Romeo and Juliet
Romeo Montague
Juliet's secret husband
A romantic young Montague who falls in love at first sight at the Capulet feast and swears off his name for Juliet.
Romeo is the only son of Lord and Lady Montague, a poetic, impulsive young man who feels everything at full strength. When the story opens he is wandering a sycamore grove at dawn, sighing over Rosaline, a woman who has vowed to stay unmarried. His cousin Benvolio and his friend Mercutio spend much of their time trying to pull him out of his gloom.
What Romeo wants is to love completely and be loved in return, and he is willing to throw away rank, family and safety to get it. Verona thinks well of him; even Lord Capulet says the city brags of him as a well-governed youth. His great weakness is speed. He acts on the feeling of the moment, and the people who love him, especially Friar Laurence, keep telling him to slow down.
“Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Romeo crashes the Capulet masquerade to see Rosaline and instead sees Juliet, forgetting Rosaline at once. He climbs the garden wall that night, and by the next afternoon Friar Laurence has married them in secret. When Tybalt provokes him in the square, Romeo refuses to fight, but after Tybalt kills Mercutio he avenges his friend and is banished by the Prince.
He spends a last night with Juliet, flees to Mantua, and hears from Balthasar that she is dead. Never receiving the Friar's letter, he buys poison from the Apothecary and goes to her tomb. There he kills Paris, who tries to stop him, and drinks the poison beside Juliet, dying with a kiss just before she wakes.
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