every act, then the main characters and ideas.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. A tragedy is a play that ends in the deaths of its main characters. The Royal Shakespeare Company says the play was first printed in 1597, and that Shakespeare most likely wrote it in 1595 or 1596, while Elizabeth I was queen.
In the exam it is Section A of Literature Paper 1. The question prints an extract, then asks about the play as a whole, so you need to know the whole story. The play opens by telling you how it ends, so the real question is how, and why, it happens.
- 30marks for the Romeo and Juliet question, plus 4 for spelling, punctuation and grammarAQA specification
- 40%of your English Literature GCSE comes from Paper 1AQA specification
- 1597the year Romeo and Juliet was first printedRoyal Shakespeare Company
Read the transcript
This is the complete revision guide to Romeo and Juliet for AQA GCSE English Literature. I’m Hannah, and I teach English. In one video you’ll get the plot, the characters, the themes, the context, the terms to know, every quotation worth learning, and what the examiners reward. Paper 1 Section A: one question on an extract and the play as a whole. The question may call the extract a speech, a conversation or a moment in the play.
30 marks plus 4 for AO4, about 50 minutes. Answers are placed in a level by best fit. Let’s start with the plot, act by act. Act 1. The Chorus tells us the lovers will die.
Servants of the two houses brawl and Tybalt joins in; the Prince threatens death for any further fighting. Romeo pines for Rosaline. Paris asks to marry Juliet, and Lady Capulet tells her of the match. Romeo goes masked to the Capulet feast, fearing what the stars hold. He and Juliet meet and kiss; Tybalt is held back by Capulet; each learns that the other is an enemy.
Act 2. Romeo climbs into the Capulet orchard. In the balcony scene the lovers exchange vows and Juliet asks him to arrange a marriage. Friar Lawrence agrees, hoping to end the feud. Mercutio mocks Romeo, and Tybalt sends a challenge.
The Nurse carries messages, and the Friar marries the lovers in secret. Act 3. Tybalt challenges Romeo, who refuses to fight. Mercutio fights instead and is killed under Romeo’s arm. Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished.
Juliet hears the news from the Nurse; Romeo despairs in the Friar’s cell. Capulet fixes Juliet’s wedding to Paris for Thursday. The lovers spend one night together and part at dawn. Juliet refuses Paris, her father threatens to throw her out, and the Nurse advises her to marry him. Act 4.
At the Friar’s cell Juliet threatens to kill herself. The Friar gives her a potion that will make her seem dead for two and forty hours. She pretends to agree to the marriage, and Capulet moves it to Wednesday. Juliet drinks the potion; on the wedding morning the Nurse finds her, and the wedding becomes a funeral. Act 5.
Balthasar tells Romeo in Mantua that Juliet is dead, and Romeo buys poison. The Friar’s letter never reaches him. At the tomb Romeo kills Paris, drinks the poison and dies. Juliet wakes, refuses to leave with the Friar and stabs herself. The Friar explains everything, and the Prince tells the families “All are punish’d”.
Capulet and Montague make peace. Now the characters. Romeo. Montague’s only son, who moves from sighing over Rosaline to marrying Juliet in a day, kills Tybalt, and takes poison when he believes Juliet is dead. Juliet.
Capulet’s only daughter, not yet fourteen, who marries Romeo in secret, defies her father, and takes her own life in the tomb. Mercutio. The Prince’s kinsman and Romeo’s friend, a quick, mocking talker who fights Tybalt for Romeo and curses both houses as he dies. Tybalt. Lady Capulet’s nephew, quick to anger and proud of his family’s honour.
He kills Mercutio and is killed by Romeo. Friar Lawrence. Romeo’s confessor, who marries the lovers in the hope of ending the feud and plans Juliet’s false death. The Nurse. Juliet’s nurse since birth, bawdy and loving, who carries messages for the lovers and then advises Juliet to marry Paris.
Capulet. Juliet’s father and head of the Capulets, who seems patient with his daughter in Act 1 and threatens to throw her out in Act 3. Lady Capulet. Juliet’s mother, who urges the match with Paris and turns away from Juliet when she refuses. Benvolio.
Romeo’s cousin and friend, who tries to keep the peace and reports the fights to the Prince. Paris. A young nobleman, the Prince’s kinsman, who asks to marry Juliet and is killed by Romeo at her tomb. Prince Escalus. The ruler of Verona, who threatens death for further brawling, banishes Romeo and judges both families at the end.
