Starvard.Starvard.
Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
In Verona, two rich families hate each other so much they brawl in the streets. Romeo, a Montague, crashes a Capulet party and falls instantly for Juliet, and the two marry in secret the next day. Everything that can go wrong does, at the worst possible speed. Shakespeare's story of young love against an old feud is five hundred years old and teenagers still recognize themselves in it.
Verona's two great houses, Montague and Capulet, hate each other so thoroughly that servants brawl in the street. Romeo, a Montague, slips into a Capulet feast and falls for Juliet at first sight; by the next day they are secretly married by a friar hoping the match will end the feud. Instead a street fight kills Romeo's friend and then Juliet's cousin at Romeo's hand, Romeo is banished, and a rescue plan involving a sleeping potion depends on one letter. The letter never arrives.
The idea underneath is speed and inheritance. The feud is old, pointless, and owned by the older generation; the young inherit the hatred but not a reason for it. Everything in the play happens too fast, vows, fights, marriages, deaths, as if haste itself were the curse on both houses.
Teenagers still recognize themselves in it because Shakespeare took young love completely seriously. Watch how much turns on missed timing, and how the lovers get all the poetry while everyone else talks business.
Two teenagers from feuding Verona families fall in love at first sight and marry in secret, and the whole city pays for the grudge. The most famous love story ever told is also a story about how fast hate ruins the young.
The first chapter
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
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 fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Escalus, prince of Verona
Paris, a young nobleman, kinsman to the prince
Montague and Capulet, heads of houses at variance with each other
An old man, cousin to Capulet
Romeo, son of Montague
Mercutio, kinsman to the prince, and friend to Romeo
Benvolio, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo
Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet
Friar Laurence, Franciscan
Friar John, Franciscan
Balthasar, servant to Romeo
Sampson, servant to Capulet
Gregory, servant to Capulet
Peter, servant to Juliet’s nurse
Abraham, servant to Montague
An apothecary
Three musicians
Page to Paris; another page; an officer
Lady Montague, wife to Montague
Lady Capulet, wife to Capulet
Juliet, daughter to Capulet
Nurse to Juliet
Citizens of Verona; several men and women, relations to both houses; maskers, guards, watchmen, and attendants
Chorus
Scene: Verona; Mantua.
Source: Standard Ebooks. Published 1597. Author died 1616. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp