 Hello and welcome to our video summary of Romeo and Juliet. Now, I made this video for two reasons. Now the first reason is some of you may have been following this course and you've gone through with me through the detailed introduction of the play in addition to a detailed reading of each act as well as each scene in the play and what this video is going to be really useful for is to give you a general mind map, in other words a general idea of exactly how everything is structured together but also this is a really really nice revision summary in the case you just want to get a nice idea of how or you take a step back, how does the play really look like. However, the second reason why I made this video is for some of you students who might not have the luxury of time. You might need something that's really quick, short and snappy to help you especially because you don't necessarily have that much time before your exams or any kind of upcoming assessment. Now what this video is really useful for if you're in that position is I will summarize the plot, the themes, the main characters, quotations as well as context and all the top line quotes you need to remember for the exams. So let's get started. Now we're going to start first off with the plot and talk about it in summary. So now Romeo and Juliet just to recap begins with the Montague's versus the Capulets. So these are two wealthy families who essentially have been feuding for decades if not years upon years. And essentially this feud starts even between their servants. So this shows just how deep and how far the hatred really runs. However, Prince Escalus, because this is set in Verona, a city in Italy, he comes in, breaks up the brawl and essentially says that this feud between the two families is essentially creating a really unsafe environment in Verona. And so he essentially heightens the tension by telling both of the families that if there's any more feuding or if the peace is disturbed, he is going to have the person that causes this to be killed. Now the play then develops essentially when Romeo and Tybalt as well as or rather Romeo and Mercutio as well as Fanfodio learn that Lord Capulet is having a masked ball. Now we learned that Romeo initially is in love with a lady called Rosaline and he is heartbroken because she doesn't require his love. Now we know that Rosaline is more aligned with the Capulet family and of course we know that Romeo is a Montague. However, Romeo who wishes to at least see if there's any chance of getting back and rekindling this love with Rosaline he decides to sneak in to Lord Capulet's ball and when he does he actually forgets Rosaline because he meets Juliet and initially unbeknownst to both of them when they do fall in love with this ball they don't realise that they essentially are from feuding family. So of course you know that Juliet is a Capulet whilst Romeo is a Montague. However, they fall in love and their love really quickly escalates because they decide to marry secretly and this is where the nurse who essentially raised Juliet so she is from of course a very wealthy family even if her mother Lady Capulet is around she has a closer relationship with the nurse who essentially looks after her. She helps Juliet broker a secret marriage with Romeo through Friar Lawrence so they end up marrying in secret and of course we know that Friar Lawrence can marry them because he is a man of God and he's a monk so they marry secretly with the help of Friar Lawrence and then essentially we then find at a later scene because of course this is a secret Tybalt encounters McCutcio and Bonvolio so of course we know that Tybalt who witnessed Romeo at the Capulet ball is really angry about this he sees this as an insult to the honour of the Capulet family he encounters both McCutcio and Bonvolio and decides to seek revenge and Romeo encounters them arguing. Now Romeo is really happy he's quite blissful because he is married to Juliet however when Tybalt asks him for a duel Romeo refuses initially McCutcio steps in and Tybalt ends up killing McCutcio and of course Romeo in retaliation because he feels that being in love has made him really effeminate he also ends up killing Tybalt in revenge and of course Prince Escalus makes good on his threat because he has Romeo banished so he's actually he lets him off lightly because it doesn't have him killed but he is banished and whilst Romeo is banished essentially Juliet because of course also Juliet's family doesn't necessarily know that she's already a married woman she is forced to marry Paris who Lord Capulet essentially had arranged this marriage prior and of course they speed this up because they feel that Juliet who is really sad because Romeo has had to leave they think that she's melancholic because of her cousin passing away so they speed up the marriage even if Juliet tries to refuse the family actually threatened that they will disown her if she doesn't go ahead so then Juliet decides to have a separate plan with Friar Lawrence Friar Lawrence who is good at creating potions and different medicines gives her a sleeping potion she sleeps in order to pretend that she's dead and to essentially deceive her family Friar Lawrence also promises that he will send another Friar to go and meet Romeo to let them in and Romeo would according to this plan come back to Verona take Juliet at night from the tomb and they would flee and go together to be happy together as a married couple however of course this plan doesn't go according to how both Juliet and Friar Lawrence wanted because Balthazar who works for Romeo gets over to Romeo first