The themes. For each one, here’s the idea in a sentence. That sentence is the start of a thesis. Love. Love comes in many forms in the play, from Romeo’s borrowed sighs for Rosaline to the sacred, sudden love that costs the lovers their lives.
Conflict and violence. The feud turns quarrels into killings, and its violence reaches the people who want no part in it. Fate and free will. The Prologue says the lovers are star-crossed, yet every disaster needs someone’s choice to happen. Family and authority.
Fathers rule their households, and a daughter who refuses a match risks losing her home. Honour and masculinity. Young men are expected to answer an insult with a sword; Romeo’s gentleness is called submission. Time and haste. The story takes about four days, and almost everyone acts too quickly, from the lovers to Capulet.
The context. Use it where it explains a choice the writer made. One clause inside a point does more than a paragraph of history. Romeo and Juliet was probably written in about 1595 and was first printed in 1597, while Elizabeth I was queen. Shakespeare took the story from Arthur Brooke’s poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which came from an Italian tale.
He squeezed months of action into about four days and made Juliet younger: she is not yet fourteen. Many Elizabethans believed that the stars could shape a person’s life. “Star-cross’d” means thwarted by the stars, so the Prologue tells the audience that fate is against the lovers. In wealthy families, fathers arranged their daughters’ marriages for money, land and status. A daughter was expected to obey, and one who refused could be disowned.
Young men of good family carried swords, and an insult to a man’s name or family was expected to be answered. The play is set in Verona, where the Prince has banned street fighting on pain of death. Love poetry in the 1590s was full of sonnets in the style of Petrarch, the Italian poet who wrote of a lady he could never have. Romeo’s speeches about Rosaline use the same sighs and oxymorons, and the Prologue and the lovers’ first conversation are sonnets. The terms to know.
Name a method only when you can say what it does. Tragedy and tragic hero: A play that ends in the deaths of its central characters. Romeo’s haste is often read as his fatal flaw (hamartia), and the Prologue tells us the ending before it begins. Prologue and sonnet: The Chorus speaks a fourteen-line sonnet that ends in a rhyming couplet. The lovers’ first conversation in Act 1 Scene 5 is also a sonnet, shared between them (Lesson 9).
Petrarchan lover: A lover who sighs over a lady he cannot have, in the style of the poet Petrarch. Romeo over Rosaline: “Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!” (Lessons 5 and 6). Oxymoron: Two opposite words placed together. Romeo’s “O brawling love! O loving hate!” and Juliet’s “Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical” show love and hate joined.
Soliloquy: A character alone on stage, speaking their thoughts. Juliet’s “Gallop apace” in Act 3 Scene 2 and the potion speech in Act 4 Scene 3 (Lesson 22). Dramatic irony: The audience knows what a character does not. Capulet mourns Juliet in Act 4 Scene 5 while the audience knows she has taken a potion (Lesson 23). Foreshadowing: Hints of what is to come: Juliet’s “My grave is like to be my wedding bed” and the Friar’s “These violent delights have violent ends”.
Blank verse and rhyme: Unrhymed iambic pentameter for most of the nobles’ speech. The lovers often slip into rhyme, which marks their love as special. Prose: Lines with no metre, used by the servants, the Nurse and Mercutio when he jokes. Mercutio’s dying lines are prose (Lesson 16). Light and dark imagery: Juliet is “the sun” and teaches “the torches to burn bright”; the lovers meet at night and are parted by the dawn.
Religious imagery: Pilgrims, saints and prayer in the shared sonnet make the lovers’ first kiss sound holy (Lesson 9). Foil: A character who shows up another by contrast. Benvolio keeps the peace while Tybalt hates the word; the Nurse’s earthy talk sets off Juliet’s devotion. The quotations. These are the 31 I’d want every student to know by heart.
For each one: who says it, where, and why it matters. “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life”. The Chorus, The Prologue. The stars are against the lovers before the play begins; the audience knows the ending. “Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean”.
The Chorus, The Prologue. Citizens kill citizens: the feud stains the whole city. “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”. Abram, Act 1 Scene 1. A rude gesture starts a street fight: the feud runs down to the servants.
“I hate the word As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee”. Tybalt, Act 1 Scene 1. Tybalt hates peace itself; hatred is his whole identity. “O brawling love! O loving hate!”.
