The Tragedy of

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare
The Prologue
 Chorus.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient trudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins if these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows,
Do with their death bury their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught 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.
So what does that mean?
The Chorus is played by a
single actor, whose job is to
briefly summarize the plot of
the play.
The story is set in Verona,
Italy.
The recent fighting that
broke out between two
feuding noble families dooms
So what does that mean?
The unfolding of “their death-
marked love” is the play’s
subject.
Its tragic climax is their untimely
deaths, which cause their
respective families to resolve the
feud.
ACT I
Romeo and Juliet

Remember when we did the plot

pyramids for Marigolds?
The beginning of a story is called the
____________.
What does an exposition do?
In Romeo and Juliet, Act I functions
as the exposition of the play.
Romeo and Juliet

ACT I, SCENE I
Act I, Scene I Summary
On a street in Verona, two
servants of Lord Capulet start a
fight with two of Lord Montague’s
servants.
Benvolio, Romeo’s friend, enters
and stops the fight.
Then Tybalt, a relative of the
Capulets enters and insults
Benvolio, and the fighting starts
again.
Act I, Scene I Summary
The fighting is stopped by several
people, just as Lord and Lady
Capulet and Lord and Lady
Montague enter.
The two Lords exchange angry
words.
Prince Escalus, the Prince and
leader of Verona, comes and
warns the Lords that if they fight
any more they’ll be sentenced to
Act I, Scene I Summary
 Romeo enters the
scene and
confesses to his
friend Benvolio that
he’s upset because
he loves a young
woman, Rosaline,
who’s sworn she’ll
become a nun.
 Benvolio tells
Romeo to forget
about her, but
Romeo says any
other woman will
only remind him of
Rosaline, who he
loves so much.
Romeo and Juliet

ACT I, SCENE II
Act I, Scene II Summary
 Paris asks Lord
Capulet for
permission to
Marry Juliet, but
Capulet hesitates
because he thinks
Juliet is too young
for marriage.
 He says if Paris
can win Juliet’s
heart, the two will
have his blessing.
 So, he invites
Paris to a feast.
Act II, Scene II Summary
Romeo finds out Rosaline is on
the guest list to attend the feast,
so he and his friends decide they
will sneak into the Capulet’s big
party.
Act I, Scene 3
Now we’ll watch the rest of Act I
in the 1968 film version of Romeo
and Juliet, directed by a famous
Italian director named Franco
Zeffirelli.
Pay close attention to the party
scene, when Tybalt sees Romeo
and gets mad that he’s there.
Also, pay close attention to
the part when Romeo and
Juliet first meet.