Before You Begin

In fair Verona two great families, the Montagues and the Capulets, have hated each other so long that no one quite remembers why. Their quarrel spills into the streets and stains the city with blood, until the Prince himself swears that the next man to break the peace will pay with his life. Into this feud are born two children who were never meant to meet — and who fall, at first sight, hopelessly in love.

Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story ever written, and also one of the fastest: in the space of a few days a masked dance, a whispered vow beneath a window, a secret marriage, a fatal duel, an exile, and a desperate plan carry the young lovers from joy to catastrophe. Shakespeare tells us the ending before it begins — that these are “star-crossed lovers” whose deaths will at last bury their parents’ strife — and then makes us hope, against everything, that it might turn out otherwise.

This edition presents the complete play, act by act, with an illustrated companion to its world: the warring houses of Renaissance Verona, the friar and the nurse who try to help, the hot-blooded Mercutio and Tybalt, and the walled orchard, the candle-lit cell, and the cold monument where the story turns.

The play opens with a Prologue, spoken by the Chorus, that foretells the whole of what is to come. Enter, and see how “a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”