before he even knows what's going on he tells Romeo that Juliet is dead and of course Romeo who's overcome with grief tries to also kill himself so he buys poison and he goes to Juliet's tomb and essentially he meets Paris who of course also is fooled he thinks that Juliet is dead and Paris believes that Romeo is there to basically desecrate and dishonour her tomb they fight Romeo kills Paris and ultimately of course Romeo then also takes the poison and dies now when Juliet wakes up and she finds both the dead bodies of Paris but more importantly the dead body of Romeo and she realizes that the idea that she had hasn't gone according to plan she decides to take the dagger from Romeo and she kills herself and Friar Lawrence of course comes too late because he tries to reverse this plan and he tries to get Juliet to take her to a nunnery because of course now Romeo has died Paris has died Juliet doesn't necessarily doesn't have many other options Juliet refuses she kills herself and ultimately it then turns out that you know all of this is uncovered Friar Lawrence explains all of this to both the Montague family the Capulet family as well as Prince Escalus and ultimately because of this Montagues and the Capulets decide to unite together because they realize just how terrible a feud is for everyone everybody loses now that is it in terms of the plot for Romeo and Juliet let's talk about firstly the genre that it begins in and of course in terms of the genre that Romeo and Juliet belongs to it squarely fits into a tragedy now always remember a tragedy is what Aristotle termed as a play which essentially has good characters characters who are good at heart but they have something called Hamashia which means a fatal flaw and Hamashia is spelt H-A-M-A-R-T-I-A essentially the fatal flaw is what causes them to make a series of mistakes and ultimately this leads up to in the case of both Romeo and Juliet death however tragedy doesn't always have to lead in death it leads in some kind of downfall now in this case when you're thinking about the fatal flaw in both Romeo and Juliet both of them are quite young and very impetuous but also very very impulsive and of course this causes them to act before sometimes they think ahead and this causes them ultimately to die and they both take their own lives now in times of context the first thing to remember with this play is that it was written by Shakespeare during the Elizabethan era what this means is that Queen Elizabeth was the monarch and of course when it comes to the Elizabethan era there are a lot of things that were really prevalent in terms of beliefs and we're going to go through this contextually now the first thing is to do with the family structure now of course even if ironically the monarch was a woman this was still a very patriarchal society in other words a society that was dominated by men at the head and in the family structure more so men essentially controlled everything that happened including their daughters and women and daughters were seen as property so of course this is another contextual factor hence why when it comes to family number one there was no such thing as marrying for love in the Elizabethan era you're only married based on what your father wanted for you or what your uncle or any other male relative who was in charge of you as a woman wanted for you so that's the first thing to remember also the second thing of course in this very patriarchal society there were very strict ideals related to the honour and the honour of one's family and one's family had to be defended even by blood and of course when you're thinking about honour this is why the issue between the Montagues and Capulets really escalates and it becomes essentially a blood feud and what this means is that honour is so important it even takes more of a precedent than one's life now the other thing of course which I've mentioned in terms of context relating to family is to do with the idea of marriage there was no such thing as love marriage it was mainly focused especially in the aristocratic class it was based on arranged marriages because this marriage was seen very much as a business transaction to unite families who had common interests of course shown in Romeo and Juliet through Lord Capulet's brokering of marriage between Juliet and Paris he had more of a strategic advantage to gain from that relationship than of course from Juliet marrying Romeo now let's talk about themes in this play so the first theme to be aware of of course is the theme of love however do remember that when it comes to love there's two types of love that's illustrated in this play the first of course and the most obvious one is the romantic type of love and of course we learn that this romantic love is expressed both between Juliet and Romeo Paris does, we can argue, fall for Juliet he even comes back to her tomb when she dies in order to pay his last respects however of course the love relationship that dominates and the romantic relationship that dominates is that between Romeo and Juliet and of course they want to even be united in death however the other kind of love is the friendship love and of course the one that's most illustrated is that between Romeo and Mercutio Romeo essentially avenges Mercutio's death and defends his death by killing Tybalt so also that's another type of love and this is a friendship type of love now the other thematic aspect to be aware of is that to do with conflict and of Aleppo the inner side of conflict as well as the conflict between the two families now let's first start with the conflict between the two families so