Romeo, Act 1 Scene 1. Oxymoron: Romeo’s love for Rosaline is borrowed from Petrarch’s sonnets, and love and hate are already joined. “My child is yet a stranger in the world”. Capulet, Act 1 Scene 2. Capulet seems protective of his young daughter, which makes his later rage more shocking.
“It is an honour that I dream not of”. Juliet, Act 1 Scene 3. A polite, obedient answer to her mother about marriage. “Some consequence yet hanging in the stars”. Romeo, Act 1 Scene 4.
A premonition that the feast will lead to his death. “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!”. Romeo, Act 1 Scene 5. Light imagery: Juliet outshines the torches and puts Rosaline out of his mind. “My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand”.
Romeo, Act 1 Scene 5. The shared sonnet: religious imagery makes their love sound sacred. “My only love sprung from my only hate!”. Juliet, Act 1 Scene 5. Antithesis: love and hate are tied together the moment she learns his name.
“It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!”. Romeo, Act 2 Scene 2. Metaphor: Juliet is the centre of his world and his source of light. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet”.
Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2. Juliet wants to separate the man from the family name. “It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden”. Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2. Juliet sees the danger of their speed, even as she gives her love.
“Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes”. Friar Lawrence, Act 2 Scene 3. The Friar doubts young men’s love, since Rosaline was forgotten so quickly. “These violent delights have violent ends”. Friar Lawrence, Act 2 Scene 6.
Foreshadowing: love this intense will burn out like gunpowder. “O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!”. Mercutio, Act 3 Scene 1. Mercutio sees Romeo’s peace with Tybalt as shameful, so he fights for him. “A plague o’ both your houses”.
Mercutio, Act 3 Scene 1. Repeated as he dies: a curse on both families, which the play then carries out. “Thy beauty hath made me effeminate”. Romeo, Act 3 Scene 1. Romeo blames love for making him less of a man, and turns to violence.
“O, I am fortune’s fool!”. Romeo, Act 3 Scene 1. Romeo blames fortune for the killing he has just done. “O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!”. Juliet, Act 3 Scene 2.
Oxymoron and Eden imagery: Juliet’s shock that Romeo has killed her cousin. “There is no world without Verona walls”. Romeo, Act 3 Scene 3. Banishment feels like death to him. “Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch!”.
Capulet, Act 3 Scene 5. Capulet’s rage when Juliet refuses Paris: a father’s power over a daughter. “I think it best you married with the County”. The Nurse, Act 3 Scene 5. The Nurse’s practical advice leaves Juliet alone.
“If all else fail, myself have power to die”. Juliet, Act 3 Scene 5. Juliet’s first talk of suicide: death is the one choice she still has. “My dismal scene I needs must act alone”. Juliet, Act 4 Scene 3.
Juliet alone with the potion: a theatre metaphor for her isolation. “Death lies on her like an untimely frost”. Capulet, Act 4 Scene 5. Simile: dramatic irony, because the audience knows she is not dead. “Then I defy you, stars!”.
Romeo, Act 5 Scene 1. Romeo defies fate and in doing so fulfils it. “Thus with a kiss I die”. Romeo, Act 5 Scene 3. His last line ends with the kiss that began their love in Act 1 Scene 5.
“See what a scourge is laid upon your hate”. The Prince, Act 5 Scene 3. The Prince names the feud as the cause, and heaven as the punisher. “For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”. The Prince, Act 5 Scene 3.
A rhyming couplet closes the tragedy, as the Prologue opened it. Finally, what the examiners reward. AO1, response. An argued answer to the question, set out in a thesis, with short references from the extract and other acts. Both bullets matter, in either order: students do not have to start with the extract.
A how far question needs a judgement. AO2, methods. How Shakespeare makes meaning for an audience: sonnet and rhyme, soliloquy, dramatic irony, structure and timing as well as imagery and single words. Level 6 analysis is convincing, critical and exploratory. AO3, context.
Context in AQA’s wide sense: the ideas in the question, the setting in Verona, tragedy as a genre, audiences then and now and the play’s universal ideas, as well as the 1590s: fathers and daughters, honour and the sword, belief in the stars, the sonnet tradition. Use it where it explains Shakespeare’s purpose. One clause inside a point does more than a paragraph of history. AO4, accuracy. 4 marks for a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.
