<P> Benvolio argues that Romeo has justly executed Tybalt for the murder of Mercutio . The Prince, now having lost a kinsman in the warring families' feud, exiles Romeo from Verona, under penalty of death if he ever returns . Romeo secretly spends the night in Juliet's chamber, where they consummate their marriage . Capulet, misinterpreting Juliet's grief, agrees to marry her to Count Paris and threatens to disown her when she refuses to become Paris's "joyful bride". When she then pleads for the marriage to be delayed, her mother rejects her . </P> <P> Juliet visits Friar Laurence for help, and he offers her a potion that will put her into a deathlike coma for "two and forty hours". The Friar promises to send a messenger to inform Romeo of the plan so that he can rejoin her when she awakens . On the night before the wedding, she takes the drug and, when discovered apparently dead, she is laid in the family crypt . </P> <P> The messenger, however, does not reach Romeo and, instead, Romeo learns of Juliet's apparent death from his servant, Balthasar . Heartbroken, Romeo buys poison from an apothecary and goes to the Capulet crypt . He encounters Paris who has come to mourn Juliet privately . Believing Romeo to be a vandal, Paris confronts him and, in the ensuing battle, Romeo kills Paris . Still believing Juliet to be dead, he drinks the poison . Juliet then awakens and, discovering that Romeo is dead, stabs herself with his dagger and joins him in death . The feuding families and the Prince meet at the tomb to find all three dead . Friar Laurence recounts the story of the two "star - cross'd lovers". The families are reconciled by their children's deaths and agree to end their violent feud . The play ends with the Prince's elegy for the lovers: "For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo ." </P> <P> Romeo and Juliet borrows from a tradition of tragic love stories dating back to antiquity . One of these is Pyramus and Thisbe, from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which contains parallels to Shakespeare's story: the lovers' parents despise each other, and Pyramus falsely believes his lover Thisbe is dead . The Ephesiaca of Xenophon of Ephesus, written in the 3rd century, also contains several similarities to the play, including the separation of the lovers, and a potion that induces a deathlike sleep . </P>

The summary of romeo and juliet by william shakespeare