what essentially kicks off this entire tragedy is that both the Capulet and the Montague families are at war and they are at conflict and of course Shakespeare's message is that this lack of forgiveness is what causes the downfall of both families and the deaths of both families however also when I've mentioned with regards to inner conflict what this means is for example when you look at Romeo at the beginning of the play he has a lot of inner conflict when he is dealing with his emotions and his love for Rosaline and he even speaks in oxymorons we're going to talk about it very shortly with regards to quotes also the other inner conflict is of course the conflict that Juliet experiences between obeying her family's wishes and obeying what her family would want versus following her heart and falling in love with Romeo so that's another type of conflict so there's two types of conflict always remember there's the family conflict the external conflict but also there's the inner conflict that the two key characters experience the final theme is that to do with family and duty and essentially we have mentioned this before this is the idea that both Romeo and Juliet have this internal conflict that they have to deal with partly stemming from the fact that they have a duty to follow what their parents want in terms of their own internal desires and their marriage and especially this is brought to bear when it comes to Juliet and her father's wishes for her to marry Paris now of course when you're also thinking about family and duty there's this conflict that they experience when it comes to the duty between the extended family so of course Romeo faced this conflict when he witnessed Tybalt keeling Makushio he initially tried to express some kind of unity with Tybalt however this backfired and this led to the death of Makushio so essentially this conflict between family and duty and of course the theme of family and duty is really brought to bear and the power that the family has over the individual becomes one of the key sticking points to the play and of course this is also what propels the tragedy forward so now let's move on finally to the quotes and especially quotes according to the key characters now as you can see here what I did was I highlighted all the main characters and this includes Romeo, Juliet, Tybalt, Makushio Benvolio, Paris, the Nurse Friar Lawrence, Lord Capulet, Lady Capulet as well as Prince Escalus and I'm going to go through the key quotations for each character that you need to be aware of so let's start off with over here the chorus now in terms of the key quotations for the chorus and these are the people who essentially foretell for us what's going to happen in the play the first quotation is Star Cross Lovers and of course this is essentially saying that fate has it that Romeo and Juliet not only will they meet but ultimately they will have a really tragic ending and we learn about this and this idea that the individual might not necessarily have that much power over fate and over the destiny the second quotation from the chorus to remember is when they state passion lends power and this is of course by act two when Romeo and Juliet have met and they're fallen in love and essentially they are describing this power that both Romeo and Juliet have gotten as a result are falling in love with each other now when it comes to Romeo and the quotations to remember for Romeo the first quotation is when we meet him and he is really lovesick with regards to Rosaline and he speaks in oxymorons he says loving hate sick health and these two oxymorons are really powerful in highlighting especially when you're linking it to the theme of conflict highlighting the inner turmoil that he experiences the second quotation from Romeo is when he says my life is my foe's debt and of course this is what he says once he realises that Juliet belongs to the house of Capulet and he essentially foreshadows and foretells that his life will ultimately end because of his love for Juliet now the other key quotation for Romeo is when he is talking to Paris and he tells him do not tempt a desperate man and this is when he gets to Juliet's tomb he believes Juliet is dead and Paris essentially is telling him that what he can and cannot do and he is really angry and of course this shows just how impulsive he is he's so driven by his emotions he can't think rationally even when he's still into Paris now the final quotation from Romeo is when he says let's pale flag is not advanced and of course this is a metaphor when he's looking at Juliet's face he says she looks as if she were alive and of course this is used for dramatic irony on Shakespeare's part Juliet is alive she's just asleep but of course Romeo doesn't know this and this is what makes a tragedy so terrible for us as the audience now when it comes to the character of Juliet the first quotation is when she says I must love a loathed enemy and of course this is when the nurse tells her Romeo is a Montague and she decides to pick her loyalty to Romeo over her own family and of course this ties in to the theme of family and duty she doesn't necessarily follow this duty that she should have as a daughter to her father she prefers to follow her heart instead the other quotation from Juliet is when she describes Romeo as her true knight and she gives the nurse a ring to give to Romeo as a gift and as a symbol of her devotion and commitment from Juliet is fortunes at thy foot are lay and she essentially promises to Romeo that wherever he goes she will go and of course this alliteration of Fs of fortunes and foot show kind of