Check the spelling of the names: Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio, Capulet, Montague. And how answers lose marks: Retelling the plot; writing about the play as a novel with readers; staying in the extract; treating it as a simple love story and leaving out the feud; context bolted on at the end; pre-learned paragraphs that do not fit the question; theory or terms used to impress. That’s everything in one place. Watch it again in a week, and pause on any section you couldn’t have explained yourself. Everything in this video comes from our Romeo and Juliet scheme of learning for schools.
If you’re a teacher, Lesson 3 of every scheme is free at btl.education. Thank you for watching.
Act 1: The feud and the feast
Before the action starts, the Chorus, a single speaker, tells the audience the whole story in fourteen lines. Two families in Verona, the Montagues and the Capulets, have an “ancient grudge”. A “pair of star-cross’d lovers” will be born to them, and only their deaths will end the feud. Star-crossed means the stars, or fate, are against them.
The play begins with a street fight. Servants of the two families insult each other, and Abram asks “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” Benvolio, a Montague, tries to stop the fight. Tybalt, a Capulet, arrives and says he hates peace “As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee”. Soon the heads of both families want to join in. Prince Escalus, the ruler of Verona, stops it. He warns that if they fight in the streets again, “Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace”: the punishment will be death.
Romeo, Montague’s son, missed the fight. He is miserable because he loves a woman called Rosaline, who has sworn never to marry. He talks about love in a string of opposites, such as “O brawling love! O loving hate!”
Paris, a young nobleman, asks Capulet if he can marry Capulet’s daughter, Juliet. Capulet says she is too young, since she is not yet fourteen, and tells Paris to win her heart first. Capulet’s servant cannot read the guest list for that night’s feast, so he asks Romeo to read it. Rosaline is on the list. Benvolio persuades Romeo to go, so that he can compare her with other women.
Lady Capulet tells Juliet about Paris. With the Nurse, who has looked after Juliet since she was a baby, she asks Juliet to think about marrying him. Juliet gives a polite, obedient answer.
On the way to the feast, Romeo’s friend Mercutio makes a long, wild speech about dreams. Romeo says he fears that something “yet hanging in the stars” will begin that night and end in his own early death. They go in wearing masks.
At the feast Romeo sees Juliet and forgets Rosaline at once. Tybalt recognises Romeo’s voice and wants to fight him, but Capulet stops him, and Tybalt leaves swearing revenge. Romeo and Juliet speak to each other in a shared sonnet and kiss. Then each learns from the Nurse who the other is. Romeo is a Montague and Juliet is a Capulet.
Act 2: The balcony and the wedding
A Chorus speaks again, then Romeo climbs the wall into the Capulets’ orchard. Juliet comes out onto her balcony, and he hears her talking to herself about him. She wishes he had a different name, so that his family would not stand between them. Romeo speaks, and they swear their love. Juliet says it is all “too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden”. Before they part, she asks him to send word the next day if he means to marry her.
Romeo goes to Friar Lawrence, a priest. The Friar is amazed that Romeo has forgotten Rosaline so quickly, but he agrees to marry the couple. He hopes the marriage will “turn your households’ rancour to pure love”, which means turn the hatred of the families into love.
Tybalt has sent a letter to Romeo’s house challenging him to a fight. Mercutio jokes about Tybalt, then teases the Nurse when she comes to find Romeo. Romeo tells the Nurse that Juliet should come to Friar Lawrence’s cell that afternoon to be married. The Nurse goes back and teases Juliet before she finally gives her the news. The Friar warns Romeo that “These violent delights have violent ends”, then marries the lovers in secret.
Act 3: Two deaths and a banishment
On a hot day, Tybalt finds Romeo. Romeo has just married Tybalt’s cousin, so he refuses to fight and speaks kindly to him. Mercutio is disgusted by Romeo’s “calm, dishonourable, vile submission” and fights Tybalt himself. Romeo steps between them, and Tybalt stabs Mercutio under Romeo’s arm. As he dies, Mercutio curses both families: “A plague o’ both your houses”.
Romeo feels that love has made him weak. In a fury he fights Tybalt and kills him. He cries “O, I am fortune’s fool!” and runs. The Prince banishes Romeo from Verona, which means he must leave the city. If he is found there, he will be killed.
Juliet is waiting impatiently for night and for Romeo. The Nurse brings the news that Tybalt is dead and that Romeo killed him. Juliet is torn, then decides that her loyalty is to her husband. In the Friar’s cell, Romeo says banishment is worse than death. The Friar tells him to spend the night with Juliet, then escape to the city of Mantua and wait there.
