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A BRIEF PLOT SUMMARY

An age-old vendetta between two powerful families erupts into bloodshed. A group of masked Montagues risk further conflict by gatecrashing a Capulet party. A young lovesick Romeo Montague falls instantly in love with Juliet Capulet, who is due to marry her father’s choice, the County Paris. With the help of Juliet’s nurse, the women arrange for the couple to marry the next day, but Romeo’s attempt to halt a street fight leads to the death of Juliet’s own cousin, Tybalt, for which Romeo is banished. In a desperate attempt to be reunited with Romeo, Juliet follows the Friar’s plot and fakes her own death. The message fails to reach Romeo, and believing Juliet dead, he takes his life in her tomb. Juliet wakes to find Romeo’s corpse beside her and kills herself. The grieving family agree to end their feud.

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(courtesy shakespeare.org.uk)

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WHERE DOES THE PLAY TAKE PLACE?

Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona, Italy (and briefly also in Mantua).  

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References to time and temperature tell us that the play takes place in late July-- the month with the longest and hottest days of the year.

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We can also place the year of the play based on the Nurse's reference to an earthquake in I-3. Although Verona experienced a serious earthquake in 1117, it is much more likely Shakespeare is setting the play in the context of the earthquake he would have experienced in real life-- in England in 1580.  

 

NURSE

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...marry, I remember it well.

'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years,

And she was weaned, I never shall forget it,

For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,

She could have run and waddled all about,

For even the day before, she broke her brow.

 

(I-3, 25-29)

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