this impassioned way that she's speaking again we learn that both Romeo and Juliet are very much driven by their emotions and their impetuousness and of course we know that this is what's going to cause their fatal ending and the final quotation is when she says oh happy dagger this is when she takes the dagger and pulls herself now when it comes to Tybalt the key quotation from him is when he notices Romeo at the capillette and he says seeming sweet converts to bitterest and of course this is him foreshadowing when he decides to engage Romeo in a duel and obviously this causes his death and also the death of Makushu now in terms of Makushu there's two quotations to bear in mind the first is when he's telling Romeo be rough with love and of course this summarizes Makushu's own really bawdy way of talking his idea that he doesn't necessarily really believe in love the other key quotation is when he dies and he says a plague on both houses and he's cursing both the houses of capillette as well as the house of Monticu now when it comes to Bernfoglio the first quotation to show that as opposed to Makushu he's not very hot headed is when he tells Makushu let's retire it's a really hot day we need to go away otherwise there's trouble brewing and of course rightly so because Tibault encounters them and then Makushu dies the other quotation from Bernfoglio is when he then follows up by saying all eyes gaze on us he is essentially being shown as a person who's much more rational much more balanced but ultimately nobody listens to him and Makushu ends up dying in terms of Paris the first quotation which shows perhaps that he's a little bit selfish and wanting to marry Julia he doesn't necessarily care that she's very young is when he says younger than she happy mothers are made this is when he's trying to explain and justify to Lord Capulet initially that actually he should let Juliet marry quite young because actually there's even younger women than Juliet who already have children and this shows that he's very self-consumed and very self-absorbed in what he wants the other quotation for Paris is when he says most detestable death and of course the alliteration of Di highlights how angry he is when he realizes incorrectly that Juliet has died now in terms of the nurse the first is when she's warning Romeo not to lead Juliet in a false paradise and she's speaking in metaphors she's basically warning him that he needs to be honest in his intentions for Juliet the second quotation from the nurse is how you hence to Friar Lawrence's cell this is when she's telling Juliet that she's going to support her and actually Romeo is currently waiting for her to marry her the other quotation to remember is when he says these violent delights have violent ends and of course the repetition of violent initially or rather essentially shows just how this impetuousness this impulsive nature that both Romeo and Juliet have and how young their love is actually this will ultimately lead to violent ends and of course he again foreshadows what's going to happen which is essentially their deaths now in terms of Lord Capulet there's a few quotations to remember the first and essentially this is when he asks Juliet to marry Paris after Tybalt died Juliet refuses and he essentially curses her and tells her that if she doesn't marry she's going to be disowned the other quotation is with my child my joys are buried this is when he realises that Juliet has died he doesn't realise of course she isn't dead she's just asleep however this is a complete contrast to how he was before he now is somehow really remorseful really sad it's only now that he wants to think about Juliet from a positive perspective and the final quotation is at the end of the play when he calls Romeo's father brother Montague and of course this shows that he's decided to end the feud now with Lady Capulet Juliet's mother the first quotation is when she calls Romeo that villain Romeo and of course this shows just how detached she is that's more of a mother to Juliet than her own mother who doesn't even know what's going on the other quotation is when she asks Juliet are you mad this is when Juliet says that she doesn't want to marry Paris again this shows just how detached her mother is as opposed to the nurse who actually really cared about Juliet's feelings and the final quotation is when ironically after Juliet dies she calls her my only life again this shows that she's not necessarily as Juliet has supposedly died now the final person to remember in terms of quotation is Prince Escalus and of course he's the person that runs Verona he's the one that's in charge of Verona and he says at the beginning he calls them rebellious subjects this is when he's breaking up the fight amongst the servants of both the Montague and Capulet household and he then says to Romeo once Romeo has killed Tybald after he has warned everybody not this is just him essentially saying that he doesn't care what Romeo has to say in this defence he has to leave Verona now the final quotation this is at the end of the play when he's speaking to both Lord Montague and Lord Capulet he essentially says see that son and heir now nearly down and this is when he's talking to Lord Montague and he's basically saying look at the results of your lack of forgiveness and your lack of feuding so that's all I hope you found this summary really useful make sure you take notes but also if you don't necessarily have a great view of this mind map I have created it as a resource which you can download so make sure you also download it in this course and thank you so much for listening