Capulet agrees with Paris that Paris will marry Juliet on Thursday. Capulet thinks this will cheer her up after Tybalt’s death. Romeo and Juliet spend their wedding night together and part at dawn when they hear the lark. Then Lady Capulet tells Juliet about the wedding. Juliet refuses. Capulet is furious. He calls her a “disobedient wretch” and says that if she will not marry Paris, she can starve in the streets. Her mother turns away from her. The Nurse advises her to marry Paris and forget Romeo. Juliet now trusts nobody in the house, and she goes to the Friar for help.
Act 4: The potion
At the Friar’s cell, Juliet says she will kill herself before she marries Paris. The Friar gives her a plan. She will agree to the wedding, then drink a potion the night before. It will make her seem dead for “two and forty hours”. Her family will lay her in the Capulet tomb. The Friar will send a letter to Romeo in Mantua, and Romeo will come to take her away when she wakes.
Juliet goes home and tells her father she is sorry. He is so pleased that he moves the wedding a day earlier, to the next morning. Alone in her room, Juliet is afraid. What if the potion does not work, or is poison? What if she wakes in the tomb next to Tybalt’s body? She drinks it anyway.
In the morning the Nurse goes to wake Juliet and finds her, as it seems, dead. Her parents, the Nurse and Paris mourn her. The wedding becomes a funeral.
Act 5: The tomb
In Mantua, Romeo’s servant Balthasar brings news that Juliet is dead. Romeo cries “Then I defy you, stars!” He buys poison from a poor apothecary, a seller of medicines, and sets off for Verona. The Friar’s letter never reaches him. Friar John, who was carrying it, was shut in a house where people feared there was plague.
At night Paris visits the tomb to scatter flowers. Romeo arrives, and Paris tries to arrest him. They fight, and Romeo kills Paris. Inside the tomb, Romeo looks at Juliet for the last time, drinks the poison and dies with a kiss: “Thus with a kiss I die.”
Friar Lawrence arrives too late, just as Juliet wakes. He hears the watchmen coming and begs her to leave with him. She refuses, so he runs. Juliet kisses Romeo’s lips, hoping there is poison left on them. Then she takes his dagger and stabs herself.
The watchmen bring the Prince, the Capulets and Montague. Montague says his wife has died that night of grief at Romeo’s exile. The Friar explains everything, and a letter from Romeo proves his story. The Prince tells the fathers that heaven has punished their hate, and says “All are punish’d.” At last Capulet and Montague shake hands, and each promises to raise a gold statue of the other’s child. The play ends: “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
The main characters
- Romeo: Montague’s only son. He moves from sighing over Rosaline to marrying Juliet within a day, kills Tybalt, and takes poison when he believes Juliet is dead.
- Juliet: Capulet’s only daughter, not yet fourteen. She marries Romeo in secret, defies her father and takes her own life in the tomb.
- Mercutio: the Prince’s relative and Romeo’s friend. He is a quick, mocking talker who fights Tybalt for Romeo and curses both houses as he dies.
- Tybalt: Juliet’s cousin, quick to anger and proud of his family’s honour. He kills Mercutio and is killed by Romeo.
- Friar Lawrence: a priest who marries the lovers in the hope of ending the feud, then plans Juliet’s false death.
- The Nurse: Juliet’s nurse since birth. She is rude, funny and loving, carries messages for the lovers, then advises Juliet to marry Paris.
- Capulet: Juliet’s father. He seems patient with her in Act 1 and threatens to throw her out in Act 3.
- Lady Capulet: Juliet’s mother, who pushes the match with Paris and turns away when Juliet refuses.
- Benvolio: Romeo’s cousin, who tries to keep the peace.
- Paris: a young nobleman who wants to marry Juliet. Romeo kills him at her tomb.
- Prince Escalus: the ruler of Verona, who bans fighting, banishes Romeo and judges both families at the end.
The main ideas and context
Love. The play shows many kinds of love: Romeo’s borrowed sighs for Rosaline, the sudden love of Romeo and Juliet, the Nurse’s rude jokes and the parents’ pride. Romeo and Juliet’s love is shown as holy in their first sonnet, and it costs them their lives.
Conflict. Nobody in the play remembers why the families hate each other. The feud spreads from the servants to the heads of the families, and it kills people who want no part in it, such as Mercutio and Paris.
Fate and choice. Many people in Shakespeare’s time believed that the stars could shape a person’s life. The Prologue says the lovers are star-crossed, and Romeo keeps fearing or blaming the stars. Yet every disaster also needs someone’s choice, and almost everyone acts in a hurry.
Fathers and daughters. In rich families, fathers usually chose husbands for their daughters, for money, land and position. A daughter was expected to obey. Capulet’s rage in Act 3 shows how little power Juliet has.
Honour. Young men carry swords, and an insult must be answered. That is why Mercutio thinks Romeo’s peace with Tybalt is shameful.
Time and haste. The Royal Shakespeare Company points out that Shakespeare took the story from Arthur Brooke’s long poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, printed in 1562. In Brooke’s poem the lovers have several months together. Shakespeare squeezed the action into a few days, so everything happens too fast.
Myths about Romeo and Juliet
Myth When Juliet says “wherefore art thou Romeo?” she is asking where he is.
What the evidence says
Wherefore means why. Juliet is asking why he has to be Romeo, a Montague. Her next line, “Deny thy father and refuse thy name”, makes the meaning clear. She does not know he is listening below.
Source: William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2 (Project Gutenberg text)
Myth Shakespeare made up the story.
What the evidence says
The story was already well known. Arthur Brooke published his poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet in 1562, and it came from earlier Italian and French versions. Shakespeare’s big change was the speed: months in Brooke became a few days in the play.
Source: Royal Shakespeare Company, Romeo and Juliet: dates and sources
Myth Romeo and Juliet is only a love story.
What the evidence says
The play begins with the Chorus describing the feud and then a street fight, before Romeo and Juliet even meet. It ends with the Prince blaming the families’ hate. The lovers die because of the feud, so an answer about love should also talk about hate.
Source: William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, the Prologue, Act 1 Scene 1 and Act 5 Scene 3 (Project Gutenberg text)
Romeo and Juliet in the exam
Romeo and Juliet is one of the Shakespeare plays you can study for Section A of AQA’s Literature Paper 1. Paper 1 lasts 1 hour 45 minutes and makes up 40% of your English Literature GCSE. In Section B of the same paper you answer on your 19th-century novel.
You answer one question. It prints an extract from the play, then asks about the extract and about the play as a whole. It is worth 30 marks, plus 4 marks for AO4: using a range of vocabulary and sentence structures, with accurate spelling and punctuation. The exam is closed book, so anything you say about the rest of the play comes from memory.
In June 2024, AQA’s examiners reported that Macbeth was the most popular Shakespeare play, “followed by Romeo and Juliet.” That year the question was about the difficulties Juliet faces. Students wrote about difficulties from across the play, such as Romeo’s banishment and the Nurse letting Juliet down.
What to do next
Learn the quotations on Romeo and Juliet: quotations to learn, and practise with How to answer the extract question. You can read the whole play free on the Folger Shakespeare Library website, which numbers every line.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the story of Romeo and Juliet take?
Only a few days. Romeo and Juliet meet at the Capulet feast, marry the next afternoon and are both dead a few days later. Shakespeare took the story from a poem by Arthur Brooke, where it lasts several months, and made it much faster.
Who is to blame for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet?
There is no single answer, and the exam rewards an argued one. The Prologue blames the stars, the Prince blames the families’ hate, and many characters make choices in a hurry, including the lovers, Capulet and Friar Lawrence. A good answer weighs these against each other.
How old is Juliet in Romeo and Juliet?
She is not yet fourteen. Her father tells Paris that she “hath not seen the change of fourteen years”, which is why he first asks Paris to wait.
Why does the Friar’s plan go wrong?
The letter explaining the plan never reaches Romeo. Friar John, who was carrying it, was shut inside a house because people feared plague. Romeo hears only that Juliet is dead, buys poison and reaches the tomb before she wakes.
Which paper is Romeo and Juliet on in GCSE English Literature?
It is on AQA Literature Paper 1, Section A. You get one question on an extract and the whole play, worth 30 marks plus 4 for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Sources
- Project Gutenberg, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (ebook 1513)
- Folger Shakespeare Library, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: the entire play
- Royal Shakespeare Company, Romeo and Juliet: dates and sources
- AQA, GCSE English Literature 8702 specification
- AQA, Report on the examination: Paper 1, June 2024